It seems the more precisely weapons can be targeted the more some people oppose them. I have a suspicion some people don't want us to have a really effective anti-insurgency counter-measure. They seem to feel that insurgencies are inherently forces for reform. Just look at Boko Haram. Or Bundy's militias. Sooner or…

Last line of "Dune:" "History will call us wives." Many stupid. Much inane.

"Corona" is Latin for "crown," which is how the solar corona got its name, and, I bet, coronaviruses, without any astronomical connections.

No, what's really superstition are all the dire economic predictions the Right makes if we do anything about CO2/raise the minimum wage/don't abolish Social Security/have health care/raise taxes on the 1%. Has anyone EVER seen a rigorous prediction that bears out any of those claims? Is there any computer model that…

Not until you find Nemo.

Yup. Got that stuff, too. Over the shoulder clunker. Don't have a video camera any more. My regular camera has better capabilities.

Well, I've never done this on a Mac, but I've copied old tapes by feeding the audio output into the input jack on my computer and then recording it with Audacity. That's all pretty generic and I'd bet Audacity or something similar exists for the Mac.

Can it withstand 1000 C? 3000 g's of force? Or being submerged in thousands of feet of water? The kind of medium used in the black boxes has to be ultra-robust, leading to low information density, much to the befuddlement of folks who say "Duhh, I can get 1000 tunes on my flash drive, so why can't they do that on…

As a patriotic male, I am always prepared to do my booty, er, duty.

So if your city rezones your neighborhood for high density rentals, you're okay with that, right? Or is it all the other folks that will have to live with it?

Lots of the world's lowest birthrates are in Catholic countries. The highest birthrates are in Islamic and sub-Saharan countries. Social status and machismo, not religion, are driving it. This has always puzzled me, being proud of accomplishing something gerbils can do at three months of age.

Our brains, to use a computer term, are crufty. They're like a Pentium hooked to a 486 hooked to an 8088 hooked to an Apple II hooked to an Altair. And because we've had it the longest, and trust it the most, we let the really important decisions be made by the Altair.

Where in the world did you get that bread? Who eats bread sliced so thin you can actually see the underlying part of the sandwich through it?

I like to say that the principle is NEVER the principle. It's always the specific issues, and people who attempt to dress their judgments in broad principles invariably end up in contradictions and being accused of hypocrisy. The way to figure out what principles a person really holds is to observe their moral choices…

There's your plan. Collect all the most hated video games, music CD's, DVD's of Battlefield Earth, copies of Vista and Windows ME (and 8?), old Apple III's, etc. Bury them over and around the nuclear waste. Future generations will dig them up or find them uncovered by erosion and flee in horror.

Bryan had actually run for President as a Democrat, and as a progressive. His crowning moment was his speech where he asked "Shall we crucify mankind on a cross of gold?" At the dawn of the 20th century, when social policy was almost entirely local, it was quite possible to be a social reactionary and an economic…

Very likely the most evil event of the 20th century was Mikhail Kalashnikov's invention of the automatic weapon that bears his name. Kalashnikov pictured his weapon as defensive, but it has actually become the principal tool for oppression in the world. Kalashnikov should have known better - he was a Soviet field…

It's so much easier now. You can download Mein Kampf and do a word count. "Evolution" turns up a dozen times, never in the biological sense but in the sense of historical development. The German word used, Entwicklung, is used many more times but usually translated "development." "Darwin" does not occur once. Before…

Hypothesis: human beings are organic. Just a thought.

We have a direct democracy, too. We also have a court system that overturns popular vote on a regular basis.