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Random thoughts on Lebanon
It’s been quite a while now and I haven’t seen any reports of actual conflict between the IDF and the Lebanese military, which would tend to suggest that they’re staying out of it altogether.
For all of the talk of cease fires and peace keeping forces, who would actually do it? The US is busy in Iraq, and the last time we tried that it didn’t work out too well anyway. Most of the available European forces (small in number to start with) are with NATO in Afghanistan. Assuming that part of some eventual deal involves “peace keepers” (technically more peace keepers, there have been a number of ineffectual UN troops there for years.) where would they come from? The Arab countries? China, Russia or India perhaps?
Or will that be a negotiating ploy used to delay a cease fire until the IDF weakens Hezbollah to the point where the Lebanese military takes over, which might be a very long time.
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Two links and new word
- Gentleman’s Emporium – for that cool 1879 look.
- More comic covers! From wired
The new word is MacGanized. It’s the organization of Mac users. Rather than be organized, they just know people who are organized who find stuff for them. Quite common.
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Saturday rapid fire
- Make a timeline of your life – it could be cool, but too revealing
- Time Maps
- Top 10 Signs You’re Made to be an Entrepreneur 6.
You spend more time and energy looking for easier, faster, cheaper, more effective ways of accomplishing something than if you just did the task outright.
- Prosopagnosia – The inability to recognize faces. Or the way of the Steve.
- A good wrap up of the Goldstein – Frisch battle by Wendy McElroy. I still find it odd that Fox News employs a Canadian anarchist as a columnist, but she does seem popular there.
- The Agitator’s Fox column about Swat Teams and no-knock warrants. It would seem that the best way to fix the problem is to assign liability to Judges who sign errant warrants, though I don’t think anyone has suggested that yet.
- A very good post on why the current world situation is NOT World War III.
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Cool new military stuff
The Polecat, built by Lockheed Martin, was just unveiled. It’s a high altitude drone of some sort, but the most eye-catching line was
The company built the plane with $27 million of its own money over an 18-month period.
A pretty impressive design, for only $27 million, in only 18 months. It’s startling how much the client matters in terms time and cost. Even if you throw out the corruption and overruns (which would be huge), an internal client is much more likely to select only the low-hanging fruit, and put that into the mix.
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An odd fact
Yesterday was the highest traffic day this blog has ever had.
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Update on local democracy
Nick is correct on the primary system. From the AJC
Anyone registered to vote as of June 19 may cast a ballot in the Aug. 8 runoff, regardless of whether they voted in the primary. But those who voted Tuesday in the Republican primary may vote only in Republican runoffs, and those who voted in the Democratic primary may vote only in the Democratic runoff.
Unrelated quote of the moment
“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.”
– Marquis de la Grange -
Tesla Motors seems way cool
The official unveiling of the Tesla Roadster is tomorrow, but Wired has photos and an article. It looks very cool.
Judging from the specs (I haven’t seen any independent reviews) it seems like a plausible model. 0-60 in four seconds, 250 mile range for an electric car, standard batteries (i.e. laptop batteries) fairly quick recharge time. It could work.
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South Park updates
Comedy Central is replaying the Tom Cruise / Scientology Episode (Trapped In the Closet) this evening. The Virgin Mary episode is still banned it seems.
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Democracy working, somehow
Ralph Reed goes down to defeat, and Cynthia McKinney is in a runoff against a guy with no huge party support and didn’t seem to spend much money. How cool.
Does anyone know if you can vote in the runoff if you didn’t vote in the primary?
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RIP Mickey Spillaine
He’d been writing since the 40s. More details here.