thinkness - February 2004 Archives

February 2004

Sympathy through war - Oy, it's been a long time. Gurp. A couple weeks ago I saw The Fog of War, Errol Morris' amazing documentary about Robert McNamara. One thing in particular struck me. Over the past few weeks and months I have been... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 0 Trackbacks | 250 Comments

The source of 'chick power' - In the previous post, I said that Slate's piece on The Apprentice got me started on this kick of thinking about women drawing power from their sexual attractiveness. I had forgotten that last week I saw "Live Nude Girls Unite!",... Posted in | 4 Trackbacks | 186 Comments

Chick power? - Over the past few days I have been thinking a lot about modern women, feminism and where they're going. It first popped up in my mind when I read Slate's take on The Apprentice, the reality show with Donald Trump... Posted in | 0 Trackbacks | 405 Comments

In the works - Okay, they're making the bluetooth music transmitter. Give it to me for very little money.... Posted in | 21 Trackbacks | 174 Comments
My umpteenth get-rich-quick scheme - Here it is: you make a plug-in attachment for a portable music player that sends out the audio signal to 6 nearby headsets. That's it. I guess I would use bluetooth for the transmission. What this does is allows a... Posted in | 0 Trackbacks | 364 Comments

Life and death, GMO-style - Another interesting trend in genetic engineering is using the technology for targeted assassination, wiping out cells or perhaps even whole species. (And I promise this will be more interesting than yesterday's overly-detailed post.) Here is some of the bigger stuff... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 10 Trackbacks | 383 Comments

GMOs spreading - Seems to me one of the biggest issues concerning genetically engineered crops is their containability. Transgenes can certainly escape from their intended recipients. [You can use any one of a number of cliches: tough to keep a lid on, Pandora's... Posted in evolution by and for the people | 0 Trackbacks | 201 Comments

The coalescing Big knock on Bush - I'm seeing a very interesting phenomenon pop up after Bush's Meet the Press appearance. While news outlets mostly carried it pretty drily, just summarizing what he said [transcript for ya], a consensus is building among some pretty shrewd analysts. It's... Posted in political currents | 4 Trackbacks | 197 Comments
Plato, Aristotle; abstract, concrete; digital, analog; monkey, robot - thinkness thinks all the time about differences between abstract and concrete existence. (It first came up overtly in a post about the difference between the 'technical' information contained in a recipe and the 'practical' information stored in a cook's brain.)... Posted in monkey vs robot | 11 Trackbacks | 137 Comments

Color -- animatronic Lincoln - That's the whole quote right there. It's in reference to John Kerry [who happily points out that his initials are JFK], from Mickey Kaus via Michael Kinsley's latest Slate column. I love animatronics -- there's something so spellbinding about those... Posted in language , monkey vs robot | 8 Trackbacks | 146 Comments

Too good to go - Technology Review looks at '10 Technologies That Refuse to Die.' I like when people don't buy into unnecessary obsolescence. Of course, it would be nicer if people used less paper [the classical example mentioned in the article].... Posted in | 1 Trackbacks | 101 Comments
Cutter Kennedy - Last year a whole fracas emerged surrounding ads using John Kennedy's likeness to sell Bush's income-tax cut. Kennedy, Bush said, was a tax cutter, and his tax cuts helped the economy. Ted Kennedy, John's younger brother, got pissed. ['Don't you... Posted in color , language | 2 Trackbacks | 177 Comments