February 2009
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Passionfish →
A week ago, Lisa and I took Mom to this restaurant to celebrate her birthday. The food is divine.
January 2009
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Puppy Bowl V →
The best sporting event of the year is back this Sunday! Puppy Bowl V will begin with Pepper the Parrot singing the national anthem, then the puppies take the field. The Kitty Half-Time Show is back too.
I legitimately cannot express how much I love that the Puppy Bowl exists in this world.
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WatchGo to a full screen view. It’s magical.
Via kottke.
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The Serious Need for Play -- Scientific American →
[A] lack of opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play can keep children from growing into happy, well-adjusted adults. “Free play,” as scientists call it, is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress and building cognitive skills such as problem solving. Research into animal behavior confirms play’s benefits and establishes its evolutionary importance: ultimately, play may...
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Gates Takes Aim at Procurement -- Ares →
Defense Secretary Gates come out swinging this morning during his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, telling the assembled Senators that even though fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are the biggest issues facing the DoD in the near future, the Pentagon’s broken procurement system looms large in his crosshairs …
He cited the “longstanding, systemic problems” and...
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Let's Have Flexible Armed Forces -- Wall Street... →
By law, the military is responsible for deciding how to fight — organizing strategy, training units, and developing doctrine. But the military owes civilian leaders the capability to advance U.S. interests against the entire spectrum of conflict. This, as we see from looking back at the past few decades, is essential for healthy civil-military relations today.
As far as strategy is...
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New Blackbird Reading -- IMINT and Analysis →
One of the most interesting and researched topics in aviation history is the Lockheed Blackbird family of aircraft. Recently, three new books have been released, taking advantage of newly declassified information to shed new light on some of the more sinister aspects of these aircraft.
I protest the characterization of the SR-71 Blackbird as sinister! It is a plane of grace and thrilling...
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Fictional Moldovan Soccer Phenom Tells All --... →
McDonnell kept poking around. He found that the player had originated in a series of fake AP stories posted to forums and blog comment sections, as if they’d been copied and pasted there. Taken together, these formed the droll chronicle of a temperamental young talent, already a regular for the Moldovan national team as a teen, who was convinced of his own greatness—”I Will Destroy...
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The Stimulus Trap -- The Weekly Standard →
The new political realities dictate that compromise, not confrontation, is the way forward. At least where the economy is concerned. At least for now. So, to that end, conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, need to recognize that they may have to accept things that they do not like in order for the economy to return to normal. For conservatives and Republicans that means...
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Intelligence Agencies' Databases Set to Be Linked... →
The initiative grew out of discussions more than a year ago between the Pentagon’s intelligence chief and Mr. McConnell’s top deputy, who were concerned that military and civilian intelligence data couldn’t be easily tapped. They asked the chief information officers at the six largest intelligence agencies to develop a solution. Over the summer, the officers began to sketch out...
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WatchMore puppy playtime.
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WatchSilly Teddy is silly. And Kirby has to join the game, as ever.
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Obama Staff Arrives to White House Stuck in Dark... →
More proof that government is a dinosaur:
One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were...
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In From the Cold: What's New in Space →
While the maneuver was used to inspect another American satellite, the implications of the Mitex experiment are clear: Since the U.S. is now demonstrating the ability to do such up close rendezvous and inspection of American spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, it means USAF now has at least a “call up capability” to do the same to non-U.S. spacecraft like those from Russia and China....
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Top Secret: What Did That Delta IV Heavy Take into... →
Last weekend’s successful Delta IV Heavy launch will come as a relief to the security services operating the top secret satellite as launches have fallen behind schedule through failures and technical challenges. These spy satellites are critical to the White House and Pentagon, as the information gathered by USA 202 aid military decisions and shape foreign policy. In this case, it is...
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Sell-Off Is Sobering Welcome From Wall Street ||... →
The Dow Jones industrial average yesterday fell below 8,000, shedding 4 percent, its bleakest performance on any Inauguration Day since the index was started 124 years ago. Nasdaq and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index both plunged more than 5 percent.
Disillusioned investors fled financial companies as fresh evidence mounted that the industry’s problems are larger than...
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How to destroy the Earth →
This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I (Sam Hughes) can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets;...
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A Young Mad Scientist's First Alphabet Blocks →
Like many of you, we are concerned about the state of science education in the public school system, especially in the lower grades. Specifically, we have noticed that there is absolutely no training in the K-6 grades that prepares students to become mad scientists. In this competitive 21st-century world, the need for mad scientists will only increase, but the lack of basic education in primary...
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From a Visionary English Physicist, Self-Adjusting... →
The glasses, which are manufactured in China, are not sleek. In fact, he acknowledged, “detractors call them ugly.” He said the design can be improved, but the current model looks like something from the back of Woody Allen’s closet — thick dark frames with round lenses. The glasses work on the principle that the more liquid pumped into a thin sac in the plastic lenses,...
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