No One Gets What They Want Today

It’s Another New Year.

Happy New Year. Stand on the neck of 2010 and throatpunch the future.

–WE

Like the title says, it’s another new year. And like the quote says, it’s time to build on our victories and poise ourselves for a surprise attack on whatever it is that lies ahead.

I’m typing this on my phone because I haven’t forked over a year of my life to the local telecom [yet]. It’s a sunny 73 degrees out. During

Posted at 4pm on 01/01/11 | no comments | Filed Under: Madness, Phoning it in, Plans, Reflection read on

An Opening

Unedited brain dump. The opening of my novel. Judge all you want, but know that it has so, so, so far to go.

I didn’t like being on the end of this beating, but I figured that I had earned it. It had all started with a spilled beer and a few choice words. I’m not much for brawls with orangutans wearing leather vests and posing as men, but this trip was starting to wear on

Posted at 12am on 11/03/10 | no comments | Filed Under: Writing read on

Scribbles

A Chronicle of Doing It | The Classical.

Fascinating article that reads like something from Gibson’s Bigend trilogy. Money may not be able to buy happiness but it can purchase an entire market.

01/28/12

Fuckery aside, this place is actually beautiful.

from Miguel, a U.S. Marine. Re: Well, it almost does not matter, because we hear this almost everywhere we work. (UPDATE: O.K., because you asked. Miguel was referring to Afghanistan.)

01/27/12

01/11/12

Feedair Digital Ticker hands-on -- Engadget.

glanceable:

One of the first consumable glanceables.

Feedair is a USB-powered WiFi enabled digital ticker that will span emails and tweets (or anything else with an RSS Feed) to its old-school dot-matrix display. Controlled with an iOS or Android app, it’s designed as an “unobtrusive display:” for those situations where you can keep a casual eye on a physical device or send messages to people who aren’t au-fait with technology. Feeling it in the hand, it’s machined from heavy aluminum and we could see this doubling as a paperweight for the right kind of office — and a great way for your assistant to send you discreet messages during tedious meetings. Constructing a “vidget” (visual widget) is apparently very easy and the company’s planning to court young developers to expand the capacity of the gear. Setting up the display to show Enagdget’s twitter feed took around 30 seconds, although in the process, the app froze out a few times, so it’s not quite ready for prime-time just yet. The Feedair is expected to hit the shelves in March and cost around $50.

Looking forward to this & the hacks that’ll follow.

01/11/12

///I need to dump this whole thing [when it’s finished] into a pdf so I can print it & take notes in the columns. On a similar note, perhaps next year’s edition can be delivered in installments to Berg’s Little Printer.///

Aldrin also doesn’t mention why NASA can’t innovate. It’s because NASA became a pork machine; it methodically spreads out major projects among so many Congressional districts that they’re unkillable, but also unworkable. Nobody was ever held to account for the failure of the Shuttle. even though the thing was a chimeric gobboon from the get-go. At least Aldrin manfully admits this failure, but he doesn’t address the underlying systemic problem involved in having Congress run a space technocracy. The contemporary Congress isn’t about Mars, it’s all about culture war over evolution and climate change. It’s a radically anti-science Congress where denial of facts is a litmus test. These guys can’t repair bridges, much less build shuttlecraft.

That doesn’t mean the US doesn’t innovate in aerospace, though. A giant, high-tech, robot blimp with a laser communication system and a starling horde of Predators. “Blue Devil” is not fast, it doesn’t zoom into outer space, it just sees global guerrillas and it illegally kills them. If anything’s gonna intimidate and cow the Chinese, it’ll be weird, scary, Gothic High-Tech devices like this, not some General Motors Martian bailout for NASA.

*The Chinese are building drones as fast as they can weld ‘em. Everybody likes drones. Even terrorists like drones. In 2012, drones are where it’s at, and they don’t even have pilots, much less glorious astronauts.

The WELL: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012 (via new-aesthetic)

01/07/12