schmevil

1. My everyday headphones have died!

I'm left with my theft-proof-buds, running clip-ons and circumaural noise reducers. The first two are pretty terrible, being cheap, cheap buds. The last set actually provides decent sound quality, for all that there's a slight hiss when the NR is on. Because they're circumaural, they're incredibly muffling even without the NR, which means I don't notice the neighbors parties so much. And as a bonus, NR provides a crucial assist in my ongoing quest to ignore the industrial strength air conditioner of the high school out back. But they aren't the best phones for everyday use, being freaking gigantic and attention-getting.

Need a new set of everyday headphones. I kind of want Sennheiser's HD650 but they're so out of my price range right now. So the hunt begins.

2. Why is it that so few contemporary philosphers/political thinkers know how to write?

Even if I excuse some of the awkwardness as being a deliberate rhetorical strategy, there's still so much WTFbadness going on. A) Brevity is the soul of wit, bitches! Stop disclaiming, explaining and obfuscating, and make your goddamn point. B) No. No, you don't need two chapters to explain your rhetorical strategy. I can see your rhetorical strategy just fine.

Ok wait, three things.

3. I need a dirty cover of Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker, and I need it like burning. Why are so many of the covers so pedestrian? Anyone have a rec for me?

The Animals' version is fun: ( Read more... )
But Hooker's is so much hotter: ( Read more... )
But my favourite version is still this one. Hnn.

Current Music: John Lee Hooker - Boom Boom

Valentines Day doesn't interest me, so I'm going to share some stuff that did interest me, from my morning news scan.

Actually, I just thought of one Valentine-y thing that does interest me - anyone seen editorials about how you can do your part to support capitalism this V-Day? "IN THIS ECONOMY GO BIG OR GO HOME--BUY GIANT STUFFED ANIMALS AND SUPPORT ~~AMERICA~~ ~~CHINA~~ GLOBAL CAPITAL!" Come on, somebody's got to be talking about the importance of spending our hard-earned, fist-full o' dollars on red and pink crap.

"WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CARD INDUSTRY?"

Links?

Computer generated illustration of the situation out there (via European Space Agency). Go here for a larger version of the image. And here for a table of space junk, as of 2000, and space junk facts.

Possum with bandaged paws at the Healsville Santurary in Australia. (via a short piece from NPR)

Penguins Showing Strain Under Climate Change

Argentina's Magellanic penguins are moving north, laying their eggs later than they used to, and struggling -- often unsuccessfully -- to feed their chicks, all as a result of climate change.

These findings suggest the need for a major shift in the way we think about protecting penguins, as well as other marine creatures, said conservation biologist Dee Boersma, of the University of Washington in Seattle. She presented the results of more than 25 years of research today in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Penguins are incredible sentinels for our environment, particularly the ocean environment," Boersma said. "They're already telling us there are severe changes going on."

Fourteen of the world's 19 penguin species are threatened or endangered, with a few species in deep trouble. A major reason for their decline, Boersma said, is an increasingly variable climate, with more frequent El Nino and La Nina events that can drastically change water temperatures and nutrient levels from year to year. Climate models predict more of this type of variability to come.

February 14, 2009
Emily Sohn, Discovery News

Google Power Meter

Google believes consumers have a right to detailed information about their home energy use. After all, real-time energy information helps people make smarter choices so they can save energy and money. Studies show that people save 5-15% of their energy costs when they have access to information about their energy consumption.

(via Earth2Tech)

Darwin in song? A singing Darwin scholar. Nice.

A cool new thing:

K-based design firm DIY Kyoto has come up with a clever plan to allow homeowners to visibly see how much energy they are using in their home at any given moment. Wattson, a portable and wireless device, hooks up to the main fuse box of any home and a bright display shows how much energy is being used in either in watts or cost over the past 28 days. The program also allows the user to put the information online in a community, where ideas about saving electricity are shared. (Via Lost At E Minor).

The Avenging Unicorn Playset This is quite possibly the best. toy. evar. Nay, it is the best toy evar. Do you see that? You can kill a corporate raider with a unicorn.

I must have it.

I posted some more Mouse Guard at

scans_daily. I command thee to go forth and read! The mice need more love. Did I mention that the art is awesome?

Look at those beautiful colours!

Aboriginal leaders look to future after historic apology

"Our peoples, our history and our present being are the essence of Canada," Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine told members of Parliament and hundreds of observers seated in the gallery. "The attempts to erase our identities hurt us deeply. But it also hurt all Canadians and impoverished the character of this nation. We must not falter in our duty now. Emboldened by this spectacle of history, it is possible to end our racial nightmare together."
CBC News

Next step? Making concrete plans to counter the underdevelopment of First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities, and signing the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

When Max Met Julie

MONTREAL–The restaurant where then-industry minister Maxime Bernier first met an enchanting brunette named Julie Couillard is a chic Italian eatery and bar frequented by movie stars, beautiful people and, on occasion, gangsters. Couillard was brought to a dinner gathering, held in Bernier's honour in April of last year, by a colleague from a property development firm with which she had recently become affiliated, sources say.

A La Presse investigation has revealed the man who accompanied Couillard to Ristorante Cavalli on the evening of April 26, 2007, was Philippe Morin, one of two owners of Groupe Kevlar, a large Montreal property developer. The investigation has confirmed Morin brought Couillard along to a weekly dinner held by a handful of young Montreal businesspeople, and that Bernier's acquaintances among the group intended to introduce the minister, a bachelor, to the one-time actress and model.

...

"There is the possibility that organized crime is trying to infiltrate the government," Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion told reporters. "I'm not saying it's what happened. But certainly all the experts of security who have spoken (say) ... this is the pattern that you need to check."
Sean Gordon
Toronto Star

The Hells Angels are trying to infiltrate the minority Conservative government through the Industry Minster? Okay! I'm not discounting the possibility but it does sound a little strange. There are easier ways to gain influence over members of Parliament.

I'm also starting to really get annoyed by the Sex! Scandal! aspect of the coverage. On a fundamental level, I don't care how awesome Julie Couillard's breasts are. Instead, let's get back to talking about those pesky potential threats to our national security. (Not that 'national security' is the way I'd choose to frame this issue - way to hit the panic button, guys!)

The Rise of the Low Cost Laptop

But in one respect the XO Laptop has undoubtedly made an impact: by helping to spawn a new market for low-cost laptops. Hardly any models costing $500 or less were available when the XO burst onto the scene, but now there is a wide selection of such machines, from familiar makers such as HP and Intel, and from relative newcomers such as Asus and Pioneer Computers. By raising the very possibility of a $100 laptop, the XO presented the industry with a challenge. Wayan Vota, founder of OLPCNews.com, an independent website that follows the project, calls the XO a “harbinger of an entirely new class of computers”.
The Economist

The piece points to how the One Laptop Per Child program has done more to revolutionize computing in developed countries, than developing. Many of the new cheap laptops are marketed to first world consumers, and aren't exactly intended to address the access gap. Still, cheap laptops may follow the same pattern as cheap cellphones, and we'll have a wired world before we know it.

How to Spot Greenwashing
Organizers of this weekend's Green Living Show say they rejected 100 would-be exhibitors because their goods were not terribly environmental.

Sensing a lucrative green wave, some entrepreneurs are pushing products that make promises they cannot keep, spinning them as "natural" or "earth friendly," terms that are meaningless.

• Look for products that have been certified by independent parties, such as EcoLogo, right, or Green Seal. Both have set standards and perform ongoing checks.

• Check if the certification claims are true. Reputable certifiers offer public lists of their companies.

• Ask whether a company is emphasizing good work in one area but hiding negative practices in another.

• Examine the product label for directions that tell consumers how to find proof of its claims.

• Is the claim evident? Or so vague (such as "all natural" or "Earth friendly") that it is meaningless?
4-25-2008
Moira Welsh
Toronto Star

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to do some research before going green, or even, at the bare minimum, read the freakin' labels of your shiny new green product. I work in grocery/gm retail, and I've developed a pet peeve roughly the size of Jupiter, when it comes to jackasses who buy every product in green packaging. Every product that claims to be natural. Every nonsensical, hippy-dippy homeonaturorganic product, without understanding what 'organic' means. Most of all, I'm tired of people who preach greening, without considering the problem holistically.

Memo to idiots: 'natural' products are not better for the environment if they were shipped across the continent. Reusable bags are not better for the environment if they contain possibly dangerous, untested due to grandathering chemicals, that are never broken down by the bodies of living things. Your energy efficient light bulbs, appliances and insulation are not better for the environment if you landfilled the less efficient versions.

And while we're on the subject of greenwashing - stainless steel drinking bottles. Actually green? I'm a bit leery of the mining/refining/manufacturing process. This requires investigating, because I'm sure I've seen ss bottles that claim to be green.

NASA has a stunning image of the day - Uvs Nuur Basin, Mongolia

The Uvs Nuur Basin sits on the northern edge of the Central Asian steppes, bounded on all sides by mountains. Though largely arid, the basin is dotted with water. A large salt lake, the Uvs Nuur Lake, sits at the center of the basin, and several smaller lakes are scattered across the region. Rivers, the largest of which is the Tes-Khem, run from the surrounding mountains into the basin, but no rivers flow out of the basin. This image shows one of the smaller lakes near the western edge of the basin.

PA Semi customers asking Department of Defense to intervene in Apple sale
Apple has long served as a haven in the Valley for engineers with a taste for hallucinogens and pacifism. The same can not be said of PA Semi, which Apple recently acquired. The PWRficient processor was an instant hit among defense contractors building the latest in hyper-efficient killing technology, such as Curtiss-Wright Controls. As the EE Times reports:

"We've had customers saying they are going to the DoD on this one," said a source in one of the several companies making embedded computer boards with the processor.

I'm sure Apple will be happy to simply license the design to a fabricator with no qualms about dealing in death. God bless America.
4-24-2008
Jackman West
ValleyWag

I'm linking this for the comments, such as:

Blow that shit up. My SUV needs oil, as I need to drive it to the mechanic because I got so many weak omega-male crybabies caught in my tires when I went plowing through the torch protest crowds. Hopefully he can get the smell of entry-level wage and patchouli off of the rubber as well.

and

Also, your pacifist snark aside, what do you think gives us the ability to wage war without unintentionially killing thousands of civilians? Targeting technology that uses advanced electronics. The fact is, having more effective and more accurate weapons saves lives: first, those of American troops, who have the right to demand the best technology available, given the risk we ask them to take; second, those of non-combatants, as we no longer have to level cities to take out crucial infrastructure and we can target military facilities embedded among civilian infrastructure; and third, enemy combatants, who know that we can put a bomb through the skylight of a treehouse and are more likely to surrender as a result.

Well, it's true that casualties in Iraq don't come close to casualties in say, WW2, it's specious to claim that targeting technology as it stands was developed in order to reduce civilian casualties. It's certainly a selling point when firms shop their wares to the DoD, in the sense that reducing collateral damage means less ill will from the international community, but it's not THE selling point. Increasing remote capabilities is imo mainly driven by projected cost-cutting and risk aversion.

And come on, the whole 'we can put a bomb through the skylight of a treehouse' thing is so patently false - under ideal conditions the technology can do this, but in practice? Not so much. DoD yahoos have been predicting the ~~Final Crisis~~ Revolution To End All Revolutions In Military Affairs, since like, the start of the Cold War and it still hasn't materialized. In practice what we've got is one country that's seventy bajillion lightyears ahead of everyone else when it comes to defense technology, and lots of other countries and non-state actors who spend all their time figuring out how to get around this snazzy new tech. Hello IUDs! (Did your know that garage door openers are key weapons in insurgencies, guerrilla wars and terrorism all over the world?)

Let's also not forget that a lot of America's woes have been the result of this aversion to putting boots on the ground.

And! All the victims of: bombs that hit the wrong treehouse; pilots who had bad intel; and lots and lots of HUMAN ERROR.

(Man, do you guys remember that episode of ToS, where two neighboring planets had outsourced their war to their computers, in order to reduce collateral damage, and the civilians were required to calmly report to a nearby disintegration facility, when it was calculated that they'd been 'victims' in the latest 'attack'?

Awesome sauce. Oh Stark Trek, you continue to win at lulz even now).

I can't stop listening to Samuel L Jackson's version of Stack-O-Lee. Mississipi John Hurt's is the definitive version but I liking this one. There's something just so Samuel L about it that makes it appealing.

( Lyrics )

***

This is not what I like to see when I check on my Amazon account.

Items not yet shipped:
Delivery estimate: Oct 17 2007 - Oct 25 2007

* 1 of: Reflections on Violence
* 1 of: Thus Spake Zarathustra
* 1 of: Negative Horizon : An Essay in Dromoscopy
* 1 of: Caucasia A Novel
* 1 of: Strategy in the Contemporary World : An Introduction to Strategic Studies
* 1 of: On The Shores Of Politics

GodDAMNit.

***

During the past 200 years, shrubs have expanded their reach into many of the world's grasslands, reducing the amount and quality of forage available to livestock. Some scientists theorize that elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations have spurred that growth.
New Scientist
10/08/2007

And what do we think the likely response of big agriculture will be? *wince*

For some reason this puts me in mind of the plan to pump compressed, nutrient-rich water down to the ocean floor in order to stimulate algae growth. Who else remembers this? Engineers pointed out that the plan could inadvertently raise CO2 levels. OMG fringed sage is taking over the ocean floor! Shrubs vs Coral death match? It could be funny... no? Ok, then.

But seriously, I'm not looking forward to the Monsanto vs Degradation of North America's Grasslands Via Shrub Encroachment death match. Not at all.

And now for our (now regular) quantum computing update:

How scientists realize the promise of the theoretical qubit is not clear. Various designs and paths have been proposed, and one very promising idea is to use tiny magnetic fields, called "spins." Spins are associated with electrons and various atomic nuclei.

Magnet lab scientists used high magnetic fields and microwave radiation to "operate" on the spins in the new material they developed to get an indication of how long the spin could be controlled. Based on their experiments, the material could enable 500 operations in 10 microseconds before losing its ability to retain information, making it a good candidate for a qubit.
New Scientist
10/08/2007

I don't really have anything to say about this except HOLY SHIT AWESOME, because as you might have noticed, I'm a total fangirl when it comes to this shit. You want to hear about the railcar evac system for the shuttle launcher now? No? :-(

Last entry I passed on the rumor that Facebook was going to launch a music store. That rumor has now mutated:

Facebook is said to be launching an artist platform to compete with MySpace's musician-friendly profile pages -- a feature that has been a huge part of the social network's growth. Ali says that the platform includes iTunes integration for buying music through Apple's store, special profiles for bands, and unique widgets for music promotion, tour dates, and more, all within the clean Facebook interface.
Jordan Golson
ValleyWag
10/06/2007

***

As heard in hour 17 of the 24 hour comic podcast: Brian Michael Bendis is writing an upcoming Mighty Avengers Annual with an all-female team going up against an all-female group of villains.

Yay to that, because Bendis writes female characters as being people, not female-people.

Current Music: Samuel L Jackson - Stack-O-Lee

Allfacebook.com is reporting a rumor that Facebook will take on Apple's dominant iTunes by introducing its own music store. Few details are provided, save that they are actively looking to hire someone to head the project and discussions with studios have been ongoing.
Tim Faulkner
10/05/2007
Valleywag

Oh Facebook. I have a deep-seated doubt of the wisdom of trying to be everything to everyone. This could either work out fantastically for them, or screw them up really, really bad.

In contrast, this is intriguing news. I don't know - is there enough interest in streaming music? But I'm happy to see more people moving into the digital download market. Yay for competition.

Time Warner Launches Music Store

For $9.95 a month, you get unlimited access to streaming music. It also will sell digital downloads through its store, and allow you to transfer files onto portables for an additional fee. With all these new entries into digital music distribution -- real and rumored -- it'll be interesting to see if Apple caves to market pressure and either allows flexible pricing on iTunes, as the labels have asked for, or a subscription plan, to stay competitive.
Mary Jane Irwin
10/05/2007
Valleywag

This is an interesting post but I'm resistant to some of his suggestions. Just how much *are* we going to let technology control our existence? Well, a lot, I'm sure. Still, I can't even cope with being leashed to a cell phone and only enjoy using lj *because* it's anonymous.

Every day I look around the lecture hall and see at least ten laptops on Facebook, constantly refreshed. I have a Facebook account but I can't seem to muster up the interest necessary to become addicted. I mean, the daily minutia is boring enough without having it enshrined in photography. Look! Here's me at the mall! Here's me at bus stop! Here's me at the--FUCK OFF. And the wall posts. Jesus god.

Anyway, the post blurb--

Web 3.0 Starts With Your Phone

Expanding on the promise of a more mobile powered web, consider these scenarios. You have an iPhone or some other similar device. You walk into a store and your network switches over to the in-house WiFi. Now you’re online and browsing an interactive, web delivered catalog. Maybe you want to know where to find a certain product (in a department store, etc). A map pops up on your screen, showing your current location through GPS, along with a directory that you can search or browse.
Sugar Attack
10/04/2007

There's a post on World Changing about greener apartment living and it's discouragingly short on promise.

I live in a mixed townhouse/apartment condo complex that's about 30 years old. In the next few years a number of new, greener building codes and recycling requirements will come into effect. It's easy enough to recycle in a house (though it's harder when you have to bring your various recyclables to a central location), but retrofitting a 30 year old apartment building for wet recycling and composting is mind boggling. At least it's currently boggling my mind.

Our condo association is painfully in the red, and swiftly depleting its reserve fund, trying to cope with the new building codes re fire/elevator/everything safety, (which are really good, well thought out regulations), and I can already see the special assessments in our mailbox. I truly believe in the importance of making some fundamental changes to our collective lifestyle, but some days it really hurts.

Current Music: Samuel L Jackson - Alice Mae

I'm seriously considering a layout incorporating this:

Oh the lolz. And speaking of lolz, have you ever actually read lj's 404 error messages? Refresh it a few times.

***

And now for an update on my favourite line of physics/computing research, quantum computing.

"For the first time the components that underlie quantum computing's great potential – qubits – have been linked on chips like those in conventional computers. Two US research teams used superconducting circuits to make two of the quantum components linked by a quantum information cable or bus.

The bits that work together on calculations in a normal computer can exist in two states – either 0 or 1. But qubits can inhabit both at once, allowing them to process many calculations simultaneously when they get together.

Qubits can be made in different ways, but so far most schemes don't lend themselves to mass manufacture. Putting them onto chips like those in conventional computers could unlock the economies of scale that have driven the rise of electronic computing."

Saswato Das
09/26/2007
The New Scientist

Quantum computing is of particular interest to the NSA because it's believed that it could revolutionize codebreaking. Commercially, I don't know - just ridiculously fast computers? Personally I'm in it for the Holy-Shit-Cool factor.

***

I'm so forwarding this to every one of my poor, bastard friends who are running Vista. Not because I want to see them cry, although that would be entertaining.

"The first indication that Microsoft should abandon Vista is its poor sales figures. According to a recent report titled "Windows Vista Still Underperforming in U.S. Retail" from NPD, Vista sales are significantly behind XP sales during its early days. Even worse for Redmond, some are reverting to XP, citing issues with compatibility and overall design. And if that wasn't enough, Macs continue to surge and with the impending release of Leopard, Microsoft may be in for a rough holiday season.

With each passing day, it's becoming blatantly clear that Microsoft released Vista too early and the company's continual mistakes and promises that can't be kept are further annoying the Windows faithful."

Don Reisinger
09/26/2007
The Digital Home

When I got my iMac yesterday, I thought I had a usb cable handy but it appears I do not. This is tragic because I wanted to scan my Marvel Adventures: Iron Man issues. I'm consoling myself with this preview of MA: Avengers #15 (scroll down). God, this whole line of books is just ridiculously cute. It's so cute that its cuteness threatens to overwhelm the stability of the cutetime continuum and cause universal (though cute) destruction.

I also desperately want to scan my favourite sequence from Brian K. Vaughn's Pride of Baghdad. Wicked great book. I found some scenes too emotionally simplistic, and at times the story was perhaps too caught up in being an anti-Lion King, but it's such a sad, beautiful narrative, and Niko Henreichon's pencils are simply lovely. La la la love.

BTW,

cedarlibrarian are you aware that BKV is set to write a Faith story in Buffy Season 8? I haven't been reading the comics (I'm waiting for the inevitable trades) so this totally passed me by. I've never been much of a Faith fan but still, this is good news - BKV will be writing Buffy, and his Faith is guaranteed, by dint of his fabulosity, to annoy me much less than did Noxon!Faith. And his ideas about the series as expressed in this article are certainly promising.

***

YouTube instantly trumped sites like Vimeo, Veoh, and Grouper by converting all uploaded videos into Flash videos that almost anyone could view.* The site's second genius ploy was its permissiveness. While the staff quickly removed pornographic uploads, YouTube wasn't as hasty to take down copyrighted content: music videos, clips from TV shows, and sports highlights. YouTube's first big moment came when someone uploaded the Saturday Night Live sketch "Lazy Sunday" in December 2005. Since NBC hadn't posted a copy itself, everyone went to YouTube. By the time the TV networks and music studios figured out that a third-party site was siphoning away their traffic, Web surfers already thought of YouTube as the one and only online video clearinghouse.

Slate
Nick Douglas
July 18 2007

Sound familiar ljers? Permissiveness + user-friendly interface seems to be a prime indicator of internet success. And that permissiveness doesn't tend to last once commercial success sets in. Douglas also has some interesting things to say about how centralization limits creativity and stiffles vision, which are interesting in the context of the current lj climate.

I was chatting with

metaphoracle the other night about the so-called migration of fans, from lj to other journaling services. From what I've seen, the numbers just don't support there being a mass migration, and I don't think one is likely until the Next Big Thing in social networking has become obvious. Until it's caught on with more than the early adopters. The lj fandom is so used to social networking that, in my opinion, the NBT for this segment of fandom will have to incorporate some of the better features of things like lj, myspace or facebook. It will also have to be bigger than fandom. As much as I'm interested in

fanarchive I don't think anything that comes out of this project will be the next lj.

The advantage of an open, general spaces like lj is that they bring in far more fresh blood than would exclusively fan-run sites, for the simple reason that very casually fannish people are more likely to interact with devoted fen, and perhaps discover a deeper interest in fandom.

So my half-assed prediction is this: that from the recent lj goofiness, we will see develop a social hub and a creative hub, hosted separately, each embodying some cool new development. Projects like Fanarchive have a lot of potential in terms of becoming creative hubs but I doubt the ability of Insane Journal or Journal Fen to foster the same kind of social ecology that lj does - they don't have the numbers or the diversity. (They also don't have the pretty, which is increasingly important online).

[Keeping in mind, of course, that however far news of lj's deletions and guerrilla TOS changes has spread, it hasn't spread through all of lj fandom, or fandom beyond lj, and that many people remain unaffected practically and emotionally.]

My own fannish activities are not limited to lj, though I know many, many people who can't see past the goat. I'm a big fan of message boards and archives. Used to like lists, though now, I can't be bothered with keeping my filters up to date. I like the opportunities for different kinds of social interaction that different internet media allow. I also like seeing how those media affect the creative outupt of fans. I do think that lj and lj culture together produce different kinds of creative expression, distinct from lists and list culture. And I'm honestly excited to see what's next.

***

Ha! I mistakenly labelled one of my icons Strom.

So I just got a new iMac.

And printer.

And nano. Thank you student discount.

Good day. Very good day.

This is the first Mac that I'll be using extensively since the ancient bricks with keyboards that I used way back in grade nine computer science. I learned turing on those things. Good times. Everything's just a little bit different from using a PC but I think I'll adapt quickly. My god, though - it's a beautiful machine. It almost curbs my iPhone cravings!

Setup was a dream and now I've just got to transfer everything over from my old PC. It's a good thing I use delicious so extensively, or else I'd be going crazy not having everything just so. Even without all my files it's an improvement over my ghetto, jury-rigged machine.

BLISS!

An independent tech start-up in BC is saying that they've made a breakthrough in quantum computing.

This is interesting for two reasons:

1. They're not interested in advancing quantum physics - they just want to build a really fast computer.

2. They're not funded by the US government.

Quantum computing completely blows my mind. I will freely admit that I don't get quantum mechanics, but considering how few people do, I can live with that. But I love the idea of quantum computing, which is essentially to build a computer that functions on the principle of something being not just a binary yes or no, but yes or no, and yes AND no at once. (See the wiki for details).

What grabs me about the above linked start-up is that they're trying to just engineer the thing, without being interested in the whys - it's the ultimate in applied over basic research, and it's not being funded by the NSA. Or any other part of the US government. Both of which fund basic research solely in order to reap the technological benefits that are supposed to naturally come along with advances in theory. Meanwhile, most scientists say that quantum computing won't be realized for decades. Oh the lulz.

***

According to a recent study:

After 199 pages of detail on everything from automatic picking machines to consumer packaging, the researchers find no strong evidence that locally sourced foods are better, in environmental terms at least, than global produce - and in some cases the opposite is true.

Financial Times
Sarah Murray
April 28 2007

Yes, thank you. My god. I am so tired of sanctimonious, ignorant enviro-fascists and their constant admonishments to buy local. It sickens me that environmental awareness has been reduced to the level of fashion, with all these Live Earth wristband wearing jackasses waiting to follow, sheep-like, Al Gore's every offhand advisement about better living through ecological sainthood, NO MATTER HOW LITTLE THEY UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE AT HAND. I miss the goddamn hippies.

***

Mahnahmahnah!

no future

Two things...

2 pictures, 2 news items

random stuff and the best. toy. evar.

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ramble

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