Cleaner makes your more ethical?

A study to be released by a BYU professor found people in a clean and orderly enviorment act more ethically.  Really? Weren't Nazis a clean meticulous people. The camps laid out in orderly grids. I don't know about you but clean and meticulous makes me edgy.

Krung Threp

I met the guy who built the Tyrell pyramid in Blade Runner in Bangkok. He said it was knee high and could fit on a table. He also said the entire Blade Runner set was only a block on a back set.

                                          Think of that......

May set fire to the atmosphere?

Enrico Fermi, a brillant Los Alamos physicist was worried that when the first Atom bomb was detonated the the reaction would be so energetic that it may set fire to earth's atmosphere. The army thought at the time it was a acceptable risk.

Your tax dollars at work circa 1944

At the height of World War II. A dentist (a profession fundamentaly evil by nature.) named Lytle S. Adams came up with the idea for a bat bomb.  Bats as it turns out can carry close to their own weight in flight. And as luck would have it there are four caves in Texas with something like seven million bats . Bats when dormant hibernate so would need very little care and when active hide during daylight.  They seek out eves and attics which interestingly enough in Japan were constructed of wood and paper. So this toothpuller hooked up with another gigglemaster by the name of Louis Fieser the inventor of napalm. He designed a .6 ounce napalm bomblet with timer to be carried by a bat. The bats would be carried in 26 trays stacked forty to a bomb. The bomb would be dropped at night at five thousand feet and release the bats at one thousand feet where they would seek out the comfort of the aforementioned eves and attics. The timers go off and the bats and Osaka Bay would burn to ashes.
 There was a plan to produce  1,040,040 batbombs and fly them over Japan from Alaska. During testing and bunch of bats(colony?) escaped and burned  a Army base in Carlsbad New Mexico to the ground.
 It was due to be made opperational in 1945. The little parties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki made it unnessary.

Seamless Transistion

The transistion from speculative fiction to mainstream was effortless in this watershed novel. Gibson loses none of his edge or quicksilver dynamic in this novel about a coolhunter,9/11 intertwined with industrial espionage.  Read it.

The only weapon banned by the Catholic Church

This weapon was banned by Pope Innocent the II for use against  Christians. Before the introduction of the arbalest a mounted knight could pretty much mow down foot soilders at will. But armed with a crossbow a comon foot soilder drop a mounted night with ease. This presented a conundrum for the Church since the cash flowed from the nobility. So you could draw,quarter burn alive and otherwise create any mayhem you could imagine. But stick a bolt in some armored miscreant you were going to Hell. Unless he wasn't Christian or noble(no cash see)

Augment (teaser) Look for Augment in spring of 2010

       "What's he doing Colonel?"
       "It looks like he is making a depth change, probably near test depth. Amazing, almost eleven hundred meters."
       " I'm overjoyed your impressed Colonel. Thomas are we going to be able to reach him?"
Thomas smiled. "As stated earlier. Distance or depth will not be an obstacle.      
       "For your sake I hope so." Stone smiled back.

        "Sir passing through seven five zero zero meters."
         "Excellent. Engineer how are the stress sensors?"
         "Sir the sensors report even stress through out the pressure hull."
         "Well done. Report any changes. Officer of the deck make your depth nine zero zero zero meters."
       
          "He's still diving?"
          "Just passing through seven thousand five hundred meters."
          "Good." Stone chuckled. 'Tell me when he levels out."

           "Approaching one zero zero zero zero meters."
           'That's a lot of zeros. Level out at one zero five zero zero."
           "Aye Captain."

            "He leveled off, holding at just under eleven hundred meters."
            "Excellent. Stand by Thomas."

             "Engineer. board still green?"
            " Board still green. Captain."

            " Alright Thomas, hit that fucker."

A klaxon rang out startling all those in control. The Captain roared. "Report."
The weapons officer responded. "We got radiation alarms going off all over in the missile bay."
            "Alarms? Has the pressure hull been brea...."
There was a flash of unearthly white. And a billionth of a second later the Zheng He ceased to be.

            "Holy Shit. We are picking up a massive undersea detonation in the megaton range at the Zheng He's last reported position." Phones and alarms began to go off all over the control room.
             "Fuck me. That's the Joint Chiefs." Picking up the phone the Colonel responded. "Yes Sir. I have it on my screen's now. No, does not appear to be accidental launch, much too deep. What caused it? I have no idea,some catastrophic failure. What Sir? Yes he's standing right here." The Colonel handed the phone to Stone. "Sir, it is the Vice President for you."
Stone took the receiver and paused for two heartbeats. "Stone here. I see, why yes, I would love to meet at the earliest opportunity. Not at all Mr. Vice President. Thank you Mr. Vice President." Stone hung up the phone.
The Colonel looked stunned. "That was you? How?"
               'That is a need to know issue Colonel." Stone said softly.  "Come Thomas we have the Lord's work elsewhere." The two left without looking back.  



        
        
        

Alpha cyberpunk

The more I learn about this gentleman. The more amazed I become. Truely a Wizard who spooked the hell out of Edision. His invention the capacitor is one of the bedrocks that our modern electronics depend.

Gregorz Jonkajtys

Grzegorz Jonkajty's Ark was a brillant ground breaking short film. Check out the biomechanical odyssey 36 stairs.

I want to eat you up.

I have heard from both camps. It's wonderful, whimsical. It's frightening and sends the wrong message.
I am seeing it this weekend. I let you know.

Molly in Panther Modern chameleon suit.

A lot more of this type of material surfacing on the web with Neuromancer coming out.

Joesph Arthur's Rages of Babylon. Old school and worth a listen.

Just because I can

The new paradigm

For the first time in it's history the airforce will be training more drone pilots than fighter pilots. Spooky.

I find this perversely interesting.

Really?

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October 14, 2009 , 6:41 am

Women, Vampires and Gay Men

Today’s idea: American women are attracted not so much to vampires as to the gay men they represent, a writer argues. This is part of society’s effort to process, through vampire stories, a “newfound acceptance of what so many once thought strange or abnormal.”
Culture | “Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men,” Stephen Marche writes in Esquire. “Not all young straight women, of course, but many, if not most, of them.”
He says consider the subtext of the relationship between Bella, the young heroine of the “Twilight” series, and the boy vampire Edward, to whom she is attracted “because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her.” Marche explains:

“Twilight”/Summit Entertainment Gay boy meets straight girl?

“Twilight’s” fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that’s the clincher. Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? Sex that’s dangerous and safe at the same time, risky but comfortable, gooey and violent but also traditional and loving. In the bedroom, we want to have one foot in the 21st century and another in the 19th.

Marche thinks today’s vampire stories — whether their gay themes are taken by implication, as in the “Twilight” series, or explicit as in HBO’s “True Blood” — are “symptomatic of something much larger: a quiet but profound sexual revolution and a new acce

The Health Care Circus.

As I sit transfixed I am both horrified and amused at the workings of the U.S. congress.  People complain that congress does not work well. Untrue. The work very well for the people that pay them. Not, us. Not the mere $158103.00 base. Which they raise at every opportunity regardless of their lack of progress. The large lobby groups which float their re elections and then employ them once they leave for obscene salaries.

The Federal clown college is during their best to sidetrack any real reform due to such considerations as cost or competition (this obviously did not concern them during the trillion dollar Wall Street bail out.) It looks like a weak bill may pass. No public option(oh the horror!) but at least you won't be denied coverage for being ill or having preexisting issues.

My grandmother once told me while watching Billy Graham that she could carve a better man out of a bar of soap. This may be a option. God knows they would be less slippery.

Still going strong after all these years. I first saw him during plays live in 1982. Amazing. Check out the "Talk to me" Video. Great stuff.

Could have been.

Man. I went into this one with high hopes. Ben Foster who did such a great job in 3:10 to Yuma was largely wasted here. Great concept, but fell apart. Like a good curry. Got to start strong, hold and finish nicely. This left a bad after taste.

Barrista with a night off.

This gentleman has much too much time on his hands.