Saturday rapid fire

• Dean Kamen's Robot Arm - simply incredible. Why Kamen isn't America's most highly regarded public citizen is a mystery.
• The liberal media follows me around an takes notes - I had this conversation with some friends last week, it's an odd coincidence. I don't cry at movies but my the movies that come closes are The Virgin Spring and On The Beach.
• More HDR Photography
• Groupware is bad
• Russia's Hypermortality -

  Moreover, a large proportion of the Russian workforce may be too drunk to function. Almost one male death in three is alcohol-related. “The increase of alcohol consumption from 10 to 15 liters and an almost simultaneous increase in mortality suggests the central role played by alcohol to mortality, in average up to 426,000 per year in 1980-2001. Alcohol-related deaths total 29.6 percent of total mortality for men and 17.0 percent for women,” the report says.

• My next project is going to be something like this
  

Update on the two murders across the street

A news update here. It seems that there were two killers, and also that they planned to torch the house when they were done. Scary business.

For your viewing pleasure

Just fyi - still no real word on the double murder across the street.

To make everyone feel better, check out this Craig Shirky talk on the internet

The Libertarian candidates

CNN.com has a nice round up here.

Meeting the trouble halfway

So now it seems that the "incident", which is to say, two murders, that happened 100 feet away from my house was a drug deal gone sour, and not a home invasion. That does make me feel a bit better. The shooter(s) being caught would seal the day nicely.

More info on the blue lights

Here is the article. Scary business. The article does describe the neighborhood as "Upscale".

The night the blue lights kept the neighbors up

The street is taped off in front of my house, there are three police cars to the left and right of my house, and the church parking lot across the street is cordoned off with yellow police tape. A news van was here too (they left after about an hour). I've heard something of what happened, but I'll link to the news story when it comes out in the morning.

Fifth Generation Warfare sighted in the wild!

Check out this interview on bloggingheads with the author of The Family, which is a book about a loose network of self dealing Christians in high placed.

From the interview (I haven't read the book yet) it seems to match all of the definitions of 5GW (loose as they may be), and it's been around since the 30s as well.

Thoughts from my fellow war nerds, which is to say Soob and Slog?

With summer comes five more strings

Lately I've been fighting a craving for a banjo, I see the wonderful rendition of a Dock Boggs song (below) and I'm almost out the door to buy one....

Or should I get a mandolin?

The amazing McCain

According the the wonderful site, Electoral-Vote.com, Clinton (who won't be the nominee) beats McCain 280-241 in the electoral college, whereas Obama loses to McCain 237-290. Granted, it's quite early, but it's amazing nonetheless.

John Robb's annoying moments

On the whole, I like John Robb, his book Brave New War was thought provoking, and his upcoming book on Resilient Communities looks to be good as well.

But then posts like this one anger me to no end. He goes over current world trends in apocolyptic tones and then closes with

Except for the fanatical optimists, market mystics (the divine invisible hand), and the naive/uninformed, the debates over these trends are over.

He always mentions the broad trends with no real mention of where economics might shift the current, instead he just brushes that off with the thesis (this is what I gather from reading him anyway) that practically all of the benevolent inputs are dynamic, whereas the benevolent inputs are static.

Homeless James Bond

Via Soob, check out Homeless James Bond

Talking to the police

Watch this video - it's a lecture by a law professor and a detective, both of whom agree on practically everything, it's weird.

Two from Newsweek

• Terrorist Triage - basically posits that the struggle is in fact winnable (to a large degree) and is in fact, won (as much as we're going to win). Remember though, that desperate times call for random vehicle searches.
• Women and their ovaries make for interesting reading
  

The Israel lobby complex

A question to my many readers

I recently watched Hillary Clinton basically state that her administration would treat an attack on Israel as an attack on the United States. Charles Krauthammer makes a similar proposal in a column here. He is kind enough to give some reason as to why the US should assume this burden, specifically

it will be said, because Israel could retaliate on its own. The problem is that Israel is a very small country with a small nuclear arsenal that could be destroyed in a first strike. During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. created vast and invulnerable submarine fleets to ensure a retaliatory strike and, thus, deterrence. The invulnerability and unimaginably massive size of this American nuclear arsenal would make a U.S. deterrent far more potent and reliable than any Israeli facsimile -- and thus far more likely to keep the peace.

If I remember correctly, Israel has nuclear missile submarines, which would make a successful Iranian first strike unlikely.

The question is, does anyone seriously expect that Iran would be willing to gamble on a sixty percent change of annihilation, but not a 100% chance? Realistically that would be more like a 90% chance due to American political wavering, but let's call it 100% for arguments sake.

The obvious answer to this is "The Iranians are irrational" which is a claim not borne out be history. They've been quite skillful players of brinkmanship for years now. Evil and harmful yes, irrational and stupid, definitely not. Is there really that much value to pandering to the American fans of Israel?

Random Sunday link roundup

• Argentina has decriminalized illicit drug consumption - hopefully a trend
  
• Hanselman on graphs and charts
• Soob on Global Warming
• A network visualizer
• A network map of corporate America
  

The quotable General Sherman

I'm surprised that no one on the left has picked up this little Nugget from General Sherman, specifically

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

Other favorites

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and defeat.

Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other always.

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.

Vox populi, vox humbug!

War is, at its best, barbarism.