August 2005 Archives

A week ago, I caught a short segment of Fox News' business anchor Neil Cavuto interviewing Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, who was promoting his company's Deep Space DSE-Alpha program, a privately-funded Soyuz-based circumlunar expedition. I noticed, not for the first time, a surprising skepticism about private space travel from the normally highly pro-free enterprise Cavuto, who seems to be nurturing a serious blind spot on the matter, a dangerous case of NASA-romanticization.

Me, I'm sanguine about the DSE-Alpha, and hope to see Anderson's enterprise succeed. In the meantime, someone needs to buy Neil Cavuto a copy of Victor Koman's "Kings of the High Frontier." Abolish NASA, get the government out of the space business, and let people like Anderson do their thing without subsidy or interference.

Seen on a trip to the supermarket:

Oh, yum, gotta eat me some of these right away. Not.

The idea of a constitution, we’re told, is to limit government power. It’s supposed to bind the government to certain operational procedures that restrict its ability to violate rights. So a constitution cannot grant human rights; it can only spell out what are seen as the proper functions of government, and try to limit its ability to invade rights.

The US constitution came perhaps as close to this ideal as possible, until its meaning was perverted into a complete reversal, from restricting power to enabling it, from binding government to giving government a mandate for a thousand things to do to us.

But here is the problem. Constitutions by necessity leave the government as the primary enforcement agency. It’s like a memo: "Government to Self: don’t become tyrannical." It only works so long as the enforcement agent operates in good faith. If we remember that the worst rise to the top in government, as Hayek noted, we can have no realistic expectation that this good faith will last. Government gains not by adhering to its own restrictions, but by re-rendering them as positive mandates.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"A Constitution for Iraq"

Can you Breathe in Freefall?
At 120mph, inhaling is real easy. If you find it difficult to exhale, panic and scream, which is just another way to exhale. Then inhale which, as mentioned, is very easy at that speed.

In short, yes, you can breathe in freefall.

Adventure Center Skydiving FAQ

I walked into math class a few months ago and saw this folded cardboard box propped up in the back of the room, pulled out my Treo 650, and snapped this shot.

No, I don't understand the labelling either. My guess is that some Chinese packaging engineer was channelling Dr. Bronner when he wrote this.

In my opinion, ninjutsu is not a spiritual system (outside the confines of martial training) or a religion. Some may disagree.

Asking for ninjutsu without the martial aspects would be akin to asking some Navy SEAL "I want the spiritual strength and tenacity of a Navy SEAL but I don't want to do any hard physical training."

Jeff Sherwin

An interesting blog article about the use of dendrimers in targetted drug delivery systems, sent me by Tom Burroughes in London.

University of Michigan scientists have created the nanotechnology equivalent of a Trojan horse to smuggle a powerful chemotherapeutic drug inside tumor cells – increasing the drug's cancer-killing activity and reducing its toxic side effects.

Previous studies in cell cultures have suggested that attaching anticancer drugs to nanoparticles for targeted delivery to tumor cells could increase the therapeutic response. Now, U-M scientists have shown that this nanotechnology-based treatment is effective in living animals.

This type of news carries a special type of urgency for me, as I've recently been informed that my good friend Chris Tame, in London, has been diagnosed with epithelioid angiosarcoma of the bones (spine & hip so far.) His oncologists are working hard to find the primary source of the cancer. In the meantime, any new developments in the effectiveness of chemotherapy with short & medium term time horizons are of great personal interest to me and my friends.

...the digital (PDF) version I'm reading now, but Charlie Stross tells his readers not to do so. I will, however, be buying several copies from Amazon as gifts to friends. Damn it's good!

If you can, within principle, take over and adopt whatever name your enemy calls you, do so. It shuts them up very handily.

L. Neil Smith

My teacher Dale Seago sent this reference to "Oppressive Knife Laws" to our dojo's mailing list. This summary dates from 1998, but is a nicely written short piece on the key features of this particular type of prohibitionism.

I bought a 40GB iPod about 8 months ago, and have worked that thing like a prom date, using it in my car, at the gym, at school (both for listening & for recording lectures) and simply for walking around. A couple of days ago, I was greeted with the "sad iPod" icon which indicated the unit's hard drive had failed. Though I'd bought the unit at a discount at the campus bookstore, I called the local Apple Store and told them my situation. I was told to come in, they'd have a replacement waiting for me, no charge, covered under the unit's 1-year standard warranty.

This isn't the first time I've dealt with Apple when I've had an issue with their equipment and/or operating system. I bought an AppleCare contract with my new dual G5 a few months ago, and have found that my calls are answered promptly, and the technicians will hang onto the phone doggedly until any problems are run to ground. At least in my own case - I can't speak for others - I'd rate Apple as having a superb culture of customer service all around.