December 2011
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“The power of the first laser was measured in Gillettes. In 1960, before there...”
– Three Smart Things about Lasers, Wired
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Iran's Hormuz Threat || Wall Street Journal →
So now we know the kind of sanctions that hit Iran’s regime where it really hurts. The U.S. and Europe are at last mustering the gumption to target Iran’s multibillion-dollar oil industry, and almost immediately Tehran is threatening to bring Persian Gulf tankers to a halt.
“If they impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the...
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Have We Met? Tracing Face Blindness to Its Roots... →
Those with prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, can see perfectly well, but their brains are unable to piece together the information needed to understand that a collection of features represents an individual’s face. The condition is a neurological mystery, but new research has shed light on this strange malady.
One of the keys to understanding face recognition, it seems, is ...
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Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas —...
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OWS Should Ask for Less Government || Veronique de... →
… However, they seem to miss the elephant in the room. Yes, corporations have influence over decisions made in Washington. Yes, it has led to many awful consequences for the economy as a whole. However, the real source of the problem is government intervention in the private sector — the bloated state’s ability to distribute rents, tax breaks, tax credits, and bailouts to its...
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White Winter Hymnal — Fleet Foxes
The...
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WatchComet Lovejoy (2011 W3) rising over Western Australia (via Universe Today)
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Vaclav Havel, living in truth || Washington Post →
[P]erhaps precisely because he was neither a rabble-rouser nor an ideologue burning with anger, Mr. Havel pioneered an entirely new form of political revolution — one that is as relevant in the tumultuous year of 2011 as it was when he first spelled it out in the mid-1970s. His simple but extraordinary idea was that the most effective way to defeat a totalitarian regime was for citizens to reject...
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Breaking the Kim Dynasty || Wall Street Journal →
Dictatorships tend to split when they are under economic and diplomatic pressure. The best policy going forward is not to offer new inducements in exchange for more promises of the kind Kim Jong Il always broke. China has wanted to keep the North as a client and buffer state, but this may be a moment when it too begins to rethink its interests in Pyongyang.
Whatever China’s choice, the...
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Czech playwright, ex-president Havel dies ||... →
Vaclav Havel wove theater into revolution, leading the charge to peacefully bring down communism in a regime he ridiculed as “Absurdistan” and proving the power of the people to overcome totalitarian rule.
Shy and bookish, with a wispy mustache and unkempt hair, the dissident playwright was an unlikely hero of Czechoslovakia’s 1989 “Velvet Revolution” after four...
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dies || Washington... →
Kim Jong Il, the strangely antic and utterly ruthless heir to North Korea’s Stalinist dictatorship, died of an apparent heart attack Saturday, state media reported Monday. He was said to be 69.
During his reign, he menaced the world with his nuclear ambitions and presided over a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of his subjects.
Mr. Kim formally succeeded his father, Kim Il Sung, in ...
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96 hours to the stone age: How quickly our... →
Today, we take for granted that we will have full Internet access and connectivity to the world 24/7/365 on our smartphones, tablets and notebooks. We expect to be able to check a sports score or connect with a loved one in 10 seconds or less.
However, we don’t really consider that our smartphones and wireless device are connected to cell sites and cell towers. Which in turn are connected to...
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