Read it.

This is from 2004, but I’m going to put it here, because I wasn’t aware of it, and since I try to be aware of stuff involving my favorite authors, I assume that others might not be aware of it, either — and Neal Stephenson is someone of whom you ought to be aware. He is, as we say, always worth reading.

Read it.

And about time, too.

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Read it.

We have the technology. It’s just a matter of getting past the sclerotic establishment gatekeepers that’s holding things up.

This doesn’t just mean a different way of learning: The funding of academic research, the culture of the academy and the institution of tenure are all threatened.

Pass the popcorn.

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Of course we all know that this Star Wars stuff will never work. Just ask a Democrat.

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I am not making this up.

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I’m impressed.

Suitable for framing.

The Other McCain is having fun.

By the way, this is probably a good time to express my appreciation to those readers — including generous folks in Albuquerque, N.M., Jacksonville, Fla., Depauville, N.Y., and Tequesta, Fla. — who have recently done their share to help me push the frontiers of rhetorical brutality against idiot liberals and RINO sellouts.

Dvorak has a dream.

Having heard Bill Gates promote the tablet machines to no avail, and watched the birth of the Kindle, Steve Jobs has developed a clear vision of what a perfect tablet should be, I’m sure. And no matter what it will cost to build, Apple’s offering will go beyond what anyone expected, just so Steve can show up all those who tried before.

Speed the day.

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It’s twue, it’s twue.

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Read it.

Evidently Ecotopia hasn’t completely gone over the edge.

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After one of the primeval-scum robbers started pistol-whipping an employee of proprietor Charles Augusto, Jr., Mr. Augusto “rose from a chair 20 to 30 feet away and took out a loaded Winchester 12-gauge pump-action shotgun .. . and fired three blasts in rapid succession,” according to the New York Times.  Mr. Augusto had bought the rifle after being robbed 30 years ago.  “The first shot took down the gunman at the front,” who died almost immediately; the second two shots hit all three accomplices, who stumbled bleeding out of the store.  One died after having been taken to a local hospital (at whose expense?); the other two were picked up on the basis of their blood trail and witness descriptions and also treated at the hospital.

Read it.

Watch it.

Read it.

A “top ten” list to take with you on the road. Some cornerstones of American culture.

Iowahawk. ’nuff said.

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Steve Sailer piles on that toddlin’ town.

Patrick Fitzgerald has a fun job. The chief federal prosecutor in Chicago enjoys a “target-rich environment.” Besides nailing two Illinois governors, Tony Rezko, Conrad Black (and even Scooter Libby on a sojourn in D.C.), there are the colorful local characters.

Most towns – and states – run by Democrats provide a similar source of amusement.

The Obama family knows all about waste in the health care industry. Back when Mr. Obama was merely the chairman of the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services committee, Mrs. Obama got paid $122,000 annually as the University of Chicago Hospitals community outrage coordinator. When he got promoted to U.S. Senator, she got a $195,000 raise. When she quit, her job turned out to so incredibly important that the position she filled was eliminated.

Nope, nothing suspicious about that at all.

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It was delightfully appropriate that, as large parts of Argentina were swept by severe blizzards last week, on a scale never experienced before, the city of Nashville, Tennessee, should have enjoyed the coolest July 21 in its history, breaking a record established in 1877. Appropriate, because Nashville is the home of Al Gore, the man who for 20 years has been predicting that we should all by now be in the grip of runaway global warming.

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Mr Muller, who only sells American vehicles, is offering a gift certificate – only to be used at a licensed dealer – for a Kalashnikov AK-47 worth $450 (£320).

The guns are made by IO Inc in North Carolina, the only company in the US which manufactures the robust, durable weapon. First developed in the Soviet Union and exported to Moscow’s allies across the world, the AK-47 has been used in countless conflicts in the developing world. In the hands of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, it became a symbol of resistance to America.

Asked why an automatic weapon with a 30 or 60-round magazine was required for self-defence, he cited the case of the Florida couple recently shot dead in their homes by a gang of six robbers.

Best Tombstone Ever.

Check it out.

Muammar Gaddafi doing to Barack Obama what we’d all secretly like to do.

Oh, I’m sure it’s fauxtography, but I still had to laugh. It would make a superb poster.

Mencius Moldbug is at it again.

For serious UI geeks, one way to see an intelligent control interface is as a false affordance – like a knob that cannot be turned, or a chair that cannot be sat in. The worst kind of false affordance is an unreliable affordance – a knob that can be turned except when it can’t, a chair that’s a cozy place to sit except when it rams a hidden metal spike deep into your tender parts.

Like most hubristic UIs, Wolfram Alpha is operating with a completely fictitious user narrative. The raison d’etre of the natural-language interface, stated baldly, is to create a usable tool for stupid people who might be confused or intimidated by a tree of menus. The market of stupid people is indeed enormous. The market of stupid people who like to use data-visualization tools is, well, not. (And since the interface is not in fact easy but actually quite difficult, it achieves the coveted status of a non-solution to a non-problem.)

But for the actual developers, this compensation mechanism is far more effective. The actual developers (a) have enormous experience with the hubristic UI, (b) have enormous patience with its flaws, and (c) most important, know how it actually works. So their internal model can be, and typically is, orders of magnitude better than that of any naive user. So the product actually seems to work for them, and does. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make money by selling a product to yourself.

I love you, man.

Read it.

Well, be prepared, that’s what I always say….

Tim Kidwell does an English usage rant.

If you’re like me, at the end of the day you’re tired. You’re not looking for a fight, but you’ll stand your ground if you think you’re being played. And that’s precisely the limit I’ve reached with this sprig of verbal parsley.

Fun to see such a thing in a major publication. If you can only afford one newspaper, the Wall Street Journal is the one to get.

Read it.

The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.

I’m sure glad we re-elected Bush. That Obama guy sounded pretty scary.

Read it.

So there.

Harry Stein has a new book out.

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Turns Bram Stoker’s classic into a blog. There is nothing new under the sun.

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The Hog confronts the information revolution.

I have a Facebook account; don’t ask me why. I log in about once a month. Facebook has weird features called “apps” that help people annoy each other. One is called “Speed Date.” I do not understand how it works, but somehow I got signed up for it, and it likes to send me possible matches in the Miami area.

You can probably imagine how eager I am to make use of this information. If there is anything worse than an unsuitable woman you choose for yourself because you have no judgment, it’s an unsuitable woman a computer chooses for you, based on variables chosen at random, by the kind of well-adjusted males who work in the IT industry.

It’s nice to sort of get to know people online, but the truth is, I don’t care what movies you like or whether your imaginary zombie can beat up my imaginary zombie. And I find it a little creepy when another man “Superpokes” me.

Read it.

And why not?

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Be the first on your block to make your own pipe organ … out of wood.

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I have no idea whether — or how — this actually works, but it looks really cool.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, offers a look at the lighter side of pessimism.

That’s right, stationery with an ‘e’. (The difference was immortalized, at least in England, on one of those vulgar comic postcards George Orwell wrote a famous essay about. A gorgeous female store assistant is being addressed by a callow-looking young man. He: “Excuse me, Miss, do you keep stationery?” She: “Well, sometimes I wriggle a bit.”) Stationery! I love the stuff. Paper, pens, notepads, folders, envelopes, markers, erasers, staples, push pins, paper clips, bulldog clips, poster board, display board, foam board, desk furniture … A stationery store is to me … what? Aladdin’s cave? Pah! — What did Aladdin know? You can’t do anything with a mess of rubies.

Preach it, brother.

Read it.

By goading a sitting president into responding to his arguments on his terms, Dick Cheney won the contest with Barack Obama last week before either said a word. And his re-emergence onto the public square seems to be driving everybody nuts.

Fun is where you find it.

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You can’t make this stuff up.

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Last December’s floods washed out park roads, bridges, and facilities at Kauai’s Polihale State Park. Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) studied the damage and released a statement two months later, declaring, “We know that people are anxious to get to the beach. However, the preliminary cost estimate of repairs is $4 million.” The DLNR’s response to this natural disaster was to look for more state or federal funds. Its main objective was to grab a fee-generated windfall for the department, ironically entitled the “Recreational Renaissance” fund. DLNR’s chair, Laura Thielen, proclaimed: “We are asking for the public’s patience and cooperation to help protect the park’s resources during this closure, and for their support of the ‘Recreational Renaissance’ so we can better serve them and better care for these important places.” An original timeline for the work was set for late summer, but according to local resident and surfer Bruce Pleas, “It would not have been open this summer, and it probably wouldn’t be open next summer.”

From food donated by area restaurants to heavy machinery offered by local construction companies, a project originally forecast to cost millions and take months (if not years) to complete has been finished in a matter of weeks with donated funds, manpower, and equipment. As Troy Martin from Martin Steel, which provided machinery and five tons of steel at no charge, put it: “We shouldn’t have to do this, but when it gets to a state level, it just gets so bureaucratic, something that took us eight days would have taken them years. So we got together—the community—and we got it done.” Cleaning up the park was a major undertaking involving bridge-building, reconstructing bathroom facilities, and use of heavy equipment to clear miles of flood-damaged roadways.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

Arnold Kling uncovers shocking news.

Since we know that the Obama Administration is centrist and pragmatic, the only inference to draw is that the Post has become a mouthpiece for the far right wing.

Read it.

When SteamPunk is just to johnny-come-lately.

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Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.

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“Massive energy generating ship”? Dude, that’s what nuclear reactors are all about.

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Read it.

It is truly astonishing the number of ways in which we’ve improved the lives of mice and rats.

Read it.

Actually, they’re pretty reasonable.

1. From now on, Nancy Pelosi has to wear a mask or ring a bell before she approaches a camera.

Who could say no to that?