2008 is great!

It's both the international year of the Potato and Sanitation!

Ergonomics

One stick in my life's craw is ergonomics; If I can never unshackle myself from computer use, it will become imperative that the ergonomic situation is improved. I am hunched and my arms are thin and strained; If I'm constantly sitting at a computer I start developing tendonitis. It has happened to me at a few office jobs in the past; I experience numbness in my arms, and then shooting pain along the ulnar nerves that I feel up into my ring and little fingers. And then I can't use a computer for weeks, have to go through physical therapy etc. Mac is rumored to be working on a new interface this year. If I could work a computer like a theremin, like an interpretetive dancer , well, it'd be the bee's knees.

Operation Paperclip and The V-2 Rocket: The Spoils of War

I was never aware before of Operation Paperclip, the US operation to collect Nazi scientists for own use. I was never a good student of history, but I just can't believe I never heard of this, or I hadn't retained it if I had. This is from the V-2 article:

The V-2 rocket (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2) was the first ballistic missile and first man-made object to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight,[3] the progenitor of all modern rockets and a direct precursor of the Saturn V moon rocket. Over 3,000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets in World War II. As many as 20,000 slave labourers died constructing V-2s compared to the 7,000 military personnel and civilians that died from the V-2's use in combat.[4]

It makes little sense to put Hitler in a class of his own when we have benefited so much by what he started. Just the sound of the last sentence is bloodcurdling, consciously or not, there's a disturbing chord in the tone of the writing: Well, despite the deaths of so many "slave labourers" there was a "gain" of 7,000 enemies killed. Yes the enemy in this case was the Allied Forces; but nonetheless the V-2 showed great promise as a killing device.

I know I'm reading too much into a wikipedia article. And I know that the technological advances of Germans were mutually sought out by the Soviets because we had to keep pace with one another. There's something about the idea of reaping benefits from the most vicious of legacies ever that is so...despairing. But maybe I've watched too much Star Trek; maybe it's my naïveté. It would be better if I looked at the continuum of human history as one giant war. There has never been peace, and there may never be peace. As I write these words people are dying, have been dying, will be. Satellites are been shot up and out of space. The US corporate-military structure is building up its arsenal for the next wars with the world. It will never stop in my lifetime.

20,000 Bullets

The cast of A Better Tomorrow II thanks you:
Chow Yun Fat
Leslie Cheung
Ti Lung
Dean Shek

We've almost hit a 20,000 plays--that's almost equal to the number of bullets shot in the final shoot-out in the movie!

And the cast in turn thanks you with a free podcast with a ton of our music, presented to you by Meltmaster's Raw From Selection:

Maple leaf soliders..

This article is disturbing, I think. Is this proof that we don't have the capacity (in armed and trained forces) to protect our selves. Will this lead to Canadian/United States tensions beyond the silly jokes we know......Has anyone heard about this agreement with soliders being allowed to cross borders.....

Writing a Good Hook: Fuck it

I'm sick of hooks. I don't want my students to write good hooks. I want them to write good essays. If you have a good idea, it'll hook me.

I don't know if I could write an essay to save my life, but hooks are stupid.

I'm grading Korean essays and they are graded on the base of having a good hook and a good thesis. Both are equally valued, mind you. My thesis: This is illustrative of our (increasingly shared) endemic superficial culture that values shininess. And it's crap; and it makes me weep. This is what is wrong in my world; my tiny fixed perspective looking at the world from inside the microcosmic hollow-spere; and the little pinprick hook-stars are ugly and make my eyes bleed sadness.

Wikipedia

Had you checked my entry as of late? It's filling up with tasty details.



Or perhaps I should ask, have you check yours?

What's that you say. Oh, you don't have one. Hmmmmm. How curious.

Now we got a name for them

Old World Babbler

Sausage

I'm pretty sure it won't eat your computer.

Fashion show of the damned

McCain's A Commie: Vote McCain

"...on the contrary, I discovered that nothing is more liberating in life than to fight for a cause that encompasses you but does not include you alone. And that has made, my friends, all the difference in the world--all the difference."

Who does he think he is? JFK, FDR? Can we get him down to three initials? John the III. Christ, no wonder the base hates him. He talks like Jesus, except not about Jesus. Well, I still salute him, GW style:


Looks like a job for Fantasy Mission Force. Go!

This is wrong

Literature should not be used to inspire hope. It should be used to validate pessimism and the lost dream of actualizing human potential. Sham culture.

George Carlin...

Finally, he's edgy enough for me.

well, I like the first half. But then he gets preachy.

If I'm voting for Hillary...

...it's not because of Stan Lee and Cher!

The Less Famous Cromwell

wikipedia:

I amongist other have indured a Parlyament which contenewid by the space of xvij hole wekes, wher we communyd of warre, pease, stryffe, contencyon, debatt, murmure, grudge, riches, poverte, penwrye, trowth, falshode, justyce, equyte, discayte, oppressyon, magnanymyte, actyvyte, force, attempraunce, treason, murder, felonye, consyle[ation], and also how a commune welth myght be edeffyed and contenewed within our realme. Howbeyt in conclusion we have done as our predecessors have bene wont to doo, that ys to say as well as we myght, and lefte wher we began.

Gone is the apprentice, in comes the master

McCain and Kristol's magnificent 10,000 year reign.

via cursor.

News from Laogzed

Laogzed sends his regards. He also has some issues he wants to bring up with the A&S community. Namely issues of wealth, disparity of wealth, notions of class, and other things. To further the argument, whether for clarity or obfuscuity, I just want to say that I don't have a political opinion about rich people. I just have an emotion. But this emotion, namely, hate, or envy, or whatever you want to call it is not rational. It is a self-hatred, because I am among the rich; although not among the super-rich. And if there was a global catastrophe I'm not sure what side of the wedge I'd fall into. There is a great deal of money in my extended family--but we are not aristocrats. We don't have keys to the underground tunnels. So maybe that's what I really hate, is the ones with the keys to underground tunnels. Laogzed will have something to say about that as well, I'm sure! Hoping to get him in the studio soon.

The Party of Ideas

Atrios posted this.