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Worth noting that this is about serving customers by helping them avoid high shipping costs — not something every company cares about. Notice, too, that Teenage Engineering explicitly encourages people to print as many replacement parts as they want — no attempt to limit this to “one-offs” through stupid licensing agreements, for example.

Watch it.

Who’ll be the first to cry ‘raaaaacist’?

Read it. And definitely watch the videos.

This is the Babbage Engine at the Computer History Museum in L.A., one of two funded by Nathan Myhrvold in 1991.

Check it out.

 Test Your Vocab is a research project to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates. It functions by means of a test: the first part with a handful of words to determine the general vocabulary level, and a second part with a larger but narrower selection of words to determine the vocabulary level with greater precision.

Remembering always that this is just an estimate. My score was 39,900; don’t know whether that’s good or bad. Robin can probably beat me, since he’s more of a polymath than I am.

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The fine minds at MIT combined the Kinect with a laser range finder and a laptop to create a real-time mapping rig for firefighters and other rescue workers. The prototype, called SLAM (for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) received funding from the US Air Force and the Office of Naval Research, and it stands out among other indoor mapping systems for its focus on human (rather than robot) use and its ability to produce maps without the aid of any outside information, thanks to an on-board processor.

This is an amazingly good idea.

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Take whatever action you deem appropriate.

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Unless you’re Muslim, of course.

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You, too, can be a best-selling novelist — or an awesome adventuring avatar. Here’s now.

Read it. And watch the video.

If you don’t subscribe to Savage Chickens, then the angels weep for you.

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The Maple Bacon Donut … mmmm.

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No matter who you are, there is someone out there less interesting than you. Enjoy.

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And then again it might not, but why take the chance? Milton Hershey is your friend.

Lileks has done it again.

Read it.

The US Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF) is sending expeditionary labs housed in 20-foot shipping containers to Afghanistan, allowing engineers to manufacture parts on-site and provide soldiers with real-time technical support. Each lab costs $2.8 million and contains a 3D printer to print plastic parts, a CNC machine to manufacture steel and aluminum parts, a number of tools, as well as satellite equipment for engineers to collaborate via video conference with others worldwide.

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If, of course, you should want to do that.

The open source aviation organization will allow you to download its plans and schematics for free, then build your plane’s parts using CNC (computer numerically controlled) mills and 3D printers. If you don’t have one of those lying around, you’ll be able to go to a “makerspace” replete with all the necessary tools to get your wings whipped up, instead. As for keeping the blue side up, open source avionics software will also be included, allowing bold dabblers to create digital flight instruments and displays.

I am not making this up.

Watch the video.

Read it.

Successful Green Energy Investments
by Barack Obama

My Thoughts on Personal Liberty
by Nanny Michael Bloomberg

Actual Hard Scientific Evidence Supporting the Theory of Human-Induced Climate Change
by Michael Mann

The Relevance of Newspapers in the 21st Century
by NY Times Publisher Pinch Sulzberger

Socialist Policies That Actually Work
by French President Francois Hollande

Read the whole thing.

Gates of Vienna is holding a fundraiser. Stop by and contribute.

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A heroic pilot at the helm of a doomed plane full of skydivers made sure all of his passengers had jumped to safety before deftly crashing the aircraft in a backyard — where no one was injured

Brandon Sparrow, the brave pilot, was the only one killed in the horrific crash in Taylorville, Illinois, on Saturday morning.

Neighbors and authorities say Mr Sparrow’s efforts saved untold numbers of lives — as the plane went down in a crowded residential neighborhood.

A hero by anyone’s definition.

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In the months before a US Presidential election, the quality of political discourse hits new lows. Blue State/Red State tropes dominate the news cycle as the media gins up outrage over perceived injustices in the culture wars. It’s all about our differences. So I started wondering, how do Americans really think about “those people” in other states? What are the most common stereotypes? For each of the fifty states and DC, I asked Google: “Why is [State] so ” and let it autocomplete. It seemed like an ideal question to get at popular assumptions, since “Why is [State] so X?” presupposes that X is true.

The results are quite entertaining.

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Proving that learning a lesson is very, very difficult, North Face has taken the former owners of South Butt to court again. What happened at the conclusion of the original lawsuit was South Butt agreed to drop their brand entirely as part of an injunction. Then, according to North Face, they jumped right back into their old shenannigan ways, forming the company Why Climb Mountains LLC and registering for a trademark on their new brand Butt Face.

This is why I could never be an attorney — you have to argue these cases with a straight face just because they drones running the company pay you.

 The other interesting tidbit in North Face’s complaints is that they believe…wait for it…that WCM’s owners are simply using the lawsuits filed against it as publicity. They reached the same conclusion as we had years ago. But, in an apparent attempt to test a theory called “litigation through stubborness”, they filed suit and gave their adversaries more ammuntion for publicity. It would be as though I had an ant problem in my kitchen because I left some honey out on the counter and my response was to cover the counter in honey while complaining about the ants marching in.

Hey — there are a lot of humor-impaired people in the world. Most of them are Democrats and buy shit from North Face. “I don’t really climb mountains but I’d like you to think that I do.” Not quite as pathetic as survivalists, but pretty close.

Read it. And watch the video.

The Roto-a-Matic has recently gone live in toy maker Rotofugi’s store in Chicago, and will create a polyethylene plastic figurine for you in under a minute, provided you feed it a token. Rotofugi and product design company Squibbles INK have given the vintage Mold-a-Rama vending machine a new lease of life, and now they are looking for artists to contribute designs for future molds.

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Put a .50-cal mount on that bad boy and I’m in.

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Yeah, what?

In the States the meaning of Anglo has evolved as various waves of people were assimilated. The term was first used to distinguish Protestant Americans of largely British (though also Dutch and German) stock from Irish Catholic immigrants, many of the former emphasising their Englishness in reaction to the newcomers. In the early twentieth century it was sometimes used by American leaders who felt a bond with Britain, such as Woodrow Wilson, especially when that country was in conflict with Germany. But later Anglo-Saxon (and Wasp) came to mean people of north-west European Protestant ancestry, as opposed to the immigrants of the 1880-1920 wave, Catholics and Jews from south and east Europe. Nowadays it can mean all “non-Hispanic whites”.

By that definition the implications of Romney’s adviser could be “we are white, Obama isn’t”. But if this was dog-whistle racism, then Obama’s 2008 campaign was a blaring Klaxon horn of race. Forget the “post-racial candidate” (© the entire mainstream US and European media), Obama was in reality the “multi-racial” candidate, one who signified the end of white demographic dominance. That’s post-racial in the sense that the majority are becoming a minority, but it would be absurd to pretend that race was not a huge factor in the election of this not-very-experienced junior senator – illustrated by the fact that 96 per cent of African-Americans voted for him.

Can you spell ‘double standard’? Of course you can … if you dare.

America’s vast contradictions and hypocrisies concerning race still rest on the idea that some groups are supposed to be post-racial, while others are encouraged to celebrate their identity, and to fight for the interests of their group. For example, lots of self-appointed Hispanic leaders want America to be more Hispanic, to have more of their countrymen. No one in the media accuses them of racism or chauvinism, and instead presents people wishing to maintain the status quo as hatemongers. Yet why is it necessarily more wrong for Anglo-Americans to want the country to be more full of people like them? Some people advancing the interests of their group are racists; some people advancing the interests of their group are anti-racists.

These days, ‘racist’ is just a synonym for ‘white’.

And why is it acceptable for every ethnicity in America to take pride in its roots, apart from the ethnic group that founded the 13 colonies, bequeathed it their language and laws, and established the political philosophy and liberal institutions? Even if actual English blood accounts for less than 10 per cent of American DNA, the Anglo political identity of America is deep. As David Hackett Fischer pointed out in Albion’s Seed, the cultural influence of the initial founders of a society can vastly outweigh their genetic input.

Yeah — but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?

Freeberg reminds us that there are ‘progressives’ who still have two brain cells to rub together.

Like George Carlin. I miss George.

A sample.

There doesn’t appear to be a ‘current cartoon’ link, so the link at right goes to the home page – click on the ‘page xxx >>’ caption at the top for the latest.

Read it.

Carlos Miller of Photography is Not a Crime is helping publicize (and test) a new iPhone app that automatically streams video as a user is recording it and stores it remotely in a cloud, thus preventing grabby law enforcement officers from deleting footage.

Which is, of course the crime of conversion, when it isn’t actual obstruction of justice. But we all know that police never get called on that sort of thing. This will redress the balance somewhat.

Big Brother doesn’t like it when you’re watching him back.

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This strikes me as a great idea.

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The city of Takoma Park, Maryland granted a waiver to its strict Nuclear-Free Zone Act this week in order to use Hewlett-Packard computers in its city library. The city of Takoma Park has been nuclear-free since 1983, meaning that the city is prohibited from supporting companies that work with US nuclear weapons production. HP is on this list of prohibited contractors, so when librarians received the shipment of new hardware for the library’s computer learning center, they packed them away and awaited the Nuclear-Free Takoma Park Commitee’s decision on the matter. The Committee denied the waiver for the equipment, but was overridden for the first time ever in a vote by city officials.

Posturing gets kicked to the curb when it might actually pinch.

My first girlfriend at Yale came from Tacoma Park; her parents were bureaucrats. Eventually she joined the Party of the Right. (You know — you grow.)

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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).

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.”