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Worm gears and motors and robot, oh my!
As my mad scientist phase continues, I’ve come across a few cool supply sites (some from Mark)
In other news, I just ordered 3 sets of brass robot gears for ten bucks from E-Bay. They should arrive soon.
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Two from Slate
- Hitchens on Falwell – a nice vicious hit job, closing with
It’s a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it’s extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the “faith-based.”
- On Generals – An interesting piece on the lack of turnover at the Pentagon due to the Iraq war. Unmentioned is the lack of turnover as a result of 9-11, which should be the larger clue.
- Hitchens on Falwell – a nice vicious hit job, closing with
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We live in scary times when Bill Maher is right about something
Check out this post from The Agitator. The whole “They hate us for our freedom” bit sounds nice, and is partly true, but it is the most useless adage ever created. If we’re going to reduce the number of terrorists to zero (the goal) we’re going to need to do more than just proclaim our greatness and ignore all specifics. Sigh.
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Funny
After the Snuke episode of South Park, the cast of 24 actually sent them one of the suitcase nuke props as a gift.
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V for Vendetta
I finally saw the V for Vendetta movie and found it soils my memory of the comic. Gone was the grit of Evie, the violent mystery of V, the looming menace of the state. Replacing it was corporate angst, an ocean of improbabilities, and a third rate parody of the Bush Administration. Gone was all the base motivation, the insight into human nature, and a believable origin of the crisis. Instead we got soap opera, pandering nonsense, and an explanation out of a Michael Moore movie.
Somehow they turned a potent story of pure anarchism into a theme of left-wing resentment.
All that being said, it was well acted, especially by Steven Rea, who caught the essence of Finch very well.
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If Granny had wheels, she’d be a trolley
Starting with this review of a CNN.com Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko is Socko“. It prattles on and on about the inequalities and suffering that result from illness. All true most likely. Read that and ask yourself, “So What?” Is the same leviathan that brought you the Iraq War (or “Peace” if you prefer) likely to improve matters? Or for that matter, one that couldn’t even find a way to discreetly have sex with interns?
The second one is “What if Lincoln Had Survived?“, also on CNN.com. If they had the medical technology of today but not the 25th Amendment, what would have happened?
Isn’t there some news site that caters to the person who is interested in news?
For far better non-news brain candy, check out this history of the 1920 Wall Street bombing. The perpetrators of that attack, much like the anthrax mailer, were never caught.
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Wind Power in Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics has an interesting article on Wind Power on their site. Sadly, it makes it seem unworkable on any kind of large scale. It would be quite handy on a small to medium scale though.
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First HDR attempt
The image is nothing spectacular, but the HDR process really brings out the grain and contrasts from the source files (HDR stands for high Dynamic Range).
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First thoughts on Brave New War
I just finished reading John Robb‘s Brave New War and I’m struck by how similar his vision of the future was to David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom.
I’ll have my review of the book later. On the whole I liked it a lot.
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Local cooling
I sit here at four in the morning, listening to Woodie Guthrie trying to restore a database that a client accidentally deleted the day before launch (yay me). And it’s 54 degrees outside. In Georgia, in the middle of May. It seems unnaturally cold lately.
I wonder if there’s a site somewhere that tracks local temperatures and plots, plots a yearly average and indicates if that is lower than average or higher. If not, that would be a cool AdSense supported project…