Not So Fast

The Big Picture covers the Holi festival in India, which is probably the coolest looking celebration in the world.

Ubuntu has managed to take the worst looking (of the major players) default theme and dig deeper into the pit of ugly they choose their colors from.

VDH brings the historical perspective on the importance of allies. That’s why I like him.

Anti (it should be clarified) domestic violence lobbyist shoots husband of 5 days.

Listen to Beethoven played on a piano from his time.  With comparison and contrasting on modern pianos. I’d be nice if they had the same pianist on both pianos, but hey.

Foundation movie goes on the backburner. The world is safe for now.

My previous thoughts on the matter.

Chilean earthquakes knocks the earth around a bit. Final figures aren’t in yet but currently it looks like 1.26 microseconds per day are gone. You can’t have them back.

Cracked covers some of the more popular economic collapses throughout history in their own inimitable NSFW style.

A more, ahem, serious look at most of them can be found in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds.

Interesting old pictures of various stars. I fully expected Dennis Hopper to have an iPhone in his hand. I probably need some sort of counseling.

New element Copernium, named after Copernicus. You many have previously known it at Ununbium. Not that anyone really cares about all those elements down at the bottom.

To beat box that long has to be hard.

Supreme Court rules that reading Miranda rights is good for a limited time only.

Watching any cop show should teach you that.

Is nothing on TV real anymore? Actually, the less real TV is the better. Better writing, better acting, better locations.  Reality TV is for the birds.

Most-accurate, highest-resolution images of earth.  Bonus: North America.

Why we probably don’t need to fear a Cold War with China.

Stargate props auction on Ebay. I’m not picky, any of it would be cool.

I’m not saying UP isn’t a great movie, but how on earth can it conceivably be up for a science fiction writing group’s award?

Also, in case Star Trek wins, I am preparing to be appalled at what is considered award-winning writing. I mean, good movie and all, but it’s no <insert well-written movie here>.

No solutions, but Frank J. sums up the problem well.

…third parties attract all the crazies — all the people who give up on the social niceties (read: “sanity”) — needed to be a member of one of the major parties. For instance, libertarians have seemingly rational stances of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, but who does the Libertarian Party nominate? Candidates who dye themselves blue and like to have their promotional pictures taken with ferrets.

And no, I don’t want a parliament of many parties and their loose, shifting coalitions. Ugh.

The difference between a pirated movie and a pay movie.

Another point: computer with keyboards are more flexible and easy to use versus DVD remote controls. It pains me now to watch stuff on a DVD player having gotten used to using a computer to watch movies.

VLC, ftw!

Voice texting.  I just called to say lol.

Awesome pictures of dolphins off the coast of South Africa.

Hollow coins for all your Cold War spy needs. I can see having to break into Taco Bell because you accidentally gave them the wrong change and now they have the plans to the Death Star.

Walmart vegetables chosen over Whole Foods in a blind taste test. The meat and dairy, not so much, but there you have it. It tracks with my experience at Walmart, which I shop at regularly.

Not that I have a Whole Foods or even a Trader Joe’s to shop at as an alternative.

Edelstein completely forgets that starships have deflector shields and warp speed creates a bubble shoving everything out of the way, thus invalidating his results.

/it’s real to me

Cheap books. Free shipping. Wonder how long they can keep it up.

Yeah, not so much. Bonus: fairly awesome  smirk.

The US does poorly in mock cyber-crisis, which might not be such a bad thing once we look at it.

Participants also wrangled over how far to go in regulating the private sector, which owns the vast majority of the “critical” infrastructure that is vulnerable to a cyber attack. Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security who played the “cyber coordinator” on Tuesday, said that the private sector was not prepared to defend against a cyber act of war and that the government needed to play a role.

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it. I’d feel better about the government having emergency powers over stuff if they didn’t think every stiff breeze was an emergency.

I guess he doesn’t care anymore now that he’s not running for reelection.

“If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”

Video of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra Railway. Needs more Petrelli.

Oh, wait, yes it is.

1 terabyte SSD drives coming in the next couple years. Which will be awesome. I’m sure they’ll be incredibly expensive, but the 500GB drives should be reasonable, right?

Oof.  Remind me not to try a triple-salchow. I can’t even skate backwards, actually.

Colbert’s Olympics poster is about 1000 times better than the official stuff.

Hollywood is going to destroy another piece of Isaac Asimov’s work. How can they possibly make a movie about the idea of the rise and fall of social constructs creating huge problems and solutions over the span of thousands of years? They couldn’t even take a straightforward mystery story of Asimov’s and not mutilate it.

[insert facepalm picture]

A shockingly good list of Science Fiction’s 10 Most Epic Love Stories. It has Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan in it, that’s how good it is.

There’s little to argue with except why must Lost be included in every list of Science Fiction ever? You could add John and Delenn, Adama and Rosalyn and maybe Riker and Troi, I suppose.

Now I have to go read Cordelia’s Honor again.

I’d vote for him if I could.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn found himself stranded inside the Capitol, an odd position for a small-government curmudgeon who called the government shutdown a “dream.” He cleaned his desk, wrote to constituents, read books and reveled at the empty corridors of power.

“The best thing is we’re not passing any legislation, which ultimately will save the government a lot of money,” he said.

Ha!

Obama vs Palin.

50 awesome wallpapers for your desktop.  Okay, not all 50 are awesome, but there’s a bunch of cool ones in there.

Current desktop:

I had a nice wood grain just last week too.

A bunch a cool pictures of Mars.

Killer whale takes out a great white shark.

I wanna go there.

Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson for your reading pleasure.

In a brief op-ed in USA Today, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan charges that critics who question the Obama administration’s decision to grant Miranda rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are “serv[ing] the goals of al Qaeda.”

“Too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points,” Brennan writes. “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”

Those fear-mongering, right-wing, jingoistic fascists…oh wait.

General Motors, who can’t build a decent enough car that Americans will buy it, are helping NASA build robots? Shouldn’t NASA be working with Honda, who are already making advanced humanoid robots?

Pictures of awesome model town and cars. The 50s were a great time for cars.

One journalist is upset about the global warming scandals.

Let me back up. Because of manmade global warming, I warned in 1996, that “sea levels could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100 … warming can lead to hotter and more frequent heat waves … stronger and more frequent hurricanes to Hawai‘i … endanger native plants species [and] coral reefs.” These dire predictions came from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia provide much of the IPCC’s analysis and predictions. In November 2009, hackers released thousands of e-mails from the CRU, going back years, and it is these e-mails that reveal the very unscientific, unethical activities I described above.

I feel I’ve been had.

It’s nice to see someone admitting they were wrong, even if they blame the scientists, instead of themselves for not looking into it further before pronouncing doooom.

When Europeans start in on the but-but-but Bush it means a whole different thing than when Obama does it.

And then you realize that your math has been off for 80 years. The story is only mildly interesting, but a spherical cow reference is always awesome.

Doh, can’t embed. This is the direct link.

Vodkapundit has some excellent advice for publishers concerning ebooks.  And it’s a valid scenario. I am considering the choice today. Buy the used book for $7 + $4 shipping,  wait a week and get a hardcopy or buy the Kindle version for $10, get it now and then worry about how to get it out of DRM so I can read it how I want.

I’ll end up getting the Kindle version. I’ll fight it for a day or two, but I’ll get there in the end. But a 35 year old book should be $5.  If it was that much cheaper for the ebook, there would be no debate at all. Just so you know.

Interactive budget graphic. Check out how much the Net Interest changes between this year and next year.

Now that he has Apple in his corner, the CEO of Macmillan Books took out a full page ad to demand Amazon raise their prices on ebooks. Which are priced too high as it is, IMHO. He mighta shoulda waited to see if Apple sells any books first.

An author’s rebuttal to Amazon. As he points out, I, the consumer, don’t care about the finances behind the scenes. I want to buy cheap books.

…while the folks at Cato would respond to special-interest lobbying by reducing the size and scope of government so less of life is politicized and there is less to lobby about, Lessig would respond by amending the Constitution to restrict freedom of speech. Given this fundamental disagreement, Lessig’s efforts to “build an understanding” with libertarians (and other fans of the First Amendment) will not get him where he wants to go.

A little bit more here. For the record, I agree with Cato on this.

How To Be Invisible. It may not be relevant to your interests, but hey, free book.

Roundup of the right-libertarian blogs.

What really irks me about the speech is Congress’s standing ovation on the Supreme Court slam. Like they aren’t the cheating, lying weasels that created the problem in the first place. Like they don’t whore out their votes to the highest bidder. No one knows why these rules are in place because are their lily-white hands would never accept money from anyone that waves a few bills in front of their noses. And of course their consciences are clean because they certainly aren’t going to gleefully accept any money that this ruling might enable them to receive despite knowing that it would be wrong.

As for the rest, the usual. Lots of good and bad ideas, few of which will be implemented and those that are will be done in such a way that it costs the taxpayers and shovels money to Congress’s favorites.

I’d also like to point out that I never think of Obama as a black man unless someone blatantly mentions. And even then I don’t care what color he is.

How to use a semicolon; what?

Obama wants to axe the moon mission. The one big government thing I want to spend more money on and Obama—who wants to spend money on everything—cuts it from the budget.

In their place, according to White House insiders, agency officials, industry executives and congressional sources familiar with Obama’s long-awaited plans for the space agency, NASA will look at developing a new “heavy-lift” rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit. But that day will be years — possibly even a decade or more — away.

In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible.

I’m sick and tired of this puttering around LEO crap.  Let the earth-scientists worry about Earth and let the rocket scientist do something about space. Whatever happened to our reach exceeding our grasp cause that’s what a heaven for? NASA’s been frittering away decades already or I’d be living on the moon by now.

Also:

Pie in a jar. I’m trying this soon.

Keynes vs. Hayek; the rap

A small spending freeze is better than no spending freeze. Know what would be better? A big spending freeze…starting about 18 months ago.

Today’s Calvin and Hobbes is a life lesson for us all.

Governments should prepare for the worst if aliens visit Earth because beings from outer space are likely to be just like humans, a leading scientist is claiming.

Wouldn’t they be just as likely to be able to visit us as we are them, then? Also, science fiction writers have saved us the trouble of creating these plans from scratch since they’ve thought through most of the possible permutations by now.

If a meteor fell through my roof, I’d keep it. They could take a fragment for study or whatever but it’s mine. Space salvage laws.

A long, but fairly interesting look at suburban America and the latest assault on it from Washington.

Matt Welch explains why the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission isn’t entirely a horrible thing.

U2 and Jay-Z are writing a song for the Haitians to play on George Clooney’s telethon. I’m glad they’re doing this because it has been kinda under-reported and it’s difficult to find ways to give to help the Haitians now.

A US filmmaker used his iPhone as a flashlight to escape the rubble and then as a first aid handbook in Haiti. I’m impressed he had service. And he used his camera to see with because he lost his glasses.

The best explanation of the Leno-Conan-NBC love triangle.

Michael Yon has some awesome pics of Spitting Cobra artillery in Afghanistan.

I thought we knew calcium and vitamin D help with bones 50 years ago and that’s why they put the Vitamin D in milk.

Why would we want Haiti? What would it add to the Union except a sinkhole for money? If we want to bail out a flailing economy we have California. If we’re going to take a 3rd world country I think we’d choose Mexico, solve that whole illegals problem.

See also, the inevitablity of US hate.

Can the Americans do a better job coordinating? No doubt. Should the whiners put up or shut up? Yes. Float in your own aircraft carriers, hospital ships and security forces, show us how to do it right.

A working phaser.

Sure, you can only kill balloons with it now, but when has mankind ever been satisfied with its weapons technology.

Apparently the TSA and airlines are bad about losing or stealing expensive stuff (never personally had a problem with this), but if you put a gun in your checked luggage you get to lock your stuff up and they keep an extra-special eye on it.  I like that.

Yeah, blocking roads because you’re not happy with how fast help is getting to you sorta minimizes my sympathy for you.

Is there no one that doesn’t expect help to be handed to them? I’d think that dead poor countries would be used to doing stuff without or despite government help. Although, the more I think about it, governments play a large part in keeping their people poor.

In case you forgot how much communism sucks, a look at China’s crackdown on computer services,.

IMHO, Google did get what was coming to it for compromising to do information business in a country that’s all about censorship.

Well, imagine it’s Foslom Prison.

Really cool pics of Martian dunes.

Also in space news, something small whizzed by the planet this morning.

Really expensive cars destroyed last year. Thankfully, no Veyron’s were harmed in the making of the post.

While we’re talking about cars, the ugliest car in the world. Apparently, the entire Pontiac line was unavailable for comment.

Ramesh Ponnuru nails the reason Republicans aren’t going to be making any big comebacks any time soon.

Good lord, THIS:

One of the worst by-products — among many — of the rapid expansion of government in the past 50 years has been the politicization of everything, including aspects of personal daily life that government has no business in. Relationships, child rearing, garbage collection, even the replacement of light bulbs have come under government scrutiny.

The Big Picture has some cool pictures from the later Apollo missions, along with some of the LRO pictures.

Michael Totten has an interview with Christopher Hitchens in which Hitchens makes several good and significant points about how the West is dealing with radical Islam.

Man that survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs died. I would be really perturbed when the second one went off.

Christopher Lee’s “metal” album clips.

The decade in war, alphabetically by country. Horrible typography on that page though. Makes you not want to read it.

Solar system may be younger than originally thought.

Bonus: cool solar system pic.

Blue moon on a New Year’s Eve. Not that I can see it through the clouds.

The new TSA bans are random and  insane. Which is what you should expect from the government I guess. I can’t wait for them to start making rules about my health care (yes, I went there).

Next up: everybody sit upright with your hands on your head for the entire flight. Nobody move.

the rest starts here.

John Scalzi gives us the ups and downs of the sci-fi movies this last decade. Without mentioning Serenity*.  Also, the movies he mentions all actually have science in their fiction [I wish the comic nerds could get their own genre though].

*I can’t believe he killed Wash.

TSG’s Mug Shots of the Year.