Month: March 2007

In goes bread, out comes toast – magic!

This toaster_clip.jpg is recent, but not totally new news. It does not appear these are actually in production and available anywhere, but whenever these awesome ceramic toasters go up for sale, I want to buy one. Hopefully they can be made at an affordable price point.

designer’s own words:
There has been little development of the toaster since the start of the century, whilst other appliances have developed and improved incorporating new technologies and thinking, toaster have remained relatively untouched. When the toaster was first invented eating toast was a social activity that took place on the breakfast table, these days toasters have been relegated to cheap plastic objects hidden away in the kitchen landscape. This toaster is designed to engage the user, re-invigorating the social context of toasting by questioning everything about what we toast with today. I was also keen to make playful object to be proud of having on your breakfast table. Slip moulded bone china allowed me create this intricate and sculptural form, but also provided the material longevity that I required. This is a toaster that brings life and joy to a stagnant domestic appliance, and iconic object for the home.


[tags]Ceramic toaster, Toaster magic[/tags]

High class service? Goes down hard

When the headline says High-class hooker service goes down hard, you just have to see what the story is. And when the article ends with

“They didn’t provide us with any hands-on training or even an instruction manual, so at least in the beginning, the blow jobs we dispensed really sucked — in the negative sense of the term,” she complained.

you just have to laugh at the whole story. The real story is a high-cost prostitution service drew too much police attention, got less selective about the call-girls hired, didn’t provide training, and eventually got shut down because of lack of quality service and police pressure. But it’s way funnier to just read the headline, read the last paragraph, and fill in the rest yourself.

[tags]High-class hooker service goes down hard[/tags]

A possible restoration of rights and protections for Americans?

Finally we see a few members of Congress are growing the spines we need them to have to take back our rights and freedoms that have been slowly stripped away by President Bush, his lackies, and the until-recently roll-over-and-give-him-everything Congress. We have Senators questioning and harshly criticizing FBI Director Robert Mueller for the abuses of the PATRIOT act that have recently come to light. Members of the House Judiciary Committee look to be working to curtail the FBI’s record-gathering powers if these abuses aren’t fixed. Congress-critters, aware that since Karl Rove can’t even tell the truth under oath (premium content – I can post some of the information if requested, but it should be viewable via temporary pass), he and others in the Bush enclave shouldn’t be trusted to give believable statements in non-transcribed, non-recorded, non-mass media provided, not under oath questioning.

That means that subpoenas are authorized for certain White House advistors to require testifying under oath on the recent firing of several US attorneys general last year. It appears that the Congress-critters aren’t willing to accept Tony Snow’s “Executive Privilege is bad for Clinton and good for Bush” flip-flopping now. So maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see our rights actually protected by our government rather than secretly stripped away via classified executive orders and Presidential signing statements which lack any legal force. Only time will tell.

Of course, I don’t expect this will lead to impeaching the man who is so committed to violating our rights, but I can always hope for that positive outcome.

[tags]Some in Congress may be growing enough spine to protect America from Presidential abuse[/tags]

On the DC gun ban ruling

I’ve just read the best commentary on the DC gun ban ruling I’ve seen (out of the very few places that have covered it) over at the Reason magazine web site. As the real root of the article, the author wonders why the federal appeals court ruling the gun ban unconstitutional is “interpreting the Second Amendment broadly,” as The New York Times reports. After all, as he points out, actually protecting free speech rights or unreasonable search and seizure rights would not be seen as overly broad interpretations of First or Fourth Amendments.

This oddly bifurcated view of an enumerated constitutional right helps explain why the gun control debate in this country is so acrimonious. When one side considers the Second Amendment a nullity and the other side thinks it counts for something, there is no safe middle ground.

. . .

The court did not say Americans have a right to own anti-aircraft missiles or nuclear warheads. It did not even say they have a right to carry guns publicly (although that does seem to be implied by the “bear” part). It said they have a right to keep guns in their own homes for self-protection.

Continue reading “On the DC gun ban ruling”

The Geek Hierarchy

While reading something totally unrelated to geekdom, I stumbled on a link to The geek hierarchy chart. Now you can check out what level of geek that dorky guy who sits next to you is. I figure myself to be about a level 4 geek, as I max out on the chart just one level below what is shown in this clip from the chart:

geek-hierarchy.jpg

[tags]The Geek Hierarchy, I’m a level 4 – what are you?[/tags]

The effects of a nuclear attack on US cities

While scanning through stories on Digg tonight, I saw this link to a ZDNet article on the effects of a nuclear attack on various American cities. The article examines a Center for Mass Destruction Defense (CMADD) simulation of the catastrophic impact a nuclear attack would have on American cities. The complete study paper is 33 pages, and freaky scary to read over.

Continue reading “The effects of a nuclear attack on US cities”