I have very limited time this weekend (and tomorrow) for looking at the Internet, let alone writing anything. But I don’t think it would matter if I did. Nothing interesting is happening. Even worse, for the first time ever, I came in last place in our fantasy league. So, no playoffs for me.
Screw it. Let’s have some music:
How was that?
While the Middle east continues to blow up.
Deep.
Then you post a video by a glorified garage band.
Shallow.
Sometimes I wonder about you, Booman.
AG
You know, you could get your own blog. Then you could post things that you’re interested in, and work on your own schedule.
I am already too busy working on things that interest me, and I do work on my own schedule.
The secret of a successful blog…besides of course some sort of line-level competence and interest…is consistent work. I have a very irregular schedule, so I cannot gurantee that kind of consistent work.
So it goes.
AG
Zzzzzzz
YouTube doesn’t provide the option for the old embed code any more – is there another way to embed? IFrame isn’t working either…
I would love to see a thread where the implications of the recent vote on Palestine could be discussed, even if you just get us started with “you can talk about that here”.
Apologies if I missed such a thread recently, I have been watching for it, but haven’t seen one.
Here’s my take. Israel lost a lot of support in Europe as a result of it’s pre-election security theater attacks on Gaza. It lost US support too, but the US has to pro forma support Israel for now. Israel called in all its chits and only got 9 No votes.
The resolution itself does not bolster Palestine’s position as a state. That will happen as countries begin to recognize its sovereignty over the West Bank.
Israel’s punitive acceleration of constructing settlements will come back to haunt it within the year. Exactly what form that will take is not yet clear. But that action shows that Israel’s current regime is rushing to close the doors on an apartheid state, leaving the few remaining areas under control of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas as Bantustans, or as we call them in the US, reservations.
What is unclear is whether the resolution gets UN investigation into Palestinian complaints about Israel’s violation of treaties and norms of international conduct. Previous attempts failed because Palestine did not have “standing”.
Thanks, TarheelDem. I really appreciate hearing your take on this.
Nothing interesting except the destruction of democracy in the state of Michigan.
Think very carefully about what this means. Then go check the price points for 3-D printers.
Congressman calls for ban on 3D printed guns
Steve Israel seems to have no clue of what a profound change this is to both domestic and international politics. Just passing a law will not do it on this technology.
Better start looking for solutions beyond technological solutions.
This is essentially the inevitable course that improvements in manufacturing processes are taking us. You just don’t need a giant factory to produce complex goods anymore. Sure the cost for producing an individual unit is going to be high but if you don’t need to mass produce… you can live with that and these costs will decrease even more as time goes on. Obviously they should have been sending out their parts to Shapeways who have the ability to produce parts out of stainless steel.
Legislation definitely isn’t going to help with this… but this increasing rate of change is probably not going to stop ever. If you’ve never seen James Burke‘s Connections it is a great presentation of these ideas (watch online). And if you’re interested in the possibilities presented by the logical endpoint of these manufacturing changes (nanotechnology) have a read of Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation. Drexler discusses both the positive and negative possibilities of nanotechnology.
Have read Burke and some stuff over the years about nano. Right now it’s not the ideas that captured my attention, it’s the fact that this technology (and thin film solar) are coming of age at this moment and we need to adjust our ideas about both as the practical implications become clearer.
No one really anticipated the form, commercial structure, or legal implications of social media during the early practical days of personal computing (the 1980s) or the early days of the internet (mid 1990s). And the commercial and political decisions made at that time shaped the dominant environment for the development of that technology. And even then, no one anticipated how significant open-source development (Wikipedia is the classic example) would be.
We are rapidly moving from possibilities to realities.