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The oldest living tree
The oldest known tree is “Methuselah”, which is 4,789 years old. To keep Methuselah from harm, this tree isn’t labeled, as the other trees are. An older tree called Prometheus was killed shortly after it was discovered in 1964.
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Recommended reading for Tuesday
- Londonistan Calling – Hitchens goes back to London. Choice quote:
He was a conspicuous figure because, having lost the use of an eye and both hands in an exchange of views in Afghanistan, he sported an opaque eye plus a hook to theatrical effect. Not as nice as he looked..
- The Crime Against Kansas – Why isn’t this sort of thing in more history classes? You might hear about John Brown’s raid, but never about any clashes
- Londonistan Calling – Hitchens goes back to London. Choice quote:
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Monday link roundup
- A useful post from CodingHorror.com on interface friction
- Al Gore, like Ann Coulter, seems to be a mac person
- A blog for women! And one of the editors might be someone I went to high school with.
- Kuler! The Adobe web color harmony tool – via this site
- Co-Mapping (mind mapping software) looks cool
- Properly bashing ethanol
- HiddenUnities and PurposeSlog have posts on the Wire and 24. I helpfully added the Shield in the comments. All excellent programs, though 24 is basically a commercial for the cell phone industry, not torture.
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Firefox tip
(via CodePoet) To speed up Firefox
Open Firefox, type about:config into the adress bar, filter on “v6” (this should easily find the ipv6 setting)
Right click it and choose “toggle” and the FOX is back in business.It works quite well.
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The Civil War in time lapse format
Coming Anarchy has an awesome time lapse animation of the Civil War, it’s one of the best animations like this I’ve seen.
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Worm gears and motors and robot, oh my!
As my mad scientist phase continues, I’ve come across a few cool supply sites (some from Mark)
In other news, I just ordered 3 sets of brass robot gears for ten bucks from E-Bay. They should arrive soon.
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Two from Slate
- Hitchens on Falwell – a nice vicious hit job, closing with
It’s a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it’s extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the “faith-based.”
- On Generals – An interesting piece on the lack of turnover at the Pentagon due to the Iraq war. Unmentioned is the lack of turnover as a result of 9-11, which should be the larger clue.
- Hitchens on Falwell – a nice vicious hit job, closing with
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We live in scary times when Bill Maher is right about something
Check out this post from The Agitator. The whole “They hate us for our freedom” bit sounds nice, and is partly true, but it is the most useless adage ever created. If we’re going to reduce the number of terrorists to zero (the goal) we’re going to need to do more than just proclaim our greatness and ignore all specifics. Sigh.
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Funny
After the Snuke episode of South Park, the cast of 24 actually sent them one of the suitcase nuke props as a gift.
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V for Vendetta
I finally saw the V for Vendetta movie and found it soils my memory of the comic. Gone was the grit of Evie, the violent mystery of V, the looming menace of the state. Replacing it was corporate angst, an ocean of improbabilities, and a third rate parody of the Bush Administration. Gone was all the base motivation, the insight into human nature, and a believable origin of the crisis. Instead we got soap opera, pandering nonsense, and an explanation out of a Michael Moore movie.
Somehow they turned a potent story of pure anarchism into a theme of left-wing resentment.
All that being said, it was well acted, especially by Steven Rea, who caught the essence of Finch very well.