I have always been fascinated by aerostats, particularly rigid airships such as those manufactured by Zeppelin. Robotics has also been an interest too; and that makes these videos of Festo AG’s floating art particularly riveting.
Hat tip to Will for pointing these mesmerizing videos out.
Some have suggested that the recent discovery that both South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford and Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign were having extra-marital affairs would be schadenfreude (joy at the suffering of others), and I have to disagree. Likewise, the exposure of New York Democratic Governor Elliot Spitzer’s visits with prostitutes is no cause for schadenfreude either.
There is no joy in the broken hearts and damaged relationships. No joy in the dishonesty, the deceit, the contempt, the lack of respect for their partners and voters. No joy in the hypocrisy that both of these Republicans pilloried then Democratic President Bill Clinton when he was caught having an affair in the 1990s, and now both have participated in the very same activity that they themselves claimed was reprehensible and grounds for impeachment.
I think we are being unreasonable as a society to expect everyone to lead perfect lives with no mistakes and no loves outside of the one sanctioned by some very narrow definitions founded a century ago. Monogamy is not the natural order of things, and limiting ourselves to just one love denies the fact that we love our children, all of them, even when we have more than one child. We love our parents even after we get married. We can certainly fall in love with more than one adult and be attracted to more than one person at a time; it is not a weakness as some in the media present. It is natural.
What is reprehensible are the lies about it. The lack of honesty within their families. The lack of honesty within their support staffs. The fact that they pilloried Bill Clinton for his affair and for his lack of honesty (and I agree with them on his lack of honesty), but then proceeded to do exactly the same thing they sought power trying to stamp out. Spitzer’s crime was that he engaged in the same activity he ran against. Kettle; calling the pot black is perhaps a little silly.
For me, I don’t really care how many consenting adults of whatever sex are cavorting with our elected leaders, so long as they are honest and open about it (so they are not vulnerable to blackmail), their partners and families are ok with it (so trust is not violated), and they are clear with their staff so that emergency contacts can be made and duties fulfilled (an affair should not interfere with the job).
Schadenfreude? No, it is very sad that our society prosecutes people for the affairs and not for lies and neglect of responsibility.
By Crom that John Hodgman is a funny guy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY
Hat tip to mindflayer… perhaps it’s Obama’s geek credentials that attracted my sysadmin friends to his campaign….
Tickets appear to be sold out, but if you already have tickets, and want to carpool (parking at Arlington Cinema ‘N Drafthouse is very tight). The event begins Saturday, June 27th at 1pm; but the doors open at noon, and I suspect the local Browncoats will make it fun.
Thanks and hat tip to Castalusoria for the idea of carpooling to the event.
We’ve had and heavily used a Garmin StreetPilot 2620 for years and years, and it has usually worked very well. It is frustrating that this old model only syncs to Windows computers for Map Updates and Waypoint/Route planning. Sometimes the touch screen calibration gets so far off that it seems unresponsive. It has certainly been well worth the big bucks we spent on it years ago.
This weekend it went through a very frustrating fit of telling us it could not re-calculate a route we needed because “Route Calculation Error: Not enough memory available.” would pop up on the screen after calculating for minutes (by modern standards it is pretty old). Short routes could still be calculated on the fly, but long routes (we were on a long trip) were simply not working. I poked and prodded it for quite some time, resetting the device a dozen times. Finally I figured out an erroneous setting that used up all the memory in the little device… It was set to record our tracks. I am not sure what that is, but as soon as I turned off that feature, and purged the recorded tracks, route calculation – even for long trips – went back to normal.
I am only publishing this in case anyone else out there sees the same error – check to make sure you are not “recording tracks” and if you are, stop doing that and you may find you have plenty of memory again.
Hope this helps.
This essay/posting by Andrew Sullivan is a must read on why the events happening in Iran right now are so important to the whole world:
andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish
It is worth reading in it’s entirety. Freedom is not a gift that can be given and democracy is not something that can be forced on someone. Both have to be desired, fought for, earned, and one by the people who want democracy. Furthermore it is a grave responsibility and requires ongoing vigilance to keep the freedoms we cherish.
This makes what is happening in Iran so special, so amazing. The Iranian people are earning their freedom with incredible courage against a pretty formidable and scary deck of cards stacked against them. They are literally putting their lives on the line. I admire them for it and hope we can live up to that example.
Hustler Turf have come out with an all-electric zero-turn riding mower! At approximately $6500 it is a bit out of my price range, but it’s still amazing and gives me hope for things to come in the future. Hustler has a sterling reputation for making some of the finest lawn mowers in the world, and some of the toughest. 80 minutes on a 16 hour charge is more than enough to do an acre per charge.
I am not even a car buff, and I love the show Top Gear… it’s entertainment the way Car Talk is for radio… you don’t even have to like cars.
In case embedded does not show up for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_KIqdS1SO0
As the current regime in Iran tries to shutdown the internet and new media methods of communication, it has been very impressive just how difficult it is to silence the people. The internet, even in a centralized theocracy, is profoundly resilient and able to work around various specific links being cut. The people are being forced to resort to all sorts of challenging work-around solutions, but the word is getting out and the resistance is being planned and coordinated.
Pretty impressive design. Hats off to the cold war era packet messaging system designers from the 1960s.
I am hoping the resistance continues to be non-violent; though with the current government’s crackdown, it is unlikely to be completely peaceful.
Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish continues to be an excellent source for news about the current revolution in Iran.
So Iran’s election appears to be rigged. It looks like Mousavi won by a very large margin, and that Ahmadinejad came in a very distant third place (eg: only 5.69 million votes to over 19 million for Mousavi and well over 13 million for Karoubi); and that despite the obviously clear to the public victory for Mousavi, the military theocracy declared Ahmadinejad the winner without even bothering to count most of the votes. Furthermore, they audaciously proclaimed the alleged Ahmadinejad victory to be a mandate of nearly 2/3 of all votes; something that was so clearly wrong that Tehran and many other cities in Iran are in open rebellion now.
The mainstream media fail is that over 36 hours later, only the BBC has any real coverage of the revolution happening in Iran. You have to get this information from bloggers and twitterers if you want it. Guess the revolution is not being televised after all.
