Slow Takes


  • Chrenkoff
    "George W Bush is raising money - indirectly: "Outland Books, a New York publishing company, said today that it would donate $3 from each internet sale of its popular daily calendar, Presidential (Mis)Speak: The Very Curious Language of George W Bush, to the UN aid agency Unicef." I'm sure his contribution will be misunderestimated again."

  • how-to record on your ipod (for free) - hack a day - www.hackaday.com
    apple cripples recording on an ipod so belkin and griffin then have to sell us add-on devices for over $50 that can only record at 8khz, which is all pretty shitty. apparently (the rumor is) apple does this so people don’t use their ipods to record stuff they think we shouldn’t, like concerts, whatever. but don’t worry, there’s a way around it and you can record at high quality, all for free.

  • Mark Steyn: On tsunami's shore
    You would think an unprecedented tsunami in a region that has never been a U.S. sphere of influence would be hard to pin on the Great Satan. And, to be fair to the global rent-a-quote crowd, for an hour or two they were stunned into silence. But it wasn't long before they were back singing the same old song: Disaffected young Muslim men in Saudi Arabia, devastated coastal villages in Sri Lanka ... "These Foolish Things Remind Me Of U.S.A." You really need Cole Porter:

    You're The Pits

    With your massive armies

    You're The Pits

    And you cause tsunamis.


  • Michael Barone: The lessons of Clintoncare (1/10/05)
    Social security overhaul seems to be the Bush administration's first priority for 2005. To gauge the prospects of success, it may be helpful to compare Bush's formidable task with the No. 1 goal of the incoming Clinton administration in 1993, healthcare finance overhaul. On the surface, Clinton's odds of a win looked better in early 1993 than Bush's do today. But Bush actually has a better chance of prevailing.

  • Foreign Affairs - Grand Strategy in the Second Term - John Lewis Gaddis
    Summary: In his first four years, George W. Bush presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. strategy since the days of F.D.R. Over the next four, his basic direction should remain the same: restoring security in a more dangerous world. Some midcourse corrections, however, are overdue. Washington should remember the art of speaking softly and the need for international legitimacy.

  • TV to Go: TiVo Unveils Portable Service

    SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - TiVo Inc. pioneered digital video recording as a new way of watching television - when you want it. Now it could be TV where you want it, too. The long-awaited service feature called TiVoToGo, set to launch Monday, will give users their first taste of TiVo untethered. No longer confined to TiVo digital video recorders in the living room or bedroom, subscribers will be able to transfer their recorded shows to PCs or laptops and take them on the road - as long as the shows are not specially tagged with copy restrictions. That's also the case for pay-per-view or on-demand movies, and some premium paid programming. Users also will be able to copy shows onto a DVD - soon after but not immediately at the service launch, company officials said.


  • Predicting 2005: Going Global >

    Web Globalization Goes Mainstream Based on surveys I've conducted, discussions with executives at Fortune 500 companies, and a few recent discussions with reporters, the signs are pointing toward a very public year for the field of Web globalization. You may remember that Web globalization was a hot topic back in the heady days of 2000. But this time around, growth will be driven by real revenues. Amazon could see more than half of its revenues come from outside the US by the end of 2005, and definitely by 2006. And it won't just be the virtual companies that embrace Web globalization; we'll see companies from industries such as hospitality, retail and financial services launch multilingual Web sites --another sign that this emerging field has crossed over from luxury to necessity.


  • The Penny-Wise Aren't Foolish Anymore
    But in 2004, signs were abundant that small can be beautiful, too. In the stock market, less-heralded stocks crushed their larger, more famous brethren. Through Dec. 29, the Russell 2000 - an index of smaller-capitalization stocks - was up an impressive 17.32 percent for the year. That's almost double the return of the Standard & Poor's 500 (up 9.13 percent). And it dwarfs the meager 3.6 percent rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, composed of 30 titans of business.

  • Celebrity Butts 2004 is at an end so what better way to celebrate than to see the back of some gorgeous celebrities. These stunners have all had a great year and they're bound to have even more success in 2005. But can you guess who they are? We've been a bit cheeky and we're only showing you a snapshot of their bum along with a little clue to their identity.

  • 100 things we didn't know this time last year 1. Street brawlers sometimes arm themselves with potato peelers, according to the Home Office, which wants to make them banned weapons. More details 2. Farmers plant their crops up to three weeks earlier than 15 years ago. In the 1960s, temperatures from January to March averaged 4.2C; it rose to 5.6C in the 1990s. 3. Brussels sprouts have three times as much vitamin C as oranges. .... 100. Bill Clinton sent just two e-mails while he was president.

  • Yoko Ono Appointed Spokesperson for New Chemical Castration Drug NEW YORK — Yoko Ono has been appointed spokesperson for a new chemical castration drug, tentatively called “Chop-Chop.” It has just been approved by the FDA after a lengthy delay. It seems laboratory rats wanted nothing to do with her because she was always in the way during recording sessions. “Let me tell you,” said Ms. Ono, speaking from her Chalet in Switzerland. “I know a thing or two about robbing males of their manhood. We considered calling the drug, ‘Balls-Be-Gone,’ but that’s the beauty of this drug. It leaves you with your balls intact.

  • Scientists develop fly-eating robot Scientists at the University of the West of England have developed a robot that powers itself by catching and eating flies. The carniverous robot, named EcoBot II, uses human sewage as bait to catch the insects.

  • Agog with blogs Bloggers offer access, megaphones to the showbiz underclass By JENNIFER NETHERBY Showbiz is blogging itself silly about insider comings and goings. The industry's underclass dishes everyone from Paris Hilton to Harvey Weinstein in a growing number of showbiz blogs....

  • Evolution is a Friend of Creation, says Evangelical Professor “Denying science makes us look stupid…People should not feel they have to deny reality in order to experience their faith.” Richard Colling, a biologist/evangelical, is swinging a new voice in the creation/evolution debate this winter: Darwin’s theory of evolution is compatible and complementary to the theory of intelligent design. Colling, who received a Ph.D in microbiology and chairs the biology department at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, recorded his new symbiotic theory in his book, “Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with Creator.”

  • Tsunami must be fault of the US In the past three days I have been impressed by the originality of the latest critiques of the evil Americans. The earthquake and tsunami apparently had something to do with global warming, environmentalists say, caused of course by greedy American motorists. Then there was the rumour that the US military base at Diego Garcia was forewarned of the impending disaster and presumably because of some CIA-approved plot to undermine Islamic movements in Indonesia and Thailand did nothing about it.

  • Words A Go-Go
    The NYTimes ran a contest for best alternative definition for words. The winner was "coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon"... Second place went to "flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained".

  • Coric to Anchor CBS News?
    Moonves could easily justify the $20 million or more that he'd have to pay Couric: Aside from the ratings jolt she'd almost certainly give the evening news, she could also be deployed to do a raft of prime time specials and contribute to 60 Minutes. Twenty mil? Hell, David Letterman makes more than that.

  • NASA plans massive Mars rover
    Building on the success of the two wheeled geologists that arrived at Mars in January, 2004, NASA has begun planning a new rover mission to the red planet %u2013 the Mars Science Laboratory. Planned to be twice as long and three times as heavy as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Science Laboratory would collect martian soil samples and rock cores and analyze them for environmental conditions and organic compounds that could have supported microbial life now or in the past.

  • Camera Phone Tips
    We've compiled this list of camera phone tips and techniques to help us get the best results from our camera phones. They are not rocket science and will not guarantee crystal clear pictures like those you'd get from a Digital SLR - but they could drastically improve the shots your Camera Phone produces.

  • The network is the blog
    The blog network is made of people. We are the nodes, actively filtering and retransmitting knowledge. Clearly this architecture can help manage the glut of information. More subtly, it can also help ensure that no vital inputs are suppressed because nobody has to rely on a single source. If one of the feeds I monitor doesn%u2019t react to some event in a given domain, another probably will. When they all react, I know it was an especially important event. The resemblance of this model to the summing of activation potentials in a neural system is more than superficial. Nature knows best.

  • Doc Searls on BuzzAgent
    Several people have asked me what I think about BuzzAgent, so here's my joint answer to all of them: It sucks. Where Marqui is up front about what it's doing, and engaging bloggers in conversation (as well as promotion), BuzzAgent and its clients are being surreptitious and false, and spreading a virus of falsity through its agents. Mass market advertising has always been impersonal, and often (okay, almost always) fake. BuzzAgent's system allows advertisers to be no less fake, but in person, face to face. Even if the agents really do love the products they shill, their love is bought. Worse, it comes cheap.

  • Jarvis' First Law of Media
    Whenever citizens can exercise control, they will. Today they are challenging and changing media -- where bloggers now fact-check Dan Rather's ass -- but tomorrow they will challenge and change politics, government, marketing, and education as well. This isn't just a media revolution, though that's where we are seeing the impact first. This is a chain-reaction of revolutions. It has just begun.

  • Friendship and Relativity
    If Einstein succeeded in transforming time into space, Gdel would perform a trick yet more magical: He would make time disappear. Having already rocked the mathematical world to its foundations with his incompleteness theorem, Gdel now took aim at Einstein and relativity.

  • Open Letter to a Digital World
    It's time for anyone running a Windows PC to switch to Linux.You see, the Windows platform is not just insecure - it's patently, blatantly, and unashamedly insecure by design and for all the lip service to security it's really not going to get better, ever. To make matters worse, it's more expensive and gives you fewer necessary applications right out of the box than Linux. Everyone, even Microsoft, knows this - they are just too afraid to say it. The tide is coming in. Nothing on this planet can stop it.

  • Books by the Foot ~ Books by the Yard
    We sell books by the foot and offer 2 catagories of books: Jeweltone at $9 a spine in quantities up to 250 and $8 a spine in quantities of 250 . Designer Mix are $13 a spine in quantities up to 250 and $12 a spine in quantities of 250 . We consider ten books equal to a foot and we ship a minimum ten books (one foot). Filling a bookcase couldn't be easier... Measure how many linear feet you need to fill, and then order by the foot from Book Decor.

  • Forget Cue Cards, Make a Teleprompter!
    Creative problem solving is a trait many creative professionals share, but perhaps no one possesses that skill more than Brian P. Lawler. See how he made a teleprompter with a laptop, Adobe InDesign, and some scrap wood.

  • Laura Bush's Christmas Letter
    And what with George Sr and Barbara having spent four very happy years here and Jeb hinting that he is quite keen to move away from Florida some time, we have come to regard it as family property In the end, fortunately, the landlords seemed to find the other couple completely insufferable and virtually begged us to stay on....

  • A Stoning in Iran
    The single job for a writer that would most certainly condemn you to hell in this life and the next has to be reporting for Reuters. Impervious to sense and humanity, this "Service" continues to pump out what passes for "reportage" using editorial rules and filters from somewhere in "the Stone Age". I use that term advisedly. Here's a full report that just moved over the wires from that bastion of religious peace, harmony and toleration, Iran.

  • Europe is Kaput
    In the major newspapers of the US east coast, to be sure, Europeans continue to read about their sad little concerns. What "red state" Americans hear, by contrast, is that Europe is dying, like the now-vanished "evil empire" of Soviet communism.

  • Kyoto is a Sham
    So what if a reduction in emissions by the means prescribed is impossible by 2050? Politicians don't want to hear it. And since politics very often consists of promising the impossible to the ignorant, the scientific bankruptcy of currently proposed Green initiatives is entirely irrelevant. Kyoto, like Peacekeeping is always good, though no one can say why. The climate change initiatives will continue to be put forward; they are an end in themselves.

Recent Posts

About

Recent Comments

January 01, 2005

It Could Have Been Worse -- Command Post

It Could Have Been Worse: " Cross-posted from AEBrain, the blog.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami could have been worse. A lot worse. That's a particularly cold-blooded thing to say about an event that's caused at least half a million casualties (injured and killed), with 70,000 confirmed dead at the moment. Nonetheless it's true. Just have a look at a graphic of the event.

Indian Ocean Tsunami
Click on graphic to show animation

As you can see from this simulation (Animation provided by Kenji Satake, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan, via ITSU), the Tsunami was focussed mainly to the West, with a slightly lesser wave to the East, and relatively little North and South. especially North.

Indian Ocean Tsunami Radii

Now please look North. The "crinkly bits‚" to the right of the Indian subcontinent represent the deltas of Bangladesh. Population 141 Million. Most of whom live within 2 metres of sea level.

The Maldives only had a population of 280,000, and they were badly hit, with some parts rendered permanently uninhabitable.

Bangladesh is at almost exactly the same distance from the epicentre as the Maldives, and are equally low-lying, 2/3 of the country being river delta within a metre or two of sea level. When the first reports came in, it wasn't clear how big the seismic event was. One source said 6.8, another 8.0, another 8.5. When I saw that last figure, I immediately thought about Bangladesh. Why?

From WorldInfo :

The 1970 cyclone killed over five hundred thousand people. In the 1991 cyclones over two hundred thousand people drowned and many millions of homes were destroyed. In 1991 a tsunami wave killed one hundred and thirty-eight thousand people in Bangladesh.
That was a small one, and there was plenty of time to see it coming - much smaller than the one that hit the Maldives with no warning.

I'd been thinking about Indian Ocean Tsunamis for a day or two, due to Friday the 13th and Jay Manifold's calculations about an Indian Ocean Impact.

So when the news came that the quake was 8.9 on the Richter Scale (soon to be upgraded to 9.0), I feared the worst. But as the hours ticked by, it soon became more likely that the reason there were no reports of devastation in Bangladesh was because there was no devastation, not because there was no Bangladesh.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for parts of Aceh province in Indonesia, whole towns and villages are on maps, but from aeriel reconnaisance, no longer exist. When I first started posting about the event over at The Command Post, I feared that the death toll would be in Millions, or even tens of Millions in Bangladesh, with another fifty or a hundred thousand everywhere else combined. Not just feared, I figured that if either the waves were unfocussed and omnidirectional, or focussed North-South, then at least a Million people had just died. I could see no way around it. It would have taken an extraordinary focussing of the energy East-West to keep the toll below that. But wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, such a focussing happened.

Never in my entire life have I been so glad to be wrong. So now when I see the heartrending pictures - a man cradling the lifeless body of his infant son; a mother with terrible wounds searching desperately for her children; or even think of the gay couple Carmel and I know well (they live not far from us) who were in Phuket and are still unnacounted for - I can't help thinking how much worse it could have been, by a factor of not just 10, but 100.

My favourite Marxist, Norman Geras, discusses with sympathy those whose faith in an Omnibenevolent God has been shaken by this event. Well, there are 10 Million reasons why my agnosticism, and unbelief in a God who participates in human affairs has been shaken. There aren't 10 Million corpses, mainly children, in the Bay of Bengal today. As I write this, I still can't believe that we dodged this particular bullet. When I first posted the alert over at TCP, I had an icy pit in my stomach. Now I'm quite literally shedding a few tears of relief as I type this.

Oh yes, after a steady increase to a chance as high as 1 in 32, it looks like 2004 MN 04 won't be hitting us after all.

It could have been worse. "


On Command Post Op-Ed Page

January 1, 2005 in World View | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

World News

Pope's prayer for tsunami victims: "The Pope prays for victims of the Asian wave disaster at his annual New Year address in Rome."
On BBC: World

South Africa begins gun amnesty: "South Africa begins a nationwide amnesty for gun owners in an attempt to cut high crime levels."
On BBC: World

Bush Orders Flag Tribute to Tsunami Victims: "CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush, seeking to bolster America's humanitarian image after the Asian tsunamis, called on Saturday for flags to be flown at half-staff next week to honor victims of the disaster."
On Reuters: Top News

White Roses, Candles Bring in Solemn New Year: "PATONG BEACH, Thailand (Reuters) - People held candles and white roses on the tsunami-hit island of Phuket, tearfully embracing as they grieved, in a poignant symbol of the mood which darkened New Year celebrations across the globe."
On Reuters: Top News

Iraq Ushers in New Year with Deadly Attacks: "BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq ushered in the New Year on Saturday the same way it ended the last one -- with a string of assassinations and bombings by insurgents bent on wrecking a landmark Jan. 30 election."
On Reuters: Top News

Mideast Looks Forward to 2005 Elections: "Middle East Nations Such As Iraq and Egypt Will Head to the Polls in 2005"
On ABC News: World

Floods in Sri Lanka Prompt Evacuations: "After the devastation wreaked by the seas, a deluge from the skies deepened the misery for tsunami-stricken areas Saturday, triggering flash floods in Sri Lanka that sent evacuees fleeing and increasing the threat of deadly disease as survivors shivered in relief centers."
On AP World News

The end of Uganda's mystic rebel?: "A cease-fire between northern fighters and the government is expected to be signed Friday."
On Christian Science Monitor: All Stories

36 Children Injured in Sled Accident On Foxnews: U.S. & World

Saudi's 58 Marriages Anger Some On Foxnews: U.S. & World

Justice Dept. Toughens Rule on Torture: "The Justice Department has broadened its definition of torture, retreating from an earlier memo that defined torture extremely narrowly."
On New York Times: International News

Cruel and Unusual Kittycat: "A summary of what's in the major U.S. newspapers."
On Slate Magazine

Killings In D.C. Fewest Since '86: "The District had fewer than 200 homicides last year for the first time in nearly two decades, a steep drop from the deadly bloodshed that was fueled by drugs and gangs in the 1980s and 1990s."
On Washington Post: Top News

A boy named Tsunami (Reuters): "Reuters - Six-day-old Tsunami Roy doesn't know what all the fuss about him is, as he hungrily suckles at his mother's breast before dropping off for a contented nap."
On Yahoo! News: Highest Rated

Tsunami aid tops $2 billion: "Pledges of international financial support for countries devastated by the Indian Ocean tsanumis have reached $2 billion, according to the U.N. emergency relief coordinator."
On CNN: World

January 1, 2005 in World View | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 31, 2004

Wraparound, 12/31/2004

U.S. Pledges $350 Million in Tsunami Aid-Official: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will provide $350 million in aid for victims of southern Asia's devastating tsunami, a government official said on Friday."
On Reuters: Top News

Devastating Asian Tsunami Darkens World's New Year: "BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Aircraft, naval vessels and trucks struggled Friday to deliver aid around stricken southern Asia as the death toll exceeded 124,000 from a tsunami which darkened the world's New Year."
On Reuters: Top News

Musharraf solidifies powerful post: "The decision by Pakistan's president to stay on as military chief has angered leading politicians of the religious right."
On Christian Science Monitor: All Stories

The end of Uganda's mystic rebel?: "A cease-fire between northern fighters and the government is expected to be signed Friday."
On Christian Science Monitor: All Stories

Iraq Militant Roundup: "GIs take in 49 suspects; insurgents threaten potential voters with death
• Security Teams Train"
On Foxnews: U.S. & World

£20m in 24 hours: "Shocked by the devastation caused by the tsunami, Britons responded yesterday with unprecedented generosity to the appeal for donations"
On Independent: World

Desmond Tutu on God, Bush and the Tsunamis: "Desmond Tutu discusses the tsunami tragedy, God, Iraq and the re-election of George W. Bush"
On Newsweek: World News

The End of My World as I Knew It: "A New Year's reflection on my life after heroin."
On Slate Magazine

College Football Art: A Slide Show: "The master painters of the gridiron and the fans who love them."


On Slate Magazine

Agony in Aceh: "A summary of what's in the major U.S. newspapers."
On Slate Magazine

What Was Lost: "South Asia is inundated, leaving behind scenes of unimaginable destruction as the survivors look for missing kin and relief workers try to head off a humanitarian catastrophe"
On TIME's Top Stories

An Easier, but Less Deadly, Recipe for Terror: "If you can get past the guards and fences, the ingredients for a chemical attack are available off the shelf at a crumbling military base called Shchuchye in south-central Russia. There, stacked like dusty wine bottles on wooden racks, is a collection of 1.9 million artillery shells filled with nerve agents such as VX, an oily yellow liquid so deadly that a single drop on the skin can kill."
On Washington Post: Top News

Mother's dilemma: Which son to save!: "Tsunami that hit Phuket forced Jillian Searle of Australia to make a choice no mother should ever have to make. "
On Hindustan Times: World

U.S. Aid Generous and Stingy: "It depends on how the numbers are crunched -- total dollars or a slice of the overall economy."


On LA Times: World

The Sea: "This week, tsunamis caused by underwater earthquakes in the Indian Ocean claimed tens of thousands of lives. In this article from 1951, Rachel L. Carson considers the science of waves, and the relationship between the earth and the sea."
On The New Yorker

Raw Deal: "Pure, on Irving Place."
On The New Yorker

Pacific coast'stsunami threat : "Great earthquake cluster zone in northwestcould touch off deadly waves, say studies"
On WorldNetDaily

Report: Stewart Loses Contest in Prison (AP): "AP - Martha Stewart, who built a billion-dollar media empire based on her holiday and home decorating tips, was unable to lead her team to victory in a prison decoration contest, a magazine reported."
On Yahoo! News: Most Emailed

Girl, 5, youngest Briton known dead: "A five-year-old schoolgirl has been confirmed as the youngest Briton known to have died in the Asian tsunami disaster."
On Ananova News

Terror groups call voting un-Islamic: "New Year's Eve festivities canceled"
On The Washington Times: World

Ex-Playmate Anna Nicole's Fortune Reversed (AP): "AP - A federal appeals court Thursday threw out a judge's ruling that awarded $88.5 million to former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith from the estate of her late husband, an oil tycoon who died at age 90 just over a year after they wed."
On Yahoo! News: Most Viewed

December 31, 2004 in World View | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack