Author: Justin

I noticed this morning that thorium blogger Kirk Sorenson has a new son, Elijah Frederick Sorenson. Belated congratulations are in order. Mr. Sorenson’s blog is a wonderful resource if you want to learn about liquid-fluoride reactors. Or even if you don’t. And I totally agree with his choice of nomenclature. Such devices are often referred…

Leon Kass has been awe-fully quiet lately, and I’ve been rather too preoccupied with the demands of mere living to go digging for him. Sometimes I disappoint myself. But, as a diligent collector of Kassiana, when I unexpectedly stumble across the great man’s freshly steaming spoor, well, the whole world seems just a little bit…

So they’re making a live action movie of Transformers. Big freaking deal. I never watched it as a cartoon, so why should I care about it on the big screen? Perhaps if I’d been born later, I could have invested it with the meaning that others have found there, and gotten properly stoked about it.…

On May 8, 2006, James Kunstler had this to say about our future technological prospects… Riding the van out of the airport Friday night to the Park-and-Fly lot, with the planes floating down in the distant violet gloaming, an eerie recognition came over me that life today is as much like science fiction as it…

The guys at Focus Fusion have provided their take on that Robert Bussard video that’s been making the rounds. Their impression is that his approach looks promising. Their own approach is somewhat different technically, but either one, if successful, would enable the same sort of technological revolution. Boron fusion. Clean, inexpensive, inexhaustible power. UPDATE (11/27/06…

James “I am not Elmer Gantry!” Kunstler is forever going on about those easy motoring, cheese doodle crunching Americans and the doom that is even now bearing down upon them. Wishing, we are told, will not change the facts of life, and Jiminy Cricket notwithstanding, we simply cannot invent our way out of the “Long…

Given the recent events concerning my nephew and Al Gore, this item at Greenie Watch reduced me to tears. Seriously folks, I was just howling. Perhaps that’s mortifying in a man my age, but there you have it. I like to think of it as being young at heart. Besides, the story described is so…

My niece and nephew saw Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” the other week, and it actually managed to get to them. It seems that the science teacher had their entire class make a field trip to the theater where it was playing. He feels that the issue is far too important to leave to their parents…

Forest fires can help to reduce global warming, despite generating tonnes of carbon dioxide, a study has found. Scientists looking at the effect of fires in boreal forests found that in the long term the loss of trees means that more sunlight is reflected away from the Earth. This is because more snow, which is…

The diligent rat is forced to earn his keep. Eric is trapped in the wilds of Illinois, sans connectivity. Amusingly, his hotel has nanny software that won’t allow him to access his own blog. He says “Hi everybody!”. He also says that I should crank out a few brief yet edifying posts while he’s away.…

James Kunstler’s blog has a new headshot up. Oddly enough, it makes him look like Al Gore. I know this will sound strange, but I think the look suits him. Gets him away from that unfortunate grinning shroom-devil look. As for any new content of substance, I must regretfully report that I sought in vain…

I wanted to point you toward a truly rewarding blog today, a most excellent blog, a blog guaranteed not to make you feel despairing of, or disgusted with, the damned human race. It’s the creation of Clotilde Desoulier, and she calls it Chocolate and Zucchini. If you enjoy food (not necessarily a sure assumption, I’ve…

You might find it queer that a psychologist who studies stereotypes would have such strange stereotypes. But there’s more than a grain of truth in the stereotype that psychologists study things that are problematic for them. For example, I study decision making and have a lot of trouble making decisions. I feel ambivalent about most…

If you’re a fan of William Whittle, essayist, you’ll be pleased to hear that he’s writing again. It certainly has been awhile. There was a time, an age ago, where the differences between what we call the Left and the Right seemed more or less academic; maybe the distance from one high-rise tower to its…

First, let’s look at this wonderful interview with Leon Kass, courtesy of The American Enterprise. Dr. Kass has been out of the limelight for some little while now, but he more than makes up for his absence with this morose Q&A session, some of which is unintentionally hilarious. TAE: Tell us about your parents. Did…

Rod Adams runs an informative and gentlemanly blog called Atomic Insights. Mr. Adams is a nuclear engineer and a former submariner in the U.S. navy. His blog’s primary focus is fission power and its potential benefits. It was through Mr. Adams and his blog that I discovered Kirk Sorenson’s superlative Energy From Thorium blog. It…

Well, actually no. It isn’t. But it is the most beautiful skyscraper constructed in the last five years, that I’m personally aware of. I suppose I could have missed one. Anyway, it’s called “Turning Torso” and it’s located in Malm?, Sweden. Taste is always subjective of course, so you may find it’s not something you…

Older readers may recall Nevil Shute as the author of On The Beach, or perhaps less famously, No Highway. Both books were eventually translated into films, starring Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart respectively. At the peak of his writing career he was a fairly well known man of letters. But much earlier in his career,…

Hitachi announced their latest, smallest RFID a few months ago, and I’ve just recently become aware of it. You can click here to see it. I believe it would be worth your while to do so. By way of comparison, here is its bigger, older brother. When I first heard of RFID technology, the devices…

I was reading an article about James Kunstler and came across the following remark… Las Vegas is the holy shrine of a very pernicious religion?which is the religion of getting something for nothing; the religion of unearned riches?which is an idea that is extremely destructive and insidious and has now spread throughout our culture and…