Quote of the moment

I'm watching Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd". Andy Griffith plays a Southern lowlife who stumbles into a major media role, sort of a cross between Elvis and Oprah, with the personality and accent of John Edwards on PCP.

The quote is "Well, he's got the courage of his ignorance, I'll give him that."

Friday night round up

• Hansellman on graphing - the data "wants" to be presented in a certain way
• Hansellman on a family backup strategy - for all of those of us who give out free tech support to family and friends
• Perceptions of America and Iran in der Spiegel
• Der Spiegel again - Muslim integration into Europe
  

The Watchmen movie!

To be made by the director of 300! And the plot is supposedly unchanged, and still happening in 1985. My cup runneth over.

Needed technological advances

In keeping with Instapundit's list of needed technological advances, here are four of mine

• Cheaper Carbon Fiber materials - Much lighter and much stronger than metal, but at the moment, much more expensive. If this cost could be brought down many other technologies become economical, electric cars, prefabbed buildings, small scale wind generation, etc.
• Smart traffic lights - while these do exist at the moment, they are not in wide use. I live in a traffic-light heavy part of the city. I also do most of my car travel at non-peak hours. I still stop at most of the lights for no reason whatsoever. Smart lights (these exist already) would sense if there is a car that needs to get by and turn green (assuming there was no competing traffic) and then snap back to it's existing cycle.
• Decentralized electric power - To my knowledge, the main power grid has not been modernized, ever.
  
• Cheap wholesale medical testing - imagine just having a machine in your home that could analyze your blood or urine every day or week and test it for the top 50 detectable problems. If all of these problems are caught at the first opportunity, how many lives could be saved?
  

Quick Wednesday link splash

• Backyard wind-power - not cheap, but not horribly pricey either. I imagine this would work much better in the country.
• The Aral Sea - on Wikipedia
• An interview with Michael Crichton
• Hand Cranked Cell phone charger - sadly available only in Japan. One would think it would be more popular here. Oh well.
• More hydrogen economy
  

Scenic views wanted

Does anyone know of any great views of the city? I'll soon be doing another installment of the fiddler photo series and I'm looking for some good places to shoot. All suggestions welcome.

The best marriage proposal ever

belongs to uber-mathematician John von Neumann

"You and I might be able to have some fun together, seeing as how we both like to drink."

The next South Park

Will feature Hillary Clinton in some way.

Your tax dollars at work

After being hyped for years, the label "The Imperial Presidency" seems to be coming true.

A Justice Department official will refuse to answer questions during a Senate committee hearing on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, citing her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself, her lawyer said Monday.

All of this hubbub for something that the president has the explicit power to do (fire US attorneys), he just can't look statesmanlike in doing so. Proving once again that the genius of the American political system lies in impeding the politicians, not empowering them.

Random theories I haven't thought through yet

Of fact-checked for that matter. Nonetheless, here are two bigthink ideas that have occurred to me recently:

• With the notable exception of Imperial Japan, America hasn't gone to war with any country that likes itself in the past 100 years. While I don't usually go for theories involving Constructivism, all of the countries we've had conflict with, Nazi Germany, North Vietnam and North Korea, et al, are all fighting to some degree for national pride. This is why I'm not particularly worried about Iran, because the Iranians seem to like being Iranian.
• The rise of dominant militaries can be summarized as discipline vs identity. By this I mean that the troops can be effective via skillful execution of a central plan, or simply by being themselves. The Romans were a good example of a disciplined group. They were able to carry out the will of their commanders due to training and tight organization. On the other hand, the Mongols required little central direction and usually just had to be their fearsome selves to successfully win wars. Most of the major conflicts through history can be characterized as a clash between these two tactics.
  

This site took a chunk of my day

Overheard at Work - it makes me a bit nostalgic for the old days of the office world.

Qualifications for president

Perhaps it's me, but is the incidence of presidential candidates having young children higher than normal? Obama, Edwards, IIRC McCain as well, and I'm sure I'm leaving a few out. Personally I think we should raise (via constitutional amendment) the minimum age for president to at least 55. Why would anyone want to subject their children to life in the public eye?

Those crazy Germans

I read this fawning article on the future of China in der Spiegel. The go on and on about the benefits of state owned industry, and a central strategy for all of China's economic activity. And not once do they use the term "National Socialism"!

Silver King

Quick Thursday round up

• An interesting profile of Robert Levy, who spearheaded the successful DC gun ban lawsuit. I met him several years ago when I was interning at Cato. A very smart and nice guy.
• More future of the automobile, this time from CNN. The big three American automakers and their Japanese counterparts seem to be hopelessly stuck in the past and burdened with vast wastelands of legacy costs and outdated equipment. I still have hope for American cottage industry to fill some of the gap, but I expect most of the "new" ideas to come from China. My reasoning is: The single largest unrealized opportunity for efficient cars is not the propulsion, it's in the weight of the car itself. With new advances in carbon fiber and plastics (to replace the body, windshield, axels, and so on) you can lighten the vehicle considerably while keeping safety and performance constant. Lighter vehicle=greater fuel efficiency (by whatever measure). I think the existing players have too much invested in the current scheme and will get whupped by Chinese auto manufacturers when China reaches the necessary level of industrial sophistication (my prediction, 2015).
• Microsoft is giving away a new accounting program. I'll have a field review in a few days.
• A pretty cool homemade fuel cell system. Not commercially viable (yet), but a good start at the grass roots.
• I just got John Boyd's biography.
  

A good article

I came across this article on Iraq's Mercenary King recently. It's an interesting read. One thing that's always said about Private Military Companies is that the contractors make several times what normal American troops make. Usually in another sentence it's said that PMCs can be deployed at a much lower cost than deploying the regular military. No one ever draws any conclusions about this disparity.

The Germans are German

From a quick read of Der Spiegel

• They actually have a guide to "Scoring a German"
• German Brothel Offers 50-Percent Discount to Senior Citizens

  The brothel "Pascha" in Cologne is now offering senior citizens a 50 percent discount on sex services -- but only between the hours of 12 and 5 p.m., and only upon proof of age. The offer, which many would argue beats free coffee at McDonalds, is valid for clients aged 66 and over.

  Only "many"? Not all? Also from the same article

  A brothel in Dresden in economically hard-hit eastern Germany made headlines in 2005 when it introduced a 20-percent discount for the long-term unemployed.

  I can't think of a worse incentive...
  

I miss Ronald Reagan

Somehow I stumbled upon this quote of his about hippies, to wit a hippie is someone who "dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah."

Is there anyone on the political scene right now that has come up with a better one liner? Clinton did have a few good ones in the early nineties, but the only pithy statements lately are Rice's "Franco-American relations work much better in reality than in theory" and Rumsfeld's response when asked him if he thought the Taliban would fight to the death: "We won't know that until they're all dead!".

Rumsfeld and Rice were appointees though. Have there been any good one-liners by anyone running for the 2008 election?

The funniest anti-Mac screed yet

via Megan McCardle, here is the best anti-Mac rant so far. Favorite line

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality.

In keeping with the theme, one of Megan's commenters said this

I knew a guy once who would always tell me that I should buy a BMW like he did, because doing so made "a statement about yourself".

I came to the conclusion that people who bought products to make statements about themselves were mostly saying they were A-holes.

The best I've come up with is "The MacIntosh. It's too good to be useful!"

Sunday round up

• A good read on economics and statistics
• Islam and Christianity - IBM and Microsoft - Embrace and Extend
• Resiliancy, and how to measure it
  

Quick Thursday round up

• Interesting solar thermal plant in Nevada.
• George Eastman - founder of Kodak, and the originator of two of my favorite quotes. He named his company Kodak because he thought the letter K was "a strong, incisive sort of letter". His suicide note was "My work is done. Why wait?".
• Tech Recipes - Vista Tips
• A good bio of Albert Jay Nock.
  

Random snapshot of my brain

Whilst waiting for a program to install I came across this article. Blurb:

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.

I then had the thought that there is no evidence that nature, though beautiful, likes us. Then I thought of the metaphor that everyone views the environment like it's their grandparent's house. "Oh, everything is so old and irreplaceable, let us gaze in rapt awe and try to be worthy of it someday". Mind you, what we do with it is another story.

Then I was reminded of an Ayn Rand line which goes something like "Technology is man's victory over nature". Then I Googled that trying to find the exact quote. That led me, somehow, to this page about one of my favorite thinkers, Albert Jay Nock. His excellent auto-biography Memoirs of a Superfluous Man is still one of my favorites. Then I started thinking of my other favorite social critics and came up with Eric Hoffer, H.L. Mencken, as well as Nock. All three of them have a distinctive, elegant style which I associate with urban living prior to the fifties. All three of them wrote from cities (San Francisco, Baltimore and New York) and two of them published all their work between 1900 and 1950. I'm also drawn to movies set in cities in that era.

I wonder why those circumstances have that appeal to me, then I decided to write it all down to clarify it in my head.

And there you go.

Sunday round up

• Interesting post on carbon offsets from TreeHugger.
• DIY efficient cards
• More Flickr printing
  

A rogue Core

Subadei has some interesting thoughts on the possibility of a new and hostile Core (shortly defined as a group of connected, interdependent nations) involving Iran, Venezuela. However, I think there is not much to be worried about. Assuming they do create/evolve into a second core, they would have enough incentives/core-like attributes not to do so.

I guess that raises the question, can there be two Cores? Wouldn't the opportunity cost of maintaining the divide between the two Cores? Wouldn't the opportunity cost of maintaining the divide between the two Cores become too costly for the divide to be sustainable?

Update:Edited for clarity

Victory and people I know

Tom Palmer (my boss when I interned at the Cato Institute and all around great guy) and his fellow plaintiffs just won a legal decision that throws out the District of Columbia's gun ban.

Quck roundup

• An interesting look at the military aspects of social networking.
• Underwater windmills
• How we would fight China
• The metaweb/FreeBase
• Evidently February was cold
  
• Blurb has dropped their prices.
• Strangest suicide attempt, ever

  Two Georgia men survived a gruesome suicide attempt Friday after cutting their own arms off with a saw, reported Atlanta's Journal Constitution.
  
  The 40 and 41-year-old men managed to remove three of their four arms, cutting them about six inches above their wrists, Atlanta Police Major Lane Hagin told the Journal.

• Baby steps to a better editorial, it's easier to see why this one is so wrong.
• The 20 best comic book weapons.
• It's odd seeing this already existing - I stumbled across this C.S. Lewis quote yesterday "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' which is the general gist my future novel The Comedian.
  

300

I just got back from seeing 300. It matches the hype. The visuals are stunning, the story magnificently told, the actors all unknown and brilliant. It makes the top five of all time list.

The ever amazing Vista

For some reason Outlook quit working on my new Vista install. Basically it would gray out and then present with me an offer to go to Microsoft to fix the problem. I actually do that and lo and behold, it gives me a registry fix that actually works. Amazing. I think that's the first time that has happened.

Thoughts on Scooter Libby

I haven't paid much attention to the Libby trial. Joe Wilson always seemed like too much of a pompous blowhard, and Libby too much of a devoted apparachik, to care much. However, like tax cuts, impeachments and special prosecutors are always good.

Two surprising things

• Fitzgerald convicted Libby on essentially technical grounds, which struck me as odd, as he's a rather talented lawyer. IIRC he was Clinton pardonee Marc Rich's lawyer.
• No one has brought up this reason for the animus towards Wilson; to wit: Cheney's office is filled with 45-65 year old true believers who all work 60-80 hours a week. Along comes some guy who retired in his late 40s who tries to tell them their business (and not too well either). That has to some sort of huge insult in the late middle aged workaholic society.
  

The funniest thing I read today

From Time Magazine no less

Like all language or thought police, the nigger-nazis are humorless snobs who dream of a world without toilets.

Tea in the parlor makes the ladies holler

Funny.

Your tax dollars at work

In Lilburn in this case:

Shut up and drink, Lilburn bar patrons told
...
Earlier, the city outlawed pool — the game that spelled trouble in the musical "The Music Man" — in its watering holes. Now it's also barring karaoke and just about any other party game from places that serve alcohol.

America is getting ridiculous at an increasing rate. However, my zoning for no-children idea is gaining good feedback in my informal polls.

Freaking Vista

For some reason after the upgrade my local box would not respond to localhost. After several hours of searching, I finally see this article. Who knew write permissions on a log file could be so important?

And now of course, it doesn't work anymore. Sigh.

Tommy Womack at Decatur CD

Yesterday I went to see the immensely talented Tommy Womack at both Decatur CD and later Eddie's Attic. One of the best shows I've seen in years. The photos are from the in-store appearance at Decatur CD.

The insurgency in Iraq

Check out this interview with terrorism expert Evan Kohlmann. It's a fascinating look at the current state of the insurgency in Iraq.

Random assortment of links

• Frank Miller is going to be on G4 on Sunday.
• A 96 year old mobster has his day in court. His mob name is "The Old Man" which is rather unimaginative. His record goes back to 1932.
• Stand-in mistress sought to take wife’s abuse
• Your tax dollars at work, in hovering cloud of smoke form.
• Underground coal fires.
• A horrible abuse of language from the junior senator from Massachusetts. "

  Might I ask you what your opinion is with respect to the state of American politics as regards the politics of personal destruction?

  He has the perfectly descriptive term, slander, to use and yet he came up with that. He makes Bush seem downright articulate sometimes.
• A lot of interesting talk on Gore, and specifically his carbon offsetting program from Marginal Revolution and The Economist. FYI - he seems to be a part owner of the offsetting company.