08.06.06
Pretty cool briefcase
Tom Bihn, who used to have a shop in Santa Cruz when I lived there, now has a much larger company in Seattle. His Empire Builder Laptop Briefcase is exceptionally well-designed and capacious. I bought one for a carry-on for travel (I check my suitcase these days), and I really like it. (I got the Black/Crimson/Steel.)
He makes quality stuff, and I’m pleased to say that later this fall we’re likely to see a Go Travel Bag from his shop. He’s already gone to a meeting of the Seattle Go Club to check out user requirements, weight and size of equipment, etc.
UPDATE: And I’m not the only one who likes Tom Bihn’s bags. At the link you’ll see that Bihn’s Brain Bag was named one of the Cool Tools.
UPDATE 2: An excellent review of the Empire Builder with many photos.
For want of a nail…
Via AmericaBlog, this interesting story:
The National Security Agency is running out of juice.
The demand for electricity to operate its expanding intelligence systems has left the high-tech eavesdropping agency on the verge of exceeding its power supply, the lifeblood of its sprawling 350-acre Fort Meade headquarters, according to current and former intelligence officials.
Agency officials anticipated the problem nearly a decade ago as they looked ahead at the technology needs of the agency, sources said, but it was never made a priority, and now the agency’s ability to keep its operations going is threatened. The NSA is already unable to install some costly and sophisticated new equipment, including two new supercomputers, for fear of blowing out the electrical infrastructure, they said. Read the rest of this entry »
Baltimore Coffee & Tea Co.
I regularly order my whole-bean coffee from the Baltimore Coffee & Tea Co.—and when I was drinking tea, I also got tea from there. Great prices, fine coffees, quick delivery. It also happens to be located at the other end of the block where The Older Grandson’s karate dojo is, so when I visit I can wander down there while he’s taking a lesson.
If you like coffee, give it a go. And, so this is a complete reference, here is my French press, which I like a lot. It says it’s 12 cups, but the sharp-eyed reader will note that these are 4 oz cups—i.e., 6 cups (of 8 fl oz each), or 3-4 “mugs,” depending on the size of your mug.
My coffee grinder is the Solis Maestro Plus, which has conical burrs (that’s good). You can also get it in red, which I did.
Razor bumps and ingrown whiskers
There’s a great post on this topic at ShaveMyFace.com, from the member themba:
Let’s start by defining razor bumps and ingrown hairs and shaving trauma. The first two are both usually refered to as ingrown hairs, but they are not the same They both make up PFB (Pseudofolliculitis Barbae) Read the rest of this entry »
Military academies & the honor system
The US military academics—Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard—all have an Honor System that emphasizes the absolute need for truthfulness and honesty. And yet… when these young men and women graduate, they enter into professional careers, and in those careers something happens. We see over and over instances of the military or “the Pentagon” lying, covering up, whitewashing instead of investigating. It’s endemic.
So one would have to say that the Honor System somehow doesn’t work—or that it lacks some essential component that will give it life outside the academy. Because what we so often see when something bad happens in the military is not an Honor System, but a protection system.
And it doesn’t even have to be terribly bad. Many lies were told and much covering up was done of the death (by friendly fire, as it finally was revealed) of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.
And even now we are continuing to learn of the many atrocities—war crimes—committed by American troops in Vietnam, beyond the My Lai massacre. In today’s LA Times there’s a lengthy report of newly revealed atrocities and war crimes that somehow the Honor System in practice kept hidden. The report begins:
The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam’s central coast.
They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut, unfastened his bandoliers and lighted a cigarette.
Just then, the voice of a lieutenant crackled across the radio. He reported that he had rounded up 19 civilians, and wanted to know what to do with them. Henry later recalled the company commander’s response:
Kill anything that moves.
Henry stepped outside the hut and saw a small crowd of women and children. Then the shooting began. Read the rest of this entry »
Great time for a vacation
From today’s NY Times:
Over the past year, as American commanders pushed Iraqi forces to take over responsibility for this violent capital, Baghdad became a markedly more dangerous place.
Now the Americans are being forced to call in more of their own troops to bring the city under control.
The failure of the Iraqis to halt the slide into chaos in Baghdad undercuts the central premise of the American project here: that Iraqi forces can be trained and equipped to secure their own country, allowing the Americans to go home.
A review of previously unreleased statistics on American and Iraqi patrols suggests that as Americans handed over responsibilities to the Iraqis, violence in Baghdad increased.
So the basic premise on which we were going to draw down the number of American troops turns out to be wrong—and not just wrong, actively working against the drawdown: the more we turn things over to the Iraqis, the worse conditions get (it’s a civil war, folks), and the more we have to increase the number of troop.
This is critical, and it’s happening now. We need a new plan—or any plan at all. Where is the Commander-in-Chief? Why, he’s taking a vacation, clearing brush, getting away from the office. In view of the seriousness of the situation upcoming fall elections, though, he is taking only two weeks of vacation instead of his usual month: he needs to get out on the hustings to campaign.
As for the war: ignore it. Same treatment for the Israeli-Lebanon conflict, global warming, the deficit, the environment in general, health care, … Long list. But, by golly, that brush is getting cleared! In Bush’s mind, that is clearly the no. 1 priority at this time.
Bat baby talk
Young sac-winged bats jumble bits of adult-sounding calls into strings, say researchers who’ve recorded the babies’ vocalizations.
The pups make these jumbled noises without the usual contexts, and that’s babbling, contends Oliver Behr of the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg in Germany. The nonsense amounts to bat versions of the jabberings of human babies and young birds, he and his colleagues argue in an upcoming Naturwissenschaften. “It’s the first example of babbling in mammals other than primates,” says Behr. Read the rest of this entry »
