Month: October 2012

Stormy Weather

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by Doctor Science We’re battened down pretty well against Sandy. Jim MacDonald at Making Light provided a helpful guide: How to Batten a Hatch. Food prepped and ready, water and lights handy, blankets piled. I spent much of yesterday cooking: roast pork, spanakopita, today I’ll make tomato sauce. We figure we can all cuddle up … Read more

What globalization looks like: Halloween in China

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by Doctor Science The Atlantic’s James Fallows got to tour and take pictures inside notorious Chinese manufacturer Foxconn. This is the Foxconn “campus” in the Longhua area of Shenzhen, north of Hong Kong. Some 220,000 people work there; about a quarter of them live on site; and several thousand new employees are recruited, trained, and … Read more

an ownership society

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by russell This is a short and sweet post, mostly just in the interest of putting something out there for discussion.  My personal stance on the topic will most likely be obvious, and so likely requires little elaboration. So, here ya go. The "ownership society" was a common slogan during the Bush years.  But, somehow, … Read more

I’ll tumblr 4 ya

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by Doctor Science I just started using Tumblr: doctorscienceknows.tumblr.com. Mostly I’m using it for keeping track of images: when I’m working on an Obsidian Wings post, I tend to flip through lots of images, save a few, then forget where I got them from. No more of that! she said optimistically. Demon Tumbling Downstairs, by … Read more

Welcome to the future

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by Doctor Science ALPHA CENTAURI HAS A PLANET! Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy put it in all caps, and I don’t blame him one bit. ALPHA CENTAURI B HAS A PLANET. European Southern Observatory artist’s impression. The planet (currently euphoniously called “Alpha Centauri Bb”) is only a hair larger than Terra: 1.13 Earth masses. Alas, … Read more

Jefferson’s myth of yeoman America

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by Doctor Science In Chrystia Freeland’s NY Times piece on The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent, she says: In the early 19th century, the United States was one of the most egalitarian societies on the planet. “We have no paupers,” Thomas Jefferson boasted in an 1814 letter. “The great mass of our population is of … Read more

w00t!

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About time too. Whether or not America’s politicians can find a way to sidestep the brutal automatic military cuts of sequestration, the era of rising Western spending on weapons and wars is over. link Discuss.

your price of gas open friday thread

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by liberal japonicus Over here, I don't think much about the price of gas. No really critical uses of the car, and gas is sold in liters. For me, there is some sort obsfucation constant that is added whenever you translate something from imperial to metric. "It's 39 degrees celsius" and I yawn. 'It's 103 … Read more

Cue the HUZZAHS! and the urine tests

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by Doctor Science It is an exciting week Chez Science, because Sprog the Elder is about to start a FULL TIME JOB. WITH BENEFITS. IN HER CHOSEN FIELD. (Said field being “library and book work”. Because “best-selling novelist” isn’t something a sensible person *counts* on …) It’s taken almost a year and half of temporary … Read more

anti and pro military on the left (retry)

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by liberal japonicus

This weekend, I was watching the internet thru my new iphone, which was a bit like taking in a baseball game thru a knothole in the fence. You can catch the basic action, but you don’t see the whole game.

So it was with the second campaign of the CT-LGM blog war*. The first, which could be termed The battle of Conor’s bluff, was part of a larger war and centered around whether one should vote for Obama despite the use of drones or make a statement and vote for Gary Johnson.
The second campaign, The fight of Navy’s need, took place over the weekend. (I hope those attempts at factual restatements don’t insult anyone on either side) In both campaigns, some current and former ObWi commenters were part of the troops arrayed. This post is not about either of those fights (so I’m not linking to them, though going to CT and LGM should be sufficient) but about what I think is the larger question behind them. If that intrigues, check below the fold.

*I should add that whether or not is was a ‘war’ is questioned by some of the participants.

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A master debater

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By liberal japonicus The title is a hangover from the detour into Portnoy’s complaint. I didn’t see it and I’m now at a a retreat with students. I caught a small bit of one commentator saying that Romnet behaved like an alpha male and that this might hurt him. Given the amount of testosterone that … Read more

A different green

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by Doctor Science In every wood in every spring there is a different green. — J.R.R.Tolkien This is a section of a picture I took last week on my morning walk: I used an Olympus D-510 camera, which is really pretty old at this point. What I was hoping to capture here were the many … Read more