Josh's Weblog: March 2009 Archives

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Little Red Riding Hood Infographic Presentation

The Little Red Riding Hood story, in an infographic presentation:

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

The HD version is here, and it's a lot better looking than the embeddable version.

(Hat tip to Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor Musings,)

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Technology” Thursday, Mar 26 2009 11:25 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

The Budget Debate Begins

…and it's started on YouTube:

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Politics” Wednesday, Mar 18 2009 09:24 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Veterans' Benefits Strawman

It's hard for me not be cynical about the recent antics of the President and the results of such obvious misdirection from real issues. For someone that almost never speaks in public without a teleprompter, it's hard to believe that everything is not going according to Obama's plan.

For example, when the time came to question wide swaths of earmarks/pork in the Spendulous bill, we were treated to personal attacks on Rush Limbaugh and other obvious voices of dissent and even a treat to parsing the term “earmarks.” The bill was passed with tons of pork in place.

Also, when it came time to question the problems at the Treasury Department, including the failure to staff important posts or to notice the effects of failing to read the Spendulous, we were treated to this canard about $165M in bonuses paid to executives at AIG with the full prior knowledge of Treasury and the tacit consent of Congress. Treasury is intact, although finally some are calling for Geithner to resign.

Now we hear the President's new budget does not cover service-related injuries to veterans after they leave the service. What is this mess covering up or setting up? I can't help but think it's the usual canard of some vital service being lost if we don't raise taxes. It's always police, veterans, children, or roads that suffer if we don't shake down the “rich,” isn't it?

Update: Yeah, I didn't mention the “bring back the Assault Weapons Ban to save Mexico from drug dealers” one in this list, because I had mentioned it on the blog before, but it is another good example.

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Politics” Wednesday, Mar 18 2009 08:51 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

A Sixth Sense Demonstration at TED

A Sixth Sense with $350 of off-the-shelf parts and a lot of software:

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Technology” Wednesday, Mar 11 2009 02:11 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Quantum Sudoku

Scientists in search of Hardy's Paradox came up with an interesting method:

The reality in question—admittedly rather a small part of the universe—was the polarisation of pairs of photons, the particles of which light is made. The state of one of these photons was inextricably linked with that of the other through a process known as quantum entanglement.

The polarised photons were able to take the place of the particle and the antiparticle in Dr Hardy's thought experiment because they obey the same quantum-mechanical rules. Dr Yokota (and also Drs Lundeen and Steinberg) managed to observe them without looking, as it were, by not gathering enough information from any one interaction to draw a conclusion, and then pooling these partial results so that the total became meaningful.

I hereby dub this technique, “Quantum Sudoku.”

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Technology” Tuesday, Mar 10 2009 07:28 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

What 9,000 Earmarks Look Like

Georgia Republican House Representative Tom Price (chairman of the Republican Study Committee) shows us what 9,000 earmarks look like:

(Hat tip to Hot Air.)

Of course, people try to obfuscate what earmarks are, either applying it to all localized spending projects or to only spending items introduced by the very specific earmark process, but the general idea is that it's spending not properly in the Federal domain, introduced to appease specific special interests, or horse-traded to get a particular representative's support for a bill all in seeming contradiction to the overall purpose of a bill.

Because of what I think is overly broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, such things are not considered outright unconstitutional, but it sure seems to bend the intent of limiting the powers of Congress to a select list of enumerated powers.

It takes something really egregious, and William Rehnquist, to reign in Congress's belief in what it can regulate or spend (see United States v. Lopez 514 U.S. 549, coincidentally a gun rights case).

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Politics” Saturday, Mar 7 2009 07:26 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks