Archive for January, 2011
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Hope & Change You Can Be Bereaving
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 21, 2011 by admin in Politics
Friday, January 21st, 2011I’ll be watching the State of the Union address next week, but I’m bereaving hope more than I believe in it.
A couple of years ago, I asked When Did Americans Become Such Chickenshit Crybabies?, so it was kind of a relief when Patrick Smith, the “Ask the Pilot” guy, went public with a more serious and calmly reasoned treatment of the idea. Because if you look at the entire history of airline terrorism, things haven’t changed much over the years, only our reactions have. Which is at the core of just one of many reasons I take issue with the treatment of privacy rights since the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. All along, I’ve been of the opinion – which I consider to be informed rather than paranoid – that various parties both inside and outside of government have capitalized on public fear, whether in the interest of invasive data collection or manipulating national sentiment. With President Obama’s State of the Union address coming up next week, I’m reminded of how profoundly disappointed I am with myself for falling for his campaign rhetoric and tone in 2008. One of the only reasons I voted for the man was that I foolishly believed he was sincere about troop drawdowns, lowering America’s hostile presence abroad, doing away with some of the Bush administration’s executive secrecy, and easing up on the incessant erosion of citizen’s privacy and freedom to move about. I was disappointed when Obama supported the FISA bill before he was even elected, but blew it off to a campaign-time necessity, and believed him when he said his administration would pursue a sincere review of wiretapping policies. Well, not only have none of these things come to pass in two years, he has completely contradicted himself repeatedly on almost all of them. Last year was the deadliest year so far in the Afghan conflict, with troop increases of 3,000, and a 134% increase in drone attacks and 54% increase in related deaths. The Obama White House has endorsed Bush era secrecy on torture and rendition, been worse about wiretapping issues than Bush, and made virtually no changes regarding the inept, out of control, and revenge-driven TSA, which many travelers have described as providing an experience they haven’t encountered since the Berlin Wall days. I could go on about how the Obama health care plan was a back door corporate sellout, but I won’t. The Republicans will be spending enough time deriding the plan as a dog and pony show in the coming months. No need to throw more sand in the gears of government; American politicians seem to have things pretty well ground to a halt on their own. I honestly hope to see something inspiring from next week’s SOTU address, but only because I’m idiotically optimistic about life in general. Not because I have any rational reason to do so.
Giant Woolly Mammoth Clones To Invade Tokyo Within Six Years
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 20, 2011 by admin in Technology
Thursday, January 20th, 2011Professor Akira Iritani may very well succeed at cloning a Woolly Mammoth. Hasn’t this dude seen Jurassic Park or Godzilla?
 Delphine Chanéac as a toddler |
Could someone please send Professor Akira Iritani – the guy who’s all excited about cloning a Woolly Mammoth – a copy of The Lost World – Jurassic Park
Unlimited Oil Supply From A Bacterium?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 19, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011A biotech firm has patented a bacterium that essentially consumes carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, and excretes fossil fuels. But is an unlimited supply of fossil fuels the way to a cleaner, more efficient future?
A friend once told me that he used to work in a warehouse, and one day all the guys he worked with were sitting around talking about what they would do if they won the lotto. They started making jabs at each other, joking about really expensive things they would do to mess up each others’ work day. Eventually, with no sense of irony or humor whatsoever, one of the guys said “Yeah? Well I’d buy my OWN damn hi-lo so I wouldn’t have to share it with you jerks anymore”. This story sprang to mind the other day when I read that a biotech firm called Joule Unlimited received a patent last fall for genetically modified E. coli bacteria that needs only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to enable it to excrete ethanol or hydrocarbon fuel. You read that right. A germ that lives on CO2, water and sunlight, and craps gasoline. Of course, it’s not that simple; there’s still a need to refine the compounds it excretes into usable fuels, but the company claims that once production is established, it will be able to produce 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year, at a price that is competitive with conventional fossil fuels. To frame this in way that one can more easily visualize, they claim that they would be able to provide for all of the United States’ fuel needs annually in an area the size of the Texas panhandle. Okay. Who knows if this is actually true; we hear about some kind of miracle solution to the world’s energy problems about every year or so. But assuming it is true, WHY ON EARTH would you focus this kind of engineering genius and the resources required to create AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF FOSSIL FUEL? To me it sounds a lot like that guy at the warehouse. The idea that using just sunlight, CO2 and water, we can create usable energy is kind of miraculous, isn’t it? I mean, except for the part where that energy eventually comes from petroleum again, which could create the pollution that blocks the sun that….oh, never mind. I’m no engineer, but it seems to me that the road to a cleaner, more efficient future wouldn’t be paved with a limitless supply of oil. Feel free to enlighten me if I’m spewing a geyser of ignorance here.
10 Songs That May Make People Cry
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 18, 2011 by admin in Music
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011Music is magical if only for the fact that it makes humans dance around with nothing more than subtle vibrations of air, but things get even more interesting when it makes their eyes leak salt water. Are there songs that make YOU cry?
 This is Anna Karina, after listening to my compilation. |
I’ve often said that one of the reasons I love music so much is that it’s virtually indistinguishable from magic. How else do you explain the fact that by sending subtle vibrations into the air, you can make humans gyrate uncontrollably, tap their toes and fingers, or even march to war. While these audio-induced rhythmic nervous system reactions seem easily explainable as a simple stimulus/response process, you can also use these subtle vibrations to cause less predictable responses, like the release of salt water from their eyes. To me, the latter is perhaps the most intriguing result of these subtle vibrations of air, because although humans usually reserve this release of fluid from the eyes for moments of sadness or physical pain, when a person cries in reaction to a piece of music (unless of course they’re just crying because it’s a really horrible Justin Bieber song) it can be nearly impossible to determine if they’re crying because they’re happy or sad, inspired, proud of their country, or some mixture of all of these feelings and more. I got the idea to compile this list more out of curiosity regarding what makes *other people cry, but once I got going, I got a little obsessed, and perhaps a little embarrassed. I had forgotten, for instance, that I had a playlist called “Music To Hang Yourself By”, or that a song by a band with a name like “Goo Goo Dolls” could make me cry. A lot of more obviously sad songs have little effect on me; frankly, the best way to ensure that I don’t cry when I hear a piece of music is if the tune starts off by saying something descriptively sad in the lyrics. I find it more effective when the singer first claims they’re doing just fine, and then rips it up, implying with plaintive wailing – but never admitting – that suicide will be their only salvation. Below are just a few tunes that are likely to jerk a tear from my eye. I included a few obvious ones like “Hallelujah” and “Crying”, and a few cheesy ones for sentimental reasons, but omitted many, many more, mostly because I’d like to know what makes YOU cry. So give it up. What makes you weepy? Read the rest of this entry »
Endhiran: Invasion of the BollySnatchers
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 17, 2011 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, January 17th, 2011What do you get when you fuse Bollywood, the entire robot science fiction lexicon, and rock opera spectacle? Endhiran. Probably the most entertaining three hour film ever to be filmed with Tamil dialogue.
