This article from the Atlatnic has some of my favorite things: awesome technology (including using viruses to rewrite people’s DNA) and saving little kids from life-threatening disease. Definitely worth the read.
Month: August 2013
Water-producing Billboard
It’s like something right out of Dune.
I wonder how cost efficient and scalable this technology is…
Marathon Swimmers Navigate Bloodied Waters Littered With Cuban Corpses
That’s the arresting title of this post, which I saw on Facebook yesterday evening. In it, Rai compares the fatalities of those who tried to escape communist East Germany and died on the Berlin Wall with the many thousands who have perished trying to cross the open waters between Cuba and Florida.
In contrast to these grim and tragic tales, Rai talks about the ultra-marathon swimmers who hobnob with the communist rulers of Cuba and, on their self-aggrandizing trek back to Florida, swim through waves that serve as the graves for countless thousands who died seeking their freedom.
Does Japan Have an Aircraft Carrier Now?
Japan just launched a warship, the Izumo, that looks an awful lot like an aircraft carrier. But is it?
One Eternal Whole: Worship and Corporeality
Over at Worlds Without End, Walker Wright (along with Allen Hansen) have an absolutely awesome blog post called: “All Things Unto Me Are Spiritual”: Worship Through Corporeality in Hasidism & Mormonism (Part 1). It’s an ambitious work, embracing millennia of religious history (from ancient Judaism to early Mormonism) and some theology that is really dear to my heart.
Time To Switch To Android?
Fanboi articles are generally tiresome, but I liked this one from Gizmodo. The two main points?
1. When a company runs out of real innovation, they start using frosted glass effects like MS did in Vista and Apple does in iOS 7.
2. The smartphone hardware market has matured to the point where the dominant concern is ease of access to information, where Google’s Android OS really shines over Apple’s closed ecosystem.
This goes back to the argument most people made (including me) when Android was first announced: that Android + ARM was going to be the new Windows + x86 ecosystem: bigger and messier than Apple’s walled garden. I think that Apple’s gate-keeping approach was absolutely pivotal to introduce the new technology, and Android still has serious problems to fix when it comes to piracy and disparate hardware (sound familiar?) but that the very first metaphor was probably right, and in the future we should expect to see Android take more market share (and also key sections like the enthusiast market) while Apple maintains a small (but possibly highly profitable) grip over a smaller slice of the user-base.
Me? My iPhone 4S still has at least a few good months of use in it, no problem. After that, I honestly couldn’t say if I’ll get another Apple, an Android, or even a Windows phone. I’m still completely undecided.
Planned Parenthood, Fraud, and Media Bias
Media bias is one of those tired old claims that those on the American left get tired of hearing. Frankly: I get tired of hearing about it, too.
Regrettably, however, we’ve got another egregious example.
Monday Morning Mormon Madness: More Sin
I decided to write about sin again this morning for my post at Times And Seasons. And while I was looking for fun images to accompany the post, I stumbled upon a couple Calvin and Hobbes strips that did the trick.
Wow… Calvin and Hobbes makes everything better.
The Queen’s Nuclear War Speech from 1983
USA Today reports that as part of extensive war games during the 1980’s, the following speech was prepared for Queen Elizabeth to read in the event of nuclear war.
When I spoke to you less than three months ago we were all enjoying the warmth and fellowship of a family Christmas. Our thoughts were concentrated on the strong links that bind each generation to the ones that came before and those that will follow. The horrors of war could not have seemed more remote as my family and I shared our Christmas joy with the growing family of the Commonwealth.
Now this madness of war is once more spreading through the world and our brave country must again prepare itself to survive against great odds.
Wannabe RoboCops Kill Bambi
The Wall Street Journal ran an article called The Rise of the Warrior Cop on July 22 about the militarization of ordinary police forces. The problem–and it is a problem–has to do with the proliferation of SWAT-style police units:
The country’s first official SWAT team started in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. By 1975, there were approximately 500 such units. Today, there are thousands. According to surveys conducted by the criminologist Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, just 13% of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team in 1983. By 2005, the figure was up to 80%. The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 (the last year for which Dr. Kraska collected data), there were approximately 50,000 raids.
If you want an idea of how absurd this is consider that the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior each have their own SWAT-style unit. Why does NASA need a military-grade police unit?