Display some adaptbility

Battlestar Galactica for November 3, 2006: Starbuck displays adaptability, Tigh fails to get on with on with it. Oh and some really keen stuff with Balter and the Cylons.

A random economic thought

A random economic thought

Not mine of course - it's Friday and my brain is innocent of thought as I gaze at TV through the vee of my feet.

The US Treasury combined with the US military and three hundred plus years of American social capital formation mean that our seignorage services are second to none. The three institutions work together to take tree pulp, put green ink on it, back it with a few hundred thousand boots on the ground, and convert it into a store of value that’s as good as gold, and much more portable.

Every US dollar is, in a sense, a small contract - a bit of intangible property.

Proposed: we’re not buying tungsten and oil and DVD players and containers full of manga…we’re trading for them - their consumer goods versus our micro-contracts.

Of course, the value of the trillions of micro-contracts we’ve already sold (and all the ones we hope to sell in the future) could be decimated by inflation, military cowardice, and/or excessive multilateralism that amounts to kowtowing.

Makes sense to me.

Summer memories

It's November. It's cold. You wouldn't think I'd have to say this to my six-year old this morning:

A swimsuit does not count as 'getting dressed'.

Summer dies hard in the heart of a child.

Unlettered barbarian

I am an unlettered barbarian. Below a list of 50 significant SF&F books frm the last fifty years, the ones I've read in bold.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
   
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
    
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
    
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
    
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
    
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
    
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Via TJIC who got it from Foothills who got it from here.

Learning from your mistakes

Ken MacLeod linking to an Economist article on the Hungarian  Uprising

The only people to learn anything from the collapse of the Soviet bloc have been the Communists. Everyone else was merely proved right.

Schwing!

Best Comment of the Day

From a Jane Galt poster

You can not win the presidency if you are not a white, christian male.

Lieberman was up for Vice President. Just a heartbeat away, and all that, remember?

We are a shallow and easily manipulated people.

Remember, kiddies, whenever a writer uses "we" in this manner, he really means: "you".

What she said.

Have You Dug His Scene

In a better world this guy would have achieved fame and eternal royalties as Captain Picard.



What?  Well he auditioned for the role.



Is there any doubt that when it came down to 'who would kick whose ass, Kirk or Picard' that Yaphet Kotto's Picard would have it all over Shatner's Kirk?

The post title? Refers to a kick-ass spoken word - jazz piece that Kotto recorded in 1968.

Via

Sensible Comment of the Day

Sensible Comment of the Day

I’m sure if a full scale space elevator was to be constructed, any airplane flying into the area would be instructed to turn around, and if they don’t they’d probably get shot down. Plus really, if I was a pilot, and knew my heading was in the direction of a giant laser beam powering a 20 ton climber I would generally do what I can to avoid it.

You know you're a computer nerd when

you invite people to your house for a house-warming party and in the email to a global mailist write

For automated directions (including Google Maps URL), you can finger
directions@xxxxxxcom or send email to directions@xxxxxxx.net.

but neglect to include information that mundanes might need like what town you live in.

Passion

Hugh got some email

No talent. None. Way too obscure for general consumption.

And responds

I think worrying about what interests you, what stirs your passion, is a far more effective recipe for success than worrying about "general consumption".

God, I hope so. It certainly seems that all the really succesful people I know are doing what they want to do, and not pleasing the masses.

Firefox 2.0 - Performancing - Optimized Build

  Test to see if Performancing and Firefox 2.0 (Optimized Firefox build from BeatnikPad) play well together.

...

And they do. You gotta like stuff that Just Works. Puts the fun back into trying new tools.

Personality

What is living with a terrier like?



Like that.

Read Little Dee - it's good for your soul.

Level playing field

This was an interesting comment to come across in a blog post;

I think (redacted) brought a great deal of criticism on himself by making the rules subject to his own changing opinions, rather than keeping them as fixed limits that teams could rely on.

Well then.

Things I did not know this morning

English Electric Lightning

A unique way of minimising the drag of the twin engine installation was put forward by Petter. This involved stacking the engines vertically (staggered to avoid too much weight aft, with the lower engine forward of the upper), effectively tucking them behind the cockpit, fed from the nose and achieving minimum frontal area. This effectively gave twice the thrust of its contemporaries for an increase in frontal area of only 50%.

Emergency Beam Out on my mark ...

Un -hunh.

A retired veteran and candidate for Oklahoma State School Superintendent says he wants to make schools safer by creating bulletproof textbooks.

Crozier says the idea is still in its initial stages and he has no idea how much it would cost to cover the books.

I have a far superior idea to plating school books with kevlar.

Outift each child with a personal teleporter ala Star Trek or Niven's Known Space.  Pre-program them to take the child somewhere safe - the local police station would do.

Sure, the idea is in it's planning stages and I have no idea how much a personal teleportation unit for each child would cost. And yes, I have no idea how to make one. I'm the ideas man you can't expect me to meddle about with fiddly bits.

This, citizens, is a time that has come. Or will come in the 23rd century. Thank you.

via.

Jeff Harrell: A brief and surprisingly dull encounter with an extraterrestrial life form

It's like a vintage Spider Robinson short. By that I mean it's good.

“So what you’re saying is,” Brithpth said slowly and distinctly, “is that you eat with the same orifice you breathe with?”

“Yup,” I replied.

My guest did that thing again. He paused, in the way that a glacier might be said to pause. For a slow ten-count, he was perfectly still.

“How do you keep from clogging the tube?” he asked for the third time in an hour.

Let me go back

Do the clicky-thing and read. It's pretty good.

rocketboom - space elevator

Rocketboom covers the recent space elevator competition.

Hearts and Minds

Armoured Cav Paint Ball

As long as players wear masks and thick clothing, no one suffers anything worse than a bruise. The basic concept is simple: he who is the least-splattered is the winner. National tournaments can pull in hundreds of devotees and paintball has built up a solid appeal among stag - and hen - parties, pub teams, students and office workers.

But none will ever have faced a paintball gun like the one I am swivelling into position - which is just as well given that it could be lethal to anyone not protected by a thick layer of armour.

When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow

via

A very short cautionary tale

A very short cautionary tale

Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.
- Vernor Vinge

More at Wired
Via Armchair Anarchist

Things I did not know this morning

Things I did not know this morning

The Martin B-57 Canberra was a twin-engine jet bomber and reconnaissance aircraft which entered service in the 1950s. Originally based on the British English Electric Canberra, the US-built B-57 had evolved into several unique variants.

snip

WB-57F

Weather reconnaissance version.

RB-57Fs used for high altitude atmospheric sampling in support of nuclear weapon testing and weather research. Two WB-57F aircraft were transferred to NASA and are the only WB-57s still flying in the world today [4]. They are used for atmospheric research and for monitoring Space Shuttle takeoff and landing.