interweaving ideas
-
Rush is Right!
Rush Limbaugh is right. Rush is right when he says it would be better for Republicans to lose than vote for McCain, and Rush is right when he proposes Operation Chaos to help McCain win the general election. Rush is right when he says he wants Hillary to win the nomination because she’ll be easier…
-
NY Hall of Science: The Search for Life Beyond Earth
Coolest item by far in this portion of the NY Hall of Science was the Cloud Chamber, an apparatus that uses dry ice and pure alcohol to let us see the paths of cosmic particles, which are passing through and around us all the time. Different particles leave different tracks in the display. Simulating the…
-
Robert Asprin 1946-2008
Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections A moment of silence please for fantasy/SF author, Robert Asprin, who has passed away at 62. Author of the delightful MYTH Adventures, a seemingly never-ending series of novellas, which chronicled the lovable Skeeve, Aahz, Tananda, the pet dragon Gleep, and the carnival of other characters making up the M.Y.T.H. mythos. I very…
-
Edge Question: What are You Optimistic About?
Every year Edge sends out a question to all the world’s greatest minds. This year, the question was “What are You Optimistic About?, somehow, my invitation to answer the question got lost in the mail, and Edge forgot to post the response I so helpfully e-mailed them, so I guess I’ll just post it here…
-
Michael Pollan In Defense of Food
“The dinner we have eaten tonight, was part of the sun but a few months ago.” – Weston Price When geneticists mapped out the human genome, they found a complex world of proteins that will take decades, possibly centuries, to fully decipher. Medical applications, such as gene therapy, cloning, and medications must go through years…
-
The Aquatic Ape Theory
Leah, a gorilla, uses a stick to test the depth of water while wading through it Photo by Thomas Breuer/WCS/PLoS Biology Like Humans, dolphins, whales, and porpoises are mammals. They are warm-blooded, breath through lungs, and give birth to live offspring; however, they also have fins like fish and live in the sea. The skeletons…
-
The Price of Food: Who’s to Blame?
On May 3, speaking to the issue of rising food prices, President Bush Jr cited developments in India, where the “middle class is larger than our entire population” and added, “when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go…
-
Sunday Adventuring: NY Hall of Science
The 1964 World’s Fair boggles my mind. I can’t believe there was a time in America when science was revered, celebrated on such an incredible scale, and monuments were built to it. The NY Hall of Science is built up within the grounds of this wonderful event, and area in Queens filled with great big…
-
A Twittering, Flickring World
Here’s a really neat way to visualize our world in Real Time. twittervision takes the text-messages posted on twitter, and shows them on a google map as they are being posted. Watching this application with the “3D View” turned on, I was able to watch Californians planning their night as I was turning in to…
-
PMOG: The Passively Multiplayer Online Game
My Habits Make me a Pathmaker in PMOG Education is an adventure. We quest for knowledge throughout our lives, whether its the daily news, OTJ, or sitcoms. Every fact collected in our minds a tool for accessing new information and clarifying the old. Every fact is also a weapon in debate, which are battles in…
-
Acronym Speak
Today I sat in on a meeting about USCG training and qualifications that went like this: “Why doesn’t the application cover the J?” “Because they program to the 3710.” “So we need to submit a CG22 to change it.” “Are we sure we only want the BA and DM updated?” “We can follow the other…
