bummer. i'll have to put larry niven with michael crichton and orson scott card into the "authours i used to like but apparently they are assholes" category.

fwiw, ursula k. le guin proposed the death penalty for children that do poorly in school, as well as for people that fail to perform their civic duty in a responsible matter. and civic duty could mean anything on Hain... at any moment any citizen could be taped to run a school board, business, or even a government. yet somehow i still love ursula!

WOW talk about synchronicity. this just appeared on google news:

Some major brands of shampoo, shower gel and dish soap marketed as "natural" or "organic" contain small amounts of a potentially dangerous chemical, according to a report released yesterday by the Organic Consumers Association.

turns out they contain 1,4-dioxane in quantities up to 300% what california allows. and surprise! it looks like the list is mostly populated by megacorps pushing "natural" products. not all megacorps did bad; clorox products were clean.

but my favorite quote of all was from the hain flak:

Lisa Lehndorff, a spokeswoman for Hain Celestial, which owns Jason and Alba, said that the Jason tagline of "pure, natural, and organic" refers only to ingredients and that Alba makes no organic claims. The "natural" claim means "we strive to use ingredients originating from natural sources," she said.

wow! as opposed to what, those supernatural sources? "contains no ectoplasm"?

i've been dreaming of drone designs and talking to the RC crowd for a couple of years now. i have had a serious need for drone surveillance in several instances.

i do media work for protests. time and again, there is a situation where the police cordon off an area, removed the general public and media, and then proceed to beat the crap out of the protestors.

examples include the WTO protests where numerous assaults were captured on video, but the vast majority escaped detection.

more recently i was in oaxaca, mexico, just after the protests there. during my visit a lawyer working for protestor's civil rights was assassinated in his car.

a low cost aerial spy would allow the media to keep a virtual presence on the event site and capture any abuses.

at a sub-$100 price tag this becomes useful to work in the developing world. the last pricetag i had on a small RC blimp was over $1000.

if you combine the Audeo with a Bone Phone, do you get crazy skeletal feedback? and what would that sound like?

yeah, the cops example bugged me too. when the cops stops you and asks for your name, you film him and the entire transaction is loaded onto the internet. if the cop threatens to bust you when you've done nothing wrong (as recently happened to one kid) then you are indeed made more secure.

i agree that making individual's lives more transparent *to the government* is not making us more secure. but making our lives more transparent to each other may in fact be making us more secure.

when any piece of clothing can contain a audio or video recording device, and full-time wireless internet becomes commonplace, it's going to be mighty hard to abuse, rape, or rob someone and get away with it.

this is interesting... but is it playable now? the article seemed to say yes, but i can't find a link on the author's site.

marshall,

i got a KLR650 (non-diesel model, damn it) for the girlfriend a few years back, and threw on a pair of $40 lowering links for the rear and dropped the front forks by an inch or two, and put on a corbin seat that also knocked a couple inches of foam off the height. the result was a very surprised and pleased short girlfriend. this is an amazingly well behaved motorcycle for the size it looks, and easy to handle for almost any rider.

the 0-60 on this bike was pretty good as well. i seem to recall it won some desert speed trials!

AND it's rated to run off diesel, b-99 biodiesel, aviation fuel, kerosene, and probably peanut oil. :)

" zeppelins are cool and relatively fuel efficient, but they are inherently fragile, slow, and notoriously difficult and dangerous to manage on the ground. some even cracked up in the air in turbulent wind. for special purposes they might be ok, but for transporting people they are not a very good idea..."

sure, using 1940s technology, zepps were slow, fragile, and difficult. i mean the hindenburg was made of what, canvas and flammable doping?

imagine what modern composites would do for zepps now.

i want my zeppelin! you can have your stupid flying car. i'm gonna be kickin' it in the onboard lounge, smoking a hooka, and taking a nap while the zepp makes it's way from SF to LA.

"netizen," ha!

i'm a "wellpern," you young whippersnappers.

now get off my lawn! ::shakes fist::

with the amount of carbon released by flying, combined with the dehumanizing treatment received at airports, why fly?

in ten years i've flown once. i now take my vacations by train, bus, car, or ferry. much more pleasant and i don't get those nasty airplane head-colds.

i dunno man, the internets didn't make that lapdance happen. that was fully orangina's doing.

i find this very disturbing. i don't know why, but it's totally put me off the beverage.