When Total Information Awareness was first let out of the skunkworks, it had a logo: An Illuminati pyramid bathing the earth with a glowing searchlight:
(I have absolutely no association with the Cafepress "store" linked to above. Just pointing it out because I had the link and knew there was a picture of the old logo there.)
I miss that logo. It really laid things on the table. The fact that they not only chose that design, but put it on their web page suggested an arrogance so deep it wrapped around into cluelessness. When they pulled the plug, you almost had to feel sorry for the creepy ivory-dungeon darkside academic creeps involved.
Well, we still have TIA, but no cool logo. I guess they learned their lesson.
Hey! Maybe we'll get a chance to see the new, secret logo when they drag us into the local Halliburton-run Reeducation Center after the post-2006 election coup^H^H^H^H Patriotic Values Revolution.
Bob Clampett was one of the loons responsible for Warner Brothers' stable of familiar characters. He also did a buncha shows on his own, including "Beany and Cecil."
Less well known: His attempt to make an animated version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" series (A Princess of Mars and so on).
Now, the curious thing about the edition noted above is the copyright notice. It is: (c) 1961 by George Pal.
George Pal is the emigre filmmaker responsible for War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao and many others.
Huh?
I puzzled over this for many years before meeting up with Forrey Ackerman. He had the dirt: George Pal bought the rights to Odd John but never had a chance to make movie out of it.
And it can be seen as a preperation for colonization. They're imaging the moon's surface in greater detail and in another part of the spectrum. This will be a big help in determining where to site colonies.
Michael Crichton is out to make money. He gets money for giving his "daring" speech on the rubber chicken circuit. He gets money on sales of his latest shlock thriller, which has evil grant-hungry climate scientists running weather control machines to terrorize the populace.
Here is what actual climate scientists have to say about the claims in his novel:
There's a lady in California who lives in a "self cleaning house" much as you describe. Sprinklers in the cieling, drains in the floor, blowers in the walls.
She and her inventor husband built it, I believe in the 50s. It was the sort of thing that appeared in Popular Mechanics and newsreels.
The lady, now very old, still gives demonstrations by appointment. There was an article about her and the house in the paper a few years back. It all seemed kind of sad.
I don't think cieling sprinkler type washing is really practical. You'd need to have plastic upholstery, and store away all the books and such. Anyway, it takes more than running water to really get stuff clean. Just hosing down your car just removes loose dust.
THAT SAID . . . I think nano-coatings in conjunction with sprinklers specifically in a bathroom might just work. You'd need a really tight and well-sealed bathroom, like one of those molded one-piece things used in mobile homes.
When the bought-off pundits, ideology-addled fanboys, and fossil fuel industry flaks run out of viable talking points in their F.U.D. campaign, the debate over global warming won't be over whether it is happening, but on the most effective and economical ways to slow it down and cope with its effects.
There won't be a one-size-fits-all fix. Conservation and more efficient vehicles will be a big part of it. Environmental remediation projects, like reconstructing coastal wetlands to help them deal with floods and storms, will be another.
Stange notions like seeding the ocean with iron filings, and this oddball idea, are another possibility for the "arsenal" of fixes. I'd definitely put some money into researching them. Figure out the kinks sooner rather than later, so they'll be available if we need them.
Commissar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMr. Deutch's activities are exactly what one would expect from a Wedge Strategy devotee who has found himself in a position of power.
You know what it is, the "Wedge Strategy?"
The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
This is from a document, put together by the Discovery Institute, called "The Wedge Strategy":
I was a little nipper when the Space Race was in full swing.
In the early '70s, Popular Science ran an article by a stuff writer who tried out one of the water-cooled undergarments worn by astronauts during "EVA."
The garment was resembled full-length underwear, laced with yards and yards of plastic tubing. The cooling source was a bag of ice worn on the hip. Kind of like a fanny pack.
The writer put on the suit, dressed normally, and went for a walk around Manhattan on a stinking hot day. One of the few details I remember: A picture of him loading up the ice bag at a bar.
And even then, the alien brothels won't take worthless earth-currency.
Of course, you could get some house credit by volunteering to have a horny L'CHHHTTTTHhhh plunge her ovipositer into your abdomen. The house doctor can usually dig the eggs out in time. But still, after a few times you get a reputation and . . .
Oh, sorry, this is a Virgin Spaceport. No red light district. The only bars serve lemonade and alcohol free margaritas.
I have it on good authority that EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow hunts elk with a obsidian spear, and eats the livers of his prey while still warm and dripping in blood.
Cory Doctorow is said to stalk, kill, and eat emus during his frequent, clandestine trips to Australia.
The only vegetables served in the cafeterias of the EFF Tower -- formerly the Transamerica Pyramid -- are potatoes and a bit of parsely, and only to accompany great the rare steaks favored by the employees.
Factors in our favor
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
We all know that the news cycle runs on hype, and that there are always charlatans, snake-oil salesmen, and fear mongers waiting to pounce when danger threatens.
However, immediately dismissing pandemic warnings is foolish. It makes sense to develop a vaccine and work on contingency plans.
That said:
There are a lot of differences between 1918 and 2005, and 1963 and 2005. Diabetes and obesity epidemic aside, people are a lot healthier:
* Vitamin deficiences and plain malnutrition are rareities.
* Lice, bedbugs, intestinal worms and such, while not unknown and on the rise in certain populations, are very, very rare on the whole.
* The vast majority of people sleep in their own beds, in warm bedrooms.
* Simple palliative medicines like aspirin, decongestants, anti-diarrheals, and re-hydration drinks can turn what in 1918 were deadly menaces into something merely serious.
* Most people take hot soapy showers every day; soap and hot running water are available in restaurants and workplaces.
A pandemic would certainly be bad news for people on the margins, especially the very poor, very old, and recent illegal immigrants crammed into shared housing. But on the whole, the factors listed above will work together to turn a life-threatening menace into something serious -- possibly temporarily debilitating -- but survivable for most people.
Stefan
P.S. Hey! You! Wash your goddamn hands after you use the bathroom and cover you mouth when you sneeze. Yeah, you!
You could fund this program by selling "designer" vesions in wealthy nations.
Have Swatch or some other design-centric company make a dozen glitzy versions a year. Sell them for $250, with a big trade-in allowance on used units. The store and designers would get a cut; the rest would go to buy units for distribution to poor kids.
OK, it's not a gadget, or even really geeky, but it is a lot of fun:
About ten years back, a classmate gave a party. I forget the occasion. But she made up an adult pinata. No, it wasn't squicky or exotic or anything. I think it was a pretty ordinary pinata. What was adult was the stuff inside:
Cigars Dice Condoms (in gold-coin wrappers) Bandanas
. . . and so on. You could have a lot of fun finding stuff at the Dollar Store to put in one of these. Beef jerky, cheap "swiss army" knives, etc.
If you live in the right place, wind power is close to being economical.
Solar is still kind of pricy. If you buy an extra-big system, sign up for time-of-day billing, and arrange to sell power back to the utility, you can do pretty well. The buy in is pretty big . . . tens of thousands.
BUT . . .
*B*U*T* . . .
Don't think of wind and solar as an alternative to the grid. Think of them as a backup. An alternative to a noisy, smelly generator.
A modest system that could (for example) power your refrigerator, a small TV, a few lights, and charge batteries for various items, would turn a days-long power outage from a miserable mess to a tolerable nuiscance. Such a system might be a couple of thousand.
(You are better off using gas, wood, etc. for heating and cooking in emergency circumstances. A solar system [heh] that could run your electric range would be formidable.)
(Oh . . . and A/C? Right out. VERY current-hungry. You'd need a huge set-up for that. But you could run exhaust fans and such.)
Slashdot Mirror
When Total Information Awareness was first let out of the skunkworks, it had a logo: An Illuminati pyramid bathing the earth with a glowing searchlight:
2 0awareness
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/total%20information%
(I have absolutely no association with the Cafepress "store" linked to above. Just pointing it out because I had the link and knew there was a picture of the old logo there.)
I miss that logo. It really laid things on the table. The fact that they not only chose that design, but put it on their web page suggested an arrogance so deep it wrapped around into cluelessness. When they pulled the plug, you almost had to feel sorry for the creepy ivory-dungeon darkside academic creeps involved.
Well, we still have TIA, but no cool logo. I guess they learned their lesson.
Hey! Maybe we'll get a chance to see the new, secret logo when they drag us into the local Halliburton-run Reeducation Center after the post-2006 election coup^H^H^H^H Patriotic Values Revolution.
Stefan
If you try anything kinky, your DS alerts the Department of Homeland Security and sends out a squad of Human/Animal Hybrid Ban enforcers.
Bob Clampett was one of the loons responsible for Warner Brothers' stable of familiar characters. He also did a buncha shows on his own, including "Beany and Cecil."
Less well known: His attempt to make an animated version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" series (A Princess of Mars and so on).
http://www.johncolemanburroughs.com/0934.html
Odd John by Olaf Stapledon is a ground breaking but dated SF novel about a superior mutant kid growing up and finding others of his kind.
It is still in print, teamed up with a much better novel about an intelligent dog:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486211339/
Now, the curious thing about the edition noted above is the copyright notice. It is: (c) 1961 by George Pal.
George Pal is the emigre filmmaker responsible for War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao and many others.
Huh?
I puzzled over this for many years before meeting up with Forrey Ackerman. He had the dirt: George Pal bought the rights to Odd John but never had a chance to make movie out of it.
. . . but I was to afraid to show up for the photo shoot.
."
I'm allowed to make jokes like that because, well . . .
STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!
. . . no, seriously, I know what those damn mice feel like . .
HEY, MR. HAND, SLUGGO GOING TO BE MEAN TO ME!
I think some of the long-term Mars exploration plans call for a simple GPS net.
Something to help slow-moving crawlers and balloons figure out where they are.
Makes sense to do it on the moon, too.
. . . comets hit the moon, evaporate.
For a few glorious hours or days, the moon has an atmosphere or sorts, of vaporized comet juice.
Most of this gets stripped away, but some vapor finds its way into dark, permenantly shadowed nooks and crannies, where it stays pretty much forever.
Maybe. Maybe the H2 signatures found by the last probe were just traces of hydrogen bound to minerals. We'll find out after this thing does its work.
And it can be seen as a preperation for colonization. They're imaging the moon's surface in greater detail and in another part of the spectrum. This will be a big help in determining where to site colonies.
I already curb my dog, thank you.
Oh, PLEASE.
r ts-fear/
/ 976
n ews_lz1e21benford.html
Michael Crichton is out to make money. He gets money for giving his "daring" speech on the rubber chicken circuit. He gets money on sales of his latest shlock thriller, which has evil grant-hungry climate scientists running weather control machines to terrorize the populace.
Here is what actual climate scientists have to say about the claims in his novel:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
At CISCOP, Chris Mooney reviews State of Fear:
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/
A look at the politics behind Crichton's crusade:
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/01/robe
Who are your going trust, Crichton or scientists?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/1/20/234126
OK. Maybe you can't trust scientists. How about the opinions of another author? Here is what Gregory Benford has to say:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/
There's a lady in California who lives in a "self cleaning house" much as you describe. Sprinklers in the cieling, drains in the floor, blowers in the walls.
She and her inventor husband built it, I believe in the 50s. It was the sort of thing that appeared in Popular Mechanics and newsreels.
The lady, now very old, still gives demonstrations by appointment. There was an article about her and the house in the paper a few years back. It all seemed kind of sad.
I don't think cieling sprinkler type washing is really practical. You'd need to have plastic upholstery, and store away all the books and such. Anyway, it takes more than running water to really get stuff clean. Just hosing down your car just removes loose dust.
THAT SAID . . . I think nano-coatings in conjunction with sprinklers specifically in a bathroom might just work. You'd need a really tight and well-sealed bathroom, like one of those molded one-piece things used in mobile homes.
When the bought-off pundits, ideology-addled fanboys, and fossil fuel industry flaks run out of viable talking points in their F.U.D. campaign, the debate over global warming won't be over whether it is happening, but on the most effective and economical ways to slow it down and cope with its effects.
There won't be a one-size-fits-all fix. Conservation and more efficient vehicles will be a big part of it. Environmental remediation projects, like reconstructing coastal wetlands to help them deal with floods and storms, will be another.
Stange notions like seeding the ocean with iron filings, and this oddball idea, are another possibility for the "arsenal" of fixes. I'd definitely put some money into researching them. Figure out the kinks sooner rather than later, so they'll be available if we need them.
You know what it is, the "Wedge Strategy?"
This is from a document, put together by the Discovery Institute, called "The Wedge Strategy":
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
The wedge document is several years old now. If a new version was produced, the accomplishments section would now include:
Stefan
. . . maybe that should have been modded "Informer."
Do nothing. Roll over. Keep quiet. Don't stick your neck out. Hunker down. Give up. Deal with it. Surrender. Comply.
Is that what you'd recommend in the face of arrogance and tyranny?
Armored door in sub-basement leads to giant, nanite-proof shelter under Mountain View landfill.
One if five employees have prototype DRM dongle attached to skull.
Giant brain in vat [REDACTED BY HOMELAND SECURITY].
Brin's "hybrid" car eats at cafeteria.
Bathrooms are labled "CARBON UNIT ELIMINATION FACILITY."
I was a little nipper when the Space Race was in full swing.
In the early '70s, Popular Science ran an article by a stuff writer who tried out one of the water-cooled undergarments worn by astronauts during "EVA."
The garment was resembled full-length underwear, laced with yards and yards of plastic tubing. The cooling source was a bag of ice worn on the hip. Kind of like a fanny pack.
The writer put on the suit, dressed normally, and went for a walk around Manhattan on a stinking hot day. One of the few details I remember: A picture of him loading up the ice bag at a bar.
"Oh give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With the Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We'll think of nothing but sex."
. . . won't open until 2078.
And even then, the alien brothels won't take worthless earth-currency.
Of course, you could get some house credit by volunteering to have a horny L'CHHHTTTTHhhh plunge her ovipositer into your abdomen. The house doctor can usually dig the eggs out in time. But still, after a few times you get a reputation and . . .
Oh, sorry, this is a Virgin Spaceport. No red light district. The only bars serve lemonade and alcohol free margaritas.
Stefan
I have it on good authority that EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow hunts elk with a obsidian spear, and eats the livers of his prey while still warm and dripping in blood.
Cory Doctorow is said to stalk, kill, and eat emus during his frequent, clandestine trips to Australia.
The only vegetables served in the cafeterias of the EFF Tower -- formerly the Transamerica Pyramid -- are potatoes and a bit of parsely, and only to accompany great the rare steaks favored by the employees.
"Pale vegetarians?" Fah!
. . . to cull the herd. This will encourage people to stay fit and get home at a decent hour.
Or maybe getting anti-aging drugs will require a survey of your friends and neighbors.
If you flunk, or no one returns the survey, you don't get boosterspice, because who needs a bunch of old, unpopular jerks hanging around?
I wrote "Radley Manor," a haunted house adventure, using Inform. You play a kid trying to retrieve a baseball from an abandoned house.
.z5 interpreter . . . Frotz or the like:
You'll a
Radley Manor
We all know that the news cycle runs on hype, and that there are always charlatans, snake-oil salesmen, and fear mongers waiting to pounce when danger threatens.
However, immediately dismissing pandemic warnings is foolish. It makes sense to develop a vaccine and work on contingency plans.
That said:
There are a lot of differences between 1918 and 2005, and 1963 and 2005.
Diabetes and obesity epidemic aside, people are a lot healthier:
* Vitamin deficiences and plain malnutrition are rareities.
* Lice, bedbugs, intestinal worms and such, while not unknown and on the rise in certain populations, are very, very rare on the whole.
* The vast majority of people sleep in their own beds, in warm bedrooms.
* Simple palliative medicines like aspirin, decongestants, anti-diarrheals, and re-hydration drinks can turn what in 1918 were deadly menaces into something merely serious.
* Most people take hot soapy showers every day; soap and hot running water are available in restaurants and workplaces.
A pandemic would certainly be bad news for people on the margins, especially the very poor, very old, and recent illegal immigrants crammed into shared housing. But on the whole, the factors listed above will work together to turn a life-threatening menace into something serious -- possibly temporarily debilitating -- but survivable for most people.
Stefan
P.S. Hey! You! Wash your goddamn hands after you use the bathroom and cover you mouth when you sneeze. Yeah, you!
You could fund this program by selling "designer" vesions in wealthy nations.
Have Swatch or some other design-centric company make a dozen glitzy versions a year. Sell them for $250, with a big trade-in allowance on used units. The store and designers would get a cut; the rest would go to buy units for distribution to poor kids.
OK, it's not a gadget, or even really geeky, but it is a lot of fun:
About ten years back, a classmate gave a party. I forget the occasion. But she made up an adult pinata. No, it wasn't squicky or exotic or anything. I think it was a pretty ordinary pinata. What was adult was the stuff inside:
Cigars
Dice
Condoms (in gold-coin wrappers)
Bandanas
. . . and so on. You could have a lot of fun finding stuff at the Dollar Store to put in one of these. Beef jerky, cheap "swiss army" knives, etc.
If you live in the right place, wind power is close to being economical.
Solar is still kind of pricy. If you buy an extra-big system, sign up for time-of-day billing, and arrange to sell power back to the utility, you can do pretty well. The buy in is pretty big . . . tens of thousands.
BUT . . .
*B*U*T* . . .
Don't think of wind and solar as an alternative to the grid. Think of them as a backup. An alternative to a noisy, smelly generator.
A modest system that could (for example) power your refrigerator, a small TV, a few lights, and charge batteries for various items, would turn a days-long power outage from a miserable mess to a tolerable nuiscance. Such a system might be a couple of thousand.
(You are better off using gas, wood, etc. for heating and cooking in emergency circumstances. A solar system [heh] that could run your electric range would be formidable.)
(Oh . . . and A/C? Right out. VERY current-hungry. You'd need a huge set-up for that. But you could run exhaust fans and such.)
Stefan