8/10/2007
8/09/2007
8/08/2007
8/07/2007
"Scope stops bad breath": It's The Marketing Stupid
"What are you?," Trout asked the boy scornfully. "Some kind of gutless wonder?"
This too, was the title of a book by Trout, "The Gutless Wonder." It was about a robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings.
It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground.
Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But the he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade
8/06/2007
Hiroshima Survivor - Recalls First A-Bomb
Shigeko Sasamori was 13 years old on August 6, 1945. At 8:15 AM she was working with her junior high classmates clearing the streets of Hiroshima, Japan. She looked up into the clear blue sky when she heard a plane flying overhead and saw something white dropping to the earth. Shigeko was less than a mile from the center of the explosion caused by the world's first atomic bomb.
Somehow, Shigeko survived, but she had terrible burns over most of her body. Some of her fingers had fused together and scars on her face made her and others like pariahs in Japan for fear of contamination.
Listen to her story:
8/05/2007
I-35 Bridge Collapse Info:
From the New York Times: Tons of Repaving Material Was on Bridge at Collapse.
MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 5 — Trucks carrying tens of thousands of pounds of crushed stone were parked on the Interstate 35W bridge, and more stone was sitting on the deck when the bridge collapsed, investigators said Sunday, raising suspicions that the added weight of materials intended for repairs may have played a role in the bridge failure.
Speaking of Failures.......
OTBL quote:"The can't-do attitude is symptomatic in politics and not in the market, where they have to do or die, quite literally. The state is not driven by the same incentives and since they can tax and confiscate, they lack the ability to economize and rationally allocate resources."
Hey spiritofpublicus, speaking of market based failures,
how are those sales of the "Price of Sin"? Have you sold a dozen yet, or has bottom dropped out of the vanity press market?
Loser!
Jack Bauer V. Global Warming
"24" Takes On Fight Against Global Warming
From "An Inconvenient Truth" to popularizing the Prius, Hollywood has helped lead the way on some environmental issues. One of the latest initiatives: Cool Change, Fox's company-wide program to reduce the network's impact on global warming. As part of that effort, the seventh season of "24" will take steps to reduce and offset the carbon emissions from the show's production, with the goal of having the season finale be entirely carbon-neutral.
It may sound like a publicity stunt, but Fox spokesman Chris Anderson says the network isn't after bigger ratings. "We are publicizing '24's' commitment to climate change for two reasons and two reasons only: to inspire the public to take global warming seriously and hopefully to motivate other studios to make changes to their production practices as well," he says.
Read more@ The Washington Post.
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