THESE MAKE ME SAD
- Ill-advised movie sequels – “Ill-advised” as in “crime against humanity.” Or at least “against culture.”
- Schneier on Security: Hand Grenades as Weapons of Mass Destruction – The devaluation of the term “weapons of mass destruction.” Read the comments for actual legal definitions — yeesh!
- The problem with the one-eye veil for women, and a… – The willingness of ideologues to tromp on any semblance of human liberty in order to make people comply with their beliefs never fails to amaze (and disgust) me.
- Nick Reynolds, RIP – Boing Boing – The short member of the Kingston Trio.
THESE MAKE ME THOUGHTFUL
- Who is “essential” during a pandemic? – Clearly the societal necessity of IT Directors has been greatly underestimated.
- Save a Tree – Shrink Your Sunday Bulletin – I can’t imagine doing a full-up service bulletin with all the text each week. That would be incredibly wasteful. We don’t force people to flip back and forth within the BCP, but we do create season service booklets that are used for 2-3 months.
- Bush’s sad finale | Reaping the whirlwind | The Economist – When The Economist proclaims your conservative presidency a failure, that’s pretty darned sad … for you. (And, I suppose, for the rest of us as innocent bystanders.)
- What’s missing from the oldest Bible – Pish-tosh — we all know the King James Bible is the final, ultimate, perfectly revealed Word of God, right?
- The J-Walk Blog: Christ As Magician – An interesting archaeological find, though not particularly decision-making in in particular directoin.
- Pam’s House Blend:: Gay or queer? – Um, you people settle it amongst yourselves and send me the memo. Meantime, I’ll try not to be linguistically offensive while writing in support of your rights.
- 317 – Tea As A North/South Litmus Test « Strange Maps – If it weren’t for slavery, I’ve little doubt that Sweet Tea would have been the eventual cause of a civil war.
- Obsidian Wings: Mark To Market – What I don’t understand about the current financial crisis could fill a book (or twelve), but this is an interesting article about “mark to market” vs “mark to model” asset pricing.
THESE MAKE ME HAPPY
- Barbarian Class Playtest – Wait! I already have characters figured out! No fair introducing new D&D 4E classes!
- Simon Says… – A clever way to deal with NPC generation in a game.
- Bailout Provides More Mental Health Coverage – NYTimes.com – Okay, earmarks = bad. But that they were able to slip this into the bailout bill is both remarkable and, I’ll say, a net gain.
- a new twist on alternate energy – Coolness. At least until Homeowner Associations get wind of it (so to speak) and ban them.
- A Is For Alignment: The Geek Alphabet – Probably a scosh sophisticated for folks who really need ABCs, but still cool.
- 314 – Watch the Road: World’s Earliest SatNav « Strange Maps – Way too cool — I’m surprised that Lord Peter Wimsey didn’t have one of these.
- 318 – The Semicolonial State of San Serriffe « Strange Maps – A greatly amusing story.
- Document sans nom – Helvetica Monopoly
- Texting drives viewing of subtitled movies? – An interesting idea — texting is making subtitles more acceptible, as are CNN-style TV tickers.
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I’m glad to see the Barbarian (Defender?) making its way forward, now we just need the Monk (Striker!) and Bard (Controller? . .Wizards need a little companionship) . . . .
On other notes: as part of my daily job I’m looking into Green Energy alternatives for all the buildings we control. This summer I attended a conference on Small Wind Power. One of the most interesting things I learned is that urban environments are TERRIBLE for producing wind power. We’ve all experienced the wind tunnel effect in city streets, but at the rooftop level the surrounding buildings create such tremendous sheer that almost all of the usable velocity is lost in random swirling.
There’s some (faint) hope that turbines like that you linked to may address some of that, but at the end of the day the best location for wind equipment is open air areas with wide expanses of flat or gently rolling landscape with minimal trees.
There is an ongoing urban wind study being done in london right now. Most of the urban turbines have very low useage, or have been turned off/removed due to quality of life issues (noise/vibration). Bottom line is that a single turbine in the country at less that 30′ height was producing more energy that all the urban turbines together.
I applaud people wanting to ad wind power, but the cities are custom made for Photovoltaics. All those roofs, every one of them should have a ‘sunflower’ style panel on it that follows the sun throughout the day.
Go green energy! (I have a coworker who has been off the grid at her home for over 20 years . . ..)
The Barbarian is evidently a melee striker — big hits, big damage, big mobility.
I’d agree with the prospect for wind turbines vs solar in cities. Suburbs, though, would seem a good prospect — much lower profiles. More trees, to be sure, but we get plenty of wind at our house.
No doubt! The suburbs should have solar and wind. I’m waiting to hear more about the new PV roof shingles, but the turbines should pop up like mushrooms!
I have been enamored with the PV shingles for years. I am glad our current roof has held on for a long as it has. Maybe when we finally replace it we can take advantage of the PV shingles. Because really, why wouldn’t you exploit the fact that Denver has more sunny days than San Diego or Miami. Also, I don’t care if it’s ugly I love the solar farm they are building at DIA. In my eyes it is much more attractive than the “Demon Horse”.