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Came up in conversation today. Had to wiki it:
"Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated."
Interesting thought piece in there on how that would have worked out over time.
Resolved, the Sovereign of these United States shall under these Articles do two things:
1. Mind the borders.
2. Mind his business.
I always thought fat prizes to encourage individual innovation was a good use of Government Loot.
This private venture, a One Billion Dollar Prize, works just as well. My back of the envelope ciphering tells me Bill Gates could do about thirty of these and still make groceries.
Hell, ten million dollars got us a private space industry. Good trend.
H/T Instapundit.
With Dennis dropping out of the Presidential Race (he was edging up the charts in America Samoa) this is my last chance to add the lovely (if kooky) Elizabeth to my picture stream:
City-Journal has a great story on Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the broader UAE. The UAE will be the Arab worlds future handshake with a globalizing word. Something like 6% of the UAEs wealth is looted from the ground (Oil); the rest comes from the productive work of its citizens. The UAE is a federation; not quiet a republic, but close enough (division of power).
The always raging Nedj boys will burn out, or be burned out, over time (and at potentially enormous cost). When the macrodecision is reached, the UAE will be leading the Arab world as it merges into the global world. My two cents.
I'm constantly amazed at the crap they're building in the UAE. Back in the nineties, the cyberpunk genre was obsessed with Tokyo and it's environs. Today, authors make half hearted attempts at Shanghai and Honk Kong; but for my money, base future stories in the UAE. It is the coming thing:
The World.ae (Islands)
At the end of the day, "Special Economic Zones" need to be the rule, not the exception.
...IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION.
Found this (premature?) Declaration of Human Sovereignty:
We, the People of Earth, regard the need for freedom to be universal. Therefore, we hold that all individuals in all worlds are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with sacred and inalienable rights. Fundamental among these are the right to live as a free race on their Planet of Genesis, their Homeworld; the right of self-determination, self-sufficiency, and creative expression; the right to life without oppression; and the right to pursue in life a higher purpose and a higher calling that the Creator has provided to all.
Nice words and all, but remember: people sleep peaceably at night because Federation Dreadnoughts are ready to violence on our behalf!
I think I was traveling through Johannesburg Airport when I picked up my first Iain M. Banks novel, "Excession." At the time, I'd never heard of him. I'm glad I fell into his Culture Universe. Great stuff.
Here's the link to A Few Notes on the Culture
At last, a gang of gene nerds have engineered a genome from scratch. The group, who work at Craig Venter's institute, call the bacterium they built "synthetic life," because they modded (rather than duplicating) the materials that grew into strands of DNA.
I'm telling you, computer science is just a poor man's warmup for the really interesting stuff: lifehacking.
Vending machines that cell iPods, now vending machines that sell the mary-ju-wana.
Whn I used to work as a security quard, I lived out of vending machines: a microwaved jimmy dean sausage biscuit with the right amount of mustard made my moth water.
So I noodle around alot with the idea that we'll end up stuffing whatever "magic" (new tech) we come up with into vending machines.
Geez, the pictures off Virgin Galactic's website come in at about 5 mb and change. Huge.
Couple of thoughts up front:
1. Burt Rutan and Richard Branson must have sat down with a couple of glasses of straight scotch, the movie Casablanca and a subscription to CartoonRetro: Galactic Girl
2. Next, looking at Spaceship2 and White Knight2 makes me think L. Ron Hubbard was onto something with Xenu and the whole DC-8 thing...
Either way, forward the future.
Ghetto chic is my word for structures (government, cultures, etc) that have entered entropy. They all behave the same way. Cheap crap substituting for a paucity of any structural energy. Like all those crap palaces Saddam Wozhisname built in Iraq.
It's the name's that kill me, thought:
And,
Ghetto chic is my word for structures (government, cultures, etc) that have entered entropy. They all behave the same way. Cheap crap substituting for a paucity of any structural energy. Like all those crap palaces Saddam Wozhisname built in Iraq.
It's the name's that kill me, thought:
And,
Man, I'll take two; hold the fries:
Engineers at the University of Washington are developing techniques to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights. The lenses incorporate circuits made from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick and light-emitting diodes one third of a millimeter across. The possible uses for such technology range from drivers and pilots reading meters while watching out the window, to video games and internet usage.
My next obsession. Looking forward to the reimagined release.
The official site led of with a crap flash based trailer. Unfortunately, we bandwidth starved of the world cannot view it. Wired link above has a decent copy.
IO9 thinks it may tank; I think it succeeds, if the movie gets back to some Trek 'Verse basics.
But what the hell, I also thought Steve Job's was giving me a Mac Tablet for MLK Day.
I'm a convert to cartoonretro. Awesome sight that comes in less than two cups of coffee for a months subscription.
I knew women were made up of triangles; and that is as far as my skill in drawing women went. Getting a chance to look at his sketches is going to open a world of meeting/conference/should be working doodling for me.
Came across Bibi's Box looking for retro cartoons and cartoon pinups. Great ways to steal learn to draw.
She reintroduced me to Shane Glines; I think I'll be joining cartoon retro.
(Updated to correct name. When my blog tops a search string in google, then I know I've misspelled something. Apologies to Shawn Gilnes; whoever you may be)
And by love, I mean rub up against. But that was then.
Stainless Steel Droppings: a mature blog dedicated to the word and the pictures that sell Sci-Fi.
Good stuff.
Life extension research at I09.
I'm cool with that; but then I also think of death as imperfect information retrieval, so, either way.
Ok, no tablet.
Macbook Air is pretty, but at 1700.00 dollars, plus 99.00 dollars for a DVD drive...a little pass my price point for pretty. I can move my wife into a Macbook and throw in an iPhone for that kind of money. In fact, I think that's where our computer money goes this year. I can wait.
Ditto on the Apple TV. We'd be streaming video into the house while at the same time streaming cash out. No thanks.
My pledge: unless I drop a manuscript this year, no Macbook Air.
On the other hand, I do see room for this 1 TB timecapsule/airport base station.
Tim Blair. The world needs humor.
I admit I have no idea what this NYT article is about.
But is did lead me to this neat blog on cosmology. I think. My memory is an illusion.
How much, how little?
Article from the LAT on expat wives living in Saudi Arabia:
"I don't miss the U.S., though," she said. "I think most Americans are living in a bubble and they believe in whatever the media feeds them. They're so focused on their jobs and their lives that they don't put the international pieces of the puzzle together. America is too fast.
Structure answers a need, a need which cuts through all horizontal Lines of Operations.
Reading through Matt Bai’s fren-ergetic poliblog at the NYT. Came across a statement on Fred Dalton:
When asked to commit himself to the premise that man-made climate change was endangering the planet, a premise so widely accepted now by the scientific community that even the Bush Administration has begrudgingly accepted it, Mr. Thompson refused to be cornered.
Nice wiki definition of premise: “In other words, it is a statement presumed true within the context of the discourse for the purposes of arguing to a conclusion.”
Climate change is such an attempt to environ towards a conclusion, it is not even funny. And that’s fine; people have differing opinions on how to move forward.
Even if they have make shit up.
From the New York Times:
The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.
The Timing Error Blog found 98,595* cases in which nonveterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after not participating in any recent war.
It’s called ‘fun with numbers’; even when it drives policy.
*Data from 2001-2006.
And we are banning it; interesting piece in the New York Times on the competitive advantages a double amputee would enjoy in Olympic competition.
Ultra slim looks like a sure bet.
My fanboy parts are absolutely tumescent.
n. 1. Middle East Treaty Organization
In remarks to the traveling press, delivered from the Third Army operation command center here, Bush said that negotiations were about to begin on a long-term strategic partnership with the Iraqi government modeled on the accords the United States has with Kuwait and many other countries.
1. I’ve been saying this since about three minutes past forever.
2. The Brigades never come home from Iraq (think Europe)
3. Remaining in Iraq has always been the Liberal (Unit Promoting) option; the United States is a Liberal foedus.
4. Beneath the noise, some sort of alliance has been building.
5. Still doesn’t settle the macrodecision on the brand of global integration; that is largely an argument between Players at the level of the International System.
6. Key Decision Point: will integration be unit promoting or will it be structure promoting?
Predicting the future is easy; you just figure out what makes sense and then wait for people to come around.
I’m still holding out fro a tablet, but the rumors are trending towards this at Macworldexpo. Six days to go.
And yes, I’ll buy a Macbook Nano. There, I said it; are you happy jobs?
Instapundit is blogging up a storm at the CES (the de facto warm up for Macworldexpo). He notes the amount of Gaia and Eco friendly branding going on there.
Corporations: Slaves to their Cultural Masters. Ha ha.
The old labels are dead. Rebrand me some new labels.
(plus, this post is an opportunity for me to nick some eyecandy for my blog)
Got me thinking and researching the Imperial Purple of Rome. All structures get there eventually: unity.
And do not let the door knob hit you where the good Lord split you. Nice piece in the TNR (of Beauchamp Fame) on Congressman Paul and some of his past thinking.
If it pans out, this should be a dealbreaker for most of his coalition; Stormfront, the Rockwells and Dukians excluded.
You know, I am a big believer in subsidiarity; in the national political structure that puts me on the side of states rights, I guess. But every time you get some steam going for states rights, out of the woodpile pops some Confederate retread yelling ‘states raats!!”
Let’s be clear: these guys are often described as Southern Independents, and Reason even goes so far as calling them Rightist Libertarians. But you conduct several levels of analysis and you see that they are independents with relation to the nation state structure, but big believers in democratic tyranny with relation to the state structure. In my mind, that outputs tyrants in effect.
You can not get any meaningful analysis from asking one question. Always follow up with “and then?”
The coronation of Bhutto the Younger, through bloodline, and the micro state of Transnistria are linked to broader trends, in my mind. The structuralization of units.
While we are so battle focused on the Arab Middle East, there is so much more of interest and long term impact going on in the world.
The old labels are dead. Rebrand me some new labels.
Neat way to doodle.
1. Computer science is just the poor man's biology.
2. Really gains when it mimics a natural form.
I go through notebooks (moleskines), 5x8s and scraps of paper by the ton. The Napkin PC is probably a joke, but man what away of head. Imagine Da Vinci hitting 'save' instead of turning a page.
Via Bornrich
Second Life for future Martians.
The International Child Bearing Economy: Outsourced Wombs
Life is fun.
Adam Benton does great artwork (pulled link from i09, below). Adam Benton also does mockups. In his gallery you see the iPhone and this:
Sweet.
io9. Geeky goodness from the Gawker Hegemon. Finally, peeps who see Sci-Fi the way I do; and they also have a blimp fetish.
I am no longer alone.
Once more from oobject.
Early One Laptop per Child model.
1. This could go places, on the market.
2. An ebook that is well, a book. Pen enabled.
3. Flexible LED screen.
4. Mac OS touch enabled (yeah, I know I am obsessing)
Government Inc. or Privatopia. Look forward to seeing how he develops this.
1. Brand Government has departed from its core business.
2. Structures are neither omnipotent nor omniscient.
3. When you depart from core businesses, your traditional products (Security, territorial integrity, public health) suffers.
4. Witness this bed bug business in New York. But hey, public smoking is down.
Good to see Rudy thinking along these lines; specifically how to bolster Merka’s inherent resilience.
1. Structures are not resilient. Units are.
2. The approach should be towards Unit resilience. Thus Unit promotion.
3. Two series I’ve watched recently: Heroes and Jericho. Both deal with cataclysmic or near cataclysmic events.
4. I see this as evidence of the play element of society war gaming scenarios. Hunziger would be proud.
Time to get a taste of the UMPC business.
1. Mobility is key.
2. Laptops good but clunky.
3. Significant solid state storage in the near term (powering those iPods and iPhones). 60gbs would do me fine.
4. Cannibalize the ebook market by effect.
5. Touch enabled
6. Nice bridge between mobility and home based computing.
7. I wants my mac tablet.
