Sunday, March 16, 2003

There seems to be an audience who are excited about the upcoming Spring programming of war reality TV. A friend and I were talking about a conversation his teenage son was having with his buddies - about all the explosions, crumbling buildings, depleted uranium bullets, blockbuster bombs. They seemed to feel this was going to be great stuff. The quote that bothered me the most was: I hope they try to use chemical weapons 'cause then we'll nuke 'em or the Israeli's will nuke 'em ... This is clearly pornographic - So we now have war as acceptable porn for the family. Much of it will be spectacular and the dirty little bits that upset people will probably not appear on the flickering blue family fireplace. So are your kids looking forward to death and destruction? I'm sure the network executives are excited. 8:05:59 AM     Reagan pioneered the concept of Republicans as really big deficit spenders (where really big means the economy was damaged), but W seems to be exceeding even Ron's performance. Many of the Republicans I know actually believe in fiscal responsibility. It is remarkable that the party seems to have outdone the Democrats when it comes to spending beyond its means for the sake of ideological rants. So now we have an airline industry on the verge of near total bankruptcy, the telecom industry recovery looks further out in the future, the automobile industry is showing serious signs of trouble, consumer confidence seems to be dropping, state and local governments are hurting and how is your 401k doing these days? The administration's leave no millionaire behind program seems to be winning and perhaps the economic future of the US will be the largest casualty of the war. I'm very upset with the administration, but I'm equally upset with the Democrats for not offering a viable alternative. 7:45:04 AM     While looking through some of old surfing notes from mid 1997, I came across a link for the Gaslight reading list. The list took interesting mystery, adventure and strange pieces (generally, but not always short stories) and discussed them using a mailing list. There have been many lists like this, but Gaslight had a reputation for clever commentary. I am not a member and don't know the status of the list. The site, on the other hand, has links to many of the stories used for discussion and is probably a good resource if you are into this sort of fiction (Sukie in particular!). 7:07:53 AM     Ah fallout shelters. Someone in the adjoining township just got a permit to build one. 5:57:37 AM     Speaking of objects of times gone by there are a class of interesting analog computing devices. I remember seeing a pole planimeter in a mechanical drawing setting. It could measure the area of a closed curve, but I didn't know how it worked. This morning I woke up wondering about it and a quick Google search found the answer. Very simple and very clever. 5:57:22 AM     A few documents on analog computers can be found at Doug Coward's page. For those who may be curious (somewhat technical - perhaps sophomore level EE) the pdf articles are particularly interesting. 5:57:03 AM     When it comes to the worst water in the world, Belgium leads the way.. This is interesting considering the reputation of their beer. The EU, in general, does poorly. In any event the reports look interesting. 5:56:10 AM

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