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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…
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How does the West expect to win…
When we have judges like this
“The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a Web site is,” he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms “Web site” and “forum.” An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: “I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.”
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A cool idea
ThinkCycle.org – an open source community for machines.
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Interesting bits of knowledge
About evolution in this case
Since records on the subject began in the mid-1800s, the average breast size in the US has increased from a 32-B to the current average of 36-C. This may be a result of better nutrition, healthier lifestyle, or the result of the aforementioned sexual selection.
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A mad scientist period
For some reason I’m going through a mad scientist phase right now. My current idea is pair a passive solar heater with a Stirling engine and see how much power is actually generated. Hopefully I’ll have time to work on it in a few weeks.
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Quote of the moment
Via CodePoet, and from this page
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. (Nathaniel S Borenstein)
and
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)
and
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration. (Stan Kelly-Bootle)
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Wednesday round up
- 5 Techniques for Enhancing Contrast in Digital Photos
- “Breeding dysentery in the ranks” – the best misuses of the English language in the Sopranos
- What journalists need to know about economics – quite good
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Wars in the Middle East are officially a vested interest
I read this article on CNN.com
White House taps general for ‘war czar’ post
President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon’s director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a “war czar” after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.
and was reminded of this Albert Jay Nock quote:
Experience has made it clear beyond doubt or peradventure that prohibition in the United States is not a moral issue; it is not essentially, even, a political issue; it is a vested interest.
and this H.L. Mencken quote:
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
We have this horrible tendency in our culture to see the means (a big new bureaucracy) as an end in itself, nay, an achievement. What endeavor has failed because there are too few managers? The right managers, sure, lots of failures due to a lack of them. But too few?
Plus an additional bureaucracy just creates it’s own principal-agent and knowledge problems.
Functionally Lute will probably serve as a dedicated adviser, but why the title Czar? All of the Russian Czars were an odd combination of stagnant, incompetent and murderous. Why is that some role model.
Sigh.