Month: March 2008

  • Who did the most to help victims of Hurricane Katrina? Wal-Mart

    While the Federal Emergency Management Agency fumbled about, doing almost as much to prevent essential supplies from reaching Louisiana and Mississippi as it could to facilitate it, Wal-Mart managers performed feats of heroism. In Kenner, La., an employee crashed a forklift through a warehouse door to get water for a nursing home. A Marrero, La.,…

  • Burt Rutan: a Capitalist Space Race

    Source: TED Video

  • "The Anticapitalists: Barbarians at the Gate" – Larry Sechrest

    (You can skip to the lecture’s beginning at 5:40.) By the way, the introductory quote is from Ayn Rand’s 1970 essay “The Comprachicos.” The text is: Observe also the intensity, the austere, the unsmiling seriousness with which an infant watches the world around him. (If you ever find, in an adult, that degree of seriousness…

  • Why not just put everyone in padded rooms?

    After banning kitchen knives, the next logical step for the U.K. is to add padding to lampposts to prevent “walking and texting” accidents. Before you start laughing at the British Nanny State, check out this ruling of the 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles, which forces home schooled kids to attend public school on the…

  • Invictus

    Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and…

  • Seeing with sound

    In the quest to find an electronic cure for blindness, some researchers are experimenting with brain-computer interfaces. While promising, this is an expensive and long-term solution. Another innovative approach is seeing with sound, which uses an inexpensive home-made setup to project a sonic representation of images to the user. I downloaded a free copy of…