Back in 1998, Harper’s ran an interesting story about David Hahn, a teenager who very nearly created a breeder reactor in his parents’ garden shed, which subsequently became a Superfund cleanup site.
A very different tale played out for young Taylor Wilson, another teen with nuclear dreams, except with much better parents. Wilson’s story was covered in Popular Science earlier this year, and is worth your time.
Some apparently very smart people went to Kickstarter to fund the production of their new intelligent watch design, Pebble. They sought $100,000 in backing.
With 25 days to go, in excess of six million dollars has been pledged, or 6,000% of their goal.
First, while the official Heathen position for many years has been “watches need springs,” but Pebble does enough cool stuff that I definitely see myself making an exception. (They won me over with the open SDK.)
Second, HOLY CRAP SIX MILLION DOLLARS. Kickstarter may be the most interesting development to come out of the Internet yet. It’s not microfinance, exactly, but it’s hard to see the ease with which Pebble reached 40,000 backers as anything but an enormously disruptive and powerful change in the way interesting things get funded.
Levon Helm died this afternoon. He was 71.
Longtime Heathen THP, Esq., makes an appearance in this clip over at KPRC, as he’s representing a woman the now-resigning Galveston county district clerk illegally fired. Go Tom!
More at the Galveston Daily News.
If Heathen Nation were given a 2400-frames-per-second camera, we’d do lots of stupid things just like these people. Enjoy.
It turns out that a whole lot of forensics is more or less bullshit, and that the Justice Department has known this for a long time and not told anyone but prosecutors, even when flawed evidence had put people in prison.
As Radley notes, this is dangerously close to “pitchforks in the streets” stuff:
I mean, think about that. Taxpayer-paid employees of the Justice Department had direct and exclusive knowledge that there may be hundreds of innocent people in prison, they knew that flawed forensics in these cases needed to be reviewed, and their justification for not doing more as these people continued to rot in prison was, Hey, we did the bare minimum required of us by law.
Al Pacino and Chris Walken, apparently just hanging out.
This morning, I found this video by The Band on one of my “coffee sites.” I didn’t realize is that this 1976 performance — from their Last Waltz farewell film — was the last time Levon Helm played “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but that’s the sort of thing you learn when you see a random video you enjoy, and start a little wandering on Wikipedia.
Sadly, I also discovered a bit of news that is almost certainly the reason the video was on Merlin’s Tumblr in the first place.
Yesterday, this was posted on Helm’s site:
Dear Friends,
Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.
Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration… he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage…
We appreciate all the love and support and concern.
From his daughter Amy, and wife Sandy
Godspeed, Levon.
Duncan “Atrios” Black’s formerly pseudonymous blog Eschaton is now ten years old.
Bruce Schneier has noticed the previously linked Kip Hawley op-ed, and gives us a rundown.
Heathen Nation, put down your beverages and watch this.
Courtney Alvis of Hueytown, Alabama got to spend her junior year of high school battling leukemia. She’s gotten well enough to go to her senior prom, but was without a date.
Trent Richardson, Heisman finalist and certain first-round pick at the NFL draft in 10 days — and perhaps more significantly the son of a cancer survivor — decided he’d solve the problem.
Alvis, for her part, was elected prom queen with Richardson at her side.
Timberlake and Kunis got nothing on this guy. Roll Tide, people.
Former TSA head Kip Hawley — who was recently whipped like a circus monkey by Bruce Schneier in an Economist debate — pens a surprising OpEd in the WSJ calling for wholesale reform of a broken, ineffective TSA.
Gosh, Kip, what took you so long?
It’s often been said that a DA can get an indictment for a ham sandwich if they want, but few notice just exactly how awful it is that this is true.
Mr Balko has a couple posts on the subject worth your time:
Criminal justice is broken. No system with immunity for state actors can ever be just, because there is no punishment (realistically speaking) for runaway prosecutors who abuse their office to improve their stats.
Salon’s Nelle Engoron breaks down last night’s Mad Men. I think it’s pretty spot on. Pete is probably doomed. Or, rather, more doomed than even the rest of them.
When I went out for the mail, four women dressed as flappers, purporting to be on a “Beer Hunt,” asked if they could (a) pretend my front yard was a public park and (b) photograph me leapfrogging them. Note that whether or not I was willing to leapfrog was never, apparently, at issue.
Sadly, this did not come to pass, as one of the flappers was insistent that my yard was in no way a public park, and that any resulting photograph would be unable to hide that fact, and that it was cheating besides.
So that happened.
Harry Shearer’s spot-on Mike Wallace in this early 80s SNL snort is second only to Martin Short’s Nathan Thurm, Esq, but the whole of the piece is an absolute pitch-perfect 60 Minutes send-up.
How Wilco engages technology and the Internet stands in stark contrast to how the RIAA and labels see it, but the recording industry as a whole would do well to take a lesson here.
…it appears that Newark’s Cory Booker may be a superhero:
Newark Mayor Cory Booker was taken to a hospital Thursday night for treatment of smoke inhalation he suffered trying to rescue his next-door neighbors from their burning house.
Congress is considering yet another Internet-fucking bill. Behave accordingly.
For years, I’ve enjoyed Sarah Hepola’s writing, so it’s no surprise that her very long meditation on her “career” of Waits fandom pleases me quite a lot. Pretty much Waits fans only, and even then only Waits fans over about 35.
A side conversation at work this morning had the following awful fact come to light:
The end of the war in Vietnam (1975) is now longer ago than the end of World War II was in 1980.
In 1971, Ginger Baker — yes, that Ginger Baker — shot a few minutes of a Fela Kuti performance in Calabar.
This is worth your time, friends.
Those fuckers over at the Houston Press have the unmitigated gall to remind us that Number of the Beast was released thirty years ago this week.
Ow.
He’s right; this is completely awesome. Stay with it, and keep in mind they’re doing this in a van. On a highway. Driving to a “real” gig.
By the way, Bluhm and her pals have other songs in the Van Sessions series.
Is it time, I wonder, to rehabilitate Hall & Oates?
Jack Tramiel, the man behind the Commodore line of computers, has died.
It would not be wrong to say his computers had easily as much to do with the pervasive spread of computing as anyone else. I never had one — my parents swayed me to buy local and get something at Radio Shack, more’s the pity — but he looms large over generations of computer nerds like me.
Thing I did not know before today: Tramiel was born in Poland; he and his family spent the war in Auschwitz and other camps before Tramiel alone was rescued in 1945.
More at MeFi.
David Letterman is 65, and has now had a longer career as “late night talk show host” than anyone else, ever. Yes, even him.
I remember, as a lonely fifth grader, faking illness so I could stay home and watch his short-lived morning show. His comedic sensibility always made sense to me, so I’ve been a fan ever since.
We sort of sat out the whole NyanCat thing — apparently, a phenom not unlike the old Leekspin — but, like Accordian Guy, we admit to finding NyanWaits oddly compelling.
Also, apparently there’s a lake in Siberia that’s over a mile deep. Whoa.
More at the band’s site. Houston show is on 4/20 (heh) at, sadly, HOB.
Charles Kuffner points out what’s wrong with the voter fraud story in Texas.
Hint: We don’t have a voter fraud problem. Voter ID laws are about reducing voter turnout, plain and simple.
Belt sander + giant stack of paper == oddly soothing experience.
Via MeFi.
This is a great rant, but it’s for hardcore geeks only.
h/t Rob.
The ever-popular Wisconsin governor has now decided to stop defending a law in the state that requires hospitals to treat gay partners as spouses for purposes of visitation. The end result is likely that said partners will be denied access.
What is the matter with this man?
More at Jezebel.
The Magnolia State will really have to step up its game if they want to stay ahead of Arizona, which has a bill pending that declares pregnancy to begin two weeks prior to conception.
It’s really ridiculous how often I have to say so, but: No, I am not making this up.
Widely hated Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has repealed a law mandating equal pay in the Badger State. Walker ally and enthusiastic repeal backer Glenn Grothman has done no favors for the GOP, opining that money’s just more important to men, see, and dames have different life goals. And besides, he tells us Ann Coulter told him that there’s not really an income gap anyway.
No, I’m not making this up.
The inevitable crop of D800 unboxing videos have arrived now that Nikon is actually shipping this $3,000 lovely, but clearly the best of the genre is this one that’s in Klingon.
(h/t Agent Triple F)
Last night’s Mad Men included references to the Richard Speck murders in Chicago, which places the episode just after July 13, 1966. (The last ep was clearly dated by the reference to the death of Pete Fox on July 5.)
The excellent Mad Men Unbuttoned blog notes that Life Magazins’s archives are online, and that you can read their account of the Speck murders from scans (which, appropriately enough, preserve the period advertising).
Today’s fun fact: the author of the Life piece was Loudon Wainwright — father of the folk singer and grandfather to Rufus — who wrote and edited for the magazine for many years.
I’m not sure if it counts as spoilers, but this page might give us hints about upcoming background events. Of particular interest in the summer of 1966, we have:
Unlikely to be referenced: On October 29, One regenerates into Two.
The Chronicle is snarkily crowing that the Astros are above .500 for the first time since 2009.
Their record is currently 2-1.
..this six-minute video of an elderly, invalid man hearing “his” music again, via iPod, is really extraordinary. Ordinarily unresponsive, Henry positively comes alive when he’s given headphones — and the stimulation lasts after the music is taken away. He answers questions, names his favorite artist from his youth, and even sings a bit of his favorite song.
Our dear pals Anneliese and David had a baby. At her first birthday party, I took a few pics.
My first DOS computer was a 286-based system. This was in a time when most folks still had 8088 or 8086 systems, so mine was the hot rod in my dorm at the time. It was pretty fast, for the era at least, and I never really had to wait on it doing many things. Of course, back then we didn’t ask our computers to do the sorts of things we ask them to do now, either.
Three years later, I bought a new computer. It was a stupid-fast 33Mhz 80386 system — top of the line at the time — and it was a complete fucking screamer. My buddy Mike and I spent hours basically marveling at how ridiculously quick it was at EVERYTHING. Even doing a directory list was blazingly quick. It was, truly, life in the future.
In the 21 years since that day, I’ve bought lots of computers, but I’ve never had an upgrade that blew me away like that again. Things got more incremental, as is the case with most progressions. The Pentium I replaced the 386 with was quicker, but Windows was more bloated, so the actual user experience uptick wasn’t that dramatic. That became the rule, even with the on-paper giant boosts in power that I’ve gained in my last few Macs. Quite frankly, for most people and most tasks, you’re nowhere nearly CPU bound — other things are in the way. Like, say, hard drive speeds.
That’s where the new development comes in. I say I haven’t had a “holy shit” upgrade experience in 21 years, but that’s no longer true. See, I bought one of these to replace the ailing traditional hard drive in my Macbook Pro, and when I booted it back up after the (lengthy) restore process, I was reminded of nothing so much as the first few minutes with that Gateway 386 in 1991.
Everything happens IMMEDIATELY now. There is never a disk delay. The absurdly fast processor is free to be, well, absurdly fast. Notoriously piggy apps (I’m looking at you, Office) spring to life like tiny utilities. Even Lightroom opens with a speed that beggars belief. Task switching? Trivial. My Windows VM sings. If I’d realized how dramatic this upgrade was going to be, I’d have done it years ago.
A visitor to a Marriott in New York discovered every web page had been dynamically edited by the hotel’s network.
Assuming those jackasses are monitoring everything. Use a VPN or a private broadband device. There are many options.