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I’m looking forward to the day that they can 3D-print a car. Unfortunately, the government will probably mandate that it be a hybrid.

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Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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Thank you, Walmart.

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It’s time for 3d printing to address the Gothic.  And the first instance has already appeared, with an artist crafting lovely human skulls.

We report, you decide.

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Service set identifiers, or SSIDs, are essentially the network names that people give to their wireless networks. It turns out many Americans–and people across the world–are turning to SSIDs as a unique way to express their political sentiments. Much in the same way a yard sign pronounces to the world your political proclivities, so too can the naming of your SSID.

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Grab a coffee, add two sugars, and check the news on your tablet: you’ve just helped kill off a species in a country you might never have heard of.

Thank God. I was afraid I’d never have an opportunity to make a difference.

As much as a third of global species threats are due to global trade, the research finds. This is a huge shift, the researchers say, compared to a pre-globalised world, where many species threats were localized (due, for example, to local demands for food, fuel and living space).

We have the technology.

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I like it. It has texture, and scope.

In a world of Nanny Bloombergs, magnificent achievement is still possible.

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I totally want one of these.

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Blind spots have long been a common (and dangerous) part of driving a car, but a new patent awarded to Drexel University in Philadelphia could help make them a thing of the past. Dr. R. Andrew Hicks has created a mirror design that is able to triple your field of view without drastic image distortion. By using a mathematical algorithm first described by Dr. Hicks in 2008, the mirror acts like a disco ball, in the sense that light reflected off of it is bounced in different directions. The difference in this instance is that the mirrors are so close, and so finely tuned, that light is refracted across a smooth surface at precisely controlled angles.

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Doubt that it’s original to The Other McCain, but that’s where I saw it first.

Extra special: ‘Modern Liberalism is an alliance of the Pointy Haired Boss and Wally against Dilbert and Alice.’

And that’s the truth.

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America is very fortunate these days in having a broad range of very highly intelligent (and very highly educated) field-grade officers who spend their spare time thinking through variations on existing (and prior) military doctrine and using the excellent technical tools we now have to work through simulations of their ideas in action. America is even more fortunate in having a military establishment who value these people and their approach, and listen to them with  respect.

OneSTDV saves everyone a lot of time.

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

Of course, left-wing blogs do exactly the same thing — but they have no sense of humor about it. Nyah nyah….

James Taranto has a dark horse for you to bet on. Or is that racist?

Nobody is challenging Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries this year–and is doing surprisingly well. One of the reasons some commentators thought Obama would be a shoo-in for re-election is that like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, he drew no serious primary opposition as an incumbent president. By contrast, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bush père were challenged by Reagan, Ted Kennedy and Pat Buchanan respectively. Lyndon Johnson abandoned his 1968 re-election bid after Eugene McCarthy’s surprisingly strong showing in New Hampshire and Robert F. Kennedy’s late entry.

We now have seen Obama held under 60% by a slate of three candidates–antiabortion extremist Randall Terry, federal prison inmate Keith Judd and Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe–not to mention Nobody. Unlike the recently re-elected presidents, Obama does not have the full support of his party.

Hey, I’d vote for Nobody over Obama.

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SittingAround, the new service that allows parents to quickly and easily find and schedule a babysitter online, is now getting their sitters clients equipped with Square credit card readers. CEO Erica Zidel tells us that, starting now, all sitters are being offered a free Square dongle as a part of the signup process on the website, and can then indicate whether or not they accept credit cards in their online profile. Parents, meanwhile, can now search and hire sitters based on the payment method they accept.

We have the technology.

And there was a great cry throughout the land: PUT … THE CANDLE … BACK!

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very weekday in recent months, fancy-food trucks have been rumbling into the gigantic freight elevator of the Starrett-Lehigh Building at 601 West 26th Street in West Chelsea. After being hoisted aloft, they roll out into the concrete truck bays on the upper floors of the 81-year-old, 19-story commercial building. There, they post menus and proceed to sell inventive meals to office workers and their guests.

The upper class discover the conveniences of the lower class. Progress? We report, you decide.

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A cause we can all get behind. Jeff is, of course, one of our Recommended Writers (see right).

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Points to note:

1. The guy is a foreigner. Foreigners value the classics. Native-born Americans do not. Used to be that Americans would do something like this. No longer.
2. The guy is middle-aged. Young people’s idea of ‘the classics’ is Seinfeld.
3. No whining about being poor and needing to have the taxpayer pay for his schooling. He saw a great deal and took advantage of it. I’ll trade him for any two Kennedys in a heartbeat.

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Mike Kinde, writer for the site Ideas Illustrated, has created a project that visualizes the etymology of the English words used in various passages — a sports article, a medical article, a United Nations document, Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” and Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

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US government funded scientists have measured the speed of glaciers in Greenland as they move down to the sea over the past ten years, and discovered that – while the glaciers have speeded up somewhat – there’s no indication that this will mean major sea level rises.

Well, shucks. What’s a global warming alarmist to do?

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This actually looks pretty useful — at least until the checkout people in Target and Kroger can be broken of the habit of putting each item purchased in its own separate plastic bag.

Check it out. And drool.

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Boyer describes his course as an “Intro to the Planet” that brings “the average completely uninformed American” up to speed on world issues. His approach? Decentralize the rigid class format by recreating assessment as a gamelike system in which students earn points for completing assignments of their choosing from many options (1,050 points earns an A, and no tasks, not even exams, are required). Saturate students with Facebook and Twitter updates (some online pop quizzes are announced only on social media). Keep the conversation going with online office hours.

Biden on Iran: “I Promise You, the President Has A Big Stick”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Woolrich, a 182-year-old clothing company, describes its new chino pants as an elegant and sturdy fashion statement, with a clean profile and fabric that provides comfort and flexibility.

And they are great for hiding a handgun.

The company has added a second pocket behind the traditional front pocket for a weapon. Or, for those who prefer to pack their gun in a holster, it can be tucked inside the stretchable waistband. The back pockets are also designed to help hide accessories, like a knife and a flashlight.

The chinos, which cost $65, are not for commandos, but rather, the company says, for the fashion-aware gun owner. And Woolrich has competition. Several clothing companies are following suit, building businesses around the sharp rise in people with permits to carry concealed weapons.

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-Great definition of “nerds”: “I’ve come to the conclusion that “nerdy” translates to, “An item or activity pursued by men that isn’t directly related to attracting or providing for women.”” For some reason, I have a visceral dislike of nerds and overly smiley, nice men.

-Predicting today’s news: Someone was killed by someone else over some conflict in some country. In other news, someone had sex with someone else when they weren’t supposed to.

-Twitter is populated by bots and people following other people so that other people follow them. I have a feeling no one actually reads anyone else’s tweets.

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Is your office less like a workplace and more like a battlefield? Head into the day prepared with the Bolt Action Tactical Pen ($50). Built from anodized milled aluminum, it features a bolt action mechanism that opens and closes the pen tip, an integrated clip, and a flat head in case all the goofing around becomes an actual, “I need to stab someone in the eye” battle.

For all your merc-wannabe needs.

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For example, c-Jump — a board game that teaches the basics of programming. Some of the spaces you’ll land on in the course of your journey down the mountain include “goto jump;” and “switch (x) {“. Then there’s CPU Wars, for the three people out there that think Magic: The Gathering is too mainstream.

Freeberg has created a useful new word, as is his wont.

Real science knows what has been demonstrated after the research is done. Red-dot science knows what has been proven, after, during, and before this research; the research itself is little more than a tangent. Most people with normal working brains, very often have at least the unsettling suspicion they’re looking at such a false brand of science when they read about studies that say, for example, “women suffer more than men do” or “girls are much more advanced in [blank] than boys” or anything of the form “World To End, Women & Minorities Hardest Hit.” Any story about a study that begins “Researchers wondered what would happen if…” inspires thoughts, although it isn’t mentioned much, of wonder about the wondering by the researchers. Wait, what kind of “researchers” would wonder about that? Intellectually-capable, non-agenda-driven people read things like that and think — waitaminnit, was this open to question or was it not? If it was not open to question, why did the money get spent on the study? And if it is indeed questionable and therefore there must be difficulty in measuring it, then how come there never, ever seem to be any “outlier” studies, even ones that are subsequently discredited, that suggest something contrary? Even through error? Like, ever?

And, of course, it wouldn’t be science without a cat.

Read it. And watch the video.

Last month Altaeros Energies demonstrated its Airborne Wind Turbine, a 35-foot-wide blimp that could carry a turbine hundreds of feet into the air in order to harness stronger winds. While we had heard about the achievement, the company has now released a video showing the AWT in action. The clip shows the turbine blimp being tested 350 feet in the air, where it managed to generate twice the amount of power as a land-based turbine and then transfer it back to the ground through special tethers. It’s impressive to watch, but the company has even bigger plans for the AWT — eventually it’s expected to reach heights of over 1,000 feet.

And if these are widely deployed, how long before some stupidly-piloted aircraft or helicopter flies into the tethers and crashes? Nobody thinks things through any more.

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Boffins in Taiwan and the University of California predict that nanoscale CMOS memory could soon be on its way after research showed nanodot memory operating 10 to 100 times faster than current RAM. The electro-optics researchers also emphasised that they had used materials that are compatible with mainstream integrated circuit technologies…

We have the technology.

A classic cartoon.

Freeberg makes up a useful new word.

1. You have a problem and want everyone to know about it; it is the very same problem other people have had, and have managed to solve, while keeping it to themselves.
2. This doesn’t bother you in the slightest.
3. The answer you have in mind for your problem involves a change in the rules that would affect EVERYONE.
4. You partner up with special-interest and advocacy groups, politicians, “community organizers” and so forth, and give lots of press conferences and interviews about this problem you’ve got…that thousands, maybe millions, of other people have managed to solve without bugging anyone at all.
5. That doesn’t bother you either.
6. You have your problem in years that are divisible by 4.
7. Inexplicably and strangely, while yammering away about how helpless you are until such time that the rules are changed so that everyone is forced to reckon in some way with your problem, and bitching up a storm about some guy on the radio calling you dirty names, you still want to let everyone know how tough you are and how you don’t back down, that you’ve got a backbone of solid steel, your will be done, you’ll triumph over anything, never get discouraged…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
8. Just like a kid on the playground at recess during third grade, you are entirely unable to distinguish between people who have logical/moral reservations against your idea (which, as noted above, would impact everyone)…and…well, you’ll slander ‘em any which way you possibly can, won’t you. Chauvinists, sexist pigs, Nazis, monsters, DirtyRottenCreepyJerks…nobody can be a decent human being unless they back your idea. Because your skin is too thin to handle disagreement, skepticism or legitimate criticism.

Next up. Motherfluker. Suggested definitions are now being accepted.

See, there’s the thing. In the pre-teen years, the dudes have to make a choice. They can grow up to be sissies who are constantly complaining that this-or-that basic challenge in life is tooooooo haaaaaard…can’t handle it by themselves, start hollering for help even where it’s obvious they should be able to succeed by themselves. But you have to give up your big-badass title to do that. You can act like a smug prick if you want, like our current Commander in Chief. You can wrap yourself up in a thick blanket of that “NPR male” not-quite-masculine sissy-rage, like Keith Olbermann or Alan Alda used to do when people were still paying attention to them. But you can’t go strutting around like a modern Conan The Barbarian when you need someone else to twist the top off your soda pop for ya. If you insist on having your cake and eating it too, you get your ass kicked. It’s wired into the male DNA. We put up with bossy male progs, expecting that after they’re done strutting around and acting imperious, they’ll go away, or at least get out of the way. To actually take the top-dog spot, for reals, pulling rank after you got done proving you aren’t good for anything — that’s a whole different story. Men don’t tolerate this in other men.

Oh, noes! Sex-linked differences! How politically incorrect!

We’re now very deep into the Age of the Fluker. I hope it’s a brief blip on the radar of our history. I don’t know if it’s up to the women to stop it, or up to the men to stop it, or to motivate the women to stop it, or if the two sexes need to work together on it somehow. Whatever the case may be, this cannot continue. There are reasons men make other men choose between prestige and the soft blanket of helplessness. No society can survive for long when its rules are created and refined by the wanker set.

Hear, hear.

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Scientists monitoring water flow in streams at test sites across the USA have found, unexpectedly, that the global warming seen in the late 20th century had basically no effect on most of the ecosystems they studied.

I guess we’re not all going to die after all. Imagine that.

Thanks, Freeberg.

Arnold Kling looks on the bright side.

Twenty years ago, most well-off US citizens owned a camera, a video camera, a CD player, a stereo, a video game console, a cell phone, a watch, an alarm clock, a set of encyclopedias, a world atlas, a Thomas Guide, and a whole bunch of other assets that easily add up to more than $10,000. All of which come standard on today’s smart phones…that’s how quickly $10,000 worth of expenses can vanish.

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I can live with that.

Participate.

Hurry, before some drone in Congress makes it official.

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In town, where almost every German has a relative who has married an American and moved to the United States over the six decades the base has been here, many talk of picking up stakes, too.

“I’m heading to Texas,” said Irmtraud Goettel, 64, who runs a hotel and open-pit barbecue restaurant with her husband. Longhorns are mounted above the bar, a reminder of her granddaughter, who’s about to graduate from college in the Lone Star State.

“You know what I do in Texas?” Goettel said. “I like to pop open a big can of Natural Light” — much better than German beer, she said — “sit on the back porch, fire up the grill.”

You’ll have to fight your way past the people moving from Michigan.

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Read it. And watch the video.

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And who are we to say he’s not?

“It was a magnificent home,” he told the Sentinel. “Did we need it? No. Did we want it? Yes.”

Yeah, that’s always said ‘frugal’ to me….

Megan McArdle articulates (much better than I could) her position (with which I agree) regarding certain aspects of modern life.

A good kitchen gadget lowers the marginal cost, in time or money, of producing good food.  More than occasionally, they also produce better food than you can do unassisted.  Toasters make better toast than your oven does.  Food processors make better pie crust than tediously fooling with two forks or a pastry blender while your fat gets warm.   Genoise can fail on even the most expert cook, but the Thermomix method is basically foolproof–and produces a product just as good as the old hand method.

And that’s what progress is all about: Getting machines to do the boring and tedious parts of a process, so that humans can spend more time on the interesting and fun parts, and so that we get a final result that as many people as possible can afford.

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A fascinating look at how Torahs are made.

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I’d get signatures to ban people from going door-to-door to get signatures, but I’d have to go door-to-door to do it.

At least I’d know when to do it: supper.

Eric S Raymond liked it.

And so did I.

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Unlike conventional silicon, the new chip uses light — not electricity — to perform its logic. By creating an array of nano-rods, light-flow can be treated like voltage and current. These rods can then be configured to emulate electrical components such as resistors, inductors and capacitors.

We have the technology — or soon will.

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As of earlier this month, commuters waiting for the next train on Philadelphia’s platforms have been able to shop for groceries by opening the Peapod app and scanning barcodes on a sign.

Read it. And watch the video.

Chris Christie on Warren Buffet: The gift that keeps on giving.

Read all about it.