A Silver Lining In The Madoff Cloud

It put an end to funding nonsense like this:

A typical apartment has three or four rooms in the shapes of either a cylinder, a cube, or a sphere. Rooms surround a kitchen-living room combination with bumpy, undulating floors and floor-to-ceiling ladders and poles. Dozens of colors, from school-bus yellow to sky blue, cover the walls, ceilings and other surfaces.

At least one tenant says he feels a little younger already. Nobutaka Yamaoka, who moved in with his wife and two children about two years ago, says he has lost more than 20 pounds and no longer suffers from hay fever, though he isn’t sure whether it was cured by the loft.

There is no closet, and Mr. Yamaoka can’t buy furniture for the living room or kitchen because the floor is too uneven, but he relishes the lifestyle. “I feel a completely different kind of comfort here,” says the 43-year-old video director. His wife, however, complains that the apartment is too cold. Also, the window to the balcony is near the floor, and she keeps bumping her head against the frame when she crawls out to hang up laundry, he says. (“That’s one of the exercises,” says Ms. Gins.)

“A different kind of comfort.” Yes, I suppose that’s one way to put it. But there’s a fly in the ointment:

Some transhumanists dismiss the couple’s architectural solution.

You don’t say.

“Human life has enough challenges in terms of our work and daily lives that we don’t need to invent new physical challenges for our bodies,” says Ray Kurzweil, a leading transhumanist figure in the U.S.

Well, the good news is that Madoff’s (and their) loss is our gain.

Fighting Aging

“Reason” has a link roundup of Russian coverage of an Aubrey de Grey visit, and some thoughts on cryonics from Robin Hanson. It’s encouraging to hear from de Grey that the first man who will live to a hundred and fifty is probably alive, and sixty today. And that people currently living will hit a thousand, if they wish (though I think it would be tough to go that long without some non-aging cause of death).

Let’s Hope The Modern Ones Don’t Follow Suit

There’s accumulating evidence that ancient Druids engaged in cannibalism and human sacrifice.

There seems to be something missing here, though:

By the early centuries of the first millennium A.D., the Celts’ defeat and absorption into the Roman Empire was nearly complete across Europe.

Today, their once wide-ranging culture lives on mainly in the traditional languages of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany, France.

Why no mention of Scotland?

Some Good News About The New Brown Shirts

They’re not very effective:

Trying to mobilize voters to rally behind a complex, multi-trillion dollar budget that Congress will take months to enact is a different task from winning votes for a presidential candidate.

“You live in Terre Haute, Indiana, or suburban Denver, and someone you don’t know knocks on the door and talks politics — the election is over,” said Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Connecticut. “I’m not sure if it will make a big difference.”

Still, Brown concedes that it’s early enough in Obama’s presidency and he’s still popular enough that some people will listen and give Obama “the benefit of the doubt” on his agenda.

“They’re scared about their income future,” Brown said.

Well, I’m scared as hell as hell about my income future, too, because Obama wants to tax the hell out of it. It doesn’t make him popular with me. And whatever “benefit of the doubt” he had with me ended last spring, after the duplicity about Reverend Wright.

The Truth, At Last

Why we haven’t been back to the moon:

The former head of the US lunar program, Wernher von Braun, said in one of his interviews several years later that certain extraterrestrial forces were even more powerful that humans could ever imagine. The scientist said that someone or something was watching every US-led flight to the Moon.

According to one of the versions, which seems to be rather unreal, all lunar programs were shut down 30 years ago because of the fear to encounter extraterrestrial beings and their immense power. Both the USSR and the USA realized that their presence on the Moon was not desirable at all.

The Earth’s natural satellite is a perfect platform for aliens and their spaceships. The Moon is not far from the Earth and it faces the planet with only one part, which means that aliens can rest safely on the other side of the Moon and they do not have to worry about telescopes. Ufologists say that there is quite a number of alien bases on the dark side of the Moon.

Well, if Ufologists say so, it must be true.

Actually if it were the deliberate policy to not have returned to the moon for the past thirty-seven years, but not explain why, I’m not sure what the government would have done or be doing differently.

[Via email from ]

The Teleprompter Addiction

Neoneocon has some thoughts:

Barnett noticed—as many had, even at the time—the enormous difference in articulateness between Teleprompter-Obama and Obama unplugged (the latter is the title of Barnett’s article). That was the easy part. The more discriminating observation Barnett made was between the message of Teleprompter Obama and the message of ad-lib Obama. The two were not just different in degree—they were profoundly opposite in tone and essence. Ad-lib Obama was far more angry and more radical—indeed, although Barnett doesn’t mention it, this Obama resembled the angrier and more radical Michelle Obama, in her earlier campaign remarks that drew so much controversy.

Obama is addicted to his Teleprompter not only because he knows he sounds better—smoother and smarter—with it than without. The deeper reason for his reliance on it may just be that he differs so profoundly from the persona he wishes to convey that he quite literally cannot trust himself to speak without it. Shorn of the Teleprompter, he not only runs the risk of revealing a disfluency that could rival (or even exceed?) that of his reviled predecessor George Bush—he may reveal who he truly is, an angry man with a profoundly radical agenda for America.

No surprise to those of us who paid attention all last year.

Don’t Expect This To Go Anywhere

A “shall issue” law has been introduced in Sacramento. I can’t see the Democrats in the legislature passing it, even with the Pink Pistol support, and if they do, I would expect the RINO Governator to veto it. And the arrogance continues to amaze:

Both McGinness and Reed said that in their counties, simply wanting to carry a concealed weapon isn’t good-enough cause.

“Personal protection is insufficient,” McGinness said.

I guess these fascists don’t like to see people out of uniform able to defend themselves.

Don’t Hold Your Breath

The media should resign over President Obama’s failure.

Actually, they won’t have to resign. Given the continuing financial failure of newspapers, they seem to be getting fired. What will happen to Frank Rich when the New York Times finally goes under?

[Late morning update]

Whoops, there goes another one. After a hundred seventy four years, the Ann Arbor News is closing its doors this summer.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!