Knowing the Enemy

In Knowing the Enemy, George Packer cites David Kilcullen on global counterinsurgency:

One good example of Taliban information strategy is their use of “night letters.” They have been pushing local farmers in several provinces (Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar) to grow poppy instead of regular crops, and using night-time threats and intimidation to punish those who don’t and convince others to convert to poppy. This is not because they need more opium—God knows they already have enough—but because they’re trying to detach the local people from the legal economy and the legally approved governance system of the provinces and districts, to weaken the hold of central and provincial government. Get the people doing something illegal, and they’re less likely to feel able to support the government, and more willing to do other illegal things (e.g. join the insurgency)—this is a classic old Bolshevik tactic from the early cold war, by the way. They are specifically trying to send the message: “The government can neither help you nor hurt us. We can hurt you, or protect you—the choice is yours.” They also use object lessons, making an example of people who don’t cooperate—for example, dozens of provincial-level officials have been assassinated this year, again as an “armed propaganda” tool—not because they want one official less but because they want to send the message “We can reach out and touch you if you cross us.” Classic armed information operation.

(Hat tip to Erik.)

Woz and $2 Bills

Woz is an odd fellow:

You can purchase $1, $2, and now $5 bills from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving on sheets. The sheets come in sizes of 4, 16, and 32 bills each. I buy such sheets of $2 bills. I carry large sheets, folded in my pocket, and sometimes pull out scissors and cut a few off to pay for something in a store. It's just for comedy, as the $2 bills cost nearly $3 each when purchased on sheets. They cost even more at coin stores.

I take the sheets of 4 bills and have a printer, located through friends, gum them into pads, like stationery pads. The printer then perforates them between the bills, so that I can tear a bill or two away. The bills that I'd tipped the waitress came from such a pad.

Read the whole story to see what kind of trouble this got him into.

Born of fire

Born of fire, from the latest Economist, describes the jinn, or genies, of Islamic folklore:

Although Somalia and Afghanistan have different religious traditions (Somalia being more relaxed), jinn belief is strong in both countries. War-ravaged, with similarly rudimentary education systems, both have a tradition of shrines venerating local saints where women can pray. Women are supposed to be more open to jinn, particularly illiterate rural women: by some accounts education is a noise, a roaring of thought, which jinn cannot bear. Sometimes women turn supposed jinn possession to their own advantage and become fortune-tellers. Among the most popular questions asked of such women is: “Will my husband take a second wife?” The shrines are often little more than a carved niche in a rock, with colourful prayer flags tied to nearby trees. Jinn are said to be attracted to the ancient geography of shrines, many of which predate Islam; as some have it, the shrines were attracted to the jinn.

Islam teaches that jinn resemble men in many ways: they have free will, are mortal, face judgment and fill hell together. Jinn and men marry, have children, eat, play, sleep and husband their own animals. Islamic scholars are in disagreement over whether jinn are physical or insubstantial in their bodies. Some clerics have described jinn as bestial, giant, hideous, hairy, ursine. Supposed yeti sightings in Pakistan's Chitral are believed by locals to be of jinn. These kinds of jinn can be killed with date or plum stones fired from a sling.
[...]
Unbelieving jinn, those who resisted the Koran, are shaytan, demons, “firewood for hell”. Many Muslims see the devil as a jinn. Some reckon the snake in the Garden of Eden was a shape-shifting jinn. All this may yet play a part in the war on terrorism. Factions in Somalia and Afghanistan have accused their enemies of being backed not only by the CIA but by malevolent jinn. One theory in Afghanistan holds that the mujahideen, “two-legged wolves”, scared the jinn out into the world, causing disharmony. It is jinn, they say, who whisper into the ears of suicide-bombers.

Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, a Pakistani cleric connected with a jihadist group, Jamaat al-Fuqra, has given warning to America that its missiles will be misdirected by jinn.

Ford was one of the most athletic presidents

Sports Illustrated notes that Ford was one of the most athletic presidents:

His deliberate manner of speaking, some highly publicized mishaps and a recurring Chevy Chase bit in the early days of Saturday Night Live helped advance the notion that Gerald R. Ford was a bit of a bumbling stumbler.

In fact, Ford was one of the nation's fittest and most athletic presidents.

Ford, who has died at age 93, played center on the University of Michigan football team, where he was a three-year letter winner. His teams enjoyed consecutive undefeated, national championship seasons in 1932 and 1933. He was the Wolverines' most valuable player in 1934 and, on Jan. 1, 1935, he played in a college all-star game known today as the East West Shrine Game.

Michigan later retired Ford's No. 48 jersey.

During a 1934 game against the University of Chicago, Ford became the only future U.S. president to tackle a future Heisman Trophy winner when he brought down halfback Jay Berwanger, who won the first Heisman the following year.

Overcoming allergies possible

It looks like it is possible to overcome food allergies:

First, youngsters spent a day at the Duke hospital swallowing minuscule but increasing doses of either an egg powder or a defatted peanut flour, depending on their allergy. They started at 1/3,000th of a peanut or about 1/1,000th of an egg, increasing the amount until the child broke out in hives or had some other reaction.

Then the children were sent home with a daily dose just under that reactive amount. Every two weeks, the kids returned for a small dose increase until they reached the equivalent of a tenth of an egg or one peanut — a maintenance dose that they swallowed daily.

After two years, four of the seven youngsters in the egg pilot study could eat two scrambled eggs with no problem, and two more ate about as much before symptoms began, researchers report in the January edition of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

In the peanut pilot study, yet to be published, six of the children challenged so far could tolerate 15 peanuts, Burks says; Elizabeth's limit was seven.

Tolkien v. Power

Alberto Mingardi discusses Tolkien v. Power:

Hardcore environmentalists have tried to enlist Mr. Tolkien among them, focusing on Tolkien's candid love for nature, for example. But if loving nature necessarily implies you are an environmentalist, people like Ludwig von Mises should also have been very sympathetic toward the Green movement. Indeed, as Justin Raimondo points out, his point wasn't to bash industry or capitalism; it was to illustrate that evil is expansionist and projects itself even on the landscape. Hence bad environmental aesthetics are a reflection of bad rulers, which is to say, the use of power.

And here we have the correct understanding of the theme of the novel: it is about the evils of power. More precisely, the book aligns itself against power--not "economic power" or "social power", but specifically political power. This is also the central theme of the classical liberal political tradition.

This has been explained in various occasions by Tolkien himself:

"You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1995, p. 121.)

"Power is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales" (p. 152.)

"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on" (pp. 178-179.)

"In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit" (p. 243.)

"Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for domination)" (p. 246.)

So, we can say The Lord of the Rings fictionalize Edmund Burke's motto: "In vain you tell me that Artificial Government is good, but that I fall out only with the Abuse. The Thing, the Thing itself is the Abuse!" That's what Tolkien is trying to convey and dramatize in a novel over 600,000 words long.

Bomb could flood New York subway within hours

Bomb could flood New York subway within hours:

The analysis, based on work by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and leaked to the New York Times, suggested that the network of tunnels was more vulnerable than had been thought. A bomb that could be carried easily on to a train could make a 50 sq ft (about 4.6 sq metre) hole in the side of the tunnels and potentially breach both sides, the analysis found. More than 1m gallons of water would enter the tunnel every minute, putting at risk the lives of up to 900 passengers - the capacity of a crowded train. About 230,000 people travel every day through four train tunnels that lie along the bed of the Hudson river. The concerns over the fragility of these tunnels are thought to apply equally to several rail tunnels that connect Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens under the East River.

Happiness: Good for Creativity, Bad for Single-Minded Focus

Happiness: Good for Creativity, Bad for Single-Minded Focus:

For better or worse, happy people have a harder time focusing.

University of Toronto psychologists induced a happy, sad or neutral state in each of 24 participants by playing them specially chosen musical selections. To instill happiness, for example, they played a jazzy version of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. After each musical interlude, the researchers gave subjects two tests to assess their creativity and concentration.

In one test, participants in a happy mood were better able to come up with a word that unified three other seemingly disparate words, such as "mower," "atomic" and "foreign."

OK, before you read ahead, find a word that unifies the following three seemingly unrelated words:

• mower
• atomic
• foreign

Incidentally, the test seems like it was devised in the 1960s.

Have your answer? OK, let's continue:

Solving the puzzle required participants to think creatively, moving beyond the normal word associations--"lawn," "bomb" and "currency" — to come up with the more remote answer: "power."

Interestingly, induced happiness made the subjects worse at the second task, which required them to ignore distractions and focus on a single piece of information. Participants had to identify a letter flashed on a computer screen flanked by either the same letter, as in the string "N N N N N," or a different letter, as in "H H N H H." When the surrounding letters didn't match, the happy participants were slower to recognize the target letter in the middle, indicating that the ringers distracted them.

Dreaming of a Remote Christmas

Today we're used to infrared remote controls, but back before modern battery technology Zenith developed the first practical remote oontrol, and it wasn't based on infrared or radio. Dreaming of a Remote Christmas explains:

One of Zenith's top scientists was an Austrian émigré named Dr. Robert Adler, a brilliant man who was a wizard in, among other things, high-frequency sound. In a matter of months Dr. Adler's research team worked out an elegant solution, a purely mechanical device that required no batteries.

Adapting the principle of ultrasonics — sounds at a frequency beyond the human ear — the Adler team came up with a system of four precisely "tuned" aluminum rods. Each rod was about 2-1/2 inches long, but each was in fact cut to an exact length that gave it a unique frequency when vibrated. Above each rod was a small hammer, triggered by spring, corresponding to the four buttons. One rod's inaudible vibration turned the set on and off, two moved the channel selector up or down, and the fourth (McDonald's favorite) muted the sound.

Zenith was able to test and put the Space Command into production in time for the Christmas shopping season of 1956. It was expensive. It increased the cost of a Zenith television receiver by 30 percent. This was because a special ultrasonic receiver involving six vacuum tubes had to be installed in sets sold with the remote. I do not remember the exact price of the set George and I saw that day in Pittsburgh but it made my uncle, who loved technology, a bit ashen faced.

All I Want for Christmas...

Douglas Kern opens All I Want for Christmas... with an amusing take on Christmas loot:

Recently I read that in Austria and some Latin American countries, the bringer of gifts at Christmas is not Santa Claus, but rather the Christ Child. I like our way better. The notion of the Christ Child as the dispenser of Christmas loot raises troubling theological dilemmas that Santa just doesn't present.

When Santa accidentally gives your kid a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it's just shabby elf labor gone awry, but when The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is giving your offspring ultra-violent video games, it's a harbinger of the apocalypse. And while it's no big deal when Santa gives you a pair of Dockers that's a size too small, what is God try to tell you when his Son gives you size 32 instead of 34? Does God want you to lose weight? Does 32 have a sacred meaning in Aramaic? And if you take them back, what will you tell Saint Peter when, on Judgment Day, he asks what you did with the in-store credit at Sears? Multiply all these problems by a hundred if you're a Calvinist. There you are, painstakingly scrutinizing yourself and your position in life to see if you're a member of the elect, and the Christ Child leaves you a sign of God's will: a $30 gift card for Applebee's. What could it mean?

Scientists link weight to gut bacteria

Scientists link weight to gut bacteria:

In one of the two studies in Nature, Gordon and colleagues looked at what happened in mice with changes in bacteria level. When lean mice with no germs in their guts had larger ratios of Firmicutes transplanted, they got "twice as fat" and took in more calories from the same amount of food than mice with the more normal bacteria ratio, said Washington University microbiology instructor Ruth Ley, a study co-author.

It was as if one group got far more calories from the same bowl of Cheerios than the other, Gordon said.

In a study of dozen dieting people, the results also were dramatic.

Before dieting, about 3 percent of the gut bacteria in the obese participants was Bacteroidetes. But after dieting, the now normal-sized people had much higher levels of Bacteroidetes — close to 15 percent, Gordon said.

The Truth About Where Your Donated Clothes End Up

The Truth About Where Your Donated Clothes End Up:

According to various estimates, here's what happens to your clothing giveaways. In most cases, a small amount of the items, the best quality castoffs — less than 10 percent of donations — are kept by the charitable institutions and sold in their thrift shops to other Americans looking for a bargain. These buyers could be people who are hard up, or they could be folks who like the idea of a good deal on a stylish old item that no longer can be found in regular stores.

The remaining 90 percent or more of what you give away is sold by the charitable institution to textile recycling firms. Bernard Brill, of the Secondary Recycled Textiles Association, told ABC News: 'Our industry buys from charitable institutions, hundred of millions of dollars worth of clothing every year.'
So, at this point, the charity you have donated clothes to has earned money off of them in two ways — in their shops and by selling to recyclers. Then the recycler kicks into high gear. Most of the clothes are recycled into cleaning cloths and other industrial items, for which the recyclers say they make a modest profit.

Computerized efficiency helps UPS handle busiest time of year

Computerized efficiency helps UPS handle busiest time of year:

The back of his UPS truck is stacked floor to ceiling, but neatly, with boxes sticking an inch or so over the edge of their shelves — lip loaded, in UPS jargon. That makes it easy for Alles to grab the packages. They're also slanting downward toward the truck's outer wall — the better to stay put when Alles takes a corner.

And thanks to technology on which UPS is spending $600 million company-wide, Alles, a driver out of the firm's distribution center in Elm Grove, feels confident that the 500-odd packages, which he will deliver to 344 stops, have been loaded in the correct order.

His handheld computer, meanwhile, will tell him the sequence for his route, one of 179 running out of Elm Grove on this day. All told, Alles and his fellow drivers here will deliver about 65,000 packages over the next several hours.

UPS has long been known for efficiency.

Drivers don't run. That might cause injuries, which definitely aren't efficient. They do, however, move briskly — about two steps per second. A residential stop should take 30 seconds, steering wheel to steering wheel, spokeswoman Donna Barrett said.

While at a stop, drivers are supposed to hang their key ring from a finger so it's handy when they get back behind the wheel, where they simultaneously start the engine with their right hand while fastening the seat belt with their left.

Shock Waves Can Save Hearts

Shock Waves Can Save Hearts:

Extracorporeal cardiac shock wave therapy sounds like something Capt. Picard might need after a run-in with the Borg. But it's actually a new, real-life way to treat end-stage heart disease.
A team of Japanese researchers found that blasting the heart with shock waves helps patients grow new blood vessels and increase blood flow.
[...]
Shimokawa and his colleagues aimed low-energy pressure waves at the chests of nine patients with end-stage coronary artery disease. During a typical session they hit 20 to 40 different areas of the heart with 200 pulses each. Blood flow increased and symptoms were alleviated in all patients, suggesting the growth of new blood vessels.

The researchers used a shock wave generator made especially for the heart. Using its fine adjustments, they could focus waves on a 2-square-millimeter area, and aim them virtually anywhere.

'Hibernating' man survives for 3 weeks

'Hibernating' man survives for 3 weeks:

A man who went missing in western Japan survived in near-freezing weather without food and water for over three weeks by falling into a state similar to hibernation, doctors said.

Mitsutaka Uchikoshi had almost no pulse, his organs had all but shut down and his body temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit when he was discovered on Rokko mountain in late October, said doctors who treated him at the nearby Kobe City General Hospital. He had been missing for 24 days.

"On the second day, the sun was out, I was in a field, and I felt very comfortable. That's my last memory," Uchikoshi, 35, told reporters Tuesday before returning home from hospital. "I must have fallen asleep after that."

Doctors believe Uchikoshi, a city official from neighboring Nishinomiya who was visiting the mountain for a barbecue party, tripped and later lost consciousness in a remote mountainous area.

His body temperature soon plunged as he lay in 50-degree weather, greatly slowing down his metabolism.

Baby put into X-ray machine at Los Angeles airport

Wow. Baby put into X-ray machine at Los Angeles airport:

A woman sent her one-month-old grandson through an X-ray machine at Los Angeles International Airport, security officials said on Wednesday.

The woman, who spoke little English and was traveling to Mexico, put the infant in a plastic bin used to hold loose carry-on items for security scanning at the busy airport on Saturday morning.

Security screeners saw the baby as it started to pass through, pulled the bin out, and immediately sought medical assistance for the child, Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nico Melendez said.

The baby was examined at a local hospital and judged not to have received a dangerous dose of radiation.

Virgin birth expected for Komodo dragon

The media-savvy folks at the Chester Zoo in England have said that they expect a virgin birth:

Flora, a pregnant Komodo dragon living in a British zoo, is expecting eight babies in what scientists said on Wednesday could be a Christmas virgin birth.

Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. Other lizards do this, but scientists only recently found that Komodo dragons do too.

"Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way," Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo in England said in an interview.

He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.

Bungee cord backpack makes light work of heavy load

A new bungee cord backpack makes light work of heavy loads by reducing vertical displacement:

Carrying heavy loads could become easier thanks to a new ergonomic backpack that uses bungee cords to take the strain off the shoulders and joints, scientists said on Wednesday.

The cords suspend the load in the pack so it stays at the same height from the ground while the wearer is running or walking and reduces the risks of muscle and joint problems.

Its designers said it will allow users to carry an extra 12 pounds (5.4 kg) while expending the same amount of energy as when carrying a normal backpack.

"For the same energetic cost, you can either carry 48 pounds in a normal backpack or 60 pounds in a suspended ergonomic backpack," said Lawrence Rome of the University of Pennsylvania.

Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett on the Culture Show

If you enjoy animation, I recommend watching "animation anorak" Mark Kermode interview Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett on the Culture Show.

Johnny on Drawn! remarks that Hewlett's influences include zombies, Daffy Duck, and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine — but he neglects to mention Tony Hart.

Blackwater

They call themselves private military contractors — or, amongst themselves, the Coalition of the Billing. Josh Manchester calls them an Al Qaeda for the Good Guys. Mark Hemingway calls them Warriors for Hire:

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, the company's founder, "believes to his core that this is his life's work," says Taylor. "If you're not willing to drink the Blackwater Kool-aid and be committed to supporting humane democracy around the world, then there's probably a better place" to go work, "because that's all we do."

Though his military career was brief, as a former Navy SEAL platoon commander, Prince is no dilettante. He attended officer candidate school after finishing college in 1992, and the next year he joined SEAL Team 8 based out of Norfolk. Prince eventually deployed to Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia, among other assignments. He is blond, handsome, and ridiculously all-American looking. His posture is ramrod straight, and his clipped sentences are true to his martial roots. At only 37, he remains in impeccable shape and looks as ready to step onto the battlefield as into a boardroom.

He hardly fits the soldier of fortune archetype. He is a staunch Christian--his father helped James Dobson found Focus on the Family--and his politically conservative views are well known in Washington, where Prince supports a number of religious and right-leaning causes. He attended Hillsdale College in Michigan, a font of conservative ideology, where he is remembered for being the first undergraduate at the small liberal arts school to serve on the local volunteer fire department. (The only book on the shelf in the boardroom of Blackwater's Northern Virginia offices is a copy of the eminent conservative historian Paul Johnson's A History Of The American People.)

Nobody can say Prince is in it for the money, either. His father Edgar started a small die-cast shop in Holland, Michigan, in 1965. Along the way he patented the now-ubiquitous lighted vanity mirror in automobile visors; a year after his 1995 death, the family company sold for over $1 billion, an enormous inheritance for Erik and his sisters.

The next year Erik left the Navy and founded Blackwater. It was the end of the Cold War. The Clinton administration and Congress had been eagerly downsizing military facilities and training--much to the consternation of many officers, Prince included. Prince knew there would be a market for the kind of training Blackwater would provide; his initial purchase of 6,000 acres in Moyock does not suggest his vision for the company was modest. (It's currently 7,500 acres; the company has plans to relocate the Florida aviation division to North Carolina near its headquarters, as well as open training facilities in California and the Philippines.)

Regardless of his inheritance, Prince's subsequent shepherding of Blackwater has proved him as adept a businessman as his father. And there you have it. Erik Prince--mercenary mogul and liberal America's worst nightmare. Not only can he buy and sell you, he can kill you before you even know he's in the room.

For a conservative like Prince, you can't make the world a better place without harnessing the power of free markets. He sounds more like an MBA than a mercenary. Prince believes that an entrepreneurial spirit and the military go naturally together: "This goes back to our corporate mantra: We're trying to do for the national security apparatus what Fed Ex did for the postal service," Prince says. "They did many of the same services that the Postal Service did, better, cheaper, smarter, and faster by innovating, [which] the private sector can do much more effectively."

Some of Blackwater's capabilities:

• A burgeoning logistics operation that can deliver 100- or 200-ton self-contained humanitarian relief response packages faster than the Red Cross.
  
  
• A Florida aviation division with 26 different platforms, from helicopter gunships to a massive Boeing 767. The company even has a Zeppelin.
  
  
• The country's largest tactical driving track, with multi-surface, multi-elevation positive and negative cambered turns, a skid pad, and a ram pad for drivers learning how to escape ambushes.
  
  
• A 20-acre manmade lake with shipping containers that have been mocked up with ship rails and portholes, floating on pontoons, used to teach how to board a hostile ship.
  
  
• A K-9 training facility that currently has 80 dog teams deployed around the world. Ever wondered how to rappel down the side of nine stacked shipping containers with a bomb-sniffing German shepherd dog strapped to your chest? Blackwater can teach you.
  
  
• A 1,200-yard-long firing range for sniper training.
  
  
• A sizable private armory. The one gun locker I saw contained close to 100 9mm handguns--mostly military issue Beretta M9s, law enforcement favorite Austrian Glocks, and Sig Sauers.
  
  
• An armored vehicle still in development called the Grizzly; the prototype's angular steel plates are ferocious-looking. The suspension is being built by one of Black water's North Carolina neighbors — Dennis Anderson, monster truck champion and the man responsible for the "Grave Digger" (the ne plus ultra of monster trucks).

The Yellow Kid

The Yellow Kid is — arguably — the first modern comic strip:

Comics in America started with The Yellow Kid. At least, that's how the oft-told story goes. But like most oft-told stories, it's a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, that feature didn't start out as comics, at least not in the modern sense of the word, a sequence of panels carrying a narrative — at first, it consisted of a single large illustration. For another, it wasn't actually the first — newspaper and magazine cartoons had been growing in prominence ever since the ability to print them existed, and are known to have existed in America as early as the middle of the 18th century. In fact, an entire comic book, The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck, appeared in an American paper as early as 1842. For a third, the name of the feature wasn't The Yellow Kid.

Cartoonist Richard Felton Outcault started drawing funny pictures about New York tenements in 1894, for Truth magazine. The first appeared in that year's June 2 edition. On Feb. 17, 1895, one of them was reprinted in Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, The New York World, inaugurating the series from which The Yellow Kid would eventually emerge. By the end of that year, Outcault was doing full-page ones, in color, on a weekly basis, under the title Hogan's Alley (which appeared on a street sign as early as the very first of the Truth magazine cartoons). Gradually, there emerged a distinctive young character, identifiable by a bald head, huge ears, and a bright yellow nightshirt, which later had his dialog written on it. He wasn't usually addressed by any particular name (although when that did happen, the name was was Mickey Dugan), but readers came to know him as The Yellow Kid.

I bring this up because, after I linked to that US presidents timeline game, someone I know — Hi, Cate! — put up a newspaper comic strip timeline game, and I was certain that The Katzenjammer Kids was the first comic strip.

In fact, I'm pretty sure The Katzenjammer Kids was the "correct" answer to the Trivial Pursuit question on the subject, and I got it "right" a few years back while playing with a group of unsuspecting non-geeks (or marginal geeks).

At any rate, the popularity of The Yellow Kid led Hearst to hire Outcault away, and George Luks continued using the character in Pulitzer's World. Both papers became known for The Yellow Kid:

The papers that ran it were often referred to by New Yorkers as the "Yellow Kid" papers or, simply, "the yellow papers". During the Spanish American War (1898), when their sensational and unreliable reportage reached a fever pitch, that style came to be known as "yellow journalism".

It was only years later that comics evolved into their more stylized form — with big-headed kids who didn't look quite so deformed, and who spoke via word balloons, rather than text on their nightshirts.

Does econ make people conservative?

Greg Mankiw, econ professor and textbook author, answers a letter from a student asking, Does econ make people conservative?:

I believe the answer is, to some degree, yes. My experience is that many students find that their views become somewhat more conservative after studying economics. There are at least three, related reasons.

First, in some cases, students start off with utopian views of public policy, where a benevolent government can fix all problems. One of the first lessons of economics is that life is full of tradeoffs. That insight, completely absorbed, makes many utopian visions less attractive. Once you recognize, for example, that there is a tradeoff between equality and efficiency, as economist Arthur Okun famously noted, many public policy decisions become harder.

Second, some of the striking insights of economics make one more respectful of the market as a mechanism for coordinating a society. Because market participants are motivated by self-interest, a person might naturally be suspect of market-based societies. But after learning about the gains from trade, the invisible hand, and the efficiency of market equilibrium, one starts to approach the market with a degree of admiration and, indeed, awe.

Third, the study of actual public policy makes students recognize that political reality often deviates from their idealistic hopes. Much income redistribution, for example, is aimed not toward the needy but toward those with political clout. This Dave Barry column, which is reprinted in Chapter 22 of my favorite economics textbook, describes a good example.

For these three reasons, many students in introductory economics courses become more conservative--or, to be precise, more classically liberal--than they began. Nonetheless, studying economics does not by itself determine one's political ideology. I know good economists who are distinctly right of center and good economists who are distinctly left of center. In my department at Harvard, I would guess that Democrats outnumber Republicans among the faculty (although there is surely more political balance in the economics department than in most other departments at the university).

Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case

In the rather dryly titled Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case, David Friedman, son of Milton, shares one of my favorite obscure bits of legal history:

In modern law the distinction between civil and criminal law depends on whether prosecution is private or public; in this sense all Icelandic law was civil. But another distinction is that civil remedies usually involve a transfer (of money, goods, or services) from the defendant to the plaintiff, whereas criminal remedies often involve some sort of 'punishment.' In this sense the distinction existed in Icelandic law, but its basis was different.

Killing was made up for by a fine. For murder a man could be outlawed, even if he was willing to pay a fine instead. In our system, the difference between murder and killing (manslaughter) depends on intent; for the Icelanders it depended on something more easily judged. After killing a man, one was obliged to announce the fact immediately; as one law code puts it: "The slayer shall not ride past any three houses, on the day he committed the deed, without avowing the deed, unless the kinsmen of the slain man, or enemies of the slayer lived there, who would put his life in danger." A man who tried to hide the body, or otherwise conceal his responsibility, was guilty of murder.

There's much more to the article, and I recommend reading the whole thing.

Millwall brick

I hadn't heard of a Millwall brick before:

A Millwall brick is an improvised weapon made of a manipulated newspaper.

The Millwall brick was allegedly used as a stealth weapon at football matches in England during the 1960s and 1970s. The weapon's popularity appears to have been due to the wide availability of innocently appearing newspapers, and due to the ease of its construction.

Seemingly mindless criminals can be remarkably clever when it comes to making weapons.

Would Legal Marijuana Mean an Excise Tax Bonanza?

Jacob Sullum asks, Would Legal Marijuana Mean an Excise Tax Bonanza? No, not really:

Gieringer suggests a tax of 50 cents to $1 per joint, which is extremely heavy even compared to the cigarette taxes that prevail in New York City ($3 a pack, or 15 cents a cigarette, on top of the federal excise tax of 39 cents a pack). Even a levy as big as Gieringer proposes would bring in revenues that "might range from $2.2 to $6.4 billion per year," according to his estimate.

Here's where the bonanza would come from:

Drug law enforcement costs something like $40 billion a year, and marijuana accounted for 43 percent of drug arrests in 2005.

Is There a Barber in the House?

Doctors Larry and Jonathan Zaroff recount an unusual medical emergency in Is There a Barber in the House?:

A 50-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital with complaints of severe weakness and difficulty breathing. She had been quite healthy until the afternoon of the admission, with no history of serious illnesses.

The doctors at the university hospital where she became a patient are known for using their brains. They also use their stethoscopes wisely, and observe closely how a patient looks.

On examination this one was sweaty and had pinpoint pupils, and her lungs were wheezy. But unlike physicians of centuries ago, doctors today do not regularly use their noses. (In the 18th century, doctors could make diagnoses of kidney failure, diabetes and liver disease by smelling a patient.) For this woman, the diagnosis remained obscure for the next hour as her breathing got more labored and she became comatose.

A tube was placed in her windpipe and she was attached to a breathing machine. Then an experienced nurse, with good sense and a good sense of smell, came to the rescue. The nurse noted that the patient had a peculiar odor, resembling garlic, most prominently from her hair. The unusual odor raised the suspicion of insecticide poisoning with organophosphates.

The patient was immediately treated with atropine and 2-PAM to reverse the effects of the poison, while blood was sent to the lab to verify the diagnosis. Each time she received the medications she woke and improved, but then lapsed back into a coma with increasing lung problems. Her skin was washed and her hair was shampooed several times with no lasting improvement.

Since the primary contamination seemed to be in her hair, her head was shaved. After that she improved rapidly, her medicines were tapered and she regained consciousness. Soon she was able to breathe on her own.

The lab reports verified that the nurse had been correct. The patient had been poisoned with an organophosphate insecticide. Now her doctors wondered, How did her hair become impregnated with insecticide in quantities to bring her to the brink of death? This was no casual exposure. She denied a suicide attempt — swallowing would have been more direct. Nor could it have been attempted murder — there are easier ways to administer poisons more covertly.

The answer came from the patient when she fully awakened. She remembered exactly what she had done before becoming ill: her usual activities, except that she had gotten her hair shampooed by a neighbor.

The neighbor, when contacted, was willing to bring in the shampoo. Chagrined, she showed up shortly, bringing two containers. One held shampoo. The other, a similar jug, contained an organophosphate insecticide. Both receptacles were the same size, the labels old and blurred.

Inventor takes airport design to new heights

Inventor takes airport design to new heights — of egotism:

Starry's design calls for new airports — he calls them Starrports — to be built on relatively small parcels of land close to major cities. He envisions parallel runways — on an incline for landing and a decline for takeoff — leading jets directly onto, or off, the roof of a circular passenger terminal and parking garage. The distance from garage to gate would be short. The heat of the terminal would help de-ice the runways, and lights on the terminal could illuminate runways.

Starry says his design would cut air pollution at a single airport 56% and save 1,000 gallons of jet fuel per flight. Inclined runways would allow jets to burn less fuel, he says, because the planes would reach takeoff speed sooner and land without thrust-reversers. The short distance from terminal to runway would allow jets to wait at the gate instead of idling their engines on taxiways. And proximity to downtown would mean fewer miles by autos to and from the airport, also reducing air pollution.

"A Starrport can be built on one-third the land at one-half the cost," Starry says. "It's based on simple, understandable concepts."

Pot is called biggest cash crop

Pot is called biggest cash crop — probably because it is:

A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.

California is responsible for more than a third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state's grapes, vegetables and hay combined — and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states.

The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter century despite an exhaustive anti-drug effort by law enforcement.
[...]
Using data on the number of pounds eradicated by police around the U.S., Gettman produced estimates of the likely size and value of the cannabis crop in each state. His methodology used what he described as a conservative value of about $1,600 a pound compared to the $2,000- to $4,000-a-pound street value often cited by law enforcement agencies after busts.

How Our Civilization Can Fall

Orson Scott Card summarizes Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, the opening chapter of Michael Grant's The Rise of the Greeks, which describes the collapse of the eastern Mediterranean economy, and Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It before imagining How Our Civilization Can Fall:

Here's how it happens: America stupidly and immorally withdraws from the War on Terror, withdrawing prematurely from Iraq and leaving it in chaos. Emboldened, either Muslims unite against the West (unlikely) or collapse in a huge war between Shiites and Sunnis (already beginning). It almost doesn't matter, because in the process the oil will stop flowing.

And when the oil stops flowing, Europe and Japan and Taiwan and Singapore and South Korea all crash economically; Europe then has to face the demands of its West-hating Muslim "minority" without money and without the ruthlessness or will to survive that would allow them to counter the threat. The result is accommodation or surrender to Islam. The numbers don't lie — it is not just possible, it is likely.

America doesn't crash right away, mind you. But we still have a major depression, because we have nowhere to sell our goods. And depending on what our desperate enemies do, it's a matter of time before we crash as well.
[...]
It takes two generations for the dark ages to reach America. But they will come, if we allow this nightmare to begin. Because once you reach the tipping point, there's no turning back, as the Emperor Justinian discovered.

Our global economic system is a brilliant creation, imperfect of course, but powerful and effective in creating more prosperity for more people than ever in the history of the world. It is a creation of America's military and America's benign government of the world — so benign they pretend we don't govern it.

Our enemies and most of our "allies" and many of our own citizens are working as hard as possible to bring the whole thing crashing down, though that is not at all what they intend.

They just haven't learned the lessons — the principles — of how great economic empires are maintained. They only look at the political dogmas du jour and spout their platitudes. People like me are ridiculed for seeing the big picture and learning the lessons of history.

I actually recommend reading the whole article rather than just his ending Jeremiad, which simply sounds alarmist.

Retailers profit from unused gift cards

Retailers profit from unused gift cards:

Last winter, Best Buy Co. reported a $43 million gain in fiscal 2006 from cards that hadn't been used in two or more years. Limited Brands Inc. recorded $30 million in 2005 revenue because of unredeemed cards.

Even so, this holiday season is likely to see record sales of gift cards. The National Retail Federation, a trade group, estimates that shoppers will buy $24.8 billion worth of cards, up 34 percent from last year.
[...]
About 6 percent, or $4.8 billion, of this year's gift cards will go unused, estimated Laura Lane, vice president of unclaimed property services for Keane Co., a compliance and risk management consulting firm.

Consumer Reports put the figure even higher, estimating that 19 percent of those who received cards last year had not used them because the cards were lost or expired.
[...]
Some gift cards get spent faster than others. Supermarkets and gas stations have close to 100 percent redemption rates, said Bob Skiba, who runs the gift card division of Ceridian Corp.'s Comdata gift card division, based in Louisville, Ky.

Even cards that get used are effectively a free loan to the retailer.

Litvinenko's killers used polonium worth $10m to give massive overdose

I was under the impression that the polonium used to kill the former KGB spy was quite inexpensive, but now it looks like Litvinenko's killers used polonium worth $10m to give him a massive overdose:

British investigators believe that Alexander Litvinenko’s killers used more than $10 million of polonium-210 to poison him. Preliminary findings from the post mortem examination on the former KGB spy suggest that he was given more than ten times the lethal dose.

Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part of a consignment to be sold on the black market.

They believe that whoever orchestrated the plot knew of its effects, but are unsure whether the massive amount was used to send a message — it made it easier for British scientists to detect — or is evidence of a clumsy operation.

A British security source said yesterday: “You can’t buy this much off the internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers.”
[...]
United Nuclear Scientific Supplies of New Mexico, one of the few companies licensed to sell polonium-210 isotopes online, said that as a single unit costed about $69, it would take at least 15,000 orders, costing more than $10 million, to kill someone.

The company said that as it sold to only a handful of outlets in the United States every three months, anyone placing an order for 15,000 units would be spotted.

Experts reckon that as little as 0.1 micrograms of polonium-210 would be enough to kill — the equivalent of a single aspirin tablet divided into 10 million pieces.

The penguin who goes shopping

Lala, the penguin who goes shopping, was rescued by a Japanese fisherman years ago. Now Lala lives in an air-conditioned room and walks to the fish store each day, wearing a penguin backpack. The video is quite kawaii.

50 Lost Movie Classics

The Observer shares its list of 50 Lost Movie Classics. I can't vouch for most of them, but I will recommend number 46.

Tsunami survivors given the lash

Tsunami survivors given the lash — with tsunami-relief funds:

When people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public.

But militant Islamists have since imposed sharia law in Aceh and have cornered Indonesian government funds to organise a moral vigilante force that harasses women and stages frequent displays of humiliation and state-sanctioned violence.

International aid workers and Indonesian women’s organisations are now expressing dismay that the flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce puritan laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves.

Some say there are more “sharia police” than regular police on the local government payroll and that many of them are aggressive young men.

“Who are these sharia police?” demanded Nurjannah Ismail, a lecturer at Aceh’s Ar-Raniri University. “They are men who, most of the time, are trying to send the message that their position is higher than women.”

In one town, Lhokseumawe, the authorities are even planning to impose a curfew on women — a move that social workers warn will force tsunami widows to quit night-time jobs as food sellers or waitresses and could drive them into prostitution.

Pygmy Marmoset

This Pygmy Marmoset is a funny looking little guy:

In this photo released by the Wildlife Conservation Society, a young pygmy marmoset holds on to a branch at the Bronx Zoo in New York, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006. This is one of two marmosets born on Aug. 20, and can be expected to reach a height of five inches and weigh in at one half pound. One of the smallest of all monkey species, the pygmy marmoset inhabits the jungles of Brazil, Ecuador and Peru.

Richard Dawkins vs. Lynchburg, Virginia

Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) responds to the question, "What if you're wrong?" — with references to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, Russell's Celestial Teapot, and other, more traditional, non-Christian deities, like Zeus and Thor.

A Theory of Investment Banking

Arnold Kling presents A Theory of Investment Banking, trying to explain why I-bankers get paid so much, yet start out working outrageous hours (e.g. 100 hours a week) for not that much money:

I think you have to come up with a story about barriers to entry. One plausible story that occurs to me is that some highly-remunerated aspects of investment banking require experience. For example, if a corporate client is involved in a megabucks merger, the client cannot afford a mistake. So the client would pay a premium to have an experienced M&A (mergers and acquisitions) team.

The scarce resource in M&A is the experienced investment banker. The barrier to entry is that you cannot get experience without doing big deals, and you cannot do big deals until you get experience.

What that suggests is that if you are young and greedy, you would pay an investment bank to give you experience. And in fact, young investment bankers do feel exploited — working incredibly long hours, doing tedious stuff, and toadying up to people in a way that no self-respecting intelligent person would otherwise be willing to do. In return for that exploitation, you earn a decent living, but more importantly, you get the experience that gives you a chance to work/luck your way into the ranks of the truly rich.

Why I Hate WW II

In Why I Hate WW II, Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, explains that all the lessons of WWII are wrong:

Fact No. 1: They Were All Fascists.

At a military level, let's face a nasty fact: WW II was Stalin vs. Hitler. The rest was window dressing. Stalin won because — because what, he was a nicer guy? Nope, he won because his brand of fascism was actually way more ruthless and bloody and effective than Hitler's smalltime snobbery, and because Stalin had the whole US industrial machine backing him. There's no moral lesson in that that I can see.

Fact No. 2: The Holocaust is a One-Shot Exception; Genocide Does Pay.

The Holocaust is the next-biggest non-lesson of WW II. Everybody loves to talk about this particular case of genocide because it failed, or so we're told. The Germans paid a terrible price for what they did to the Jews. Nope; the Germans paid a terrible price for invading Russia. If they'd stuck to holding their half of Eurasia, Stalin would have continued his love affair with Hitler, the only human being he ever liked, and the European Jews would have been a shared buffet, divvied up between concentration camps flying the swastika or the red star.

Fact No. 3: There Are No Military Lessons to Be Learned from WW II.

This is my real pet peeve about WW II, because frankly I care way more about bad military history than all that moral bla-bla. Every military lesson people want to take away from WW II is wrong, and the one they could learn is the one they don't want to learn.

So for starters, here's the real lesson of the war: military superiority in the narrow sense isn't nearly as important as economic strength and propaganda working in tandem.

Can You Find the C?

Can You Find the C?:

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

One interesting element of such visual search problems is that autistics often don't realize there's even a puzzle or challenge to it; the different character simply jumps out at them.

What do private equity firms have that public firms don't?

What do private equity firms have that public firms don't?:

Private-equity firms want to buy companies for their portfolio, fix them, grow them and sell them in three to five years. The eventual buyer could be another company in the portfolio company's industry, another private-equity firm or the public, through an IPO. The holding period is occasionally less than a year or as long as ten years. But always the goal from day one is to sell the company at a profit.

Facing a goal like that changes a manager's mindset — usually in positive ways. No longer seeing a corporate future that stretches indefinitely into the distance, executives realize that they gain nothing by resisting change: With the exit looming, driving change is their only hope.

"Everybody in the company knows you're on a sprint to do well," says von Krannichfeldt. "It's not this mindset of working for a company that's been there for 100 years and will continue for another 100 years. I find this much more intense than a public company."

Pay is a whole different concept in PE-owned companies. Don't come to play unless you're prepared to put significant skin in the game. While public companies talk a lot about aligning executive pay with performance, they typically award stock options and restricted stock on top of already substantial pay packages, giving executives lots to gain but little to lose.

And in big companies those options reflect the fortunes of the overall corporation, not the specific business a manager is running. By contrast, private-equity firms make the game much more serious. Not only is a far larger share of executive pay tied to the performance of an executive's business, but top managers may also be required to put a major chunk of their own money into the deal.
[...]
Making a big new investment or taking a write-off for a plant closing may be the best thing for the business, but many public companies hesitate because such actions could cause the stock to tank. PE-owned firms don't have to worry about it. "In private equity, you don't need to go from quarter to quarter," says von Krannichfeldt. "You can take write-offs, you can make investments that aren't accretive in year one or year two. It's a very different dynamic."
[...]
What makes a huge difference is the release of managerial time from trying to placate and massage the public markets. Talking to shareholders, analysts and the media may be important jobs for a public-company CEO, but they're massive distractions from the company's operations. In practice, a public-company CEO is lucky if he spends 60 percent of his time actually running the place. In a PE-owned firm those distractions disappear, and the CEO is free to spend close to 100 percent of his time focused on the business.

Increased managerial attention comes to many PE-owned companies in another way as well. Several of these companies were initially parts of much larger outfits where they were not central to the mission. The parent firm focused top-management time and corporate resources elsewhere, which not only was bad for the stepchildren financially but also demoralized the managers.

"I used to joke that I had to fly to London to beg for attention," says CEO Luther, recalling when Dunkin' was part of giant Allied Domecq, which Pernod Ricard later bought. "Now it's just a 20-minute ride downtown" to Bain Capital's office in Boston. Genpact's Pramod Bhasin adds, "We weren't a strategic business for GE. Our whole intention was to be able to offer our services to the broad market."
[...]
Combine all those factors and here's what private-equity firms have figured out how to do: Attract and keep the world's best managers, focus them extraordinarily well, provide strong incentives, free them from distractions, give them all the help they can use and let them do what they can do. No wonder these companies tend to be outstanding performers.

Changing the Game

In Changing the Game, Cringely explains how VCs are putting their trillion dollars to use:

The old model was for top firms (those run by intelligent people) to look at 800 deals per year and invest in two to six, pumping them with enough money to assure success while also killing off the founders and pushing for an early IPO and VC cash-out. The other VC firms just watched what the top firms were doing, then bought in on B or C rounds where the risks and returns were proportionally lower.

The new model is venture capital masquerading as a combination of hedge funds and investment bankers. Seed rounds are the only rounds and they are limited to angels, friends, and family. Very few companies go public and those that do are unique in their niches. Acquisition has always been the other exit strategy, but if the VCs don't have a piece of the company being acquired, they can't enjoy the benefits of a sale, so what's to do? The VCs start acquiring companies, that's what, in a classic hedge fund maneuver called a "roll-up."

A roll-up means buying many companies in the same market niche, say convenience stores. A private equity group buys, for example, four to five chains of convenience stores totaling 2000 locations. They consolidate the chains saving fixed costs, obtain some economies of scale through bigger purchase orders, but mainly they sell off poor-performing stores for their real estate value, and eventually take the new company public or sell it for a profit to an even larger competitor.

Today's high-tech version of VC-managed roll-up means buying a bunch of similar high-tech companies, consolidating their products and services, then selling the whole or taking it public, simple as that.

Pray for Coal

In Pray for Coal, Paige Ferrari lists the 10 most dangerous play things of all time. At the top of the list we find, of course, lawn darts:

Removable parts? Suffocation risk? Lead paint? Pussy hazards compared to the granddaddy of them all. Lawn Darts, or "Jarts," as they were marketed, would never fly in our current ultra-paranoid, safety-helmeted, Dr. Phil toy culture. Lawn darts were massive weighted spears. You threw them. They stuck where they landed. If they happened to land in your skull, well, then you should have moved. During their brief (and generally awesome) reign in 1980s suburbia, Jarts racked up 6,700 injuries and four deaths.

The real standout though is number two, the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab. It's fun, easy, and exciting! A.C. Gilbert, creator of the Erector Set, released the Atomic Energy Lab in 1951. It included the following components:

1. U-239 Geiger radiation counter.
2. Electroscope to measure radioactivity of different substances.
3. Spinthariscope to watch "live" radioactive disintegration.
4. Wilson Cloud Chamber to see paths of electrons & alpha particles at 10k mps
5. Three very low-level radioactive sources (Alpha, Beta, Gamma).
6. Four samples of Uranium-bearing ores
7. Nuclear Spheres (used to visual build models of molecules)
8. The book "Prospecting for Uranium"
9. The "Gilbert Atomic Energy Manual"
10. The comic book "Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom"
11. Three "Winchester" Batteries (size "C")

The irony is that it probably was perfectly safe. As one commenter noted:

Long term effects? None whatsoever. Uranium 238 is only dangerous if in finely powdered form and inhaled. You can safely swallow a pellet of U238; it just passes through.

Number nine is the one that speaks to me — the Battlestar Galactica Missile Launcher.

Wrestling Highlights

When you edit down competitive wrestling — freestyle or Greco — to just the highlights, it looks a lot more like pro wrestling.

Mouse-like creature saves New Zealand and rewrites history

Mouse-like creature saves New Zealand and rewrites history:

New Zealand has long been thought to be a rare example of a land mass that evolved without land mammals after it separated from the ancient "supercontinent" of Gondwana about 82 million years ago.

Until now, decades of searching had shown no hint that furry, warm-blooded animals had ever trodden on Kiwi soil, despite them having thrived so widely in other lands. That picture is changed by the tiny fossilised bones — part of two jaws and a leg — that belonged to a unique land animal unlike any other mammal known. The bones of the creature, between the size of a mouse and a rat, were unearthed from the rich St Bathans fossil bed, in the Central Otago region of South Island and the findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

History in a nutshell

Nick Szabo presents History in a nutshell:

I've written about geographic patterns that demonstrate the importance of securing as well as producing wealth. These have shaped forms of government and law. Hunter-gatherer tribes, under which our instincts evolved, had no need of large organizations, governments, or law as we know it. The dawn of agriculture was probably made possible, not by the discovery that food plants could be grown from seeds (this would have been obvious to a hunter-gatherer), but in solving the much harder problem of how to protect this capital investment over the course of a planting-growing-harvesting-storage cycle from fellow human beings. This required internal law and external security exercised much more thoroughly and over a larger area. It was securing the production, more than the production itself, that required eventually radical organizational evolution.

Once farmland became the main source of wealth, there were substantial economies of scale in protecting it. This posed a difficulty in forming organizations larger than tribes; those cultures that could coordinate larger militaries slowly displaced tribes that could not. This led to a wide variety of governmental forms, but they tended to have in common that the military consumed the bulk of the otherwise insecure agricultural surplus. The primary legal form was that of real property, usually claimed by military lords and their heirs.

The next phase appeared sporadically and temporarily among city-states that dealt most in goods (included harvested and transportable agricultural commodities) rather than farmland. As cultures became centered around trade and industry, converting from farmland to goods as the main source of wealth, they also tended to convert from feudal monarchies to republics (or as we tend to call them now, democracies). Contract law became as or more important than real property law. Real property became much more alienable, either sold outright or pledged as security for insurance or investments.

As most wealth became mobile, taxes became centered on trade and income — on wealth transfers that require crossing borders or crossing trust barriers — rather than on wealth. During the same centuries as the rise of republics, cheap paper made widespread monolinguistic merchant communities more effective. The printing press gave rise to modern national lan