Wholesome quotes for a Monday night

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

My favourite definition of 'Intellectual' is: 'A person whose education surpasses their intelligence.'

This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

The effects of technological innovations are typically overrated in the short run but underestimated in the long run.

Arthur C. Clarke

In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes.
- Mogens Jallberg

It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'
- Sam Levenson

And people called me crazy for stockpiling water....

All right, just one person, but still, in light of this stuff from the AJC, I think I'm validated. To wit:

It's safe to drink the water again in DeKalb County.

The county's water and sewer department lifted its boil water advisory on Sunday afternoon, two days after a 48-inch water main broke in north DeKalb.

Water samples sent away for testing came back normal.

"We have a clean bill of health," said Kristie Swink, a DeKalb County spokeswoman.

The water main break Friday afternoon forced officials to lower water pressure, raising the possibility that bacteria and other impurities might seep into the water supply.

Friday quotes

JC Penney

Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk.

George Marshall

Get the objective right; then a lieutenant could write the strategy

Interesting thoughts from Belmont

These musings do make the Israeli strategy a bit more rational. To wit:

what is the most important component of Hezbollah's power in the south? Again the answer is easy. It is the Hezbollah cadres themselves. Hezbollah's most precious possession isn't Katyushas, long-range rockets, night vision goggles or antitank missiles or electronic equipment. It is the trained core of its military force. Equipment can be replaced but Hezbollah's cadres represent an expensive, almost irreplaceable investment. In them resides the organizational knowledge of Nasrallah's organization. It embodies man-decades of operational experience against Israel. Rockets can be replaced. The stars of Hezbollah's operational force are less expendable.
...
The Hezbollah are doing the single most stupid thing imaginable for a guerilla organization. They are fighting to keep territory. Oh, I know that this will be justified in terms of "inflicting casualties" on the Israelis. But the Hez are probably losing 10 for every Israeli lost. A bad bargain for Israel you say? No. A bad bargain for Hezbollah to trade their terrorist elite for highly trained but nevertheless conventional infantry.

That was why Spartacus' revolt against the Romans failed as well.

Quick round up

• The great migration period
• Interview with the 37 Signals Founder
• Free Visual Studio stuff
• Free technical tutorials stuff
• The Alternative Energy Store
• More electric cars
• Carbon fiber - seems cool

Things that have vanished from the media

• Bush's approval ratings - these used to be big news, now they're nowhere to be seen. If they had improved the usual retinue of hacks would have been vocal about that.
• Japan - there's very little news this country
• Massacre at Beslan/Chechnya in general - it's just disappeared, no post-mortem investigation, no obvious revenge attacks by the Russians, nada
• Conflict in Kashmir
• Outsourcing to India
• Former VP candidate John Edwards
• Genetically modified foods
• The South Central LA farm where Daryl Hannah was arrested
• UPDATE: Also, Bird Flu
  

Cool C#/AJAX things

• Three dimensional plotting in C#
• Drag and Drop with Atlas
• Lots more Ajax
  

More Silver Comet News

Paulding.com (an odd mix of local newspaper and blog) has more news. They claim the body was found approximately here.

At long last

The College Stories book is out. I don't think my story made it in.

Scary

First Michelle and Luke get their car broken into, and now this. I ride the Silver Comet at least a couple of times a month, and some other, probably more dangerous routes as well. I think the Comet is the only route where one would stay missing though. From Today's AJC

Woman missing from Silver Comet Trail
Searchers are combing the Silver Comet biking trail in Cobb County today for a missing Sandy Springs woman last seen Monday afternoon.

Two helicopters and about 100 family, friends and law enforcement officials are hunting for Jennifer Ewing, 54, who left from home in a Honda minivan with her red bike about 2 p.m. Monday to ride the trail.

The helicopters are equipped with infrared radar, a heat-seeking tool that allows searchers to see through dense woods and differentiate bodies on the ground, said Georgia State Trooper Larry Schnall.

...

Jennifer Ewing makes the outing on the 50-mile wooded path through Cobb and Paulding Counties about four days a week, said Smyrna police Sgt. Robert Harvey.

Update: Police have found a body along the trail, somewhere in Paulding Country.

It's a small world

McKinney opponent Hank Johnson appears on Winds of Change, a very good blog I read periodically. I will be voting for him in the runoff. I wonder if this guest blogging thing will be the new craze.

Random thoughts on Lebanon

It's been quite a while now and I haven't seen any reports of actual conflict between the IDF and the Lebanese military, which would tend to suggest that they're staying out of it altogether.

For all of the talk of cease fires and peace keeping forces, who would actually do it? The US is busy in Iraq, and the last time we tried that it didn't work out too well anyway. Most of the available European forces (small in number to start with) are with NATO in Afghanistan. Assuming that part of some eventual deal involves "peace keepers" (technically more peace keepers, there have been a number of ineffectual UN troops there for years.) where would they come from? The Arab countries? China, Russia or India perhaps?

Or will that be a negotiating ploy used to delay a cease fire until the IDF weakens Hezbollah to the point where the Lebanese military takes over, which might be a very long time.

Two links and new word

• Gentleman's Emporium - for that cool 1879 look.
• More comic covers! From wired
  

The new word is MacGanized. It's the organization of Mac users. Rather than be organized, they just know people who are organized who find stuff for them. Quite common.

Saturday rapid fire

• Make a timeline of your life - it could be cool, but too revealing
• Time Maps
• Top 10 Signs You're Made to be an Entrepreneur 6.

  You spend more time and energy looking for easier, faster, cheaper, more effective ways of accomplishing something than if you just did the task outright.

• Prosopagnosia - The inability to recognize faces. Or the way of the Steve.
• A good wrap up of the Goldstein - Frisch battle by Wendy McElroy. I still find it odd that Fox News employs a Canadian anarchist as a columnist, but she does seem popular there.
• The Agitator's Fox column about Swat Teams and no-knock warrants. It would seem that the best way to fix the problem is to assign liability to Judges who sign errant warrants, though I don't think anyone has suggested that yet.
• A very good post on why the current world situation is NOT World War III.
  

Cool new military stuff

The Polecat, built by Lockheed Martin, was just unveiled. It's a high altitude drone of some sort, but the most eye-catching line was

The company built the plane with $27 million of its own money over an 18-month period.

A pretty impressive design, for only $27 million, in only 18 months. It's startling how much the client matters in terms time and cost. Even if you throw out the corruption and overruns (which would be huge), an internal client is much more likely to select only the low-hanging fruit, and put that into the mix.

An odd fact

Yesterday was the highest traffic day this blog has ever had.

Update on local democracy

Nick is correct on the primary system. From the AJC

Anyone registered to vote as of June 19 may cast a ballot in the Aug. 8 runoff, regardless of whether they voted in the primary. But those who voted Tuesday in the Republican primary may vote only in Republican runoffs, and those who voted in the Democratic primary may vote only in the Democratic runoff.

Unrelated quote of the moment

"When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice."
- Marquis de la Grange

Tesla Motors seems way cool

The official unveiling of the Tesla Roadster is tomorrow, but Wired has photos and an article. It looks very cool.

Judging from the specs (I haven't seen any independent reviews) it seems like a plausible model. 0-60 in four seconds, 250 mile range for an electric car, standard batteries (i.e. laptop batteries) fairly quick recharge time. It could work.

South Park updates

Comedy Central is replaying the Tom Cruise / Scientology Episode (Trapped In the Closet) this evening. The Virgin Mary episode is still banned it seems.

Democracy working, somehow

Ralph Reed goes down to defeat, and Cynthia McKinney is in a runoff against a guy with no huge party support and didn't seem to spend much money. How cool.

Does anyone know if you can vote in the runoff if you didn't vote in the primary?

RIP Mickey Spillaine

He'd been writing since the 40s. More details here.

Rematch with the Alabama ride

The above is actually spray-painted at the end of the Silver Comet Trail. It ends about 3 feet after this and becomes unpaved Alabama.

I decided to try the ride to the Alabama state line again on Saturday. It was brutally humid, and in the 90s, but why not? This was my last endurance goal for the summer.

I wound up making it successfully making the ride. It was 126 miles; over eight hours in the saddle. I wound up drinking 5-7 liters of water, 4 power bars and two bottles of Accellerade. It was a fun, but extremely draining ride.

I saw about 10 deer, probably over a hundred rabbits and I almost ran over a dead snake. Two days later and I'm still exhausted.

Photo Gallery here.


Sitting in Alabama, looking at Georgia


The Brushy Mountain Tunnel

An interesting alternate take on history

Coming Anarchy has an interesting satire on what might have happened had the American civil war been decided less decisively. RTWT.

Happy Bastille Day!

As an addendum to previous post, the quote of the moment is from Tucker Carlson

"Happy Bastille Day! It's like the fourth of July, only with less to be proud of".

The headbutt seen round the world

Here is how it was seen in different nations.

My favorite famous last words

From this page on WikiPedia loosely categorized by me:

Toughest

• "No! I didn't come here to make a speech. I came here to die."
  Who: Crawford Goldsby, aka Cherokee Bill, when asked if he had anything to say before he was hanged.
• "Hey, fellas! How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? 'French Fries'!"
  Who: James French (No relation to your humble blogger).
  Notes: French, a convicted murderer, was sentenced to the electric chair. He shouted these words to members of the press who were to witness his execution.
  

Ironic

• "That's very obvious.."
  Who: John F. Kennedy, responding to Mrs. Connolly's comment, "Mr. President, you can't say that Dallas doesn't love you."
• "I think I'm going to make it!"
  Who: Richard Loeb, half of the famous murderers Leopold and Loeb; said after being slashed ninety times with a razor by a fellow inmate
  

Funniest

• "Why yes, A bulletproof vest"
  Who: Domonic Willard
  Notes: Willard was a small time foot soldier during the Prohibition just before his death by firing squad, he was asked if he had any last requests.
• "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
  Who: Francisco ("Pancho") Villa
• "Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
  Who: Voltaire (attributed), when asked by a priest to renounce Satan
  

Deadpan

• "Already?"
  Who: Hangquin Zhou
• "It's stopped."
  Who: Joseph Henry Green, upon checking his own pulse.

Succinct & True

• "To my friends: My work is done. Why wait?"
  Who: George Eastman, Inventor (in his suicide note)
  

Odd and Worth Mentioning

• "I see black light."
  Who: Victor Hugo
  

Quote of the moment

From one of the AJC Gwinnett Blogs

Deer come out of the woods and hit our cars like jihadists attacking infidels.

I love the South.

Random thoughts on the current Middle East

CNN.com has a nice one page history and description of Hezbollah, which is a useful addition to their coverage. Here is some analysis from MSNBC.

We live in interesting times. On the one hand Lebanon was one of the brighter spots of the Arab world. On the other hand, this might be the only time and way to reduce Hezbollah to the past tense. By not occupying any territory Israel can play to it's technological and organizational strengths, and avoid all of Hezbollahs guerilla tactics (where their talents lie).

Anothr thing to note is that the IDF seems to have avoided striking the Lebanese military, only commerical targets and Hezbollah.

And for anyone keeping score, this is a case of democracies going to war.

Freedom lives in syndication

South Park's "Super Best Friends" is still airing in syndication, and still shows Mohammed.

This might be worth a road trip sometime

Certainly for a photo essay.

The Stone Circle of Elberton

Driving on rural Ga. 77 in northeast Georgia, you seem to time-travel across the sea to ancient Britain. What appears to be a scaled-down clone of Stonehenge rises above a hilltop.

Elbert County stonemasons, not druidic priests, fashioned this circular array of six granite slabs, but its origins are almost as intriguing.

In 1979, a mysterious stranger calling himself "Mr. Christian" commissioned the curiosity on the edge of a cow pasture 7.2 miles north of Elberton.

He reportedly told the president of an Elberton granite finishing plant that what he called the Georgia Guidestones would be "for the conservation of the world and to herald a new age of reason."

As they talked, he admitted his name really wasn't Christian, but he was a Christian and a patriot, who represented a group outside of Georgia with similar beliefs. Only the Elberton banker who handled Mr. Christian's substantial deposit ever knew his true identity. He took the secret to his grave, and no one has ever identified Christian or his associates.

A perfect one-sentence description

Of the current political situation anyway, from Winds of Change:

as poor a hand as it may be, you can't beat a pair of twos with nothing.

That sums it up pretty well I think. The dems wouldn't even have to try that hard at this point. Instead they'll probably lose a house seat or two and then return to their default position of navel gazing. Perhaps it's all a big plot by the Clinton faction to set the stage for Hillary in 2008.

Funny notions

Funny convergences: I came across this

Blair's Law - the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.

which was part of post that included Ku Klux Klan wins approval to protest Iraq war seemingly, though not explicitly, arguing that the war is bad for white people.

Saturday round up

• Magnificent photography from Afghanistan
• A guide to chopping foods
• Race, Advertising and the Sony Playstation.
• Big Brother mixes with the cast of Friends to create Dodgeball
• An insightful post on Energy from the Winds of Change; it starts

  An optimist says the glass is half full, the pessimist says the glass is half empty and the engineer says the glass is the wrong size.

  Read the whole thing.
  
• Some quite impressive numbers you're not likely to hear about.

  In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.

  I think Iraq is keeping the political class occupied, much like the Clinton scandals did in the late 90s, and saving us from grand new ideas.

Quotes of the moment

Samuel Goldwyn

"You've got to take the bitter with the sour."

37 Signals

The secret to building half a product instead of a half-ass
product is saying no.

Each time you say yes to a feature, you’re adopting a child. You
have to take your baby through a whole chain of events (e.g.
design, implementation, testing, etc.). And once that feature’s
out there, you’re stuck with it.

Quote of the moment

This actually dovetails nicely with Bevelry's adage "Look as busy as possible" theory of retail. From the 37 signals book "Getting Real"

If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know

Sign ranting

Check out the short rants on a roadside sign in Pennsylvania.

Not dead

And I did make it to Alabama, just not all the way back under my own power (though I did make it back, thanks Mike and Erin!).

More details later.

15 million illegal immigrants can't be wrong

Happy Birthday America!

You're 230 today! That's 1,610 in dog years. And over 140 years without a civil war, which isn't that bad, considering.

I'm off to celebrate the day by riding to Alabama and back. If this site isn't updated by this time tommorow, would someone please look for me?

Biz Links

• How to start a business
• StartUpNation.com
  

Quote of the moment

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.
John Ruskin

Sunday round up

• Cool Outlook tool - with mapping
• Flash + AJAX - could be cool, it seem to duplicate Atlas and Ruby on Rails, but could still be useful
• Hansel Minutes - for good taste in code
• A good description of government

  The federal government is like a fence around a farm. The fence raises no crops of wheat and— no fields of corn. It only protects the farmer while he raises his crops, he giving a good portion of his time to keep the fence in repair. Just so we give a good share of our taxes to keep the great government fence in repair. I beg of you to keep this thought in mind that government has not a dollar to give any man…not a bed, not a cow or calf. Nothing but protection while you are at work for yourself. …Government has nothing to give anybody.

• Photoshop Plug Ins!
• I think Blurb will be the publisher of my first photo book.
• An interesting history of the John Birch Society
• Online Diagrams! Finally.
• Brain Scanners? I remember this from a GI Joe comic in 1984.
  
• Possibly a real electric car. I'll let you know when I find out more.
• Atlas the ever shrill goes to a protest. The interesting point is the mixture of text, photos and video on the page.
  

What dreams may come

Yesterday I did a tough 80 miles on the Silver Comet. It was a hotter than usual, and for some reason I decided to push myself speed wise. I averaged a mile an hour over my usual speed for that distance, and my heart rate was about 10-15 bpm over the usual rate as well. I mistimed the start of the ride and wound up riding for an hour in a darkness usually found in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Riding safely in this sort of dark mandated an unusually upright and uncomfortable posture for the final hour (I had to keep my vision focused on the area covered by my headlight, which was small).

I'm also on a low-carb kick at the moment.

After I got home I finished Eric Hoffer's autobiography, Truth Imagined. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on the book later. The book describes his time as a migrant farm worker in California in the 20s and 30s. One interesting thing he writes about is the sheer variety of people he encountered while on the bum. People of learning and accomplishment, forced by the depression into a migrant way of life. It struck me that this is a as a little remarked price of prosperity, as well as the relative meritocracy that is part and parcel of a free society. To wit; in good times one is more likely to meet people just like oneself than in times of physical and economic catastrophe, for good or ill.

That night I had a dream where I attended a cocktail party, wearing a tuxedo. I was talking to an interesting and confident woman my age named Trea. I had told her the observation mentioned above and she opined that I had the cause and effect backward. Economic catastrophe's are caused by the mixing of people (grouped by ability, not race) which interferes with the division and specialization of labor.

What does this labor produce? Society and culture. The conventional view (of mine anyway) is that society and culture are like an investment portfolio; it's outside one's immediate grasp, it changes over time, and grows incrementally. Trea's view was that society is produced and consumed, and does not change incrementally at all. It's like the contents of one's pantry; food goes in, it goes out, but it doesn't last forever, and neither grows nor evolves.

In economic parlance, society/culture are stocks, not flows, which is the way I usually think of them.

I've usually don't have these sort of dreams, nor do I have new (to me) ideas in dreams. I'm not sure what to make of it all.

And if you've read this far, I'm impressed.