Vacation Time

I'll be going to Springfield, N.Y. for the 4th of July. (hometown) I plan to visit family and friends. Since many of these folks are far enough off the net to preclude a connection faster than snail mail, I'll save whatever posts I come up with for my return. Can the boy think without the background click and hum? Can lack of ubiquitous media drone produce withdrawl symptoms? I'll know soon enough. In the meantime I'm going to clear my link-list and pack.

• The G20's Twenty Agendas: Heads of state from the Group of Twenty (G20) advanced economies meet in Toronto on June 26 and 27 to discuss policies to balance global growth and strengthen global financial supervision. The meeting follows an early-June gathering of G20 finance ministers in Busan, South Korea, which stressed the need for fiscal tightening and "sustainable public finances."
• The Financial Times highlights a concern we had raised early on about the effort by BP to drill a relief well to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. While many analysts have acted as if the BP forecast, that the well would be completed by August, there is no reason to assume the initial effort will succeed, particularly at this depth, which is unprecedented for this effort.
• What the Earth Knows: Any serious conversation about the planet’s climate and our energy future must begin, paradoxically, with a backward look at geologic time. The reason for this is that the way forward is fogged by misunderstandings about the earth. Experts are little help in the constant struggle in this conversation to separate myth from reality, because they have the same difficulty, and routinely demonstrate it by talking past each other.
• Soviet Arlington: Though I had heard his name mentioned a time or two, I keep myself sufficiently out of touch with the FOX News/Weekly Standard/National Review crowd not to have known much of anything about Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret.). My first inkling that I’d not think highly of him came as I stood outside a ladies’ room at O’Hare, unintentionally eavesdropping on the forty-something man (hardly of a gentle nature) who spoke on the phone nearby.
• The Two Faces of the Tea Party: As a student in the exciting new field of Tea Party Studies, I’ve noticed that no one agrees on what the Tea Party actually is. Is the anti-Obama, anti-big government movement simply AstroTurf fabricated by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks? Is it a bunch of Birthers, Birchers, conspiracists, and white power misfits .. Or are the Tea Partiers nothing more than indulgent Boomers who combine 1960s social libertarianism with 1980s laissez-faire economics?

Hope you have a good Fourth of July.

News You Can Use

First the professional journalist reads the tweet. (just ignore the parody disclaimer on the right) Next, you publish a scathing article, demonstrating your insider connections, metahuman technical insight, and your heartfelt sympathy with the common man. (be sure to toss in a sidebar diddling your owners latest product - that pay review is getting closer) Finally the pay-off. To the blare of martial typewriter music, pneumatic Polly Perky does your story as the lede on tonight's TV news.

Via: Presurfer

Beware of Your Blender

Fox News reports:

That's right: your blender is under attack! Most mixers are self-contained and not hackable, but Siciliano says many home automation systems tap into appliances such as blenders and coffee machines. These home networks are then open to attack in surprising ways: A hacker might turn on the blender from outside your home to distract you as he sneaks in a back window, he warns.

Aw jeez, not the blender

Cindee and Pride

It's Cindee's birthday today. Happy and many more. It's also pride day. I have to admit I don't feel much connection to what has become a sell-o -thon. Buy Mr.S fetters for that edgy epater les bourgeois look. But tradition is tradition, so I'll probably tumble down Kearny street, take a couple of snapshots of folks celebrating their identity, realize that I still don't like large crowds, and mark it as being done for this year. I'm in the wrong demographic I suppose. (I'll smash the State after my morning coffee thank-you) I wonder what the Westboro Church will be doing this year? After their protests at military funerals and Fred Phelps' God hates Ireland speech, the TV cameras might be in short supply. They could always admire themselves on You Tube after editing out the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence laughing them off the stage. And speaking of the God-wacked:

• God Is Cursing Us With Bear Attacks For Failing To Follow The Bible: Last week, researchers at Yellowstone National Park trapped a Grizzly Bear, tranquilized it and fitted it with a radio collar. Shortly after the bear awoke, it attacked and killed a man who had apparently "ignored warning signs posted advising hikers to avoid the area because of the likelihood of a dangerous bear encounter."
• Rev. James David Manning posts a video with La Guns about the revolution.

Next is a bit of history:

• This fascinating essay, written by King Hussein’s grandfather King Abdullah, appeared in the United States six months before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the article, King Abdullah disputes the mistaken view that Arab opposition to Zionism (and later the state of Israel) is because of longstanding religious or ethnic hatred.

A few computer and tech articles:

• The internet, Everything you ever need to know: A funny thing happened to us on the way to the future. The internet went from being something exotic to being boring utility, like mains electricity or running water – and we never really noticed. So we wound up being totally dependent on a system about which we are terminally incurious.
• The Terminator Comes to Wall Street: You’ve seen this story in countless Hollywood science-fiction movies, from The Terminator to War Games. Scientists develop a sophisticated computer or robot to assure the nation’s security, but something goes wrong and the technology itself mutates into a catastrophic threat. Unfortunately, the U.S. economic system now finds itself crippled by a real-life technology-gone-wrong story line.
• Large Cryogenic Gravitational-wave Telescope: We have waxed poetic about gravitational-wave detectors before. These instruments are truly amazing feats of engineering, with the power to unlock a whole new window on our Universe. LCGT would be even more impressive than the current instruments.

A short story.

• The Exterminator's Want-ad, by Bruce Sterling: So, I'm required to write this want-ad in order to get any help with my business. Only I have, like, a very bad trust rating on this system. I have rotten karma and an awful reputation. "Don't even go there, don't listen to a word he says: because this guy is pure poison."

And, of course, the week's politics. Eris must be working overtime or The Twilight Zone was a documentary or all three.

• Geopolitics in the Raw: I have been wondering for a while just what we — the west in general — are doing in Afghanistan. Iraq was pretty obvious: oil. (Don't listen to the mouth, watch the hands.)
• The Failed State Index: The 10 states that fill out the top ranks of this year’s Failed States Index — the world’s most vulnerable nations — are a sadly familiar bunch. Shattered Somalia has been the No. 1 failed state for three years running, and none of the current top 10 has shown much improvement.
• SCOTUS: The question at issue was whether Washington state is within its rights to require the disclosure of signatures given to a petition to get an initiative on the ballot. The argument made by the anti-same sex marriage group that the First Amendment required that the signatures be kept private, to put it mildly, not very convincing. In essence, the argument seems to dovetail uncomfortably with Sarah Palin’s, er, innovative contention that the First Amendment should protect her from any criticism.
• The Very Angry Tea-Party: Sometimes it is hard to know where politics ends and metaphysics begins: when, that is, the stakes of a political dispute concern not simply a clash of competing ideas and values but a clash about what is real and what is not, what can be said to exist on its own and what owes its existence to an other.

 

The Cockroach Hat

Tor Books has put a short story by Terry Bisson, The Cockroach Hat on its website. If you want your Kafka marinated in Southern gothic, here you be.

Gates vs. Jobs

I went to the bank yesterday to see about a loan.

Sad & Useless

Music of the Sphere

Sound of the Sun (courtesy Richard Morton) by University of Sheffield

Scientists at Sheffield University in the U.K. have released what amounts to a recording of what you would hear if you could stand inside the solar corona - the upper layer of the Sun's atmosphere - and it turns out that what you'd hear is music

Link & Video Via: The Presurfer