This is very, very cool. Especially in light of this :::
The Navy intends to deploy an energy efficient “Great Green Fleet” carrier strike group consisting of ships powered either by nuclear energy or biofuels with an attached air wing of fighter jets fueled entirely by biofuels.
As Professor Reynolds would say ::: “Faster please!”
Well, Al Gore’s PowerPoint Slideshow/Movie is opening today, and it got a glowing review in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The following is more “food for thought” on the subjects addressed by Gore’s film:
Instapundit — “SO I GUESS KYOTO WORKED, THEN: “Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase.” (from the Telegraph, UK)
“UPDATE: Canada is abandoning Kyoto. Just when it was starting to work!”
On the “Inconvenient” Movie itself:
From _Slate_:
“…This raises the troubling fault of An Inconvenient Truth: its carelessness about moral argument. Gore says accumulation of greenhouse gases “is a moral issue, it is deeply unethical.” Wouldn’t deprivation also be unethical? Some fossil fuel use is maddening waste; most has raised living standards. The era of fossil energy must now give way to an era of clean energy. But the last century’s headlong consumption of oil, coal, and gas has raised living standards throughout the world; driven malnourishment to an all-time low, according to the latest U.N. estimates; doubled global life expectancy; pushed most rates of disease into decline; and made possible Gore’s airline seat and MacBook, which he doesn’t seem to find unethical. The former vice president clicks up a viewgraph showing the human population has grown more during his lifetime than in all previous history combined. He looks at the viewgraph with aversion, as if embarrassed by humanity’s proliferation. Population growth is a fantastic achievement—though one that engenders problems we must fix, including inequality and greenhouse gases. Gore wants to have it that the greener-than-thou crowd is saintly, while the producers of cars, power, food, fiber, roads, and roofs are appalling. That is, he posits a simplified good versus a simplified evil. Just like a movie!”
“The Moral Flaws of Al Gore’s _An Inconvenient Truth_”
Brief “Inconvenient” responses (video):
(60 second spot questioning the science behind Gore’s film):
“Glaciers”
“Captain Planet”
“If you don’t fly commercial, don’t talk to me about greenhouse gases or conservation.” (Instapundit, again)
A comprehensive and humorous look at “Inconvenient” that (among other things) questions the moral congruence of Gore promoting “Inconvenient” by flying all over the country in his private Gulfstream jet (which on a single one-way LA-DC trip burns as much fuel as a Hummer does in a year). Also looks at some of the recent Hollywood Celeb “Environmental Ads” featuring Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow and others…
More writings:
A second look at Climate Change data in the WSJ.
Finally, here is Michael Crichton who posits that Environmentalism is our modern, western fundamentalist religion.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater. The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy’s gigantic Cold War–era Ohio-class submarines. These formerly nuke-toting subs have become less useful in a military climate evolved to favor surgical strikes over nuclear stalemates, but the Cormorant could use their now-vacant tubes to provide another unmanned option for spying on or destroying targets near the coast.
One thing’s for sure–no one wants to meet us in the traditional battlespace. No one sane.
Oh man. Check this out. And have fun. I sure did. Chat on!
Hubris demonstrates his analytical and systemic prowess over at INDC Journal in this post on blogging.
More gorgeousness here.
So much for this super “breakthrough” that was being trumpeted ’round the globe. Check it and all the updates at the Marmot’s Hole. Stunning.
UPDATE: Instapundit has more on this, including what might be further fallout if the allegations turn out to be true, and the report of the vehement denials and promises to produce proof by the researcher in question, Hwang Woo-suk: “South Korea’s best known scientist said Friday he stands by his breakthrough stem cell research despite a barrage of fraud allegations, and vowed to prove the findings within days.” – updated by rich 12/17/05
I don’t always agree with everything that the Washington Post’s George Will writes. But I certainly appreciate and applaud the fact that he, essentially, “gets it.”
Take this excerpts from today’s column “Paralyzed by Collectivism” (see, right there — fantastic title):
The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society’s balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals’ lives. This is done in the name of equality.
People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.
Therefore, one of the collectivists’ tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern — the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. They stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.
Will’s piece today addresses environmentalism and energy production. It’s a very worthwhile — if brief — read. So by all means, go read the whole thing.
A Google engineer has warned that if the performance per watt of today’s computers doesn’t improve, the electrical costs of running them could end up far greater than the initial hardware price tag.
Check it here.
For a couple of years now, I’ve been hanging around “The Wall” — a local EZ Board message board dedicated to San Francisco Politics which is run by a gent who goes by the handle Able Dart. I’ve gotten grist for more than one Golden Gate item from hanging around that place, I’ll tell you.
Well, look out, because now The Wall has entered the blogosphere. I’d encourage anybody with even a passing interest in San Francisco politics and/or culture to go give it a look right now.
Able Dart’s most recent post on the new Wall blog concerns the puerile San Francisco Police Video Scandal that’s the obsession of the moment for our local media outlets. Local pols, journalists and “activists” are foaming at the mouth and spinning around in frantic little circles, while prognosticators are taking odds on which heads will roll and when. Here’s the lead from The Wall:
It seems that this city has to have a police scandal of some kind every few years, which is then used to try and pry some changes inside a hidebound department, but usually only ends up with the replacement of a politically hapless police chief.
The newest scandal, of course, is about a series of blue humor videos produced for a Christmas party at Bayview station. The videos feature a number of sociocultural stereotypes reinforced by the basic nature of police work. The police officer/videographer made the mistake of putting some of the more humorous clips on a website, and then the leaks to the press and Mayor’s Office came-a-flowing.
There is nothing new about this phenomenon, nor about political bluenoses making a scandal out of it. What is truly unfortunate about this particular case is the timing, which seems rather deliberate.
Many people who are not police officers will find some of the imagery in these videos offensive. The question comes however, whether it should even be judged by standards outside the environment of what police work has become…
So check out The Wall and read the rest of this excellent piece, which has a lot to say about “Community Policing” and what gets noticed by the media. You’ll probably want to make The Wall a regular stop. I can see myself linking to them on a fairly regular basis — if their first few days of operation are any indication, The Wall will soon be essential reading for any SF observer.
Plus, you gotta love a guy who uses the term “hidebound” in the very first sentence one of his inaugural posts.
THE sex drug Viagra can cut the physical effects of stress on the heart by as much as 50 per cent, according to new research.
Normally used to treat impotence, it was found to be effective when treating simulated stress as a result of emotional problems or exercise, and the scientists behind the work said it could be developed as a treatment for heart patients.
Professor David Kass, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said his team’s research into sildenafil citrate, which is sold under the Viagra trade name, showed for the first time that it did have an effect on the human heart.
“We [previously] had no firm evidence as to whether or how this therapy might work in the human heart. Our latest research provides firm evidence this drug does indeed have an important impact on the heart,” he said.
“Sildenafil effectively puts a ‘brake’ on chemical stimulation of the heart. Knowing more about the effects of sildenafil on heart function will allow for safer evaluation of its use as a treatment for heart problems.”
In the study, reported in the journal Circulation yesterday, the scientists gave 35 healthy men and women with an average age of 30 a dose of an adrenaline-like chemical to simulate the effect of stress.
They experienced a 150 per cent increase in the force of their heart contractions.
“This stimulation is similar to the way the nervous system normally increases heart function when triggered by emotional or exercise stress, or in diseases such as heart failure,” Prof Kass said.
When the group received a second injection, the increase in heartbeat was reduced by 50 per cent among those also given Viagra.
Read the rest here.
The CIA.
This is a very useful little link for those who ride San Francisco’s Muni public transit system.
And even if you don’t ride Muni, check it out anyway — there may be something like this coming to your community, soon.
This site is even more useful if you’ve got a mobile internet device of some kind (Laptop, Treo, etc.)
I saw this in my San Francisco Chronicle this morning, and had thought to say something about it later today.
But then I cracked up reading Brian Tiemann’s remarks over at Peeve Farm, and I had to pass those along, as well:
Hello from the 21st century, wish you were here
Wow.Thanks a lot, Garry. I would have thought this was beneath you, but… I guess you’ve been digging for material so long, there’s nothing left down there.Y’know, I think maybe he’s just jealous of people who can do journalism and hold down day jobs at the same time. Lord knows he doesn’t meet many in the MSM.
By Jeff Jarvis [downloads a Windows Media(.wmv) file] of the Buzz Machine
By many of the leaders of the best RSS apps. Check it here.
Force fields could keep lunar astronauts safe from radiation. Check it here.
…or for Pajamas Media. Instapundit says he wants some of these for bloggers:
As video cameras, and digital storage devices (like the iPod), grow smaller and cheaper, they have become useful as a military intelligence tool. The latest example of this is a lightweight video camera that can be attacked to a helmet, and the video stored on a 30 gigabyte hard drive the size of an iPod. That provides enough storage for 2-46 hours of video (depending on the resolution.)
It was civilian security personnel, former military people, who first started doing this sort of thing. Small vidcams attached to the dashboard, were used to photograph a mission. Reviewing the tapes later would often reveal an attempted attack, or some other danger that needed to be studied, and dealt with in the future. Now a British company, Double Vision (DV), is producing wearable vidcam systems for police, journalists, military personnel and athletes.
The Marmot has a post that links to an article he calls a MUST READ. It is in Wired Here.
Here is the sample he gives:
Even today, people talk about the “voluntary incineration” at Gumi. A drab factory town in south-central Korea, Gumi is home to one of Samsung’s biggest plants. A decade ago, the company was best known for budget air conditioners and low-end TVs. Its leader, Kun-hee Lee, had grander ambitions, but when he sent out Samsung’s new wireless phones as his 1995 New Year’s gift, word came back that they didn’t work. So that March he paid a visit to Gumi.
At Lee’s command, the factory’s 2,000 employees donned headbands labeled Quality First and assembled in a courtyard. There they found their entire inventory piled in a heap – cell phones, fax machines, nearly $50 million worth of equipment. A banner before them read Quality Is My Pride. Beneath it sat Lee and his board of directors. Ten workers took the products one by one, smashed them with hammers, and threw them into a bonfire. Before it was over, employees were weeping.
Ritual purification at the command of a heroic leader is an ancient and powerful tradition in this part of the world. With a few superficial changes, this whole scene could have played in a Zhang Yimou costume epic. Certainly it had the desired effect: After Lee’s visit to Gumi, shoddiness was not an option. Ki-tae Lee, then the Gumi factory manager and now head of Samsung’s mobile telecom division, personally tests new models by hurling them against a wall or dropping them from a second-story window. Once he even ran over a handset with his car. It still worked.
Kun-hee Lee’s ambition was straightforward: He wanted to transform his company into the world’s top consumer electronics brand – the place that makes the coolest stuff. A decade later, he’s just about done it. Samsung is ranked number 21 among the world’s top brands by the consulting outfit Interbrand, just one notch below Sony. In sales, Samsung has shot to number three behind Matsushita and Sony in consumer electronics and is fighting Motorola for the number two spot behind Nokia in cell phones. Samsung is also the world’s leading manufacturer of flash memory and flat-panel screens, two of the core technologies of the digital era. And it’s the most profitable tech enterprise on the planet, with a cool $10 billion in earnings last year – more even than Microsoft.
Read it all for it is good and inspiring.
We are moving to a new hosting service and attempting to keep the DB of previous posts intact. Since we are not really geeks–we just play geeks on tv–this is slightly more challenging than walking and chewing gum simultaneously.
DB or no DB…either way, the migration should be complete by Monday and more frequent posting shall recommence.
Rupert Murdoch, King of Media, said:
“I BELIEVE too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers,” Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media companies, told the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week. No wonder that people, and in particular the young, are ditching their newspapers. Today’s teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings “don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important,” Mr Murdoch said, “and they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel.” And yet, he went on, “as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably, complacent.”
The Economist has some analysis. Jeff Jarvis thinks it’s a tipping point. Glenn Reynolds agrees
Well, I shot out to the East Coast for a quickie weekend visit — starting with an eeearrrrrlllly flight on Friday morning. Which is why you haven’t been hearing from me for a couple of days. While on my trip, I was dismayed to find that TreoBlogging — posting to the blog using my Treo 600 Smartphone — did NOT work as I’d hoped it would. Quite surprising, actually — I had successfully tested out TreoBlogging a couple of times before The Golden Gate went live just under five weeks ago. (Aside: hey! We’ve been doing this for a whole month, now!)
Anyhow, on my trip, I found to my great dismay that the text I’d enter would get inexplicably cut off or munged with garbage characters as it was published out to the site. Attempts to clean up or extend such posts after the fact were frustratingly unsucessful. What happened? Well, I’m not sure. But what’s become annoyingly clear is that for posts of less than 80 characters or so (like my test posts), it works fine — the problem crops up in posts which are longer than ~80 characters! Dang! So, that’s why there was no TreoBlogging from me over the weekend. I’ll continue to work on this. I’d love to have totally 24/7 mobile blogging ability that’s as close as my mobile phone and not dependent on WiFi acess and all that entails.
So, this post is partly a report and partly a request for help. In short: does anybody out there have any experience posting to a blog via their Treo? Please shoot me a personal communication. TreoBlogging will be a very cool functionality, once I can get it to work correctly.
As for the trip itself, it involved family and, yes, baseball. And it was GREAT — apart from the technical snafu already described.
UPDATE: I found a couple of other mentions of TreoBlogging on Google. Interestingly, these all seem to be test posts!