-
Funny thing I heard on the History Channel
I’m slowly working my way through the History Channel documentary on the Spanish American war. The black cavalry soldiers, known commonly as “Buffalo Soldiers” were known by the Spanish as “Smoked Yankees”.
It’s interesting to be reminded that America had a low-level conflict with the Indians for years up to that point.
-
Monday link roundup
- An in-depth examination on how to build an energy efficient house
- Robot snipers in Israel
- Strobist begins Lighting 102
- No one thinks seriously about alternative energy. Check out this post from TreeHugger “New Battery Pushed Prius to 125 MPG“. It’s a great idea and invention, but it’s a plug-in hybrid. The motion is coming from the power grid. Granted electricity is usually more efficient than gasoline, but that’s like saying that a diesel engine gets infinite mileage because it doesn’t burn any gasoline at all.
-
Thoughts on Ron Paul on the Daily Show
He came across better than usual for his usual presentation. They talked a little about domestic policy, nothing about drug legalization or gun control, mostly spending. Not bad though.
-
A nifty photoshop video tutorial
It has some great stuff on color correction and sharpening. Check it out at Digital Photography School.
-
Ron Paul on the Daily Show tonight
Republican presidential candidate, former Libertarian Party nominee, current Texas representative, temporary darling of the trendy left and overall interesting guy will be on the Daily Show tonight. We’ll see if they go into his foreign policy stance (popular to the Daily Show audience, so long as it’s kept vague) and away from his views on abortion and national health care.
-
Two for Monday
- Sandy Berger gives up his law license, which makes me thing that there is some serious hiding going on.
- More on the rogue Atlanta narcotics squad. Unmentioned is any mention of the judges and magistrates who rubber stamp all this crap. Ideally they would be help liable for any fraudulent warrants they sign, but that will never happen.
-
Performance anxiety
So, at long last, I have my first gig as a solo performer in one month, opening for the A-Sides. And I need a full hour of material.
It’s good to have goals. And deadlines and stress I suppose.
-
Three on Iraq
First, there is this depressing report on civilian casualties in Iraq. The numbers are all going the wrong way.
Second is this post from Ross Douthat about the long term impact of Iraq, and how similar wars have affected the US and the British.
Last is this post from the Belmont Club. I haven’t read that site in quite some time (it’s a weird combination of gloom and optimism), but Wretchard does do sweeping phrases well. To wit:
Al-Qaeda, like all the evil vapors of the world through history, inevitably comes to resemble its predecessors. Soldiers of the dark eventually find themselves wearing the same livery. Flowers bloom in myriad ways, but evil, like pornography, is repetitive. It marches to same dull beat that all the Lost of the ages have heard call. Poor men, these al-Qaeda, they who would remake the world in their ostensibly new vision only to find it had been templated long ago by some sad and ancient corruption.
-
Sunday link round up
- A creepy collection of suicide notes
- Google used this camera to create their new “Street View” feature (which is not in Atlanta, yet).
- Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin explains why the lessening of racial majorities is a bad thing for diversity. Really.
- There’s a new, free version of Refactor! specifically for ASP.net. It’s pretty cool. When I installed it it deleted all of my toolbox snippets in Visual Studio, so be careful about that.
-
Flying Squads
Unbeknowst to me, before now, the Justice Department sends out teams to fight street level crime in cities around the country. The Yahoo News article lists it’s failures, which are to be expected. It’s hard to see how it could be successful when all of it’s efforts and managements are so insulated from feedback. Sending out federal people to deal exclusively with local crime is a troubling trend.