Now that a county can no longer have a cross as part of its official seal, it’s clearly just a matter of time before cities (and counties) like “El Pueblo de Nuestra Se
Appropriate
Apparently the building that houses the UN is as decrepit as the institution itself.
Sounds like a good excuse to give it a new HQ.
Perhaps in Paris, or Brussels.
With someone else’s money.
The Date Is Set
SpaceShipOne will attempt the first flight to a hundred kilometers on the summer solstice, June 21, about three weeks from today, according to an email from Jim Oberg.
[Update on Wednesday afternoon]
Leonard David has the story.
Here’s the full press release (in response to a question that Duncan Young asks in comments):
Mojave, CA: A privately-developed rocket plane will launch into history on June 21 on a mission to become the world
Presidential
Senator Kerry displayed the middle digit to a fellow Vietnam veteran who disagreed with his post-service behavior.
In front of schoolchildren.
He also accused him (without basis, as far as I know) of being “a felon.”
[Update on Wednesday afternoon]
I’m going to amend this post to “Newsmax claims that Senator Kerry displayed…” since I can’t find any other sources for the story. I still don’t find it out of character, though.
[Wednesday evening followup]
Here’s some more on the story, but unfortunately, it’s still Newsmax.
Painless Moving
Thanks for the good wishes, Andrew, but that’s already a forlorn hope, both literally (my back is (figuratively) killing me) and figuratively.
Culture and games
I firmly believe that the single most important area of scientific research is cognitive psychology (the rigorous branch of psych, not the motherlovin’ it’s-just-a-cigar-to-me-but-you’re-a-pervert freudian crap). There’s an interesting article on the results of a cross cultural comparison of behavior in some simple games here. This sort of thing helps get at what human nature really is and what’s just cultural overlay. The results are interesting, and generate more questions than answers, but at least the questions are well posed.
btw, welcome back, Rand. I hope the moving problems resolve painlessly.
A Blogger’s Work Is Never Done
I’m back in CA. We didn’t make as much progress unpacking as I’d hoped, and Patricia’s computer didn’t survive the trip to Florida. It arrived sufficiently addled that, upon boot, it shows a crazed scattering of phosphor trails across the screen, though which one can barely make out the Award logo of the BIOS, after which it attempts to load Windows, and then bluescreens with obscure messages in various dialects of Greek and hex. My machine came up OK, but we don’t yet have an internet connection there, or even phone service, so I’ve been cut off from civilization (or, at least, the blogosphere) all weekend. Thanks to Andrew for keeping the ball rolling with some interesting posts.
Because I was away, some of the lowest forms of life imaginable managed to attack my comments section with spam of the most vile nature on Sunday, most of which involved websites hawking variants on b3stiality, r@pe and inc3st, sometimes in varying combinations. Normally, I catch these after the first two or three, after which they’re banned, but my absence gave them free rein for hours and days, and for some reason, MT Blacklist doesn’t seem to remove all comments with banned URLs (at least for me)–it only deletes them one at a time, so I spent the first hour back on line cleaning up the mess. (By the way, Andrew, I don’t get emails of comments to your posts, so you should keep an eye out as well, as they age like fine wine and thus become more attractive to the scumbuckets. If you get one, let me know, and I’ll show you the drill.)
If anyone has any suggestions as to what may have gone astray with the computer, let me know. I’m guessing it’s a MB problem. I’ve had problems in the past while moving equipment in which cables came loose, but it’s hard to imagine how that would cause a weird screen display even before POST.
A Blogger’s Work Is Never Done
I’m back in CA. We didn’t make as much progress unpacking as I’d hoped, and Patricia’s computer didn’t survive the trip to Florida. It arrived sufficiently addled that, upon boot, it shows a crazed scattering of phosphor trails across the screen, though which one can barely make out the Award logo of the BIOS, after which it attempts to load Windows, and then bluescreens with obscure messages in various dialects of Greek and hex. My machine came up OK, but we don’t yet have an internet connection there, or even phone service, so I’ve been cut off from civilization (or, at least, the blogosphere) all weekend. Thanks to Andrew for keeping the ball rolling with some interesting posts.
Because I was away, some of the lowest forms of life imaginable managed to attack my comments section with spam of the most vile nature on Sunday, most of which involved websites hawking variants on b3stiality, r@pe and inc3st, sometimes in varying combinations. Normally, I catch these after the first two or three, after which they’re banned, but my absence gave them free rein for hours and days, and for some reason, MT Blacklist doesn’t seem to remove all comments with banned URLs (at least for me)–it only deletes them one at a time, so I spent the first hour back on line cleaning up the mess. (By the way, Andrew, I don’t get emails of comments to your posts, so you should keep an eye out as well, as they age like fine wine and thus become more attractive to the scumbuckets. If you get one, let me know, and I’ll show you the drill.)
If anyone has any suggestions as to what may have gone astray with the computer, let me know. I’m guessing it’s a MB problem. I’ve had problems in the past while moving equipment in which cables came loose, but it’s hard to imagine how that would cause a weird screen display even before POST.
A Blogger’s Work Is Never Done
I’m back in CA. We didn’t make as much progress unpacking as I’d hoped, and Patricia’s computer didn’t survive the trip to Florida. It arrived sufficiently addled that, upon boot, it shows a crazed scattering of phosphor trails across the screen, though which one can barely make out the Award logo of the BIOS, after which it attempts to load Windows, and then bluescreens with obscure messages in various dialects of Greek and hex. My machine came up OK, but we don’t yet have an internet connection there, or even phone service, so I’ve been cut off from civilization (or, at least, the blogosphere) all weekend. Thanks to Andrew for keeping the ball rolling with some interesting posts.
Because I was away, some of the lowest forms of life imaginable managed to attack my comments section with spam of the most vile nature on Sunday, most of which involved websites hawking variants on b3stiality, r@pe and inc3st, sometimes in varying combinations. Normally, I catch these after the first two or three, after which they’re banned, but my absence gave them free rein for hours and days, and for some reason, MT Blacklist doesn’t seem to remove all comments with banned URLs (at least for me)–it only deletes them one at a time, so I spent the first hour back on line cleaning up the mess. (By the way, Andrew, I don’t get emails of comments to your posts, so you should keep an eye out as well, as they age like fine wine and thus become more attractive to the scumbuckets. If you get one, let me know, and I’ll show you the drill.)
If anyone has any suggestions as to what may have gone astray with the computer, let me know. I’m guessing it’s a MB problem. I’ve had problems in the past while moving equipment in which cables came loose, but it’s hard to imagine how that would cause a weird screen display even before POST.
Top 10 Reasons NOT to go into space
Via RocketForge, apparently one of the things that came up at the recent ISDC conference was 10 reasons not to go into space.
I particularly like #9 Space is “just another rich white guy’s playground”, kind of like the deep ocean is just another rich white guy’s playground, right? In the short term, space development will quite likely involve rich white guys getting their jollies. The RWGs will subsidize technology development that will get the rest of us up there. Sounds great to me – after all, joyrides into space will have a lot better impact on the long term future of humanity than an equivalent amount of money spent on a game fishing vacation.
Incidentally, it looks like there’s an NSS blog now, with Arthur Smith at the helm (or at least lurking in the pilothouse 🙂 I look forward to reading it.