In my previous post I mentioned the recent broadside against Brave for its anti-Pictish discourse and representations. I'm not being fair, of course, as its author, Melissa McEwan, doesn't use the term "Pict" any time during her essay. Which is interesting, insofar as...
Some years ago I finally got around to reading Goodrick-Clarke's The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology. Reading Goodrick-Clarke's description of various...
When elements of the Republican noise machine decided to call Sandra Fluke a slutty naughty sex fiend for suggesting--in public, no less--that all health-insurance plans ought to cover hormonal...
This is our cat in the bath. He doesn't really do anything funny. He just stands in the bathtub. Then he leaves.  That was then (or, to be more precise but still vague, a few months ago). He now...
Massively cool.And here's the earlier Lego Difference Engine:Anyway, the juxtaposition of these two computers intersects (oddly enough) with one of the themes in the Steampunk debates I alluded to earlier. Steampunk extrapolates from the real (and imaginary) technology of the Victorian era. Cosma Shalizi identifies that period (i.e., the Industrial Revolution) as the true "singularity," prompting Patrick Nielson Hayden to remark:I hope Shalizi will forgive my quoting his entire post, but it seems to me to have resonance with certain recent arguments over steampunk. It might even hint at why...
The weather favors us today, so much so that the dog refuses to come inside. It is 81 degrees and dry.I have a beautiful new bike, which I have ridden only a few times. The wife and kid are out of town. And yet my flu-like illness lingers. Not enough that I feel actively sick, but with sufficient tenacity that I cannot engage in strenuous activity. In other words: teh suck.
A deer has been wandering around the neighborhood over the past week, frequently sojourning in my fenced-in back yard. Sometimes the deer has a baby with it. After a while, they will hop the fence into the neighbor's yard. Because its one of those Sundays, a few photos, of a deer in my back yard below the fold.You can see the baby in the 2nd picture.
And if you just can't get enough, you'll of course want to watch Part II and Part III!
Actually, this picture accompanies news of a leaked memo outlining plans to divert spending for high-tech weaponry, including the F-35, to Iraq and Afghanistan.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice witnesses the signing of the Joint Strike Fighter Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Australia in the Treaty Room of the U.S. State Department in Washington, December 12, 2006. The White House plans to shift $3.2 billion in defense spending - partly from new weapons like the Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - to support troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, a trade publication...
Does anyone know of a systematic comparison of the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials? The US and UK ones don't seem very different--as much as it pains me, the UK PC stacks up surprisingly well against John Hodgman.The German and French variants look to be just dubbed version of the US editions. I can't parse the Japanese ones, but they seem to be about as localized (or not) as the UK versions. At the very least, the ads might provide a snapshot of similarities and differences in "loser suit" and "laid-back dude" archetypes across multiple countries. I wonder, however, how well the ads...
The Super Bowl score is the AP's lead story right now; needless to say, I dropped down through the wire reports. I discovered that India not only leads the US in cheap call centers, but that the country also enjoys a capital/labor comparative advantage in surrogate motherhood. Surrogate motherhood is among the latest in a long list of roles being outsourced to India, where rent-a-womb services are far cheaper than in the West."In the U.S. a childless couple would have to spend anything up to $50,000," Gautam Allahbadia, a fertility specialist who helped a Singaporean couple obtain a child...
I haven't been posting much lately. I blame many developments for my paucity of quality commentary here. I've been grinding away at my book manuscript, maintaining blogs for my classes, dealing with some final revisions to various articles and chapters, getting a series of research assistants up and running on what will probably be my next major project, and so forth. For the last week, however, I've had a new excuse: the premature seizure of my desk by Georgetown facilities and management prior to the arrival of my new work surface. Since my home office is now by daughter's playroom (or, as...