The Physicist and the Climatologist; FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 2010-02-07 14:59.

David M. Hoffer at The Libertarian Enterprise - a physicist explains to a climatologist, over and over, why the global warming theory must be wrong. Then he learns of the financial benefits of climatology, and converts. Humorous.

Quote:
Climatologist: I have a system of undetermined complexity and undetermined composition, floating and spinning in space. It has a few internal but steady state and minor energy sources. An external energy source radiates 1365 watts per meter squared at it on a constant basis. What will happen?

Physicist: The system will arrive at a steady state temperature which radiates heat to space that equals the total of the energy inputs. Complexity of the system being unknown, and the body spinning in space versus the radiated energy source, there will be cyclic variations in temperature, but the long term average will not change.

Climatologist: Well what if I change the composition of the system?

Physicist: See above.

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( categories: Politics )

When the Military Serves as Police

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 2010-02-06 09:56.

Jacob G. Hornberger at The Future of Freedom Foundation - good outline of the classical difference between police and military and why we should bring the troops home from Afghanistan now. Unfortunately, police are more and more starting to emulate the military: capture the criminals, dead or alive, and damn the consequences for innocent bystanders. [militant]

Quote:
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the horrific consequences of the Bush administration’s decision to employ the military to apprehend bin Laden, unlike the case with Ramzi Yousef several years before.

In Yousef’s case, no bombs were dropped on Pakistan. U.S. officials waited patiently for two years before he finally turned up and was taken captive, with no loss of life to innocent bystanders.

Contrast that with the horrific mess in Afghanistan. In the midst of all the anger and hatred that people all over the world now have for the United States, it’s easy to forget the outpouring of sympathy and friendship that came from all over the world after 9/11, including from the Muslim community. If U.S. officials had simply waited out the situation, as they had with Yousef, bin Laden would have been isolated. That is, he could never have travelled freely and there were countless people all over the world sympathetic to the United States who would have been willing to turn him, especially for a sizable reward. His recruiting efforts would have been limited to people who were angry with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East (e.g., unconditional support of Israel, the sanctions against Iraq, etc.)

Instead, the Bush administration sent in the military — the people with the mindset of “kill the enemy even if it kills innocent bystanders,” which produced massive death and destruction in Afghanistan, which in turn converted all that sympathy and friendship for the United States into widespread anger, hatred, and rage, which in turn greatly fueled bin Laden’s recruiting efforts. And, oh, by the way, even after 8 long years of death and destruction in Afghanistan, they still haven’t apprehended bin Laden.

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( categories: Politics )

Welcome Back to the Blogosphere, George

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 2010-02-02 07:10.

George Potter is blogging again at Market Theocracy. Well, he made three posts yesterday. "Pack Mentality" with Claire, says George. Whatever. I hope he continues at least semi-regular blogging. And I hope he mails my copy of his new book real soon now.

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( categories: Gloryroad )

They Came for Our Guns, They Came for Our Freedom

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 2010-02-01 07:09.

William Lafferty has penned a short novel on the excesses of the BATFE, imagining three 80-year-old World War II veterans beginning a campaign of retribution that eventually takes down that rogue agency. Didn't cause me to cheer, as did the feeding of the hogs in Unintended Consequences or the first chapter of Absolved, but kept me turning pages. Available at Amazon, from the author, for $11 + $4 shipping. Mr. Lafferty gave me a copy after finding and enjoying my copy of Mike Vanderboegh's What Good Can a Handgun Do Against an Army?.

Quote:
Book Seven concerns the decision of the federal government to put an end to the private ownership of guns and its arrogance in pursuing this political agenda.

As the story opens, twenty-two battle-geared agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) conduct a late night raid on the house of an ordinary citizen who was reported as having an unlicensed machine gun. What he actually had was an AR15 semi-automatic rifle which, while it was being shot by a friend, malfunctioned and went full-auto. Before the owner of the rifle could take it to a gunsmith for repair, his door is broken down, guns are stuck in his family’s faces, his wife is knocked unconscious, his jaw is broken, his children are terrorized, and his is house virtually destroyed by the BATF search for the offending rifle.

William Lafferty: They Came for Our Guns, They Came for Our Freedom

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( categories: RKBA )

New groups mobilize as Indians embrace the right to bear arms

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 2010-02-01 07:04.

Rama Lakshmi at The Washington Post - gun owners in India are fighting the regulations imposed on them by long-gone British rule. Far out!

Quote:
Indian security experts appear dismissive of the group's efforts. "There is no place for a gun rights movement in India," said Julius Ribeiro, a former police officer who comments on security issues. "That kind of debate may work in America, but it will not work here, because laws are misused and guns can easily fall into the wrong hands. It can get dangerous in India."

Gun rights advocates respond -- using language familiar to Americans -- that guns are a deterrent to crime.

"An armed society is a polite society," said Rahoul Rai, a member of the campaign. He said the movement also reflects the rise of an Indian middle class that can "voice its fears about rising crime, interpret the constitution to articulate their rights to self-protection and bring like-minded people together through technology."

Shahid Ahmad, who runs a Web site called the Gun Geek , said the process of getting a gun license in India is so burdensome that it encourages corruption. To hasten the process, he said, many applicants ask politicians to put in a word in their favor, or attempt to bribe officials and police officers.

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( categories: RKBA )

Entering Apple Restriction Zone

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 2010-01-29 14:52.

From The Daily Bendiken:

Entering Apple Restriction Zone

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( categories: Politics | Humor | Computers )

The Great Cholesterol Myth

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 2010-01-29 05:02.

Malcolm Kendrick at Spiked Online - the conventional wisdom about cholesterol, especially the relationship between diet and blood cholesterol, is wrong. Cholesterol in the diet does NOT cause cholesterol in the blood. Carobohydrates do. The truth is complicated. Statins DO reduce heart attacks, but they don't do it by reducing cholesterol. That's an unimportant side effect. [grabbe]

1 comment | quote | 100 reads
( categories: Science/Technology )

Quote

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 2010-01-29 04:45.

From GeekWithA.45:

"Obama. Longest lame duck presidency. Ever." -- GeekWithA.45

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( categories: Quote )

NoMachine NX

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 2010-01-27 15:47.

NoMachine NX is a remote GUI for Linux. There are free and paid versions. I'm using it for a Gnome desktop on a remote Gentoo/Debian machine. It's almost like my desktop, only with much faster internet, since the remote has high bandwidth. Totally amazing! Client runs on Linux, Mac, or Windows. Not sure about server.

When I lose my internet connection to the remote machine, my session keeps its state. Just reconnect, and I'm back where I was. Yow!

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( categories: Computers )

Apple Tablet Press Event Liveblogs

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 2010-01-27 06:48.

iTablet? iSlate? iPad? We'll find out at 10am California time today (1pm Eastern). And there are lots of places doing liveblogs to follow the action:

Wired
Gizmodo
Engadget
Gdgt
@MacRumors
The Unofficial Apple Weblog
The Apple Blog
Slashgear
The Street
Gearlog
IT Pro
Technologizer
San Francisco Chronicle
Financial Times
iSmashPhone
Washington Post
Digital Daily
Gaming Angels
Kotaku
Mobile Entertainment
Huffington Post (Tanja Aitamurto)

Apple Table Event

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( categories: Computers )

Living Freedom

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 2010-01-25 06:00.

Claire Wolfe has a new blog, at Backwoods Home Magazine. Only a few posts so far, but I'm very happy to see her back on the web. Welcome back to the blogosphere, Claire! [tmm]

"Living Freedom by Claire Wolfe"
"Musings about Personal Freedom and Finding It within Ourselves"

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( categories: Politics )

SHOT Show 2010

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 2010-01-24 05:42.

Boge Quinn at Gunblast - four pages of photos of weapons from this year's SHOT Show.

I had two favorites:

The Big Horn Armory Model 89 Carbine in .500 S&W Magnum holds seven rounds of bison-stopping power, has an aperture rear sight, is dressed in American Black Walnut, and costs $1,889.

Big Horn Armory Model 89 Carbine

The Smith & Wesson Bodyguard .38 Revolver and .380 Pistol are equipped with integral laser sights, and designed for concealment. Slated to ship in May. Couldn't find prices. I reduced the image below from its "Actual Size".

Smith & Wesson Bodyguard .380 Pistol

There were lots of other interesting firearms, and some very pretty ladies showing them off.

Massad Ayoob has a SHOT Show Extravaganza report over at Backwoods Home Magazine. Five pages of comments and photos.

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( categories: Guns )

Cocoa/Lisp Tutorial

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 2010-01-17 07:32.

plkrueger at TC Lispers - a 70-page tutorial on writing Macintosh Cocoa apps in Clozure Common Lisp (CCL). I write lisp in CCL for a living, but I have only played with Cocoa a few times. This may well be a good place to start should I need to write a Mac GUI app.

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( categories: Lisp )

Grado SR60i Headphones

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 2010-01-14 06:56.

Yesterday, I received the third, and final (for now) component of my computer music upgrade, a pair of Grado SR60i headphones. This is the bottom-of-the-line model from Grado, but boy are they nice! Reminds me of my amazement back in the eighties at the sound I got from a $40 Grado phono cartridge. More text and photos here.

headphones-and-bag

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( categories: Hifi )

NuForce Icon uDAC

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 2010-01-13 06:53.

I got a NuForce Icon uDAC USB Digital-to-Analog converter. Coupled with my new speakers and lossless CD rips and downloads, I now have a computer stereo that approaches the quality of the $3,000 system I bought in 1984. More details and unboxing pr0n at billstclair.com/udac.

The golden posts sticking out of the right of the red box below are RCA jacks. It's just big enough for a standard printer USB jack and three RCA jacks. And boy does it sound sweet!

NuForce Icon uDAC



09-connected-rear

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( categories: Hifi )

Quote

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 2010-01-12 08:57.

From Ceres, Chapter Forty-Three by L. Neil Smith:

You can discover everything you need to know, about a people or their culture, simply from their attitude toward torture. Any group or nation with a policy that encourages—or even tolerates—torture is worse than any evil it claims to be fighting.

The ends do not justify the means. The means help to insure that the ends are just.

--The Diaries of Rosalie Frazier Ngu

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( categories: Quote )

HDTracks.com

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 2010-01-11 07:50.

One of the problems of converting your computer music to Audiophile quality is that compressed music no longer cuts the mustard. You need full CD quality, or better. Enter HDTracks.com. A sizable music library, with an artist and audiophile focus. Every album is at least CD quality, and they have a selection of 24-bit audio at 96Khz, if you've got a DAC that can handle that. You can download as FLAC, AIFF, or 320K MP3. Why anyone would pay a premium for pretty-good MP3, I don't know, but it's there. They charge $12 for CD-quality albums, or $1.49 per track (but not all tracks are available individually), and $18 for Audiophile 96khz/24bit albums, or $2.49 per track.

HDTracks doesn't have all the latest pop albums, but they have a large enough library to keep you discovering new gems for a good long time. And the recordings are amazing.

I download in FLAC format, that being nearly half the size of AIFF, so half the time to download. But iTunes doesn't handle FLAC, so I use XLD (X Lossless Decoder) to convert to Apple Lossless format, which iTunes does handle. On Windows, most of the audiophiles I've encountered (at head-fi.org), use the Fubar2000 player. I'm sure Google will lead you to plenty of FLAC players for Linux.

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( categories: Hifi )

New Speakers

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 2010-01-10 00:28.

I got some M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 Powered Speakers from Amazon. They're a big step up from my $40 Logitechs. I also ordered a USB DAC, but I'll make another post of that, after it arrives. And some new headphones; yet another post.

The new speakers are on the low end of Hifi equipment, but they sound good to me, have some sound stage, and get very loud (20 watts per channel). In preparation for their arrival, I re-imported about 120 of my CDs, in Apple Lossless format.

Choosing speakers is hard. So many choices. The Audioengine A2 speakers are similar. I chose the M-Audio because it has a volume knob, Aux In, and Phono jack on the front. I was tempted by the Audioengine A5 and M-Audio BX5A, but didn't want to spring that many bucks right away. Will likely upgrade in a year or so.

Unboxing pr0n at billstclair.com/maudio.

Front of Speakers
Back of Speakers

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( categories: Hifi )

Fast Package Tracking

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 2010-01-09 10:39.

When I mail-order something, I usually get a tracking number, for UPS, FedEx, or the US Postal Service from the vendor (often Amazon). I have always faithfully gone to the respective web site, pasted in the tracking number, and pushed the "track" button. This works, but it has two problems. I have to wait for their often slow web site twice, once to display the form, and once to show me what I want to see. And I have to do it again every time I want to check. So I have always figured out how to get a bookmarkable URL that I can put in my bookmarks bar, and click when I want to check the progress of my package.

I have automated that process. I built a web site that takes your tracking number and forwards to a bookmarkable page. My form is very simple and quick-loading, so you can do your business and be done, instead of waiting for their form to load. Give it a try!

billstclair.com/track

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( categories: Computers )

Coverage So Good That...

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 2010-01-07 20:49.

Heard on the radio:

"Verizon wireless 3G. Coverage so good that it makes you a better person."

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( categories: Humor )