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King of the Road
www.youtube.com/watch
"Two hours of pushing broom buys a 8x12 four-bit room."
Let's think about that. "Pushing Broom" - quite easily a minimum wage job (though back in 1964, when there was no minimum wage" Two hours of general sweeping earns 50 cents (four bits). That's enough to rent a small motel room for a night.
Minimum wage now - $7.25, and you ( Read more... ) -
Curse You Adobe!
I want to start a campaign ( Read more... ) -
I should have known better...
One of my RSS feeds here in LJ is the Gutenberg Release list. SciFi pops through fairly often, as does other interesting books and stories, so it's a good way to find new things to read.
And then pops up the listing for The Eyes Have It, by Philip K. Dick. Now, I've read Dick before - three or four of his novels. He and John Varley strike me ( Read more... ) -
Solar Power and Deserts
I see from time to time discussion of solar power plants being set up in the desert, and how the sun's energy can be tapped in this or that manner. One of the most recent I saw involved huge greenhouses heating up air, and letting it rise through towers to drive turbines. And that's all well and good, I think ( Read more... ) -
Memories
I clicked through to XKCD today, and nearly died laughing!
Now, as usual, the comic itself is biting and pithy and geeky, all things that leave me with a happy happy joy joy feeling. It is, however, the rest of the page that brings back memories and laughter. This is because it commemorates the passing of GeoCities, a fading leftover remnant of a ( Read more... ) -
Even The Greats Can Miss!
I'm currently reading a nice little book by Arthur C. Clarke, published back in 1977, titled Profiles of the Future. I found it interesting to read the following in his discussion on what communications satellites will mean for the future:
"Some cynics maintain that the TV relay system is the best argument against space travel that has ever been ( Read more... ) -
Accounting Gone Too Far
Ok, folks, the bean counters have gone too damn far.
Reportedly, Michael Jackson left behind an archive of about 100 songs that he recorded specifically for his children. He did not release them. ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ ( Read more... ) -
Contusions of a Contused Mind
1) I did a study of deer one day - went out in the woods, and studied very carefully their habits. My initial hypothesis was that I would find that they used one particular hoof, or another, to do various tasks such as scratching up buried grass and nuts. However, my results were quite unexpected ( Read more... ) -
Education
I just got finished reading a collection of Isaac Asimov essays, Out of the Everywhere, and a biography of Richard Feynman, Classic Feynman, and I'm reminded of my desire to utterly and completely rework the educational system...
There are some minor points:- Use Dr. Asimov's collected non-fiction as textbooks for grades 3-10th or so.
- Switch to a ( Read more... )
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I'm still not sure about this LiveJournal thing...
I find I have trouble figuring out what I want to say... and I don't see that much point to it if I don't add to it - there's plenty of other places to read people's thoughts and such. But still, I'm doing better here than I've done on a lot of other starts at keeping a journal, so I'll stick with it for now ( Read more... )