Archive for 2014
March 3, 2014
DRUDGETAPOSITION:
UPDATE: From the comments: “Hey Tim, Apple’s massive profits are provided by Chinese factories that are run on the dirtiest power on earth – soft Chinese coal. If you want to be green, move those factories back to the USA and use much cleaner US power.” That would hurt ROI. . . .
USA TODAY: “Perhaps the most surprising thing about Russia’s weekend invasion of Crimea is that the U.S. and its allies were caught so flat-footed, groping for a response that didn’t look weak and ineffectual.”
Um, at this point, is that really surprising?
FASTER, PLEASE: Membrane that can keep your heart pumping forever and possibly prevent heart attacks. “Scientists have created an external membrane using a 3-D printer than can keep a heart beating virtually forever. The thin membrane is elastic, designed to stretch over a heart like a glove, and is outfitted with tiny electrodes that monitor cardiac function – it was first demonstrated as a proof of concept on a rabbit heart.” Like I said, faster, please.
PERHAPS THEY COULD START BY ENDING THE CONSTANT RACIAL AND GENDER-BASED ATTACKS AND PUT-DOWNS: Democrats Try Wooing Ones Who Got Away: White Men.
HARVEY SILVERGLATE: Ole Miss Seeks to Put First Amendment in a Noose.
WHOLE FOODS’ BIGGEST WEAKNESS: “The problem with Whole Foods is their regular customers. They are, across the board, across the country, useless, ignorant, and miserable. They’re worse than miserable, they’re angry. They are quite literally the opposite of every Whole Foods employee I’ve ever encountered. Walk through any store any time of day—but especially 530pm on a weekday or Saturday afternoon during football season—and invariably you will encounter a sneering, disdainful horde of hipster Zombies and entitled 1%ers.”
AT AMAZON, it’s the St. Patrick’s Day Sale.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How Gun Rights Have Expanded Over The Last 20 Years: A Story of Hope.
PLANS? Inside Obama’s Plans to Squeeze Russia. Josh Rogin’s story light on actual plans for a squeeze, long on excuses for not having any plans.
NEW FRONTIERS IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Here’s video from this weekend’s Tennessee Law Review symposium.
FLYING HIGH WITH BETTER WI-FI:
Wifi in aircraft, hobbled in the past by slow speeds, could soon take off as new technology enables passengers to surf the web as if they were in a coffee shop, Internet executives say.
More airlines are rolling out new and improved services thanks to satellite technology, industry leaders said at the recent Singapore Airshow, with the public increasingly demanding wifi on planes.
US-based Honeywell Aerospace and Gogo, which supply inflight connectivity systems to airlines, are collaborating with satellite giant Inmarsat to implement the “first global high-speed broadband for the skies” dubbed the Global Xpress (GX) Aviation network.
Briand Greer, president of Honeywell Aerospace Asia Pacific, said inflight wifi could generate $2.8 billion for the company alone over the next 20 years.
He estimates that around seven to eight percent of airlines currently offer wireless connection, but says this number is expected to grow to 25 percent by 2018.
After years of being bogged down by weak demand due to poor signal quality, inflight wifi can now enable download speeds of up to 50 megabits per second, Greer said.
“How we describe it is it will be like you are sitting at Starbucks with your smartphone, your computer and your iPad,” Greer told reporters.
That’s good. The current product is so-so at best.
I THINK THERE’S A BIG FUTURE IN THIS, BUT NOT QUITE YET: Augmented Reality Gets To Work.
READER BOOK PLUG: From Mike Condon, Operation: Bravo Sierra (a short story). 99 cents on Kindle.
I DON’T CARE TO FIND OUT: Could You Ride a Motorcycle 1000 Miles in 24 Hours?
TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Obamacare cuts home healthcare for millions of seniors.
SLOW LEARNERS. SOME OF US NOTICED THIS A LONG TIME AGO: Washington Post editorial: “President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy.”
Ann Althouse notices that they’re still not facing up to facts.
THE DIPLOMAD: Climbing Out Of The Obama Foreign Policy Hole.
THIS PROBLEM DESERVES MORE ATTENTION: We’re running out of antibiotics.
If I’m the Poles, the lesson I’d take is that if Ukraine had kept its nukes, this wouldn’t be happening, and if I want to be safe, I should get hold of some nukes myself. If I were Lithuania, even more so.
Related: Ukraine’s outdated and underfunded military no match for Russia.
BOB ZUBRIN: The Eurasianist Threat: Putin’s ambitions extend far beyond Ukraine.
Remember when I said that a Jimmy Carter rerun was a best-case scenario? Yeah, well, that’s pretty much off the table now anyway.
IN THE MAIL: S. M. Stirling and David Drake, Hope Rearmed (The General).
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 298.