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We got issues: Drip...drip...drip...

by Austin Train 10/16/2010 - 11:56 pm

Yes we do. 

Perhaps the most fundamental is the safety and distribution of the water supply worldwide.  There's plenty of water - 60-some-odd percent of the world's surface is covered with the stuff, after all.  Problem is, not a lot of it is human-ready.  The oceans are far too saline to drink, and a lot of what remains is either of questionable purity or not as accessible as we'd like.

Climate change is part of this issue, as is population.  Come to think of it, they're related in their own right.  That, though, is for another discussion.
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Good Advice From The Twilight Zone:

by Austin Train 10/15/2010 - 10:29 am

Well, the creator of the show, anyway.

If you have ever taken a look at my personal blog, on the blog list is a site called Letters of Note.  Today's offering is a letter written by Rod Serling to the editor of Playboy Magazine on the publication of Alex Haley's interview with then-American Nazi Party leader Geroge Lincoln Rockwell.

Here is the text of Serling's letter: [Read more]

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Something a little lighter, for those who find the English language a strange and wonderful thing.

by Austin Train 10/11/2010 - 12:12 am

I can not take credit for writing this.  It was sent to me some time ago by a friend, who received it from a friend of his.  Where that guy got it I don't know.

It's the sort of thing journos send each other for amusement, I guess.

And perhaps a small levity break from...well,,,a lot of things.

 

FOUR ALL WHO REED AND RIGHT

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice; yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen? [Read more]

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We got issues (the shockwave riders are standing on Zanzibar)

by Austin Train 10/7/2010 - 10:37 pm

Yes we do...

In the late 1980's, when Robert Morris unleashed his "worm", the Internet was the province of the DoD and a few academic types.  No one had much thought about it, it was a curiosity.

Skip past the BBSes, the Compuserve era, and a progression when I thought my 14.4K external modem made my Amiga scream, and let's look at today.

We're closer now to the worrisome potential of a different John Brunner novel, Stand on Zanzibar, and certain aspects of its antisocial "hipcrime" behaviors.
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Connected?

by Austin Train 9/28/2010 - 12:38 pm

In the past, I have occasionally disagreed with Malcolm Gladwell. Many of his pronouncements are in fact quite facile, and there have been times where I looked at his analysis of something and silently wondered how his collection of facts could possibly lead to his conclusions.

I am quite impressed, however, with his current New Yorker piece. He begins, as many effective advocates do, with a narrative - that of the 1960 desegregation of a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, NC:

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