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An interesting movie
I finally finished watching the documentary Bastards of the Party, an interesting history of gang activity in Los Angeles from the 40s to the present day. It’s not a balanced take and doesn’t pretend to be, which is quite refreshing.
One quibble – the historian explaining the rise of crack traced it back to Iran-Contra and the CIA-crack folklore. I’ve always found this ridiculous. It assumes that the government was that clever (doubtful) and also that no one else would have thought of taking a commodity that sells for five cents in South America and selling it for fifty dollars in the US.
Beyond that though, well worth watching.
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Quote of the moment
Paraphrased from Brink Lindsay:
Conservatives and liberals both want to return to the 50s. Liberals want to work there and conservatives want to live there.
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Interesting…
Possible breaks in the Erie Collar Bomb Case. Of course, the cops are being coy.
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I make the big time
And get meaningfully quoted and answered by another blogger. Thanks Subadei! I’ll have my response soon.
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Back up
I’m back from being without the internet all day, oh how I missed it. To celebrate, check out the Frank Zappa statue in Vilnius Lithuania. (via Coming Anarchy)
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New favorite deal site
The new one is UberBargain. They found a one Terabyte hard drive array for less than five hundred dollars.
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Quote of the moment
the GOP has morphed from a party that reveres limited government to a party that is girlishly infatuated with executive authority.
via Althouse
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Growl
I’ve been stuck trying to upgrade Office 2007 for the past 10 hours now. For some reason the Groove files are un-deletable. The Microsoft general knowledge base article on uninstalling Office is here.
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Three things
- The US government converts the leader of a one million member Afghan tribe from an ally to an enemy in Afghanistan. Why aren’t we just buying the opium and then burning it or selling it for legitimate purposes (there are some)? It would be much cheaper than the current fight, and also make the Afghan farmers in the most hostile areas utterly dependent on the US. Where is Nixon when you need him?
- The Snake Eater – an army of Davids helps out in the Iraq war. From concept to completion in only 30, very cool.
- Japanese Snowplow Robot!
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A good read on hydrogen
Check out this article on New Atlantis, they do the numbers on what it would take for hydrogen to work. It doesn’t seem likely.