Migrated...

This blog is in mothballs. I've moved mostly to Wordpress (work blog), Twitter (I think of it as a personal news feed), Tumblr (stream of consciousness links).

Wordpress
Twitter
Tumblr

Current Reading List for Housing and Financial Crisis

A post to store my reading list for why my 401k is shrinking faster than the world's glaciers:

• For general consumption, This American Life stars us off with a Giant Pool of Money then covers credit default swaps (CDS).


• Michael Panzer's Financial Armageddon, which is a blog and the title of his prescient book. Chapters 1 and 6 are especially relevant.


• Nouriel Roubini's 12 Steps (PDF version) and more at a Foreign Policy Passport blog post.

Esquire to publish "e-ink" cover

I want one, preferably several, to disassemble and hack up.

Esquire to publish "e-ink" cover | FP Passport

Satellite Imagery of Burma

Tuesday Map: Burma's cyclone aftermath | FP Passport

Reminds me of the images after the tsunami in Indonesia and after Hurricane Katrina.

Time to Bail on Blogger.com?

Blogspot hasn't really kept up with it's competition. Time to move to Wordpress?
Is Google Neglecting Blogger?

Also, Facebook is better for sharing links.

Water, Food, Fossil Fuels

On-going post on a vicious interconnected, inflationary web:

• higher oil prices -> higher food prices


• water shortage -> higher food prices, food shortages


• water shortage -> higher fossil fuel consumption


• higher natural gas prices -> higher fertilizer prices


• richer, eating more meat -> more feedstock, more water, more energy


• bad monetary and fiscal policies -> monetary inflation

X factor that connects them all: global climate change/global warming

Bad American Fiscal and Monetary Policy:
Rice, death and the dollar
The Economy: Something's Got to Give

Water:
A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice - New York Times
Water shortage worst in decades, official says - California dreaming, of water

Food Shortage:
Food Crisis Fuelling Global Instability
Global food shortages: a 'silent tsunami'
Global food Crisis
Emptying the breadbasket
Decades of Great Plains' wheat as king and low prices everywhere are over

Energy Peak/Plateau:
Plateau
Non-OPEC production of crude oil seems to have stalled, promising even higher prices at the pump.

Food and Energy:
Food Riots and Falling Russian Oil Production
Natural gas -> Fertilizer, Food (and fuel) for thought

Bottom Line:
Supply to meet demand? Or economists don't live in the real world, The new face of hunger and Why More Food Is Not the Answer
Cheap energy (oil, natural gas) and heavy fertilizer use can't go on forever:
The Rise of the Neo-Malthusians

I'm in Your Blog, Deconstructing Your Cliches

IEEE Spectrum: Snowclone Is The New Cliche is a look of some of the current internet cliches/memes going around.


moar funny pictures

Hamster-Powered Night Light

Hamster-Powered Night Light

Heh.

Also Rodent Powered Nightlight - Best of Weekend Projects

A Dog of a Goal

Something I've secretly wanted to do some really annoying dogs. [via The Offside Rules]

Like playing soccer a bit too much
Uploaded by kingcarter

*hit Runs Downill

Everyone’s Poop: Texas Monthly December 2007: "They say that shit runs downhill. This is commonly understood to mean that the world is an unfair place, except among those few people who actually work with the substance, for whom it is considered something of an article of faith." via [ The Informed Reader ]

And it is an article of faith, as I can personally testify to from my time working at a waste water treatment plant. Ask the people who work there what the most important invention and they'll say the toilet.

Don't Let Your Kids Grop Up to Be Engineers

Dilbert Comic Strip Archive - Dilbert.com - The Official Dilbert Website by Scott Adams - Dilbert, Dogbert and Coworkers!

NPR : Hops Shortage Likely to Boost Price of Beer

Nooooooo!

NPR : Hops Shortage Likely to Boost Price of Beer

Old Working Phonograph

Sounds pretty good huh? No electronics.

Chumby: Information Appliance

Yeah, I have one of these things. It displays RSS feeds, handles multimedia, etc. As an alarm clock, it's overkill. This thing could be useful in lots of places, at least until they place touchscreen terminals in every room in the house.

Another opinion: A Night With Chumby

Everyday Engineering

Starts out with a discussion of "windscreen". Funny story: a few years ago, a English colleague cracked his windshield, but couldn't figure out how to replace it. Why? His internet and yellowbook searches were based all based on "windscreen", not "windshield".



Always remember : "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." - a version of Murphy's Law

Futher reading: Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

Soccer is Good for You

Soccer is good for you, fitness-wise. It's better then jogging.

"When a group of couch potatoes underwent three months of soccer training, they became leaner, fitter and healthier than a similar group that jogged[.]"

Go on, bend it like Beckham [via Sideline Views: Big surprise ]

"Tragic Event Forces Man To Spend Rest Of Life Confined To Office Chair"

Tragic Event Forces Man To Spend Rest Of Life Confined To Office Chair

WILMETTE, IL—The impact of Fahey's employment was so crushing that it has since left the former high school track star paralyzed in front of his work computer.

Too true.

It's ****ed Up? What to Do...

Handy flow chart to determine if something is *ucked up.

Flowchart: Is it f*cked up? What to do, if so. - Boing Boing

What Does the Engineer Mean

Basically, how computer programmers and by extension engineers classify difficulty of solving problems.

Understanding Engineers: Feasibility

In a post titled “Understanding Engineers: Feasibility,” Charles Miller explains exactly what engineers mean when they describe problems as “impossible,” “trivial,” “unfeasible,” “non-trivial,” “hard,” and “very hard.”

[via Off Topic : Good Morning Silicon Valley]

As a bit of a side note, computer scientists even have a notation of problem size: O(f(x)) or Big O notation.

Art Deco Dystopia

I've been playing Bioshock.



Glorious Art Deco design: the clothes, interiors, music etc. The voice acting stands out; there's just something about the accents. And if you're familiar with Ayn Rand, it makes the game more intriguing.

It's a game, it's a work of art, and it's a political commentary.

Links galore:

• Atlas Drowned: A crumbling utopia sets the stage for the world's most fascinating shooter


• BioShock lets users take on fanaticism through fantasy


• Welcome To Rapture! Even Ectomo’s Non-Gamers Will Love Bioshock


• Two Reasons Why Bioshock Is Ectomo’s Game Of The Year