Monday, December 31, 2007
In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army. They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child [...]
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
So let’s talk about your impossible dream. You need some miracles. Good luck with that. But I can give you, as a 10-year veteran, my five counter-intuitive and probably immoral success secrets. 1. Self promote 2. Steal 3. Don’t Lie 4. Hate your enemies, but love your rivals. 5. Do less. http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/12/25/miracles/
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov says about one third of all energy used in Russia is either wasted or used inefficiently. He now proposes extensive energy-saving measures. The premier says the energy demands of the Russian GDP are almost two times higher than the world average. He now calls for the introduction of new technology [...]
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Seems to me the key to Steampunk is going to be cheap desktop laser cutters. Once these things are cheap enough that a $500 unit can do 0.5mm thick brass, then it becomes possible to laser cut gears meaning that you can fab machines of arbitrary complexity relatively easily. Could be fun.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
One thing about Feynman is that he went to some trouble to arrange his life so that he wasn’t particularly busy–and so he could just work on what he felt like. Usually he had a good supply of problems. Though sometimes his long-time assistant would say: “You should go and talk to him. Or he’s [...]
Saturday, December 22, 2007
At PARC we had a slogan: “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.” It was based on a few things from the past like how smart you had to be in Roman times to multiply two numbers together; only geniuses did it. We haven’t gotten any smarter, we’ve just changed our representation system. We [...]
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Libertarians are often called Libertopians. The Icelanders (Smari and Herbert) call Libertarians “Propertarians” because, well, a lot of ‘em confuse property rights with liberty. Seems to me the comboword is Propertopians. Dunno if it’s a good word or not, but there it is.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC1KMTOgwiSoMQyT2LwZc9HyAgA The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday. “We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” [...]
Sunday, December 16, 2007
but if you want to know what’s wrong with WC3 etc it’s that XML-based vision it’s like the very plague. it’s *elegant* but it’s also *wrong* because it’s *functional* and not procedural people think in procedures and can be trained to think in objects but the idea of applying an XPATH query, which is actually [...]
Sunday, December 16, 2007
(a summary of my thinking on more general pandemic flu issues, prior to me producing a simple introductory guide, to be dropped into the public domain in an editable format for better heads than mine, with more domain knowledge, to hack on.) http://www.retrotogo.com/2006/06/keep_calm_warti.html Start with this link. So, I’m aiming for a five or a [...]