Category: Uncategorized

I could hear the sound of a kitten in distress about 2 this afternoon, but didn’t find out where it was. A couple of hours later, I had cause to be outside again and heard it more clearly, more persistently. I was able to find out that a kitten had climbed to the top of a tree, perhaps 70 feet up, and hadn’t figured out how to get down. The tree is a couple of hundred feet away from my house, so his little cries reach a good distance.

He apparently spent last night up there. The fire department was called but they said he would come down after two days. The boy who gave me the details said that the tree’s trunk is about the width of broomstick up there and the branches are too thickly interwoven to allow him to get up there for a rescue.

I could hear the little bugger, still unhappy, at about 7 when I went out again. I hope the FD have it right. It’s cold up there, getting down into the 30s. He’ll be one miserable little cat. Wonder if he’ll try that trick again, once he gets down?

Shame Bush didn’t round up Osama when the opportunity was there.

“What is happening to the geographical entity of Pakistan in all this? Simply observe the locus of the territories successively falling under ‘militant’ control and a frightening pattern emerges. This is not mere fallout of the war on terror. Let’s be clear. Are we not in fact witnessing the emergence of an Islamic Emirate of Pakhtunistan, to be established first on this side of the Durand Line and then on the other?” Salman Tarik Kureshi

[From The emergence of an Islamic Emirate of Pakhtunistan]

The Simple Dollar weblog details the process and financial, health and taste benefits of baking your own bread from scratch. [From Cooking: Homemade Bread Made Cheap, Delicious, and Easy]

It’s actually a lot easier than that.

Continue reading “simpler still”

Transformational thinking hits the car industry?

The cost of the average used car in Europe is now cheaper than the cost of gasoline to drive it for a year.

And when phone handsets could be purchased instead of rented/leased, their prices dropped. The quality was much worse — those old Western Electric or AT&T phones were build like tanks — but no one cared.

That’s why “free” cars make sense: because the purchase price is now a small fraction of their lifetime costs. Shai’s company is taking a bigger view of the business they’re in–rather than selling cars, they’re selling personal transportation, and charging a rate proportional to use. When fuel seemed nearly free compared to price of the car, companies sold cars. Now cars seem free compared to the cost of the fuel. Thus an opportunity for a car company that thinks different. [From Next: Free Cars!]

Interesting to think that we may see increased commodification in the auto industry: less frills and shininess, maybe more innovative designs to improve economy since that’s becoming the chief expense.

Free seems a long way from here, but what do I know?

• In Portland, Cultivating a Culture of Two Wheels
  “Cyclists, who have long revered Portland for its bicycle-friendly ways, are helping the city build a cycling economy based on a growing number of smaller businesses.”
  (tags: cycling culture economics politics markets)

Wow, this picture says a thousand words–a few times over.

[From Top of the Food Chain]

Wow. I knew the funding priorities didn’t match the nutritional guidelines but I didn’t realize it was this whacked.

The same technological efficiencies that empower modern culture also empower those who want to control it more tightly. More in this interview with Cory Doctorow that covers a lot of ground.

* did the title of the post ring any bells?

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.” [From ● Nick Carr on McLuhan]

Ripped from today’s headlines, as the saying goes. You may find it filed under SF, for reasons that elude me: it’s an alternate history set in 1949, with nothing more modern than the telephone. Anyway, it’s a murder mystery/political thriller, all wrapped in the aforementioned alternate history and peopled with well-realized characters, good and bad, all flawed in some way, but some quite sympathetic. Worth staying up til 1AM to finish.

“Farthing” (Jo Walton)

31 points out of 58 on Rolling Stone’s “Almost Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz,” which makes me a “Whiz,” proving they grade on a curve.

[From In Which I Am Lame and Old]

I’m not checking the key: some of it I don’t want to know.