Clearly, I’ve been looking at this music video all wrong: Rebecca Black wakes somewhat too perfectly in the early scenes of her viral video, “Friday.” Her eyes open exactly as the clock beside her bed flashes seven. She wears full make-up. Rare for a teen, she isn’t tired, longs not for any receding dreams. Her […]
CIA’s ‘Facebook’ Program Dramatically Cut Agency’s Costs The Onion, as usual, nails it. Once you’ve watched it, watch it again in full-screen mode to read the headlines and factoid crawls (starting around 1:45). ..bruce w..
Click on the chart above to see it in full size. The smallest scale is the one at the bottom (labeled (1)). Each scale above that one represents 10x the range of the scale below it. When you hear news reports about “detectable radiation that is above normally accepted limits” around the heavily damaged Fukushima […]
[UPDATED 03/13/11 — 1809 MDT] Jerry Pournelle links to the blog of an American engineer in Japan who points out at length just how well everything has worked in Japan during and in the aftermath of the quake, with a gentle reminder of how big Japan is: Quite a lot of the reporting on Japan, […]
My sweet wife Sandra is not a particular fan of SF films (though she’ll certainly watch or go see them with me), nor of war movies. Yet after we saw this movie today, she talked about how engrossed she was during the entire film. (I’ll note that she went with me to see “Skyline” last […]
![The Left: reinventing fascism [updated][again]](http://thegraph.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/500px-Deutsche_Arbeitsfront.svg_.png "The Left: reinventing fascism [updated][again]")
What Hitler is currently being quoted as saying: “We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike” – Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933 Problem is, as far as anyone can tell, Hitler never said that. On the other […]
Robert Vacca wrote his work The Coming Dark Age back in the eco-70s. His basic premise was that our technological and logistical infrastructure was becoming so complex and inter-dependent that a major failure somewhere would trigger a domino effect, causing civilization to grind to a halt. Vacca underestimated the ability of complex systems — particularly […]
Honestly: our defense spending is high. We’re still embroiled in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and while we’re withdrawing from Iraq, it really is unclear (President Obama’s various pronouncements notwithstanding) when and under what circumstances we’ll actually leave. So, yes, if we weren’t spending the money we’re spending on defense, we’d have a lower deficit. Maybe. […]
The Kleiner-Perkins “USA, Inc.” report offers possible solutions to the financial nightmare that the US Federal Government — and all of us taxpayers — are facing. I don’t agree with some of these — I think the empty results of the “Stimulus” pretty much negate the first item in #4 — but it’s telling how […]
