KaChing!
Things That Go Boing in the Brain
Jan 10, 2008
11:48am
ReubenMiller : The Cheapest Car in the World.
Tata Motors has unveiled the vehicle called Tata Nano at India’s biggest car show.
The vehicle will sell for $2,500 and enable those in developing countries to move to four wheels ( from the till now 2 wheel mode of transportation).
Jan 10, 2008
11:38am
Jan 10, 2008
11:38am
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As the voting begins in earnest, what are we to make of the Republican candidates? That the “conservative base” is dissatisfied with the GOP field is probably the single most common observation of this presidential campaign season. The second most common observation is probably that the Republican candidate, whoever it turns out to be, is doomed to defeat.
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- They’d Rather Be Right - The New York Review of Books
Jan 10, 2008
11:36am
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Once the plane is airborne, you may RECLINE YOUR SEATBACK by pressing the button inside the armrest. If you chose not to recline, be aware that the person ahead of you will soon do so fully and abruptly, causing sharp discomfort on and around the patella but rewarding you with a panoramic view of several acres of scalp. You may mitigate this situation, at least psychologically, with a loud and audibly moist “sneeze,” or by directing your personal air jet to the top of the encroaching head.
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- A Users Manual to Seat 21C - Jet Lagged - Air Travel - Opinion - New York Times Blog
Jan 8, 2008
11:23pm
Not only does this machine’s “massive solid bronze burner with a 5-inch opening” have a “blowproof design” and a windshield to guard against its 2200-degree flame, it also has a “lead-coated steel bottom.” Leaded: For your protection. (via The Hardware Aisle: Old blowtorch ad charming, scary)
Jan 8, 2008
11:22pm
Jan 7, 2008
3:52pm
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We are going from $1.5 billion in grants a year in 2006 to $3 billion in 2009. So we are on a ramp, which means we are more ambitious. As we make breakthroughs, like new vaccines, then you actually need more money to get the manufacturer to fund the delivery systems.
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- Bill Gates: the exit interview - Engadget
Jan 7, 2008
3:15pm
Jan 7, 2008
1:29pm
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Germany is still around and so is Japan, but their defeats changed them as much as our victory changed us. Some for the better, some for the worse, but they are no longer world powers or military powers because they have lost the right to such. They can reclaim it, as the EU is trying to do for their former Imperial and Colonial historical glories, but as with all things, it requires effort. Incompetent and feckless effort on the part of the EU or bloodthirsty and suicidal effort on the part of the Islamic war on goodness. There may not be such a thing as Divine Right behind the power of monarchs and dynasties, but there is certainly a score card kept by someone for entire nations, cultures, and civilizations. Score too low and you’ll end up like Carthage.
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- Ancient History and Our Funny Ancestors « Sake White
Jan 7, 2008
1:28pm
What Matters
None of this is to suggest that what is at stake in the election doesn’t matter, or that those deeply invested in it are misallocating life’s limited days. It matters. It is to suggest that the never-off eye of modern political media leaves the impression that nothing good is possible. If progress happens, as with the surge in Iraq or a new therapy for cancer, it must be diminished by “analysis,” listing four things that could “go wrong.” As a way to absorb the way the world works, this is depressing. Good things happen. Get over it. The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics annually publishes data on the well-being of the nation’s children, thought by many to be the point of all this effort. In 1980, deaths per 100,000 U.S. children aged 5 to 14 was 30.6; by 2004, that number fell to 16.8. Some 25 years ago, daily cigarette smoking among 12th graders was about 21%; in 2006 it was about 12% for both males and females. Childhood immunizations are rising steadily. In August, the Centers for Disease Control noted that the death rate in 2004 fell by 3.8% in a year, “a record low historical figure.” Life expectancy for men and women at birth in 1940 was 63 years; it is now nearly 78 years. We, or someone, must be doing something right. Many people think that the war in Iraq was a mistake. It indeed contributes to the belief that the U.S. is on the wrong track. This will be argued more deeply when just two candidates are running, and millions of voters will weight Iraq heavily in their November choice. So be it. That said, the remarkable 12-month progress of the surge strategy demonstrated it is not beyond the ability of “the system” to respond to seemingly overwhelming problems. Credit is due to Gen. David Petraeus certainly, but an infrastructure of U.S. military brains went into designing the Army’s Counterinsurgency Manual, published in 2006. Its bibliography includes many studies published since 2003. As such it represents the U.S. military’s “best practices” on fighting a modern enemy like al Qaeda, and the surge’s success showed we are not helpless before this latest form of nihilism. This to some may be bitter progress, but it is so.
Jan 7, 2008
1:23pm
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Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as “scrutineers,” are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an “X” with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate’s name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don’t, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology.
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- I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Follow the Money | PBS
Jan 7, 2008
12:51pm
Welcome to Obamapedia - Obamapedia
Ripe for vandalism
Jan 7, 2008
12:39pm
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This simulation shows what happens when momentum is not ignored, an approach that is allowed with modern supercomputers and codes. The same asteroid is now moving through the atmosphere at a typical impact velocity (20 km/s). For illustration purposes, extra energy is deposited into the asteroid when it reaches 5 km, for a total of 5 megatons. Momentum carries the hot fireball down to the surface, which enhances heat and wind effects on the ground.
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- Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster - December 17, 2007
Jan 7, 2008
12:36pm
Is it wrong to find pictures of destruction beautiful? This is a frame from a supercomputer simulation of the Tunguska meteorite. It exploded over Siberia in 1908 and flattened miles of trees. The simulation suggests that the devastation could have been caused by a far smaller explosion than previously thought—3 to 5 megatons, instead of 10 to 20. And since there are many more asteroids in that smaller size range, the risks of a devastating impact may be greater than previously thought. Maybe not enough to cause mass extinctions, but to knock out a fair piece of real estate. (via The Loom : Little Asteroid, Big Fireball)
Jan 6, 2008
9:21pm
-Darwin didn’t write a single word about tapeworms. It’s a pity, because tapeworms are as strange as animals can get… These flat, ribbon-like creatures live inside the digestive tracts of vertebrates. The tapeworms that live in humans can get up to sixty feet long. They feed on our food, despite the fact that they have neither a mouth nor a digestive tract. Their bodies are like a kind of inside-out intestine, rippling with finger-like projections that absorb nutrients. Once inside us, tapeworms can live for decades, deftly escaping the notice of the immune system despite their being as long as an anaconda. Some tapeworms have hooks or suckers on their front end (“head” is too generous a term), which they use to anchor themselves in place. They can also swim upstream to meet food coming out of the stomach and drift back down the intestines to feed, releasing chemicals to slow down their host’s peristalsis so that they don’t get swept away. (via The Loom : Build Me A Tapeworm)
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