Timing Error

Amazon Sci-Fi forum

I need to dig into this later.

Cultures change

Probably the best part about America. Constant reinvention.

Article in the IT about the migration of same-sex couples from urban centers to exurban and suburban life.

Not surprising. You age, you want a certain quality of life.

NYTIMES: U.S. Military Will Oversee Contractors

Another example of the DoD hiving out competencies from the DoS. This has nothing to do with conspiracies or such, but is just another example of a DoS adjusted for the Dar al Kant and unprepared for the Dar al Hobbes. Think AFRICOM. Key graph:

All State Department security convoys in Iraq will now fall under military control, the latest step taken by government officials to bring Blackwater Worldwide and other armed contractors under tighter supervision.

Related, Austin Bay on Muddy Boots Diplomacy.

Plundering the Moon

Article from the Guardian about the new space race being about stealing the precious fluids He3 from the moon for fusion, or some such.

I remember reading somewhere that He3 was bunk, but hey, if it's a reason to plunder the moon, then I'm all for going there.

It's about movement.

IP Link

Buried

Now I know why I delayed getting my Masters (sheer laziness), for so long. Had to do with (sheer laziness) getting experience in the school of life (sheer laziness).

But now I'm plunging head first into my degree.

Think I've figured out the fatal flaw of 'democratic-peace theory'. Has to do with pineapples.

I should have my Theory of Everything ready for a 3 x 5 card sometime tomorrow.

It's due Sunday.

(sheer %*& laziness)

Private Firefighters

When the state abandons or mismanages a core competency, the private individuals enter to maximize profit. Human nature, not a conspiracy, Ms. Rhodes.

AIG Firefighters on Neatorama.

Go ugly early

Remember, the Morlocks ate the Eloi:

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.

Boing Boing

Irredentism

Good discussion going on at my school regarding Huntington's 'Clash of Civilization'. Plenty of talk about 'Islam's Bloody Borders' and the immutable nature of civilizational conflict.

Pulled this map off wiki of China, and it's claimed areas:

Lot's of potential for bloody borders, but only one real potential flashpoint (Taiwan).

Peace comes from privileging civilization over culture.

Chocolate in peanut butter

The blending of MILTECH and CIVTECH.

Army Sends World's First Hybrid-Electric Howitzer to War

Unmanned NASA Aircraft Enlisted in Fight Against Southern California Wildfires

Maybe I'll be able to pick up and armored, combat, sport ute after all.

Fake Food

Coming along nicely.

My line: "There's one source of currently accessible energy in the solar system. The sun. Everything else is just packaging."

Don't mess with a man with a gun...

...or a blog.

The entire sordid Bobby Calvan post, here. Bring tissues, you'll cry laughing.

Mr. Calvan ran (deleted his whole blog). PVT Beauchamp, mentioned often in the Calvan comments, stayed. Yon on PVT Beauchamp.

Measuring a man isn't hard. Just takes patience.

Fast movers...

Man, I hope the euros build this:

Blimps, suborbitals and fast movers. Wave of the future.

Best in (Unmanned) show

You've truly arrived when you get your own airshow.

UAV p0rn, again from Danger Room.

Writers nibblet

Sometimes I come up with lines that make me laugh, but I'm not, like, there in whatever it is I'm writing. Often I'll forget it and continue churning out turgid prose. I want to remember this one:

"A Grunt stands ready to kill anyone who stands in the way of the Empire."

"What about Human Support Missions," asked Mordechai.

"Hmmmph. A Grunt stands ready to feed anyone who stands in the way of Empire. With the option to kill them later."

On writing

I just submitted my first essay for my Masters. The assignment called for about 500-750 words. I came up for air around 2,500 words. Edit, edit, edit.

From the 83 things in my rucksack: 37. Put the Bottom Line Up Front. Use bullets instead of paragraphs. Just because you have all day to write an email, doesn’t mean your boss has all day to read it.

I'm still learning that.

A kinder, gentler war

I am ganking this logo redesigns from one of Danger Room's commenters:

Reminds me of this BB post on cutesy personal force protection measures:

One day you wake to the sounds of birds chirping outside your window, the next day waking up to rockets detonating around you. Next day birds. The mind adapts.

Or so I've heard.

An evolving construct

More stormworm botnet from BB:

“As you try to investigate [Storm], it knows, and it punishes,” he says. “It fights back.”

Man, I look forward to the day when then scrappy Stormworm AI challenges the developed, cultured Googe(Google) AI over the future of humanity.

Or something.

Link to original.

Amazon to our Google

Via BB, a good story from Access Asia on China INC and the manufacture of luxury items:

Access

Asia

was recently in a Chinese factory where the same workers on the same production line were making US$2,000 bags for an Italian brand, and US$35 bags for JC Penney, at the same time.

This reinforces conversations I have all the time. Pay all you want, it's all coming from the same box.

WACOM, I believe we have a deal

Cintiq 12WX

Miniature Rebel Air Force

The Tamil Tigers, leaders in revolutionary war, take to the air:

The Tamil Tigers, who are believed to fly Czech-made light aircraft, are often described as the world's first insurgency to have an Air Force. They also have a naval wing.

Probably why Blackwater is getting into the business of private air forces.

Tucks in nicely with this article on NATO contracting out state core compenticies: the monopoly of violence.

I (almost) won!!!!!!!

I entered a short story into Medgadget's Sci-Fi writing contest. They say just being considered is an honor (I wanted that iPhone). I'm glad to get first runner-up (I really really wanted that phone). A great story, called 'Immigrants', by A'Llyn Ettien (who now has my phone) won. Congratulations :)

Here's a link to (I WANTED THAT PHONE) the winning entry "Immigrants' ,my short, called 'Dr. Luscious Franks And The Amazing Recyclotron', and the second runner up, 'Eternal Irony' by Lane Billaes.

Jokes aside, thanks to Medgadget and to the judges.

(phone?)

Competing with E. Coli

Gizmodo on a small robot developed to clear out the junk in our arteries.

Managing Decline

Good article by Kaplan on the "navy in being," the whole idea about SLOC control supplanting ground based operations. Basically pulling up the draw bridge. You know, as long as we fight wars, the decisive engagements will occur on land. It's where people live. The Navy and Air Force represent wars we want to fight. The Marines and the Army are the wars we get stuck with. Life sucks.

Key quote:

To grasp what our military is up against, think of our defense bureaucracy as a great metropolitan newspaper, proud of its editorial oversight, accuracy, and formal English usage, yet besieged and occasionally humiliated by bloggers, whose usage is sloppy and whose fact-checking is weak, sometimes nonexistent. The paper soldiers on, winning awards and affecting the national debate, even as each half decade its opinion carries less weight.

My recommendation for a future navy (and air force, for that matter):

From the 83 things in my Rucksack: "10. Start small and say there."

Spookytechnology

I like. In some stories, I'll make reference to "Bad physics." I like spookytech better.

Link to Danger Room story.

.PDF File and origin site.

Spooky Computing

The Quantum Pontiff

Cleaning out my Boing Boing

I'm a packrat when it comes to tagging articles in my RSS reader. Every once in awhile, I need to clean it out so sites don't load like molasses. Instead of junking them, I figure I'll stick them here:

Google Wordprocessor

Sexy Bark

Hybrid Mini

Katrina PSA

Turkmen Dictator's Book Shaped Building

Personally firewall RFIDs

Ubuntu for non-geeks

Athanasius Kircher Society

Slamdance fesitval

3D Printing comes to Sears

Pirate Bay trying to buy Sealand

Vat grown meat

Gamejew

Weird world of the rich

Augmented Cognition

Interplanetary Supply Chain

NOKO's nutty pixelboard

Moleskine Hard drive

Did the UPA ruin 'toons

Doctorow's future of surveillance

Cozy woodland home

Venter Meats

Vertical Farming

Jesus Phone

Smallest City: Pop. 4

iPhone p0rn

WoW Gold Farming

Spacesuit designs

Woodring

Future foot gear

Charlie Brown <s/strike> hentai</strike> manga

Green man

William Shunn Short fic

Spherical tree house

Howtoons

Roundup: wooden bots

Google Guy

Girl Hunt

Roundup: Labor Day

SWA short skirts

Naomi Klein

Floating Banana

NK2

Pain Ray

Offshore personal assistants

BB.TV

A-Bomb Bikini

Vending Machine Disguises

OK. That takes it back to August 2006. One of these days I'll have to do a link analysis.

Dangerously seductive

Elizabeth Kuchinich ne Harper.

Quite the femme fatale, a great character for a story.

Needs a better name though:

Muffie Potter Aston

Topsy Taylor

Bunny Mellon

Did a story where one of the character's was named Luscious Delirious Franks, M.D. Seems right in line.

The Future of the American Idea

Because I like p0rn, I finally got around to subscribing to the Atlantic. Boy was I in for a surprise.

They've got a seies going on the Meaning of the American Idea. In the preamble, the Atlantic describes its creation as:

The Atlantic was created in Boston by writers who saw themselves as the country’s intellectual leaders, and so its scope from the start was national, if rather theoretical.

The essays and pictures themselves are singularly depressing. Short version: American exceptionalism? Faggetaboutit. Their cognitive evolution has hit a dead end.

If this is what our epistemic communities think, minds well put gun to mouth and make the pain go away. Geez.

Example:

Irony is, I'd take that trade. See that wee little flag up there? On the moon? That's where I'll be. Let the nutters take the rest.

Oh, and no p0rn. What a jip!

Speaking of the Bear

An actor seeking influence by other means. Russia and the Hackers:

The hackers go by names like ZOMBiE and the Hell Knights Crew, and they inhabit such a robust netherworld that Internet-security firms in places like Silicon Valley have had to acquire an expertise in Russian hacking culture half a world away. The security firms have not received much assistance from the Russian government, which seems to show little interest in a crackdown, as if officials privately take some pleasure in knowing that their compatriots are tormenting millions of people in the West.

Closely related, this analysis of the Storm Worm by John Robb:

What makes it special is that the Storm Worm's method of operation is sophisticated, so much so, that it is nearly immune to defense, suppression, or eradication -- demonstrated in that it has already infected up to 50 million computers and slaved them into a massive botnet.

Those crazy Russians.

36 Hours in Riga

Nice article in the NYT on Latvia. I have a special affection for eastern europeans. They have a rough time sitting next to the bear, and it's my hope we never shop them, pace Morgenthau, Walt et al.

(Full disclosure, my wife's a Lat and we were married there.)

Reality TV in London

Good luck with that:

Here’s an article at the LA Times by Kim Murphy about how Close Circuit Television cameras (CCTV) are not only pervasive in central London, they can even command you what to do!

"Pete" is short for Fortney?

Fortney Hillman "Pete" Stark, Jr.

The names of the elite and wealthy have always amused me.

World Turned Upside Down

On 19 October, 1781,  Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown.

Missed this by a couple of days, but here's to remembering.

Disposable cars

Sort of. At autoblog.

"Art as form has its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant"

Art

Generally art is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind; by transmitting emotions and/or ideas. Beyond this description, there is no general agreed-upon definition of art, since defining the boundaries of "art" is subjective.

Just booking a general definition of art. Plus a good excuse to post another VdV picture.

Crab People....

Millions of giant Pacific crabs, whose ancestors were brought to Europe by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, are marching south along Norway's coast, devouring everything in their path.

Link

Be afraid:

Sky Warriors

The evolution of skynet.

Water on Mars

Nice. Evidence keeps piling up.

WikiHow

A "how to" wiki.

Inkjet printers

Nanoprinting on demand:

“We have opened direct ink writing to a new realm of functional materials,” said graduate student Eric Duoss, the paper’s lead author. “Since we print the desired functionality directly, the need for complicated templating and replicating schemes is eliminated.”

Must See TV

Getting into the first season of Heroes. Damn good show.

7 Tips for becoming a better writer:

Yeah, I could use this advice:

When you revisit your text it´s time to kill you darlings and remove all the superfluous words and sentences. Removing will declutter your text and often get your message through with more clarity and a bigger emotional punch.

Hither come the foederati

From the IHT, good line, simply put: "The bear was sleeping. Now the bear is awake and stomping his feet."

I am doing some world building along those lines, and a better line I've yet to write.

Picture Time: The Circus

Flickr this: Vau de Vire.

Photos from Eric Gillete and Ms. Trouble.

Urbanism

On the list of classes I'm taking. Fifty percent of the world in cities by 2010, two thirds by 2050.

Good luck with that.

Infinity + One

Think of the pOrn:

In the first report, IBM scientists describe major progress in probing a property called magnetic anisotropy in individual atoms. This fundamental measurement has important technological consequences because it determines an atom’s ability to store information. Previously, nobody had been able to measure the magnetic anisotropy of a single atom.
With further work it may be possible to build structures consisting of small clusters of atoms, or even individual atoms, that could reliably store magnetic information.
Such a storage capability would enable nearly 30,000 feature length movies or the entire contents of YouTube – millions of videos estimated to be more than 1,000 trillion bits of data – to fit in a device the size of an iPod. Perhaps more importantly, the breakthrough could lead to new kinds of structures and devices that are so small they could be applied to entire new fields and disciplines beyond traditional computing.

In other news, google is bouncing the gmail collective up to six gbs of storage. So I guess where headed in the right direction.

William Gibson gave up on the future

Story here. The future will be neither dystopian nor utopian. Rather, a blending of both.

A little bit of this:

A little bit of that:

Of course, you'll probably needed a little LUV to move between those two worlds:

The future willl all come down to how you move.

Man made islands

Venice, which sort of grew in place:

and Qatar's the Pearl:

Both enclaves that are easily defensible in a primtivized and reprimtivized world.

...the heritage of dead and empty language...

I confess, I've never heard of Doris Lessing until her Nobel Prize win hit the web.

I commend the NYT Op-Ed piece "Questions you should never ask a writer."

And this quote from her wiki page:"What they didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time."

Because a back rub beats a two by four any day of the week.

Amoebic Cooperatives

Good article from Damn Interesting on a cooperative survival mechanism used by amoebas:

In response to the cAMP distress call, up to one hundred thousand of the amoebas assemble. They first form a tower, which eventually topples over into an oblong blob about two millimeters long. The identical amoebas within this pseudoplasmodium– or slug– begin to differentiate and take on specialized roles.

Reminds me of the ‘Brothers’ from Greg Bears excellent ‘Anvil of the Stars.’

(The Brothers are made up of individual Chords that are not, singly, sentient. It’s only when they combine that you get an individual.)

83 Things in my Rucksack

I finally got around to listing out some of things I believe. I'll usually argue or write from one of these things. This list is by no means exhaustive. Just exhausting.

83 THINGS IN MY RUCKSACK

1. Don’t panic. Cause others to panic.
2. Remember, if perception equals reality, then whose reality trumps. Usually, it’s the one belonging to the lowest common denominator.
3. Don’t let perceptions shape you. Shape perceptions.
4. Know your goal.
5. Improve your foxhole.
6. Civilization and culture relate like spaghetti and meat sauce. The sauce changes, but the basics are the same.
7. Don’t accept wrong in order to make friends. You don’t want those friends anyways.
8. You can whine, you can cry and you can lose. Usually in that order.
9. Self justification is one of the most basic of human responses. Like potty training, the ability to not self justify is a learned response.
10. Start small and say there.
11. You cannot create a society where everyone succeeds. You can create a society where everyone fails.
12. Casual cynicism is the hallmark of intellectual laziness
13. There is no left/right divide. Only down/up. tribal or individual. The muck or the stars.
14. Islamism. Fascism. Communism. Socialism. Once a society decides to commit suicide, it doe not matter which type gun they use.
15. Free societies require constant Repair and Upkeep.
16. Any perfection you have needs to come from an awareness of your flaws.
17. Why do people who fear government the most on the hand, agitate for more on the other.
18. When people say it’s not about them, then yes, it is about them.
19. Self interest and selfishness are polar opposites.
20. Polling is a good indicator of what people think, not what is right.
21. America is hated most by those who stand to lose from her success.
22. They greatest gift from the Creator is our lips. The allow us to keep our mouth’s shut.
23. Everyone loves a loser. Just kidding.
24. Stop trying to improve the world. Start trying to improve yourself.
25. Hate is like putting rocks in your own ruck sack. Doesn’t matter what river they come from, you end up carrying them.
26. Refuse to deal with problems. Create more.
27. A thousand different solutions are more likely to succeed than one.
28. Sometimes both the baby and the bath water need to get thrown out.
29. Don’t be shamed into doing wrong.
30. Mobs can be fun. Until they pull out the rope.
31. Be that leader you want to follow.
32. Anarchy is great. Until the toilet breaks.
33. The American Century has been ending as long as I’ve been alive. It will still be ending after I’m dead.
34. Better to rely on self defense than societal acceptance. One can be taken away; the other, not.
35. I don’t care who you are, what you do or who you do. Just be able to defend yourself.
36. If you’re going to “drop dimes,” then make sure your name and incomplete actions aren’t on the dimes you drop. You just end up looking foolish.
37. Put the Bottom Line Up Front. Use bullets instead of paragraphs. Just because you have all day to write an email, doesn’t mean your boss has all day to read it.
38. Communicate what it is you want done. Then embellish.
39. Keep trying. You’ll have plenty of time to quit when you’re dead.
40. Start small and stay there. That’s how you master the big things.
41. Find the laziest man or woman you can. Then elect them to office.
42. Politics is like a glass of wine. Age turns it into vinegar.
43. Everything I love about America, its ideas, can fit onto a thumb drive.
44. Keep your powder dry.
45. There is tribalism and there is individualism. The left/right divide is an artifice.
46. So? And? Why?
47. Words are often employed to bury reason.
48. Cut from the herd, all men are rational, responsible and reasonable. Just don’t tell anyone.
49. Water is wet. The ground is hard.
50. Some tribes merely wear good suits.
51. If you want to be a dictator, start a company.
52. The less an idea is means tested, the more worthless it is.
53. Keep a D-Ring, some 550 cord, hundred mile per hour tape, Velcro and multiplier tool handy. I mean, you never know.
54. Are you running with the crowd, or merely being carried along?
55. Most people believed the earth was flat. Was it?
56. Man craves power. It beats dirt farming.
57. Is it really trangressive if everyone else is doing it?
58. Know how to do at least one thing. Build from there.
59. Art is not sponsored.
60. Seems where adolescence ends, vulnerable old age begins.
61. If you choose victim hood, then accept the consequences.
62. Life is not fair. It is challenging.
63. Would you use substandard parts to build a racecar? Build better individuals, get a better world.
64. It’s a rock. With trees.
65. Doesn’t matter how old a man is. He may still need to grow up.
66. I don’t care where you came from. I care very much where you’re going.
67. Birth uber alles? Okay. Run with that, monkey boy.
68. Keep trying. You’ll have plenty of time to quit when you’re dead.
69. Don’t tell me what you feel. Tell me what you think.
70. Earn interest on your Talents.
71. Stay in motion.
72. People move from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. Osmosis.
73. The future will be fractal. See you on the other side.
74. Plastic, young man. Plastic.
75. People worship the past because they lack vision for the future.
76. Babes are hot.
77. I seriously doubt it.
78. World ends tomorrow? Make plans for the day after.
79. The answer is simple. It’s the questions that are overly complex.
80. Pure democracy requires slave labor. Or robots.
81. Delay gratification. Increase satisfaction.
82. Make love, then war. That way everyone’s happy.
83. Khan, I’m still laughing at your superior intellect.

Well, those are my eighty three things. What are yours?