mechfish

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• Commented on America makes nothing except weapons -- UPDATED
  Double oops -- as Xeno points out, I meant to say "our durable goods economy". At this rate we'll have an accurate statement of the problem no later than comment #125......
• Commented on America makes nothing except weapons -- UPDATED
  Oops, wait, I typed that too hastily and now I can't edit it. Sigh. Replace my last sentence with "3 percent of our economy grew 125% over the last decade, while the other 97 percent shrank 20%."...
• Commented on America makes nothing except weapons -- UPDATED
  Ah, thanks to the other commenters for making my point -- using real numbers instead of my made-up example, too. The story seems to be: 3 percent of our economy grew 15%, while the other 97 percent of our economy...
• Commented on America makes nothing except weapons -- UPDATED
  So, I'm not saying that I necessarily disagree with the conclusion. We spend way too much money on weapons. But this particular graph may be misleadingly scary: It's plotting percentage changes in both categories from their 2000 levels. The graph...
• Commented on Salty microbe may be world's oldest
  The American Scientist link is awesome, by the way. Lots of gloriously detailed skeptical arguments and a series of slow, patient attempts to rebut them. Rarely if ever does the popular literature on science capture the flavor of this process....
• Commented on Why No Famous Scientists or Engineers?
  #32: "We seemed to have stopped discovering stuff" You need to buy a book on molecular biology. Better yet, try to borrow one, because when you buy one it just becomes obsolete in a year or two. Also, people seem...
• Commented on Why No Famous Scientists or Engineers?
  Noam Chomsky is not a scientist. What, linguistics isn't a science now? Someone tell the poor grad students who are taking all that data....
• Commented on Rotting WWII junk in the jungles of Peleliu
  Thanks for getting in the link to Eugene Sledge as soon as possible. A terrifyingly honest book about an awful, awful event....
• Commented on Sushi Cake
  I can't tell, but I believe I may have just been subjected to the restrained, Japanese version of the legendary Hungarian Phrasebook sketch. I really loved the bit about soaking your food in the soy sauce until it was "noticably...
• Commented on Rush plays Rock Band
  AaronLyon at #3: Your poor review of Rush's Colbert appearance actually prompted me to dig out the TiVO and watch it -- I was curious to see if it was some kind of performance art. Thanks for prompting me to...
• Commented on Rush plays Rock Band
  I've always been fond of Rock Band -- although I barely play it myself, I think it's a lot of fun, and I look forward to a world where every person over age five has a sense of rhythm. That...
• Commented on 25 spots open for Cory's talk tonight in Cambridge
  Oh, Cambridge UK. I read this in Boston at 10pm and experienced two seconds of extreme frustration, which lasted until I saw that "UK"....
• Commented on Ducklings in a Bathtub
  I love the fact that scale-model ducks issue high-pitched scale model quacks....
• Commented on Raymond Scott tribute concert footage
  Their "Boy Scout in Switzerland" really swings. This must have been an awesomely weird concert -- I love the complete contrast between the Quintette stuff (performed, as per tradition, on a lot more than five instruments :), and the electronic...
• Commented on Bananas are atheist nightmares!
  But doesn't Kottke understand? God created humans for the express purpose of cultivating bananas until they evolved to fit the human hand! Thus, the banana is the misanthrope's nightmare, because it is so manifestly the product of human-mediated selection pressure...
• Commented on Fasting may prevent jetlag
  This kind of science article makes me tired. From the next-to-last paragraph: "While skipping meals ahead of a long flight or night shift has not been proven to work in humans, it may be worth a try." Do you think...
• Commented on Funny Will Elder photo
  This is like the time I watched the video of Nick Park and noticed that he has many of the same facial tics and gestures as Wallace and Gromit. Will Elder obviously used a mirror while learning to draw. ;)...
• Commented on Mobile phones alter brain behavior?
  JeffBell at #10 is right: This study seems to have a reasonably sensible design. There's a phone strapped to everybody's head, and that phone is sometimes on and sometimes off. The computer running the experiment knows when it is on...
• Commented on Mars on Earth
  "Khan left early for a job interview with the European Space Agency." See if you can spot the subtle flaw in this simulation of the "psychological issues" of living in a small can, nine weightless months away from home. :)...
• Commented on Truth about teleportation
  "Quantum teleportation" is an embarrassingly awful technical term. It actively misleads and confuses every single person who hears it. As if quantum mechanics weren't confusing enough already!...
• Commented on Flying witches observed in English forest.
  Thank you so much for the link to "Gisele Kerozene". I saw it in some animation festival in the late eighties and have remembered it ever since, but had no idea what it was called or who made it. Youtube...
• Commented on Spore release date announced: Sep 7, 2008.
  Um, by "March 3", do you really mean "September 7"? Because that's what all the links seem to say. :)...
• Commented on Little people concealed in hockey bags fleece Swedish bus passengers
  This was a great Mission Impossible episode back in the 1960s. Except that the tiny guy in the suitcase was a master safecracker, and the bus was a vault at some expensive Swiss hotel for spies, or something....
• Commented on Gibson Robot Guitar
  As a banjo player I find this extremely interesting. Of course, trying to get a banjo into perfect tune may cause the robot to start smoking and blow up, like on Star Trek....
• Commented on Fox helps itself to photo of blogger's dog
  Hawth at #4: Sure, it's true that this is probably a stupid mistake made by a lowly intern at Fox. Sure, it's true that in a just world we would be inclined to give that intern a break and forgive...
• Commented on UK party leader hires Brian Eno as youth adviser
  In all seriousness: Eno is a decent choice because the challenge of the job is to gain the respect and the attention of the *politicians*. Compared to making an MP understand Bittorrent, talking to kids is (pardon the expression) child's...
• Commented on Police ordered to pull over people doing nothing wrong
  John at #2: "What if we're black" is a very good question indeed. This "free gifts" idea is a tailor-made excuse for "randomly" pulling people over for no reason. "I don't pull people over for driving while black! I just...