March 2008
Could be handy for making hexayurts
http://www.eemersontool.com/Home.html
sort of a giant ruler that clamps on to things - possibly useful for cutting big boards in half.
a (gorgeous) gameplan for addressing climate change
http://www.wattzon.org/gameplan.htm via Jonathan Sanderson.
Doesn’t really mention next gen solar, unfortunately.
Bono meets with the Secretary of Defense to talk poverty
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U2 lead singer and activist Bono visited the Pentagon to discuss Africa and the fight against global poverty with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, representatives of the two men said on Wednesday.
Among the topics at the 20-minute meeting on Tuesday afternoon were U.S. plans to set up a new U.S. military command for Africa, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
“I think this was a chance for two people who care about the problems facing the continent of Africa to talk about their shared interest in solving those problems,” Morrell said of the meeting that was not publicized in advance.
Hell
The pentagon’s new…
Barnett on core and gap.
Other good bits from his blog of late:
Chinese peacekeepers in the Sudan
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/02/the_end_of_were_not_political.html
Cheap chinese equipment changing lives in Africa
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/02/yuan_diplomacy_work_the_bottom.html
China “toxic for African freedom”
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/02/confront_china_quietly.html
The AFRICOM mission
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/03/africom_promotes_active_securi.html
Regional poverty maps
http://sedac.ciesin.org/povmap/
(compare with the GDP density maps here)
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/01/the_distributio.html
What ever happened to Nim Chimpsky?
Nim Chimpsky was a chimp raised in the 1970s in a way close to humans, in the hope he would develop language.
The results were ambiguous on the language front. But something else happened.
The former graduate students in New York believe that Nim had no idea he was a chimpanzee. One of them suggested to me that Nim might have thought he was going to grow up, lose all his facial and body hair and eventually look like the people who were around him. That would be a reasonable supposition. Throughout his life, Nim preferred to be with humans.
Toward the end of his life, he was paired with an ex-circus chimp named Sally Jones. That, I think, was the first deep relationship he had with his own species. They were inseparable. Sally was a lot older, a lot milder. Nim had a reputation for breaking out of his cage in Texas. When Sally came, he would break out of his cage, but then he’d remember her, and he’d go back and get her. He’d lead her out of the cage and they’d go on a little romp together. Cleveland Amory was always afraid that Nim was going to run off into the woods. But he had no desire to run away. Nim would go to the nearest house and bring Sally with him, and they would raid the refrigerator, go through the closets and try on any shoes that were lying around, and sometimes they’d get into bed and turn on the TV.
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/31/Nim_Chimpsky/
Bush booed throwing the opening pitch of a baseball game
Huge public event, and people sound pissed. The sidelong glance he gives the crowd practically says just you wait, humans…
Karl Rove - “the horns and the tail are retractable”
Said just after the 1:30 mark. Hilarious.
America the Resilient - Foreign Affairs
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87201/stephen-e-flynn/america-the-resilient.html
Yep, that’s worth reading.
Fiona Apple is the female Leonard Cohen
Interesting evening listening to classical music. Cuing up Fiona Apple afterwards was interesting, because I’d gotten kind of sensitized to a different range of instrumentation. Well well well, she’s emotionless. It’s all in the words, not in the voice.