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You can get 3 Windows 7 licenses for 125$.

Toshiba I can get behind but an HP? Really? HP's engineering department must be on drugs. I mean, why on earth would you put a harddrive next to the cpu/gpu cooler in a laptop? The entire DV series that used the AMD Turion with Nvidia chipsets and a bundle of fail. The Nvidia settlement is a small taste of what happened there. Even the models not listed as affected models still have issues.

In fact, a great book on this and all the rest of the history of the English language is Baugh and Cable's History of the English Language

Very good book. I used it in my linguistics class of the same name as a textbook.

Bathtub semiconductors? I've developed B&W film in my bathtub, and I've done some small scale glass etching with silkscreens and Armour Etch. Maybe this would provide an opportunity to re-task all those photo enlargers that are gathering dust in the closet.

The wife will have my head if I try to convert her new LG front-load dryer into a CVD oven.

PS - If you really want to get a feel for the show without delving too far into it, check out The Specials - http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Complete-Specials-Blu-ray/dp/B002ZHKZEC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301054662&sr=8-1 The stories there are generally self-contained, and require no previous knowledge of the show to Enjoy. The boxed set does NOT include the 2010 Christmas special - http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Christmas-Carol-Blu-ray/dp/B004FUYSUO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1301054713&sr=8-5 - Just a warning, while the 2010 special is FUN, its a bit on the corny side. However, you do have an AMAZING vocalist in it!

PS - If you really want to get a feel for the show without delving too far into it, check out The Specials - http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Complete-Specials-Blu-ray/dp/B002ZHKZEC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301054662&sr=8-1 The stories there are generally self-contained, and require no previous knowledge of the show to Enjoy. The boxed set does NOT include the 2010 Christmas special - http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Christmas-Carol-Blu-ray/dp/B004FUYSUO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1301054713&sr=8-5 - Just a warning, while the 2010 special is FUN, its a bit on the corny side. However, you do have an AMAZING vocalist in it!

free market fundamentalism fails because it believes selfishness trumps all.

Another misinformed poster. Not one free marketer I know of believe that at all. Try to find "selfishness" in wiki's Free market article. The father of free markets was Adam Smith and he definitely didn't. Beside writing "Wealth of Nations" he also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. One description says "Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.." His invisible hand is the conjunction of "the forces of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand". Also he says of the invisible hand:
"The rich consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for".
Dispite what people say or believe today's poor in the US have better lives than the poor a century ago.

why give back to the society that made my riches possible

Yea, why did Rockefeller, Hughes, Vanderbilt, and so many other wealthy people leave fortunes to non-profits or set up foundations that financially support non-profits they like? Bill and Melisa Gates are leaving their wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Warren Buffett has pledged to donate to the foundation "approximately 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares spread over multiple years through annual contributions, worth approximately US$30 billion in 2006." George Soros uses his wealth to fund his Open Society Institute. Its aim is to "to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform." Business tycoon Armand Hammer was friends with both Vladimir Lenin and Ronald Reagan.

the truth of course, is balance: capitalism with social safety nets. but some asshole believe that just modest social safety nets is some unstoppable slippery slope into north korea style communism.

The truth is that the

I believe he means sitting on an inflatable exercise ball. They're supposed to be very good for you.

e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Cando-exercise-chair-locking-casters/dp/B003QSVL5G
(one of the first links from Google for "inflatable ball chair" - if there's an affiliate link in there, it's not mine.)

Here come the Hadals.

http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Design-Patterns-Erik-Buck/dp/0321535022/

You are exactly correct.

It should be a requirement for every American citizen to read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Tactics-Criminal-Patrol-Discovery-Survival/dp/0935878122/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1300891075&sr=8-3
The publisher won't sell this to civilians. You have to prove somehow that you are LEO-affiliated to obtain one but I received a copy from a friend who is currently a deputy sheriff and I read it cover-to-cover. IMPORTANT PART: THIS MANUAL DESCRIBES TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AN ARSENAL OF STOPPING, INTERVIEWING AND OBSERVATIONAL TACTICS TO GET YOU TO RELINQUISH YOUR RIGHTS AS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN TO ALLOW OFFICERS TO INSPECT YOUR PERSON AND VEHICLE. The techniques and methods described are AMAZINGLY effective and proven. It teaches them exactly how to let a suspect incriminate themselves and the exact legal boundaries for an officer to skirt while in your presence.

If you have the chance, PLEASE read this book. It applies to you as a citizen regardless of whether you are a criminal or not.

There are apps that "fake" the GPS in the Android Market Place.

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/gps%20fake

I use it on my Archos 28 for developing HTML5/Google Location API pages for mobile devices.

As for tablets, the Archos 32 is a good choice. The only reason I got the 28 is because the 32 wasn't in stock when I went to buy it.

If I was more patient, I would have gotten it off Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/ARCHOS-32-3-2-Inch-Touchscreen-Android/dp/B003X26VNM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1300874100&sr=8-2

Every creationist regardless of religious orientation depends on a logical fallacy to advance their beliefs. Which is essentially a form of lunacy as the OP advanced.

So, committing a logical fallacy renders you insane? I would say that you've just condemned pretty much the entire human race as insane, no doubt including yourself.

As soon as you reject occum's razor and introduce non-empirical shenanigans every theory is subject to the Spaghetti Monster/Last Tuesday fallacies.

Science is already well past that point. String theory: Is it science's ultimate dead end?
Some respond to Japan earthquake by pointing to global warming (Global warming - is there anything it can't do?)

The experiments to try and generate the chemicals of life in what is thought to be conditions on the young earth are interesting, but they are at best a form of speculation. I don't believe there is any way to prove that any given method truly resembles what actually occurred. The fact that some scientists are attributing life or the presence of the chemicals of life on earth to meteors doesn't really change things either. If anything, it just confuses the picture even more - "life didn't begin on earth, but in space, and it came here on meteors!" And how did it start in space? Isn't that just a bit more of a hostile environment?

Occam's razor is a guide, not an iron law. If it was an iron law, we would probably be using the TeVeS theory of gravity and leave the search for "dark matter & dark energy" (supposedly the matter and energy that makes up all but a tiny fraction of the Universe despite never really being seen) to compete for funding with the search for eluminiferous Ether.

Moreover, there are limits to what can be known, and what is provable.
Godel's incompleteness theorems

Godel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems for mathematics. The theorems, proven by Kurt Godel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The two results are widely interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all of mathematics is impossible, thus giving a negative answer to Hilbert's second problem.

I think the ground you're on is shakier than you recognize, or care to admit.

Read anything by Donald Knuth lately?

Biochemist and Ohio U Ph.D. Fuz Rana in Creating Life in the Lab makes a strong case that a basic life form created by scientists is approximately a decade away.

http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Life-Lab-Discoveries-Synthetic/dp/0801072093

"There is a difference in price between hardcopy and digital versions."
orly?

http://www.amazon.com/Absolution-Gap-ebook/dp/B001ODO61G/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1300800486&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]

Absolution Gap, by Alastair Reynolds 2008
Paperback Amazon Price: $8.99
Kindle Edition: $8.99

Those prices look pretty damn identical to me. Please show me where I'm wrong?

I don't know who you have been using as a publisher but 50% of the cost is absurd.

My book (CD and DVD Forensics is published by Syngress, now Elsivere) would have cost me around $2 to have printed myself, if I had gone a self-publishing route. That would have been for 100 copies minimum. Yes, it is perfect-bound. It costs around $0.50 to ship if you order a box of them, as any reasonable bookseller would. When I order a box I think I pay something like $10 for shipping on a case of 22. Wholesale cost on the book is around $20, with the retail being $50.

I got an advance, I got a real publishing contract and if there were 4-5,000 books sold I would get royalties.

If they are making you pay for warehousing your own book, you are self-publishing. No publisher goes that far that I have ever heard of. I think you got a vanity press contract that was disguised as a publishing deal. Yes, they are going to make you pay to store your book. They are likely to make you pay for proofreading and editing as separate items as well, and make them optional, value-added services.

You don't need to print 1,000,000 copies for cheap printing, but you do have to deal with the right people. The publishers with physical books on Amazon aren't paying 50% of the wholesale cost for printing. It is a lot closer to 10%. Maybe on cheap paperbacks it is as high as 20% - that is $1.40 on a $7 book. Even an "expensive" hardcover book is going to be $5-$6 to print and bind if is being done right.

Has Been is history
Has been was
Has been might again


Live long and prosper Bill!

I use a $10 stylus with a rubber tip for most things, and it keeps the screen nice and clean.

Those freezer bags with the plastic zip/seal thing on? I wouldn't trust them to keep my cock dry in the Sahara.

Well unless you cut your cock off and put it entirely inside the bag, of course it's not going to seal.

I always wondered why Glad came out with the Yellow and Blue Make Green Seal, but now I see why -- there are people out there that are unable to make a good seal with traditional non-color coded baggies.

I've taken my kindle into the pool in a baggie (blow a small amount of air inside before sealing to ensure it floats) and haven't had any problems, if you're really worried, use a custom made waterproof case.

There's actually a book about that by Paolo Bacigalupi. Dystopian future where oil has run dry, calories are king, and Monsanto has run amok. (And coal-to-oil is conveniently ignored). You need to use a broad brush for your suspension of disbelief, but it's written pretty well.

May not be a B-movie, but it's been available on DVD for more than two years now: http://www.amazon.com/Invasion-UFO-Encounters-Alien-Beings/dp/B001NZ3DNM

http://www.amazon.com/Invasion-UFO-Encounters-Alien-Beings/dp/B001NZ3DNM

I just did exactly that search - it's used as the cover art on what appears to be a low budget straight-to-DVD documentary from 2008, but I very much doubt that's the original.

Perhaps you need one of these?

"There is a difference in price between hardcopy and digital versions."
orly?

http://www.amazon.com/Absolution-Gap-ebook/dp/B001ODO61G/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1300800486&sr=8-1

Absolution Gap, by Alastair Reynolds 2008
Paperback: $8.99
Kindle Edition: $8.99

Those prices look pretty damn identical to me.

The problem is, the harvested food contains quite a bit of water, so represents a drain on that --- which is a problem the Middle East has been having --- shipping something they're short on (water) up to customers in Europe who have plenty of it and don't return it.

Agree w/ your other points though, but I really think that nifty mechanical things to grow vegetables will be a major player --- like the ``Biotron'' which once was advertised to grow roses (but was used to grow marijuana) or the small table-top devices which are sold to grow salad greens and cherry tomatoes like the ``Aerogarden'':

http://www.amazon.com/AeroGarden-900110-1208-Classic-Garden-Gourmet/dp/B0015MG9P2/ref=dp_cp_ob_ol_title_0

There was an article a while back in _Discover_ magazine about a college professor who was advocating that people get their food from a radius of ~250 miles or so, mentioned here I believe:

http://www.naturalawakeningsmag.com/Natural-Awakenings/March-2011/America-rsquos-Growing-Food-Revolution/

Amazon recommends another book by Leonard Nimoy called I Am Spock

So I think he's cool with it now.

Hmmmm... Slashdot appears to have eaten my original comment. I hope my comment was yummy and filling, Slashdot.

Anyway... I read the interview earlier today and it's a pretty good read, if a bit long at somewhere over 13,000 words. Konrath is preaching his usual gospel, but it was nice to get Eisler's perspectives on the publishing industry and its inner workings. He drops a few entertaining links as well; one chronicles his struggles with a French publisher who bought the rights to one of his books. They went to the hassle of translating the book, only to put a cover on it that depicted a chartreuse garage door with a security camera. I have no idea what sort of through process led to that decision, but I'd kind of like to know.

I'm actually pleased as punch to see Barry Eisler doing so well, and doubly pleased that he's shifting to self-publishing and being so vocal about it. I met him back in 2003 shortly after his first book, Rain Fall, came out. I was working at a bookstore a few miles from his house, and he'd drop through to sign copies and urge us to sell more. I got the impression he was just a genuinely nice guy, and he even humored me when I asked for advice in getting an agent.

That said, I'm more than a bit jealous, too. He released a short story on Kindle this year, and it's apparently on track to make $30,000, while I'm struggling to sell a dozen copies of my sci-fi novel a month. He's a really good guy, though, and I wish him the absolute best as he dives head first into the self-publishing world.

You know, Nimoy went to the trouble of writing a book called I Am Not Spock because he's so damn annoyed at constantly being thought of as a pointy-eared Vulcan...

The word you're looking for is merchantilism.

You can thank Alexander Hamilton for reading things into the Constitution that just aren't there.

And if you want to do something about it, too bad, because Abe Lincoln nearly destroyed the country to make sure you can't opt out.

The word you're looking for is merchantilism.

You can thank Alexander Hamilton for reading things into the Constitution that just aren't there.

And if you want to do something about it, too bad, because Abe Lincoln nearly destroyed the country to make sure you can't opt out.

We watch a lot of documentaries.

We watch a lot of documentaries.

We watch a lot of documentaries.

We watch a lot of documentaries.

We watch a lot of documentaries.

Contrary to TFA, there are CC licensed scores in Lilypond format available through Mutopia. As far as PDF scans and such, as other posters have mentioned, there are innumerable resources.

The big questions for me (disclaimer: I'm a professional classical pianist) is that of scholarly review. The go-to publisher for Bach today is Bärenreiter/Neue Bach Ausgabe, and by and large, any edition of Bach that I use that isn't Bärenreiter should ideally be cross referenced with it. Of course, it is very expensive to purchase, but it is one item that any university with a music program simply must have in its library. What concerns me is that TFA simply is vague who or what they mean by scholarly review, and this alone would prevent me from considering it over current alternatives.

IMHO the value in the project will be a (hopefully) excellent recording that is CC licensed, as there doesn't appear to be any decent recordings of the sort (through a cursory search), unless you include Wanda Landowska's eccentric harpsichord recordings from 1945. Genius is already easily available in recordings on piano by Gould (both 1955 and 1981), Schiff, Hewitt, Barenboim, Perahia, and Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Contrary to TFA, there are CC licensed scores in Lilypond format available through Mutopia. As far as PDF scans and such, as other posters have mentioned, there are innumerable resources.

The big questions for me (disclaimer: I'm a professional classical pianist) is that of scholarly review. The go-to publisher for Bach today is Bärenreiter/Neue Bach Ausgabe, and by and large, any edition of Bach that I use that isn't Bärenreiter should ideally be cross referenced with it. Of course, it is very expensive to purchase, but it is one item that any university with a music program simply must have in its library. What concerns me is that TFA simply is vague who or what they mean by scholarly review, and this alone would prevent me from considering it over current alternatives.

IMHO the value in the project will be a (hopefully) excellent recording that is CC licensed, as there doesn't appear to be any decent recordings of the sort (through a cursory search), unless you include Wanda Landowska's eccentric harpsichord recordings from 1945. Genius is already easily available in recordings on piano by Gould (both 1955 and 1981), Schiff, Hewitt, Barenboim, Perahia, and Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Contrary to TFA, there are CC licensed scores in Lilypond format available through Mutopia. As far as PDF scans and such, as other posters have mentioned, there are innumerable resources.

The big questions for me (disclaimer: I'm a professional classical pianist) is that of scholarly review. The go-to publisher for Bach today is Bärenreiter/Neue Bach Ausgabe, and by and large, any edition of Bach that I use that isn't Bärenreiter should ideally be cross referenced with it. Of course, it is very expensive to purchase, but it is one item that any university with a music program simply must have in its library. What concerns me is that TFA simply is vague who or what they mean by scholarly review, and this alone would prevent me from considering it over current alternatives.

IMHO the value in the project will be a (hopefully) excellent recording that is CC licensed, as there doesn't appear to be any decent recordings of the sort (through a cursory search), unless you include Wanda Landowska's eccentric harpsichord recordings from 1945. Genius is already easily available in recordings on piano by Gould (both 1955 and 1981), Schiff, Hewitt, Barenboim, Perahia, and Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Contrary to TFA, there are CC licensed scores in Lilypond format available through Mutopia. As far as PDF scans and such, as other posters have mentioned, there are innumerable resources.

The big questions for me (disclaimer: I'm a professional classical pianist) is that of scholarly review. The go-to publisher for Bach today is Bärenreiter/Neue Bach Ausgabe, and by and large, any edition of Bach that I use that isn't Bärenreiter should ideally be cross referenced with it. Of course, it is very expensive to purchase, but it is one item that any university with a music program simply must have in its library. What concerns me is that TFA simply is vague who or what they mean by scholarly review, and this alone would prevent me from considering it over current alternatives.

IMHO the value in the project will be a (hopefully) excellent recording that is CC licensed, as there doesn't appear to be any decent recordings of the sort (through a cursory search), unless you include Wanda Landowska's eccentric harpsichord recordings from 1945. Genius is already easily available in recordings on piano by Gould (both 1955 and 1981), Schiff, Hewitt, Barenboim, Perahia, and Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Contrary to TFA, there are CC licensed scores in Lilypond format available through Mutopia. As far as PDF scans and such, as other posters have mentioned, there are innumerable resources.

The big questions for me (disclaimer: I'm a professional classical pianist) is that of scholarly review. The go-to publisher for Bach today is Bärenreiter/Neue Bach Ausgabe, and by and large, any edition of Bach that I use that isn't Bärenreiter should ideally be cross referenced with it. Of course, it is very expensive to purchase, but it is one item that any university with a music program simply must have in its library. What concerns me is that TFA simply is vague who or what they mean by scholarly review, and this alone would prevent me from considering it over current alternatives.

IMHO the value in the project will be a (hopefully) excellent recording that is CC licensed, as there doesn't appear to be any decent recordings of the sort (through a cursory search), unless you include Wanda Landowska's eccentric harpsichord recordings from 1945. Genius is already easily available in recordings on piano by Gould (both 1955 and 1981), Schiff, Hewitt, Barenboim, Perahia, and Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Contrary to TFA, there are CC licensed scores in Lilypond format available through Mutopia. As far as PDF scans and such, as other posters have mentioned, there are innumerable resources.

The big questions for me (disclaimer: I'm a professional classical pianist) is that of scholarly review. The go-to publisher for Bach today is Bärenreiter/Neue Bach Ausgabe, and by and large, any edition of Bach that I use that isn't Bärenreiter should ideally be cross referenced with it. Of course, it is very expensive to purchase, but it is one item that any university with a music program simply must have in its library. What concerns me is that TFA simply is vague who or what they mean by scholarly review, and this alone would prevent me from considering it over current alternatives.

IMHO the value in the project will be a (hopefully) excellent recording that is CC licensed, as there doesn't appear to be any decent recordings of the sort (through a cursory search), unless you include Wanda Landowska's eccentric harpsichord recordings from 1945. Genius is already easily available in recordings on piano by Gould (both 1955 and 1981), Schiff, Hewitt, Barenboim, Perahia, and Leonhardt on harpsichord.

Are you saying it's not innovating? Classical sheet music is very, very expensive.

Goldberg Variations: BWV 988 $7.95

Upon its 1742 publication, Bach entitled it "Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations, for the Harpsichord with 2 Manuals. Composed for Music Lovers, to Refresh their Spirits." As Glenn Gould remarked, the title offers a very down-to-earth description of a monumental work. Long regarded as the Baroque era's most important set of variations, the Goldbergs were relatively unknown when he chose them for his recording debut in [1955.] The sensation created by his still-popular recordings revivified the piece in concert performances, in which spectators delight in its virtuosic hand-crossings.

Reprint of the Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1853 edition.

Bach: Goldberg Variations [Gould, 1955], Bach: The Goldberg Variations [Gould. 1981] MP3 samples for both.

Two very different approaches to the same work.

In presenting the "Variations" to a modern audience, do you use an arrangement from 1742 or the 1853 Leipzig edition?

Glenn Gould from 1955? Glenn Gould from 1981? Or should you be rolling your own?

The choices are never so simple as mechanically playing a "piano roll" score in the public domain.

Are you saying it's not innovating? Classical sheet music is very, very expensive.

Goldberg Variations: BWV 988 $7.95

Upon its 1742 publication, Bach entitled it "Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations, for the Harpsichord with 2 Manuals. Composed for Music Lovers, to Refresh their Spirits." As Glenn Gould remarked, the title offers a very down-to-earth description of a monumental work. Long regarded as the Baroque era's most important set of variations, the Goldbergs were relatively unknown when he chose them for his recording debut in [1955.] The sensation created by his still-popular recordings revivified the piece in concert performances, in which spectators delight in its virtuosic hand-crossings.

Reprint of the Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1853 edition.

Bach: Goldberg Variations [Gould, 1955], Bach: The Goldberg Variations [Gould. 1981] MP3 samples for both.

Two very different approaches to the same work.

In presenting the "Variations" to a modern audience, do you use an arrangement from 1742 or the 1853 Leipzig edition?

Glenn Gould from 1955? Glenn Gould from 1981? Or should you be rolling your own?

The choices are never so simple as mechanically playing a "piano roll" score in the public domain.

Supermoon by one of my favorite artists.

There is a fairly low earthquake risk in the interior of British Columbia, but a high forest fire risk. Around 200-300 houses were lost and people were evacuated for a week or two in 2003 in a nearby city, Kelowna, BC. I probably know a half-dozen people who lost their homes.

We were evacuated for 3-4 days in 2009 due to a fire nearby (the water bombers on final approach over our house were a big clue). Three or four houses were lost, and we knew two of the families.

We keep the important stuff in a box, ready to go (birth certificates, etc). We had a half hour to pack in 2009 before the police evacuated us. We grabbed the kids, pets, a weeks worth of clothing, computers (not monitors), backup hard drives, important / valuable portable stuff (jewelry / electronics), tossed them into the minivan, and drove off. That is a very different type of emergency from an earthquake though - there is usually somewhere unaffected nearby to evacuate to.

In an emergency that kept us in our house, we have enough canned goods and dry goods to survive a week or two, along with a barbeque with two propane tanks, and a wood-burning fireplace inside the house for heat in the winter. Water is probably the only issue, and there is enough in toilet tanks to last a while. The http://www.amazon.com/SAS-Survival-Handbook-John-Wiseman/dp/0002171856 SAS survival handbook is an interesting reference - I think I've had my copy for almost 20 years now.

Neil Strauss, the guy who wrote the book "The Game", also wrote a survival book of sorts for the modern age. There's an outline in there somewhere that describes how you should be prepared to GTFO if your country is screwed (either politically or environmentally). You'll need a second passport, some wildlife skills and a way to run your business on auto-pilot for passive income. It's an interesting read, but not a manual for us geeks.

William Safire, before he was a New York Times columnist, worked as a speechwriter for Nixon. He wrote a book called Before the Fall about the pre-Watergate Nixon White House, and it's a pretty interesting set of stories about the man. One particularly informative anecdote is the story of Nixon trying to tear down a "temporary" building that had been erected on Pennsylvania Ave during WW2 as an office building (for the Navy, IIRC), on the grounds that it was unnecessary and architecturally inappropriate for the setting. It took the full might of the Presidency two years to get it torn down - much of which was spent fighting not Congress, but the Federal bureaucracy.

The technical term for the whole process run by the rich to sway decision-makers is "astroturfing," because they're creating an artificial grass-roots effort. Sock puppetry is only one tool in their toolbox.

Nicky Hager's book Secrets and Lies, has terrific detail on how such a campaign is run, documenting the New Zealand timber industry's bought-and-paid-for efforts to run roughshod over the environmentalists in order to log the islands.

http://www.amazon.com/Ring-Stephen-Baxter/dp/0061056944/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/worldwarz/

http://www.starrigger.net/Downloads.htm#Chaos

Just to name a few that I've enjoyed. My tastes may differ blah blah blah.

http://www.amazon.com/Ring-Stephen-Baxter/dp/0061056944/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/worldwarz/

http://www.starrigger.net/Downloads.htm#Chaos

Just to name a few that I've enjoyed. My tastes may differ blah blah blah.