Needless to say, restructuring the global economy on the basis of conclusions drawn from data of this sort wouldn’t be so much stupid as absolutely and certifiably insane. As for the so-called “scientific consensus”, remember two things. 1) Most people are idiots. 2) All scientists are people. Ergo, it is safe to assume that most scientists are idiots, especially when one takes into account their apparent inability to understand either a) that science depends upon capitalist wealth not government largess, and, b) that the basic laws of supply and demand apply to their profession as well as their academic credentials.

Reading through some of the background stuff on his site leads me to believe that he is the anti-xtcian. Seriously.

Here’s another cool site featured recently by Neatorama that I can’t get enough of… Scouting New York.

I work as a film location scout in New York City. My day is basically spent combing the streets for interesting and unique locations for feature films. In my travels, I often stumble across some pretty incredible sights, most of which are ignored every day by thousands of New Yorkers in too much of a rush to pay attention.

What a great job, and what a great idea to go along with that great job… Grab photos of some of the unique but easily missed features of the places you see. And New York City has plenty of character hiding everywhere, but hiding in plain sight. It just takes someone like Scout to see that character and point it out to those who are too busy to notice the beauty that’s around them.

I usually think that I’m pretty good at that — among my family and friends it’s usually me that notices the oddball little out-of-the-way places and the weird little details that others will miss — but I don’t always take the time to sit down and write about them. Around Sioux Falls, there are lots of historic sites that are marked by Historical Society plaques; I started a while back taking photographs of those markers and sites, and writing a little about them on a Blogspot site — Sioux Falls Historic Sites (yeah, original name, I know…) — but my updates have been sporadic and I’m somewhat ashamed to see now that it’s been over two years since I last added a post. I’ve still got photos of a couple dozen more markers sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to get around to writing about them, but still, there they sit.

But beyond even the historic sites, there are plenty of details in the old buildings around town that could be “scouted” & written about… Of course, Sioux Falls doesn’t have the wealth of old interesting things that New York has… But still, it’s a great idea that I might have to pick up. Maybe just add to my SF Historic Sites project? Yup, in my spare time.

Available as a t-shirt over at one of my favorite sites, Neatorama.

Watching it, I can’t help but appreciate the time and thought that had to go into this piece… I’m sure the animators started with the music, and then worked backward to synchronize the balls striking the instruments, then figured out where the balls would go afterward. The timing, the creative use of percussion, the movement through the 3D space… Very, very cool. Had to be done in animation, cuz it would never, ever work in real life. You’d have extra noise from the balls rattling through the PVC and balls flying everywhere; no way could you aim balls coming out of a common tube to strike instruments in different locations. But I guess that’s where the name comes from!

Never mind my geeking over the details; just enjoy!

It’s a flightless bird with a dream and determination. And a serious deathwish. Enjoy!

Aye, it be that time of year once again! Time break out the rum, put on yer eye patch, run up the Jolly Roger, and all the other piratey things ye can think of, for it be Talk Like A Pirate Day! Arrrr!

In case yer piratey skills be lackin, here be some boons for ye, ye scurvy dogs! And no, it has nuthin’ ta do with downloadin’ movies ner music.

How to Talk Like A Pirate
Flickr Talk Like A Pirate Day
YouTube Stuff

I’ve decided that since I gave 11.5 years of my life to this country, and even lost body parts fighting for it, I want to SEE it, and the people who live in it. My plan is to drive basically a big circle around the USA from TN to Maine, then Oregon, down Cali and off to Key West. I have a beat up 1984 Suburban I’ve been preparing for the trip, and my plan is to live in it, along with my mildly retarded Boxer. I hope to see a lot of sites, stay off the interstates, and meet a lot of interesting people along the way…

The blogger, Daniel, is a retired Army chopper pilot who lost his right arm in a crash in is making a cross country trip. Doesn’t sound so special, but

Now that he’s finished his trip, he’s posted a Google Map with placemarks showing places he stopped along the way. I invited him to stop over in Sioux Falls for a meal and a visit, but I never heard back from him.

From the map it looks like he stopped at the Palisades near Garretson, then hit I-90 and headed west, stopping at the Badlands. That’s a little disappointing because he missed a lot of sights and historic sites along the way. So much for his wanting to stay off interstate highways… Oh well, his loss I guess.

His blog is still an interesting read. He writes well, and shares some pretty entertaining stories.

Link.

Well worth a visit.

This bike was produced by Renovo Hardwood Bicycles, where else, but in Portland, Oregon. “Wood is natures carbon fiber” they say. They hand pick hardwoods for their frames, and use a CNC machine for shaping & hollowing out the four pieces that comprise each main triangle, and bonded finger joints where the pieces intersect and the halves are joined in the middle.

They call the frames “heirloom quality”, and I’d have to agree. I don’t know how well they ride, but my guess is that they are as stiff yet supple as Renovo claims. And this is something you’d definitely want to bequeath to your kids, and they’d love to inherit.

Semper Velo

I’d like to take a shot at building a wood frame bike like this, although I couldn’t match Renovo’s build quality. The finger joints would be the difficult thing to reproduce with the tools I have on hand, but it might be possible to use lap joints at the three main joints, with the wood forming gussets at those joints as well. Three layers of overlapping 5″ wide, 1″ thick planks in four sections to form the triangle might just work… Build a solid prototype from something soft like Douglas Fir to see how it works, then go to a hardwood with hollow tube centers… Even if it didn’t work as a bike, it’d make a great wall decoration. This could be fun!

Free! Convert any media file format (Documents, Images, Audio, Video & Archives) without buying or installing anything on your PC

All you do is upload a file, tell it what format you want it converted to, and it’ll email you with a download link when it’s done. Of course, there are limits to what it can do — MS Publisher files are out of bounds for some reason (Zamzar will do .pub files) — and you certainly don’t want it converting something that contains sensitive or personal information. But for that oddball file that gets emailed to you that you can’t open or convert on your own, it’s great.

And it doesn’t just convert files; if you see a video online, whether it’s on YouTube or just in a weird format, and want to be able to download a copy, just go to YouConvertIt.com’s Video Conversion page; paste the link to the video you want converted, and click the button. In a short while you’ll get an email with a download link. Very slick.

And that’s not all; there’s a separate section that does just unit conversions. Granted, the interface is a little clunky and I can do the same thing and probably more quickly with the Calculator that comes with OS X, but for those times when I need to convert something that Calculator doesn’t handle (like a parsec, which is 19,161,519,629,164.8 miles), it’s pretty darned helpful.