Timing Error

OVER THE ROAD

Heading for the hills. Supposed to have teh inernet, but if not, ok.

YURI'S 'FRIGHT' AND OTHER THINGS

A visit to the Boeing Museum of Flight:

A "Vostok" Capsule, of the type Yuri Gagarin used to first slip those surly bonds. Man had some courage; it looks like a wrecking ball.

Seat of the type Yuri used to ride the lightning (see insert astronaut here instructions).

A little compare and contrast. Take what you will.

The Space Cop world that wasn't but can be.

When form bypassed function:

Kennedy's Air Force One.

Dial 'G' for gotterdammerung. The AF1 Communications Network.

"...you know, eventually. I mean, when we get around to it, and stuff."

Look close: those are sailing ships in the background.

On call for your next 'Broken Arrow'. (Last definition)

NCC-1701. Clipper delights.

This actually flew:

The description said "fast and dangerous". I want.

The last, best hope for mankind (play music here). Spaceship One. I want my as* in the seat of Spaceship Two.

OK

I mean, the Sloppy Graffiti Offensive of 1994 certainly freed Tibet. Right?

THE GREAT RICE SHORTAGE OF 2008

All this talk about rice rationing made me review our household emergency response plan:

Not looking good for the home team.

CONVEYOR BELT SUSHI

Unlike Kate Beckinsale, I actually like sushi; eating it off the conveyor belt is not a bad way to go.

First time I ever did so was this place in Pretoria; you just stacked the bowls up next to you and they charge by the color coded bowl. Yummie. (Via Neatorama)

On day, I'll buy an iPod out of a vending machine and my insta-life will be complete.

MANDINGOS?

This is hilarious:

A black guy held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger—but the gun didn't go off.

"Honestly, that experience helped me a lot," he says. "I used to be very conservative. I didn't spend much money. Now I enjoy life. I'm much more open. Especially sexually."

It's a measure of how far he's come that Jeff (not his real name), now 40, is telling me this while we're watching a black guy have sex with his wife, Amber (not her real name), 37, at an interracial orgy. In Jeff's house. On his bed.

Read it and weep.

The liberal in me says go for it; not that the swinger lifestyle is 'right', but hey, people need to choose their own path and accept responsibility for those choices.

My day job involves managing large groups of peeps in a stressful environment. I'm constantly amazed at the choices folks make.

Via Protein Wisdom.

I HAVE BECOME HUMMER...

...destroyer of worlds.

I'm not really into cars; the wife is. She wanted it; we bought it.

Thing I hate: feeding gas to the beast. I can load my compact twice with the gas it takes to fill it once.
Thing I love: the looks of pure hate I just got from that dude on the bicycle. Dude. Have. A. Nice. Day.

My wife's happy, so I am happy. I just need to get her an "I Shop at WALMART" sticker.

INFLATING MY EGO SO YOU DON'T HAVE TOO

"New Kids of the Block", the late eighties boy band, are getting back together. Reminds me off all the famous people I've met or known. Time to recalculate my "celebrity Erdos number."

I was actually in a singing group with Joey from NKOTB. The rest I've only met and been photographed with:

If you are famous, and I've met you, then shoot me an email and I'll put you on the list. Maybe we can do a video for youtube, or something.

4CHAN CAN MAKE A ROCK FAMOUS

I missed the whole Chocolate Rain meme and you know what? I'm glad I did. Hurts my head.

Wiki of youtube celebrities.

South Park's send up of the whole phenomena.

UPDATE: Follow this link to Tron Guy. The related videos has the goods, including Afro Ninja.

And, nice piece from io9 on the future of celebrity.

THE FUTURE OF KILLBOTS

Noah turns in a damn good inside baseball piece on the competition for the next generation of killbots. Kind of reminds me of that movie, Tucker:

Ward had been a Negotiator fan since June 2006, smitten by its easy-to-use controller, its sharp-eyed camera, and, of course, its minuscule price tag. "It changed the whole perspective on what robots could cost. This was dramatically different, an order of magnitude different, from what we had seen," one military official says. "It had the potential of changing the whole landscape of robotics."

GUEST BLOGGING FIRST?

Michael Totten's announces some guest bloggers:

You probably know Tony from his indispensible blog Across the Bay, and you most likely know Lee from Slate and the Weekly Standard

I may be wrong, but I think that's the first time I've seen someone who writes for a major magazine guest blog on a personal blog.

URBAN SECURITY SUIT

I think the gas mask is a little over the top--no one does gas these days, with IEDs, Mortars and Rockets being all the rage-- but otherwise the urban security suit is perfect for rolling your urban assault vehicle through a dystopian future near you.

Via gizmodo

THE GATES OF HELL

Awesome photos. This pits been burning for 35 years. Link.

NEW NORMAL

Plastic surgery:

Among some circles — troupes of women in L.A., Dallas, Miami and Manhattan’s Upper East Side — the cookie-cutter look of fillers and Botox has supplanted the natural marks of aging. These women don’t get saggy, baggy and lined with age; they get ever smoother and expressionless.

Man you can see a ton of this stuff just by typing bad plastic surgery into google, including the woman who looks like some sort of cat. Glenn's right; there's an element of tribalism that goes into making extreme plastic surgery normal. From my perspective, what happens when genetic manipulation comes online.

That's going to be interesting.

PLANET EARTH: TIMESHARES AVAILABLE

I initially figured this was photoshopped: a spearfishing orangutang.

ESCAPISM

Sometime this week, the wife and i will escape to a little cabin in the woods.

BOOKMARKING BAWER

I enjoyed this piece, An Anatomy of Surrender:

Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.

Too true.

We are reaching towards macrodecision on a new structure. On the one side is, in my shorthand, governmentium. On the other, liberty.

At the end of the day, you either choose to promote the Structure or you choose to support the Unit. That is objective. Use of religion, race, nation-states, etc are mere adjectives.

It will be interesting to see what choices we make, at all levels of analysis.

THE REAL LITTORAL COMBAT SHIP

It should have been the stilleto:

Instead (your defense dollars at work), we get the overbudget and overbuilt LCS:

I guess from the deck of a carrier, the LCS looks small. To me, it looks like a cruise ship.

ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU...

Geez. Latest from Ahmadinejad:

"If we want to build the country, maintain our dignity and solve economic problems, we need the culture of martyrdom," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in a speech on Wednesday in the western city of Hamedan.
He described martyrdom, dying or being killed for one's religious beliefs, as "a quick and shortcut way to reach the summit of salvation."

Nice round up from Strategy Page on Iran's woes:

Now the religious police will visit work places and restaurants to insure that women found there are properly covered up. Those who fail inspection are issued a warning or hauled off to a police station, where they must wait for a family member shows up with proper clothing (that is not too tight, too short, to skimpy or too revealing in general). The clerics who run the country and mismanage the economy are also trying to distract the public from the shortages and 20 percent a year inflation.

Silly little rule sets. The sooner the mullahs exit stage left, the better, IMHO.

ABOVE ALL...

...We can only dream of FEDEX's efficiency.
...We can can't understand why anyone would question our need for 220 million dollar aerospace/time continuum fighter/bomber/IED detecting F-22s.
...We barely understand this principles of war thing.
...We dominate the Appropriations Sub Committee process.
...We are always screwing the pooch in uniform selections.
...Our arrogance knows no bounds.

WE ARE THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE: Air/Space/Cyberspace/Budget Appropriations

Bunch of Air Fore ads on you tube.

THEY ALMOST WON

Neanderthals, I mean:

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."

Wow.

OVERLOADING ON VACATION

Missed the mark for flash fiction friday. I blame Heineken, barbecue, The Office TV Show and weakness of character.

Sorry.

TRAMP STAMP ACTIVE WEAR

Google image searching the two posts below and I came across this:

Cool. Next up: tribal space suits for your weekender virgin galactic space romp.

(Something is boiling here. I've got a character named Johnny Rocket who needs some backstory)

SPACE COPS

Man, this article about a UN Spacy just screams for a modern day interpretation:

Space Cops to Enforce World Peace

Man-made satellite rocketships may soon revolve in endless orbits around the earth, policing our civilization.

Via Boing Boing

UPDATE: Add the Rocket Racing League into the mix, and you're in business:

"The Rocket Racing League on Monday detailed plans to move from a sci-fi fantasy to a full-fledged commercial enterprise — including 'vertical drag races' using rockets."

SIGNS O' THE APOCALYPSE

1. "Cats and dogs, governing together, in sin." (Book of Ghostbusters, Chapter 23, Verse 7)

2. "And they shall trade their tramp stamps for designer barcodes; lo, in the time of the bio diesel famine." (Book of Made That Up, Chapter 2, Verse 2)

THE FUTURE FIGHT

Jet powered, miniature, A-10 Warthog:

The future of the United States Air force, once their Four Bangers put down the ($$$$) F-22 crack pipe.

Plus, vat grown organs:

The goal of AFIRM? To "use a patient's natural cellular structure to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers.

POSEMANIAC

Unbelievable. Posemaniacis an awesome reference site that not only has human anatomical poses, it lets you rotate them around and adds grids for proportions. Sweet.

Via Drawn.

YOU COULD ALSO JUST BAN DIVORCE

The Corner has an quick blurb about banning pornography (Maxim, Stuff and Hooters is what passes for hardcore these days) in military exchanges:

The military continually tells us that they care about military families and that fostering stable family lives helps personnel to better cope with the stress of long deployments. Peddling pornography does not square with the pro-family message.

We people have to reactions to stimuli:

1. Environ (change conditions to suit our needs)
2. Mature (grow the hell up)

Maternalist-Paternalist always reach for the environ stick to beat people about the head.

They hide my chaps.

365TOMORROWS

365Tomorrows, a flash fiction site. (I need to build my bookmarks bar).

H/T Boing Boing.

CALLING MR. SPITZER*

Valleywag throws out a nice samizdat on how to procure a sex worker and not get busted. Between the throw away cell phones and green dot credit cards, the futures going to be interesting. I saw my first throwaway cell phone while not shopping at Walmart yesterday. Long way from the skypager and seven pound cell phones.

Tools are agnostic. What you do with them, that's where you'll find the fun stuff.

*gratuitous cheesecake

[STEAL THIS PITCH] YES, MISTRESS...

Charlie over at io9 weighs in with some good advice on writing near future fiction and a writing assignment:

So here's your exercise: Betty goes on a date, with some guy she met online. And it's a really, really bad date. The guy is a pompous dung-wad, and he keeps asking her annoying questions about what she does for a living. Describe Betty's bad date in detail, including how she traveled to the restaurant, what kind of food and drink they have, and what the guy is lecturing her about. Think about details, like how farming might be different in twenty years, or how ettiquette might change if everybody's got internet-enabled crap implanted in their heads.

I think I'll noodle around with this and see if i can come up with a flash fiction friday story.

UNTOONING

I want more...

Pixeloo's untooning is incredible. It reminds me of the "toon skeletons" that were floating around awhile back.

Update: Some more untooning from Dylan Marvin.

FUTURE PAST

Via Neatorama, a nifty contest by Mark Rayner to photoshop retro-future posters.

THE ROCK RISES

So General Petraeus gets kicked upstairs to CENTCOM and General "Odi" Odierno has his dwell time slashed to return as MNF-I Commander. I imagine that's pretty good; both of them have the one essential characteristic of any successful military leader:

They win.

THINGS YOU FORGET

1. Teh internets is fast. My home network zooms.

2. I am Steve Jobs bitc*. Bought myself a macbook air as compensation for my year of living dangerously.

NEATORAMA: FIVE TOONS TO WATCH

Via Neatorama.

I'll second Sealab 2021; I was pissed when Adult Swim cancelled Sealab and offered up The Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright Comedy Hour Boondocks.

And if you like Sealab, you'll enjoy Red V. Blue, a Halo Machinima. First time I watched it, I thought it was stupid. Now I'm a fan.

CAUSE WHEN YOU FEAR THE FUTURE...

...the best thing to do is hunker down and hide.

The goal of Paulville.org it to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty.

Because, you know, that always works. Right?

Via LGF

FFF ROUND UP

The friendly folks at futurismic have their weekly flash fictioneer round up.

Looks like the weather will clear and I get to fly; I'm going to .pdf some stories to enjoy.

2063: THE DOWNLOAD

Matt at paleo futures is making available 2063 as a free download .pdf. Sweet:

For those just joining us, 2063 A.D. was a book published in 1963 by General Dynamics Astronautics. The book asked politicians, military commanders and scientists to speculate as to where humanity would be, a hundred years hence, in the great push towards space.

PUTTING THE CUTE BACK IN KILL

At Collateral Damage; your source to cutesy self defense tools. Via Dark Roasted Blend, source of all goodness on teh internets.

PLASTICITY

Io9 points out an upcoming flick called Splice. Follow the link out of their Morning Spoilers for some additional cool pics.

JIHAD-BOOTED COPYRIGHT THUGS

They keep this up, and they'll rip their little pretend Emirate apart:

"The Islamic Emirate itself is appreciative of the services and efforts of these respectable people, but it informs them that attributing any jihadist publication or tape to the Islamic Emirate, because of the need for correlation, requires the consent of the Cultural Committee of the Islamic Emirate; otherwise, those people will not benefit from the name or title of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."

Via Danger Room.

Right now, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, LLC is a rule set looking to rule. Here's to keeping them on the wires.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

Good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm weathered in and I'm not flying. The good news is I've got a Flash Fiction story up, on time and on target. More of my flash fiction here.

I hope you enjoy.

In Service To Empire: Candie

Sometimes we called her Candie.

But we never called her that to her face. To her face it was always "yes, Sgt-Commander" or "no Sgt-Commander".

Her standard line name and number, if you need to know the thing, was Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero and she was my Squad Commander.

Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero was the best Squad Commander I ever knew; they should have never given her that Medal.

TRAVEL MODE

I'm entering the much stressed U.S. art transportation system for some much needed rest. So, my weekly flash fiction will either be:

a. Early
b. Delayed*

*I'm generally very lazy, so, choose carefully.

A THOUSAND MONKEYS

NYT story on a dude with over two hundred thousand 'boos' to his credit. He's working on algorithms to write actual stories.

The monkey's will be mad.

"FOR EXAMPLE IS NOT PROOF"

Good LAT article on the use of narrative to achieve desired ends. The above Yiddish quote is worth the read alone.

Actually figures into on of my flash fiction stories I'm cooking.

RUSSKIE UTOPIA PLANITIA

A Russian (likely vaporware) idea to build an orbital construction plant.

The Federation Shipyards have to start somewhere!

(check out the link; the webmaster actually allows you to build your own homebrew Starfleet wessel)

RAT-THING: PICTURE OF THE DAY

Very friendly. About one second after I snapped the picture, he grabbed the rib bone and was gone.

KRESCOE'S TRULY AMAZING HUMAN INTELLIGENCE MEASURING STICK

A quick picture: for no other reason than the fact that I come across this alot (and I am probably more guilty of this than not).

(And no, I have not bought a scanner as of yet)

FOLDING THE FUTURE BACKWARDS

I keep coming across these steampunk Star Wars creations. Via Neatorama, I get a couple of different sources:

Here's boring aside: steampunk, like Edwardian Balls and human circi are part and parcel a human response to uncertainty. We fold back on the past for the familiar, in the face of uncertainty. Sometimes that takes the form of Army's a marching; other times, the form of play.

Personally, I prefer the play.