Whenever somebody says “We can’t leave Iraq immediately!”, the person has to immediately present a realistic plan on whatever else they want to do with the country. The plan will have to follow these guidelines: Use no more troops than the US can afford (that’s 200,000 without a draft) Don’t rely on other mythical sources [...]
A good friend of mine, Markuz Wernli Saitô, is currently working on a monumental art project called Momentarium. Over a period of eight weeks Markuz is inviting people in the streets of Kyoto in Japan to become a part of a daily, one-hour art performance. He is following a strict schedule for these performances, so [...]
If you’ve been reading some of my previous rants you already know my opinion about the American-made disaster that the war in Iraq has become. It took the leading class in Washington a lot longer than I would have thought, but it seems the dimensions of this clusterfuck are now slowly sinking into the American [...]
PC World is featuring a great article that lists a lot of the vintage computer TV ads that can be found on YouTube. It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the last 25 years. We went all the way from computers barely able to add a few numbers and show text in black and white [...]
The Dove Real Beauty campaign has been around for a few months and it’s probably one of the best things a company involved in the beauty industry has ever done on TV and in print. They have this really amazing Flash movie on their site where a normal-looking woman is being transformed into one of [...]
This is one of the best things I’ve seen in a while on the web: Kiva.org This site creates opportunities for everybody to become involved in creating a better world. Small business owners from all over the world apply for microloans through local loan agencies who then pass this information on to Kiva.org. Just go [...]
Over the last two years I’ve been fighting a long, sad struggle against comment spammers on this site. I’ve tried filters, which worked for a while, but filters have to be updated all the time to keep them effective. And thanks to a never fully understood misconfiguration I actually managed to delete all old comments [...]
Why not? This is your chance to make 2006 the year you write your first novel! Go and check out http://www.nanowrimo.org, because November is National Novel Writing Month! I did it in 2004 and had a finished novel on my desk by the end of the year. Tried again in 2005 and got stuck about [...]
In one of those happy googling accidents I stumbled over this transcript of a panel discussion: Great Terraforming Debate Several distinguished planetary scientist and two of my favorite science fiction authors, Greg Bear and Kim Stanley Robinson, are discussing the question: Are we morally and ethically allowed to terraform another planet? It’s an interesting dilemma [...]
We’ve been on a road trip a few weeks ago all across Nevada along Highway 50, and then on down into Utah and to Las Vegas. Here’s a shot just off the Great Basin Highway near Ely in eastern Nevada. I had my Kodak Medalist along for the ride, but took only about two rolls [...]