Maybe This Time......

Not much of a joiner, never have been. But The Long Now Foundation may be an exception. I've been tired of the relentless presentism of modern culture for a long time and, at 65, I'm fed up. So, yes, I can see myself joining an organization the most tangible project of which has been the design and construction of a 10,000 year clock. Such things as always writing "0" in front of the year (so that we're now in 02009) seem more pretentious, but I'm sure they'd just say I'm not yet there in my ten thousand year thinking yet.......

A New Wave?

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has moved its web page to a blog. I don't know if they're the first, but it could be a trend. ......and how is there not a 1-1 comparison between most op-ed pages and their associated hideous letters to the editor, and an online blog with its trailing comments? OK, the former will probably have fewer typos.

I'm serious- although only in the very narrow sense that blogging is the first break in the aristocracy of opinion since the 15th century. Until blogs, the ability to spread opinion, freedom of the press or not, stems from owning a press in the first place*. Whatever the current shortcomings of blogs, they are the thin end of the wedge.

Of course, even with blogs, the same principle might apply. I, for one, welcome Blogger as my new press overlord.....

{*"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." - A. J. Liebling}

Revolutionary Energy From Gasoline?

This is too, too interesting not to post. A gasoline engine so tiny it can fit in a watch and run for two years on a squirt of lighter fuel, and which puts out 700 (that's seven HUNDRED) times the energy of a typical battery used to power the myriad electronic devices with which we encumber ourselves. Furthermore, this could be running small batteries out of the market in less than six years.

On Infrastructure

If the I-35 bridge collapse in MN brings anything good, it may be to draw some serious political attention (although the last three words seem an oxymoron in these benighted times) to our crumbling lifelines. A reporter was told, when he got indignant that the I-35 bridge was classified "deficient," that 160,000 other bridges in the U.S. were similarly tagged. That shut him up.

Unfortunately, it didn't shut them all up. Actual words seen on-screen on a cable news channel this morning:

The bridge fell
from the sky
on a train
in the river
where's your brain? (Italics mine)

I suppose they could have reincarnated Dr. Seuss to do the on-screen text....

Maybe Not !

Here and I was letting myself think that the next wave of technology is always the wave of the future. With VOIP (phone calls on the Internet), maybe not.