Category: Uncategorized

I can’t justify paying $10 over retail for the MAKE logo and cool tag — wish I could — but I may get one in the stealth version.

Just made a new batch of tools! The MAKE “bomb defuser” is small enough to fit on your key chain and the perfect companion for mobile fixing, hacking and MacGyvering. This is a limited offering with custom “MAKE: bomb defuser” laser etched with care using a 35w laser. Order today or be sorry tomorrow.

Features

• Squirt E4 features
• Electrical Wire Cutters (spring loaded)
• 20, 18, 16, 14, and 12 gauge wire strippers
• Straight Knife
• Tweezers
• Extra-Small Screwdriver
• Small Screwdriver
• Phillips Screwdriver
• Wood/Metal File
• Bottle Opener
• Lanyard Attachment
• Length: 2.25 in. / 5.5 cm closed
• Weight: 1.8 ounces / 52 grams

MAKE: Bomb Defuser – Leatherman “Squirt” E4 (electronics version) – Link.[Read this article] [Comment on this article] [From Bomb defusers]

ye olde iBooke doesn’t have what it takes to run Leopard. Glad I didn’t buy it yet 😉

1. Your computer needs to be at least 867 MHz and have 512 MB of RAM. [From [Updated] First Look: Installing Mac OS X Leopard on Compiler]

And XCode 3 is Leopard-only. I hope I don’t get left too far behind.

[C]an it really be so hard to point out that the security policy of the Republican party is to pick fights with Third World countries and lose?

[From QOTD]

• very nice astronomy site, with different levels of information
  Comet Holmes (no, I never heard of it either) has grown in brightness and can be seen with the naked eye.
  (tags: astronomy comets science)

“Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.”

From [Malcolm X]

I am on record that being born here shouldn’t grant automatic citizenship. Some would call it a kind of polling test, but unlike the racist ones used to disenfranchise minorities, this would simply ensure that people who vote have some understanding of what they’re doing.

• EpiSurveyor: Saving Lives with Open Source
  this deserves high marks as the right sort of solution, the right mix of technology and people power. It needs more publicity.
  (tags: technology health cleverideas)
• Watsonmatta U?
  just goes to show that even the great thinkers are sometimes blind. Watson and Crick (preceded by Rosalind Franklin) may discovered DNA but Watson may have missed the significance of it.
  (tags: science racism ignorance values)
• Rossi Will Challenge Gregoire
  Oh, joy. Wonder if he’ll have a platform/agenda other than the R after his name?
  (tags: politics washington gop)

[From FreeRice]

At 37 grains per gram, 1000 grains is about 27g. Not a lot, so play often.

A series of articles directed at debunking the Sage of Fresno‘s historical fictions? Yes, please.

Hanson’s dismissals of those who would correct the record he distorted are based upon two biases: “Campus liberals” would engage in culture wars, and “non-military historians” don’t know about military history and are thus unqualified to speak on the topic at hand. Well, Victor, I am afraid that I’m not going to be so easy to dismiss. Although I teach at Georgetown now, I used to teach at West Point, and the topic I taught is the same that I have studied for 18 years, military history. It is one thing for you to brush off an inhabitant of, say, the history departments at Yale or the University of Wisconsin as knowing nothing of the military or military history. It is quite another to attempt the same with an Army Airborne Ranger who also happens to be an academic historian and who thinks that your personal signal work is a pile of poorly constructed, deliberately misleading, intellectually dishonest feces. [From Media Matters – Altercation: Bateman on Hanson: An Altercation Altercation]

via The Daily Whim:

Col. David Hunt: America Could Have Killed Usama bin Laden, But Didn’t — “We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite … We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby … We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist […] The United States of America’s political and military leadership has, on at least three separate occasions, chosen not capture or kill bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri.”

[From America Could Have Killed Usama bin Laden, But Didn’t]

And this is from Faux News?

Seriously, with him dead, the war is over. Justice is done, and there is no further reason to keep troops in the oil patch. By contrast, there was no reason to keep Hussein around — and probably a lot of reasons to silence him — so he took the long drop.

If Osama bin Forgotten is still on the loose on 1/20/09, I wonder how long it will take for Commander Codpiece’s successor to track him down? I’m guessing something under 7 years.

Sign on to this letter and tell Harry Reid: No Immunity for Lawbreaking Companies! [From action.openleft.com | Signup]

My comments:

I can’t believe we need to make this any more clear. There is no reason to allow the telecom industry to evade accountability. They are publicly-owned and their business models are based on the use of licenses granted by the people of the United States. They need to be reminded of this, and I expect you as public officials, who act on behalf of the same people who own these companies and grant those licenses, to do just that.

Surely there are enough Senators brave enough to stand with Senator Dodd and against a president who can’t even muster the support of 1 in 4 of his constituents. I would be embarrassed if I couldn’t play that hand.

Go sign it.