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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.
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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.
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Sunday round up
- Interesting post on carbon offsets from TreeHugger.
- DIY efficient cards
- More Flickr printing
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.