Exploding aprons

I ran across some of the history regarding the one of the events in the discovery of 'guncotton'/nitroglycerine. In 1846, a chemist named Christian Schönbein, cleans up a spill of nitric acid with a cotton apron, lets it dry on the stove, then kablamo! Makes you think a little bit about letting clothed people on airplanes, let alone liquids. Of course its not like it is really all that practical to turn ordinary T-shirts in flash paper. One slap on the back then poof! Problem solved..... But give it time.

It seems like most of our approaches to terrorism involve technological, physical, orbureaucraticc solutions. This seems like a temporary approach that is doomed to failure. Human ingenuity is unsurpassed. It is far easier to come up with a means to destroy something than create it. Its a cruel twist of fate that technology was developed capable of annihilating everything on the planet yet we cannot come up with an effective solutions to long term basic problems. It is understandable that we continue the same (direct) methods that have served us well in the past. But in this war if we only cut the head off one hydra, two more grow back. The solution is to win the hearts and minds of the oppressed. Engage the hopeless and the hated. Prevent the spread of hatred and propaganda that passes for truth. It is only thorough philosophy can we truly succeed. After all, it was neither guns nor bombs nor rhetoric that won the cold war, but liberty and capitalism.

Radioactive Rat Poison

Real (total) wars are too costly because of the specter of WMD, even Cold wars cost too damn much, now the KGB cannot even get away with a simple grudge asassination. I just wish someone could get their cover story straight.

First its Thallium, then radioactive Thallium, then Polonium 210? Whatever, next time just cut to the chase, try something new, and tell the truth. Give your citizens the benefit of informed consent. They will surprise you (Look Ma, no panic!)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2463337,00.html

This reminds me of the time during first Gulf War where the powers that be were dying to get some hits on some scud missiles. Finally there was a briefing where Stormin' Norman showed some recon of some mobile scuds (before and after photos). Turns out this was a knowing deception, where the 'Scuds' were actually milk or tanker trucks. I still sometimes see the pictures displayed during the briefing still being touted as 'Iraqi scuds'. Sometimes when the truth gets out it still never gets accepted.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline//gulf/script_a.html


To update an old saying.....Maybe you are not paranoid and they really are lying to you....

More second life BS

Ack more second life nonsense. http://money.cnn.com/blogs/legalpad/2006/11/anshe-chung-first-virtual-millionaire.html

ohhhh another virtual 'millionaire' lets all quit our jobs, ditch our 401k plans, and start mining the virtual gold in them dar hills...... Duplicated deep in the bowels of the Internet it comes rushing out like a huge torrent of vomit violently expelled after eating 6 pounds of chocolate.

Stupid media.....

If you did'nt get my intent, I feel stories like this are full of BS. Anyone who has ever tried to sell something at a tag sale will understand why. Value is subjective. This would only be news if someone actually converted it to 'real' money and 'real' hard assets. 'Real' money too (even hard assets) has only subjective value, but at least more people believe in it. It is not only on a server somewhere on the West Coast (I assume) artificially manipulated by people who want to exchange your 'real' money into fake money.

IMHO bits of virutal currency in a made up world have no value because they have no possibility of scarcity (goes the same for airline miles). Infinite supply and limited demand = no value at all. Sure there is actual demand now for 'virtual' real estate, but please a virual millionaire. I have been a millionaire a bunch of times. In monopoly and other made up worlds.

On a closing note, If this really represents a paradigm shift in value and currency.... I hear second life is having 'real-world' funding and scalability problems, why don't they just mint more Linden Dollars , exchange them and to buy a few more servers, a few thousand developers, pay the electric bill and rent?

If you believe that Second Life and its ilk represent some new representation of the world that supercedes the real one....Well then I have a file ( on my laptop that i just posted to the Internet) that I say is worth $1M, anyone want to buy it? Hey , why not write a story about it?