Month: December 2008

The Christmas Roast

christmas-roast

The Christmas Roast

My wife asked for the the “Biggest roast you have” at the butcher’s, so now we have a 22 pound rib roast that doesn’t fit in the pan.  I seasoned it and we will be putting in in the oven in an hour or two. To give you an idea of scale, that’s a three layer chocalate raspberry cake in the background.

Year End Changes

Inanis comes pre-packaged with seven different backdrop/color templates – you can select the one you like by pressing the blue button at the bottom left. There are also comment and post navigation options along with a search window.

deer_tree

Year-End Changes

I’ve changed the blog theme to one more modern, however if you like the old Noblesse theme better then you can still select it, or its parent theme, Ocadia, from the “Theme Switcher” widget in the sidebar. The new theme is a bit more bandwidth heavy. I’ve selected Inanis Glass as the new theme because it uses newer features like transparency, and because it’s a bit more “Ajaxified”.  I do not plan on spending any time caring and feeding for the old themes, so new features will only appear in the main Inanis theme.

Inanis comes pre-packaged with seven different backdrop/color templates – you can select the one you like by pressing the blue button at the bottom left. If you are on low bandwidth or otherwise slow connection then you should select “light” or go back to Noblesse in the sidebar widget.  There are also comment and post navigation options along with a search window. If you scroll over the pages in the bottom bar, you will also get a popup with some of the child pages of each category. Over time I plan to adapt some of my photos to the theme and learn a bit of CSS in the process.

My traffic’s lower than usual because I’m not doing much that’s topical and believe it or not I like that. I do not want a blog that I have to watch over constantly, it can get wearing especially during holidays. I will go back to normal blogging after the holidays but expect more on what the future might look like and less on the latest political row. That doesn’t mean I will stop blogging about political matters however since  that’s something too hard to resist when things go remarkably askew.  

I wish everyone a Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, and Prosperous New Year.

UK Muslim Extremist Exposed on Facebook

Asghar Bukhari, a regular speaker for Muslim Public Affairs Committee of the UK appears frequently on television as a “moderate” muslim in interviews. This week he got caught out in a rant on facebook

UK Muslim Extremist Exposed on Facebook

Asghar Bukhari, a regular speaker for Muslim Public Affairs Committee of the UK appears frequently on television as a “moderate” muslim in interviews. This week he got caught out in a rant on facebook, and Damian Thompson of the Telegraph has confirmed with Bukhari himself that he stands by the statement :

“Muslims who fight against the occupation of their lands are ‘Mujahadeen’ and are blessed by Allah. And any Muslim who fights and dies against Israel and dies is a martyr and will be granted paradise … There is no greater oppressor on this earth than the Zionists, who murder little children for sport.”

This is the pitfall with many of the political action groups posing as Moderates: first that many are not moderate at all – witness CAIR in America, and second that the media pimps their swill. Where can real moderate muslims go to be heard when media only courts the worst? You have to wonder if it’s a ratings thing – real moderates are too boring or something?

Or perhaps it’s because sometimes when moderates step forward they are stigmatized and threatened, at times by the very groups that the Beeb and others interview as “moderates”. PDF Link, Center for Social Cohesion.

Meanwhile Pastor Rick Warren is cozying up to MPAC-US, and the official MPAC site continues with the non-denial and excuses for encouraging Terror Groups, calling it Islamophobia to disagree:

**warning: Link to Islamist site.

What’s Next?

What changes will be wrought in the verge between evolutionary biology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology? I haven’t a clue but I do know that the outcomes can not be predicted. A few general directions can be forseen, but how humans will creatively use the discoveries coming, how they will invent unforseen uses for them, how that will change society, and what that will in turn lead to cannot be predicted.

cropped-IMG_3815_edited-1.jpg

What’s Next

Predicting the future is notoriously hard for many reasons, but one of those is inability to forsee what will happen in the verges where sciences meet, the verges where engineering applies science, and finally in that verge where humans both adopt and adapt to new technologies.

What changes will be wrought in the verge between evolutionary biology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology? I haven’t a clue but I do know that the outcomes can not be predicted. A few general directions can be foreseen, but how humans will creatively use the discoveries coming, how they will invent unforeseen uses for them, how that will change society, and what that will in turn lead to cannot be predicted.

Bio-tech/Nanotech/Medical sciences is one of the more exciting and obvious verges nowadays, but others are cropping up fast. What about humans, nanotechnology, and computer science? What about digital imaging, neuropsychology, advertising, and art? What about biotech, materials science, and fashion? What about information technology, network science, materials sciences, and home construction? What about evolutionary biology, linguistics, and anthropology?

Applying the human element is one of the main areas where predictability breaks down. If humans could change their eye color not with contacts, not with painful ocular injections, but instead by swallowing a pill, would some do that? What if they could grow hair the translucency of spun glass and the beautiful blue color of the Caribbean sea?

If the above were true, what would the effects be on the beauty industry? Would hair dye go away? Would beauticians be required to have a pharmacology degree? Not questions I can readily answer, but it’s when you look at the verges and extrapolate that things get exciting and unpredictable.

You could almost make the argument that we’ve passed the event horizon of Vernor Vinge’s Singularity and just do not realize it yet.

Automakers Get 17.4 Billion of Our Money

I’m a confirmed, committed capitalist but the bailout of Detroit is not capitalism at all — it’s corporate socialism, or you could call it Union Welfare as well. This is sickening beyond belief so I will reprint the new Chrysler/GM/Ford ad,

I’m a confirmed, committed capitalist but the 17.4 billion dollar bailout of Detroit is not capitalism at all — it’s corporate socialism, or you could call it Union Welfare as well. This is sickening beyond belief so I will reprint the new Chrysler/GM/Ford ad, h/t Virginia Postrel:

bigthree

Update: the Term sheet for GM bailout. (.PDF link)

Update: Ford is not getting bailed out, hat’s off to them, and perhaps my next car purchase will be a Ford, although that’s sacrilege in this family.

Chinese Sailors Used Molotovs to Fight Off Pirates

The Brave Chinese sailors who fought off pirates now tell the story, with words and pictures. They sealed off the crew section and fought the pirates with Molotovs from the ships decks as they boarded.

The Brave Chinese sailors who fought off pirates now tell the story, with words and pictures. They sealed off the crew section and fought the pirates with Molotovs from the ships decks as they boarded. Full story and more pictures here at Mail Online.

SOMALIA-PIRACY/CHINA.

Bent down low to avoid being shot, this Chinese sailor lights a Molotov cocktail before throwing it overboard at Somali pirates.

Lined up before him are dozens of others he and his shipmates prepared in order to fight off the attackers as they boarded their ship in the Gulf of Aden.
The Zhenhua 4 cargo ship had earlier sent out a distress call as it realised it was being chased by pirates in speedboats armed with heavy machine guns and rocket launchers