bascule

It's been done:

The world's a pretty jacked place, but fortunately I'm a pretty jacked person. And as they say, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro...

Where can I buy a fission-powered car? Last I checked these were on backorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

Wow, so much confusion caused by my poorly stated topic. My apologies. To quote the breakdown on the page's sidebar: As of February 13th... "When it comes to the War in Iraq, the U.S. should..." 24% - withdraw now 37% - bring the troops home in a year 34% - stay 5% - undecided? Which they're apparently boiling down into: 61% - bring the troops home in a year or less 34% - stay 5% - undecided?

Yeah, I think the point of this whole video is they just need to sell something with two headmounted IR LEDs along with a game, and this could be done using the existing Wii hardware. Any game manufacturer who wanted to could take advantage of this.

Actually, it was my thread title (you think Pangloss would post a thread like this) and it was poorly stated, my bad. That 61% figure includes the 24% who want to pull the troops out immediately.

I sure hope the addressing the present situation takes precedence over assigning blame for past mistakes. I hope Obama will nail McCain on his recent remarks about an indefinite presence in Iraq, and focus less on who voted for what. Well, we have at least a poll here saying the majority of Americans want out of Iraq in a year. To put this poll in perspective: that's about one month after the new President takes office. That's probably the earliest we could realistically see a withdrawal anyway, and the majority of Americans support it, at least according to this poll. According to the article, the question was: "When it comes to the War in Iraq, the U.S. should... a) withdraw now b) bring the troops home in a year c) stay"

I suspect the issue of what to do about Iraq will come up again, with a passion, in the national election...

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2229053420080224 Looks like Bush has pressured some telcos into resuming wiretapping. Awesome!

... according to a Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/the_war_in_iraq/iraq_troop_withdrawal This despite deja vu-inducing assurances that our strategy is finally working and that in pulling out we'd sacrificed everything we've worked for over there. I believe the economic toll at home may be the thing that will finally end the war... well, and a new President.

Richard Dawkins presents the "fact of evolution" to people with the (nonexistent) scientific understanding of Ted Haggard. I think, in the end, this just makes him look like a dick to those people. "Oh, you're taking the theory of evolution and dressing it up as a fact now? What changed your mind? All those transitional fossils you never found?" I think there's a rejection of the elitism in the idea that the only people who are qualified to argue against scientists are other scientists, or at the very least people who able to present their arguments in a rational, falsifiable, scientific manner and in that regard understand a problem at least as well as scientists. They do not see the advantage of scientific answers to a problem to which they already have unscientific answers to believe in. Who are the scientists to argue that scientific understanding is the best answer to-date, just because science's answers are evidence-based, cohesive, demonstrable, and falsifiable? Within this demographic are a large number of people simply reject scientific knowledge despite its role in the multitude of artifacts they rely upon for their daily existence. They take the gifts science has brought them for granted because they are too stupid to understand science's role in their existence, and will hypocritically lambaste scientific knowledge because its conclusions disagree with their personal beliefs, while at the same time reaping the rewards scientific knowledge has brought them. Rebranding ideas which disagree with their beliefs, under any label, will still not change the fact that these ideas disagree with their beliefs, so they will remain unilaterally opposed to them. I think it takes a certain degree of intelligence to realize that we owe the extraordinary convenience of the modern world to science, that behind Wal-Mart, the tee-vee, the water you drink, the food you eat, and the juice that runs the lights and all the gizmos in your home is the panoply of scientific knowldge directing their operation which exists as part of an single, cohesive, interrelational network which has managed to survive all criticism to date, among a network of people who are intimately familiar with the majority of known criticisms.

Actually, it's not. If you want to get technical about it, there's always the whole Constitution thing and a formal declaration of war. But since that's apparently moot (due to a precedent of undermining Constitutional authority which in my opinion has gone *way too far* now) we aren't at war with a nation. We're not even at war with an identifiable group, or a distinct set of persons. "Al Qaeda" is a name rogue terrorists give themselves to instill fear into the hearts of Westerners. The "war on terror" is as much a war in the traditional sense as the war on illiteracy or the war on drugs. There's no quantifiable opponent. It's a war on ideas. Judging by recent polls, a considerable portion of our society has changed its mind. Violating the Constitution, whenever, whatever, should be subject to the most vicious of witch hunts. The Constitution is the only thing we have separating ourselves from China, North Korea, or Nazi Germany. People who would willingly subvert are traitors and should be treated as such. The Constitution makes provisions about wartime, and to a certain extent I can understand subversions of certain Constitutional stipulations at wartime. However, it also makes provisions about the declaration of war. As far as the Constitution is concerned: we are not at war.

The main think I've noticed about CFL is they gradually increase in brightness for a few minutes after turning them on

A lot of people believe that science has been hijacked by some sort of special interest group who are trying to use it to push an agenda, however science isn't a gestalt entity that can be hijacked in such a manner, and by its very nature remains impartial and empirical. The scientific method removes personal opinion from the process, and generates knowledge which is repeatable, verifiable, and falsifiable. 10 different quantum physicists may have 10 completely different, contradictory ideas about how the universe works, but that doesn't get in the way of them collaborating on scientific research, because in the end the math they're doing is the same and they can all comprehend each other's work. That's the beauty of the scientific process.

That's something I think needs to change, and I think it's largely due to paranoia and negative stigma over nuclear power, not legitimate safety concerns. The nice thing is since the end result is biofuel, there's no need for a drastic retooling of the infrastructure. This is something which can be added gradually and can supplement other means of producing biofuels. We don't need to spontaneously add a TW of power production. I guess I should mention I know him indirectly through his father... Why is the environmental risk insane? There's the potential that an accident will occur when transporting nuclear material to a safe storage facility. Wherever the waste material is stored... yes, that's going to be pretty nasty. But that aside, and I think all of that is moot, it's an otherwise clean technology. It depends on the lifestyle of the person. It's a sad state of affairs here in America: ubiquity of fuel is a must because of the sorry state of our transportation. For example, if we want to go spend the night in Denver, we can catch a bus ride down there, and be at our destination after a few transfers. But coming home? We're out of luck. The last bus back to the town I live in leaves at midnight. Our only option is an expensive cab ride back, and I'm talking ~$80 USD (but split between multiple people). It's far less expensive to just drive down there in a car. We're supposed to get light rail! Eventually. Last I heard it's supposed to be in 4 years, but that was two years ago. Our public transportation here is kind of a joke. I mean, in the city, it's awesome, but go anywhere out of the city and you're SOL. The systems don't interconnect. Buses travel within 5 miles of train stations but don't drop passengers off there. The entire system shuts down at midnight. Thanks to the awesome weather buses are often delayed. Oh, and did I mention that buses comprise pretty much all there is of our public transportation infrastructure? Nobody can use trains, unless they're actually in the city of Denver, and they didn't get light rail until about 10 years ago. Trains are a new thing to us!

I suspect the reason the Bush Administration wants to grant them retroactive immunity is that a suit against the telcos would eventually wind up in the Supreme Court, at which point the legality of Bush's executive order and whether or not his orders (which he reauthorized dozens of times) broke FISA / the Fourth Amendment would come into question.

The book in the same vein as Neuromancer I'd like to see adapted into a movie is Snow Crash. The entire book practically reads like a screenplay. Compare that to Neuromancer, which is written in the quintessential ultradescriptive style of cyberpunk. "The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel" ^^^ how the hell do you translate quotes like that into scenes in a movie?

Here's an interesting article, from those liberal zealots over at the Washington Times: http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080216/NATION/847451166/1001 Quoting a couple think tank analysts here, including one of the fine folks from the Cato Institute, and their take: FISA is sufficient. Hopefully the Democrats won't back down on this... I liked this take from the Cato Institute's blog: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/02/17/even-the-washington-times-says-bush-is-wrong-about-fisa/

I think what's novel about this scheme is that the only energy inputs are electrical power and "waste" heat. This definitely makes the possibility of ramping up nuclear energy production and using it to produce fuels which run in today's vehicles, without a massive shift in the fuel distribution and consumption infrastructure. You don't need idle capacity... you can expand the capacity as the demand increases. The nice thing about this system is that it plugs straight into the grid, and generally we grow the grid with demand. To remain carbon neutral we'd have to grow the grid with carbon neutral electricity production, and nuclear power certainly seems like a tantalizing option in that respect. Obviously the net energy balance of the whole process needs to be scrutinized, and compared to other processes which produce biofuels, such as this one: http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/12/solix_biofuelsc.html

When Google refused a federal subpoena to turn over search results as part of the DOJ's war on pornography, I was certainly on their side. And the DOJ didn't pursue it... wonder why. That as well: AT&T voluntarily gave the NSA access to their telecommunication records without the need for any warrant, and all done under executive order, in violation of FISA. The Electronic Freedom Foundation have filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T for their compliance in the matter. Bush is seeking immunity from just these sorts of lawsuits, and has vowed to veto any bill which does not include them.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037220/ Neuromancer, William Gibson's thoroughly unadaptable seminal cyberpunk classic, is being threatened with yet another movie adaptation. You may recognize my avatar as one of the multitude of awful looking Neuromancer book covers. The latest adaptation attempt (many have failed in the past) is by a no name director with a single feature film to his credit: Torque. I have not seen Torque, but judging from its critical reception there's not a lot to hope for. They've cast Hayden Christensen as the lead role, the down-and-out Case the Console Cowboy, who is presented with the opportunity to resume his status as one of cyberspace's premiere ICE breakers, so long as he can help a mysterious "individual" named Wintermute. Given Hayden Christensen's <sarcasm>excellent</sarcasm> performance as Anakin Skywaker in movies like Star Wars: Return of the Clones, I have <sarcasm>absolutely zero qualms he can pull off</sarcasm> the role of Case the Console Cowboy.

Why? (I happen to indirectly know Roger A. Pielke Jr, btw) That'd be the real hope: a carbon-neutral biofuel infrastructure which draws its power from fusion.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN16626583 At least temporarily... Bush and Congress are at an impasse: Congress refuses to grant ex post facto immunity to the telcos who participated in unconstitutional surveillance of American communcations. Bush, for his part, has refused to sign any bill which does not grant immunity to the telcos for misdeeds past. Bush insists: "House leaders chose politics over protecting the country -- and our country is at greater risk as a result." Yet he is the major impedance to the bill: Congress is refusing to grant immunity to the telcos, and won't pass a bill out of a fear of a veto. Maybe Bush should care more about "protecting the country" than sheltering the telcos from past misdeeds...

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/federal-lab-says-it-can-harvest-fuel-from-air/index.html?ref=science This is probably the most interesting scheme I've seen yet. Los Alamos claims it has the means to produce a carbon neutral fuel infrastructure, producing biofuels and other organic compounds from CO2 and water using electrically-driven chemical processes. The process seems ideally suited to work hand-in-hand with nuclear power plants, which would provide a carbon free source of electricity, and also hot air, from which CO2 can be extracted. The waste heat of the nuclear plant can also be harnessed for the process (or so I gather from the article). The result: carbon neutral biofuels that can work in today's diesel and E-85 vehicles. Awesome!

That's odd, considering he pushed through the changes forbidding torture to the Army Field Manual in the first place... changes that I guess he doesn't want to see applied to intelligence agencies.