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I took this photo from the Wolfe Island ferry on Friday. It amazed me how many wind turbines were in view (32, I think). I kept having images of James Blish’s “spindizzies“.
August 7, 2011
Wind turbines totally dominate the skyline over Wolfe Island
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Mitchell: Obama bears only 15% of the blame for the downgrade
In a blog post guaranteed to tick off members of both parties, Daniel Mitchell tries a first approximation of where the blame should be assigned:
Well, it turns out that Social Security is a relatively minor part of the problem, so even though President Roosevelt’s policies exacerbated and extended the Great Depression, the program he created is only responsible for a small share of the fiscal crisis. To give the illusion of scientific exactitude, let’s assign FDR 13.2 percent of the blame.
The health care numbers are much harder to disentangle because it’s not apparent how much of the increase is due to Medicare, Medicaid, Bush’s prescription drug entitlement, and Obamacare. A healthcare policy wonk may know these numbers, but the CBO long-run forecast didn’t provide much detail.
So with a big caveat that these are just wild estimations, I feel reasonably comfortable in saying that both Bush and Obama made matters worse with their reckless entitlement expansions, but that they merely deepened a fiscal hole that was created when President Johnson imposed Medicare and Medicaid.
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“When I used to do this I broke my hand 14 times, and I’m a banjo player”
Poland’s answer to the Society for Creative Anachronism, Knights’ Brotherhoods stage their own form of medieval recreation:
Compering and judging the hand-to-hand combat is Krzysztof Ptasinski, the son of a Polish diplomat who learnt English from an American teacher in Addis Ababa and insists I call him “Redneck Chris”.
His hooded robe and summer gear make him look like a monk in flip-flops.
“Whoa dude! Ouch! In your face!” he hollers as two knights wearing full body-plate armour weighing 35kg (77lb) lay into each other with double-handed swords.
To progress, a knight has to reach five points, each earned by laying a clean blow on an opponent above the knee.
The swords are blunt, of course, but that does not mean it is completely harmless.
“When I used to do this I broke my hand 14 times, and I’m a banjo player,” he says.
“I’ve got two screws in this finger. I had a cracked skull.
“When we were fighting the Belarusian guys, I had my kidney displaced.”
I ask him what the appeal is.
“Whenever you get hit in the helmet you almost lose consciousness because it’s so loud. It’s a thrill,” he says.
I used to work with a guy from St. Petersburg who told me all about the replica medieval armour and weapons he had to leave behind when he came to Canada. It sounds like this is a similar group.
From this description, the group doesn’t have quite the same concerns about participant safety that the SCA and other North American re-creationist/re-enactor groups have generally adopted.
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The Guild, appearing in a Munchkin game near you
The Daily Illuminator had an interesting pre-announcement today:
As the delightful Felicia Day mentioned in her panel at San Diego Comic-Con, The Guild will have its very own Munchkin expansion next spring. We’re keeping the details under wraps for the moment, but you may want to watch The Guild‘s fifth season — airing now in a variety of places. Just sayin’.
(Also watch Felicia in Eureka on SyFy — not just for her rocket scientist character Dr. Holly Martin, but because Eureka is one of the geekiest shows on TV right now.)
You can see the entire panel on YouTube.* The Munchkin announcement is around the 6:00 mark . . . and if you were in that audience, thank you for the huge response!
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Trawling a virtual economy to support a non-viable “real” economy
Give North Korea some credit for finding a viable source of revenue:
What’s a dictator to do when his third-world economy is wheezing along on its last legs? Hack some video games, of course! According to a report in the New York Times, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il unleashed an army of young computer crackers on popular South Korean online gaming portals to find ways to make quick cash.
South Korean authorities claim that a squad of approximately 30 hackers operated from a base in China and were given the mission of breaching online gaming servers (including those of the immensely popular Lineage) to set up bot factories and automated farming collectives. The digital booty was then sold to gamers for a reported $6 million over two years.
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Addressing traffic congestion (in any city)
Everyone knows that gridlock leads to wasted time and increased stress, but the effects of degraded mobility are worse than most people realize. Traffic congestion deprives job-seekers of opportunities, robs businesses of customers, and hastens the exodus of residents from the central city to the suburbs.
And although mounting gridlock may seem like the unavoidable result of increased population and strained budgets, the experience of nations from France to Australia proves otherwise. Reason Foundation draws on what’s worked worldwide and recommends a three-part plan:
1. Expand roads with underground tunnels and elevated structures.
2. Use pricing to keep traffic flowing.
3. Pay for new projects with private-sector financing instead of taxes.That plan can help Chicago or any other city bust congestion and boost economic growth.
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