Month: May 2008

In a great Pajamas Media piece, Andrew Ian Dodge takes a look at the mentality of the people who are going after video games: Politicians are always looking for an edge to be seen to be doing something; especially if it involves children. Never is it more likely that during an election year or the…

That’s what the McCain campaign is saying about Barack Obama, and it seems to be paying off. Defining one’s opponent is a key task of any campaign, and simply put, McCain has had a long head start. As early as Feb. 12–the day McCain and Obama each won primaries in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.…

I was looking at a site touting solar energy and remembered an outfit from my hippie days. Zome Works. They have a solar tracker that uses no moving parts. Just liquid in pipes. The liquid is moved by solar energy and because the solar cell holders are balanced it follows the sun. They claim that…

I don’t know why Barack Obama is getting so much grief for saying that there are 57 states. It’s quite obvious to me what was going on, and if you think about it, what he’s doing is a rather ingenious form of subliminal guerilla marketing. I mean, first there was the Abercrombie and Fitch product…

I don’t know how practical this is, but it sure looks like fun! There are also some interesting plasma/fusion experiments discussed here, but I’m not recommending that readers conduct such experiments. The above video is presented for entertainment value only! (Title inspired by M. Simon’s earlier post.) Remember kids…. DON’T DO THIS AT HOME! (You…

In a piece called “Poison Ivy,” Burt Prelutsky notes a correlation between bad American politicians and Ivy League Schools: …much of what I don’t like about American politics — namely, American politicians — can be traced back to Ivy League schools. It can’t just be a coincidence that four or five universities keep spitting out…

Assume you have 6 coins and flip them randomly (and landing on an edge doesn’t count). How may possible states are there if each coin is identifiable? That would be 64 States. I don’t think that a similar question is what the gentleman in the video has in mind. Notice that he really has to…

It is getting to the point that to make advances in the field of IEC Fusion collaborative efforts will be required due to the range of knowledge required and the cost. The individual with the home built fusor is not a thing of the past by any means, but it is not the wave of…

MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) is a classic example of an organization which has departed so far from its original purpose that it ought to be renamed. Whether this is because of success in the war against drunk driving, or whether MADD has simply succumbed to ideologically driven activists with a neo-prohibitionist agenda I do…

There is a whole lot to cover on this subject so I’m going to give mostly links and let you make up your own mind. Be sure to read the comments at the links provided as they tend to add information or present countervailing views. Fleet Positions for War. We believe the only successful exit…

Physics World reports that 20 Nobel laureates are asking Bush to work with Congress to restore funding for science that that was cut in the 2008 budget. Two fields financed by the Department of Energy have been particularly badly hit, with funding for high-energy physics falling to $688m — some 12% less than Bush had…

I’ll be out until late tonight, so I thought I’d write an uncharacteristically short post consisting mainly of links, with few comments. (It kills me, because I always want to say more. But OTOH, blogging is supposed to be done like this, isn’t it?) Glenn Reynolds links John McWhorter’s discussion of Hillary Clinton which reaches…

George Stephanopoulos says Hillary is negotiating the Vice Presidential spot: ABC’s chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos told Charles Gibson on “World News” that Clinton is staying in the race to negotiate a spot on the Democratic ticket in November. If he is right, this changes the conventional wisdom a bit. What I’m wondering is why…

Yesterday, I was rendered unconscious by intravenous administration of a drug called Propofol. The oddest thing about it is that I can remember every detail except the moment it was administered. No memory of what it felt like, no “drifting off,” nothing like that. The IV line had been set up and was flowing, and…

The above image is from a Pew Research Center Report on where the voters are vs where the candidates are. What surprised me most was that the center of gravity in America was Center Right (RINO territory) according to Pew. Althouse of Althouse and Jeralyn Meritt of TalkLeft had a dust up and Jeralyn thinks…

Click on the image for an explanation and more hot images. For a more in depth explanation see World’s Simplest Fusion Reactor Revisited. The image was created by Torulf Greek a biologist from Sweden.

But Glenn Reynolds did pick an extremely bad day to tantalize me with food. Normally I wouldn’t have whined about hunger, but it just so happens that I’ve been starving for over 30 hours, and I won’t be allowed to eat until tonight. Not that it’s all that big of a deal; it’s that I…

I like to joke about Bill Clinton when he gets into his “Angry Satyr” mode, and the picture of him in the Globe article I discussed yesterday is one of the best illustrations I’ve seen of that. It is funny, and it isn’t. There’s something a bit sad about seeing him this way, and I…

Some major doom-and-gloom for Republicans, from Newt Gingrich: Senator McCain is currently running ahead of the Republican congressional ballot by about 16 percentage points. But there are two reasons that this extraordinary personal achievement should not comfort congressional Republicans. First, McCain’s lead is a sign of the gap between the McCain brand of independence and…