Wow, someday I’d love to live in a place like where Ethan & Rachel live.
Daily Kos points out that Patrick Moore, who bills himself as a Greenpeace cofounder and wrote the op-ed in the _Washington Post_ about the need for nuclear energy that I linked to a couple days ago, has for years been a highly paid lobbyist for various industries and companies that have questionable environmental records. The sentiment still feels sound to me, but be wary of paid influence peddlers shilling their wares.
Paul thinks Steve Pavlina’s overcoming procrastination is potentiall life-changing. Having read some similar suggestions over at 43folders, I suspect this sort of thing is included in the GTD philosophy.
For the lazyweb
Here’s a sort of strange question. Tonight after a talk the lack of good bus service made me decide to walk home from work, and in the process I realized that the 3.5 mile distance is probably just right for exercising. I’d love to run/jog to work some mornings when the weather is right. Problem is that I need to take my laptop, a change of clothes, and a towel along. I can’t think of any good way to do this while still being in a position to run effectively. My only thought is some sort of robot that can follow me, or perhaps throwing my bag on a bus and picking it up on the other end. Since my imagination is clearly way outside the parameters of this task, does anyone else have better ideas?
(One potentially obvious one is to take in extra clothes/towel to work on days that I ride the bus. This makes sense, but the question of transporting my laptop would still remain.)
The Air Force is all pissed off about the email chains with pictures of the hanger filling up with foam (previously covered here). Oh, boo hoo, your poor email system, your poor PR people, your busy, busy lives. Get over it, it was funny, no harm done. Sheesh.
Marine Corps captain Christopher H. Sheppard writes in the _Seattle Times_, having returned from his second tour in Iraq: “As I watched the Iraq war begin, I completely trusted the Bush administration. I thought we were going to prove all of the left-wing antiwar protesters and dissenters wrong. I thought we were going to make America safer. Regrettably, I acknowledge that it was I who was wrong.” (via Igor)
Patrick Moore, a cofunder of Greenpeace, makes the case for switching to nuclear energy. Like Paul, I agree almost completely, and I think new technology like pebble bed reactors are where much of our energy research should be directed. And as long as we’re going to keep using coal-fired plants, we should be doing a lot more to recapture the waste products and use them productively.
Losing my memory
As I try to optimize my computing experience I find myself watching the Mac Activity Monitor and just being blown away by the amount of RAM some applications require. The tiny SSHKeychain utility I use to keep my SSH keys open is currently taking a whopping 49MB of RAM, while the little WeatherDock is taking 26MB and MenuCalendarClock (a little calendar widget, as you might suspect) requires another 15MB. Even my battery monitor is taking 14MB! Seriously people? Seriously? What is it these apps are doing that could possibly require this much memory? Or are they just very badly written?
At Ellsworth Air Force Base, the test of the foam fire suppression system was supposed to go on for 15 seconds. It didn’t. When the foam filled the hanger to a height of two stories and the crew on the raised platform was up to their heads, they decided they’d better open the doors…
Review
Syriana
This synopsis contains comprehensive spoilers for _Syriana_.
Having finally seen this thought-provoking film and understood much but by no means all of it, I’m providing a fairly complete story synopsis that might serve to clarify things a bit. I really recommend seeing the film first, as it was quite good (and in storytelling somewhat similar to _Traffic_).
Syriana is a complex and layered film that in the end is concerned with only one thing: examining the political and human consequences of the oil trade. Early on, we meet Bob Barnes, a CIA agent who performs his duties without question or complaint in the service of his country, even though it has cost him his relationships with his wife and son. Bob is involved in an arms deal that goes wrong when one of the two shoulder-mounted missile launchers disappears into the arms of a mysterious blue-eyed Egyptian rather than blowing up and killing the targeted terrorists.
My first MacBook Pro had no noise problems whatsoever. So except for the constant kernel panics, it was great. My *new* MacBook Pro is perfect in every way except that it *does* have an incrediby annoying, very high-pitched CPU whine that gives me a headache. Daniel Jalkut has documented all of the various noise complaints exhibited by different MacBook Pro models and provided two potential solutions. The MagicNoiseKiller app solves the problem for me, which I think will give me back my sanity, at least as soon as the residual ringing in my ears goes away.
In a study of mock jury panels, mixed-race juries had longer, more accurate, and more in-depth deliberations. Why? White jurors performed better in mixed-race environments than on all-white juries. (via my new buddy(!) Anil)
“Like, I totally can’t wait for the Second Coming! All those people who didn’t pay their tithing are, like, going to burn! Their flesh will, like, SIZZLE. And the earthquakes and disease and famine, those are kinda sad and all, but totally necessary, to weed out the evil-doers. Those who are righteous when he comes won’t get hurt, though. Cool, huh?” Check out that picture. Just…wow.
Google just launched their calendar product, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect it to be — slick, simple, powerful, and very, very spiffy. Kevin says and I agree, it was best for us to give up on our (secret) calendar project when we did, because you just can’t compete with this kind of polish.
Serious upgrades
I went and bought myself a MacBook Pro. This is big news for me because it is a culmination of a lot of computer soul-searching which, for a guy who spends most of his waking hours in front of computers, is a pretty big deal. This is the story behind the path I have chosen.
Khoi Vinh does his own analysis of the price of cable TV and concludes that he doesn’t really need his cable subscription. Good for him!
Bruce Schneider clarifies the circumstances surrounding a “security leak” that made available to the public supposedly classified information about Air Force One and its missile defenses. In reality this sort of information has always been made public, as it is essential to helping first responers around the world react quickly, effectively, and safely to things like aircraft fires.
Caltech students reclaimed their stolen cannon from MIT on Monday. Everyone on both sides was a good sport about the whole thing and Caltech has promised prank revenge.
Seymour Hersh provides a long, in-depth, fascinating, terrifying, and probably highly accurate analysis of US thinking on Iran, nuclear development, and regime change. It sounds like President Bush is on another mission from god.
This 2001 _Wall Street Journal_ story explores how the NSA might be going about tapping underseas fiber-optic cables, an almost impossible task.