Pollywogs!

…what an interesting concept.  I like the original Greek meaning a bit better, it resonates with the sound of the word better, I believe.   I found it after reading the entry ‘book curse‘, which I found on reddit.  My how easily I am distracted…

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I didn’t realize that an iPhone with contract costs (at a minimum) $1,320 for the first year…that is madness!  Makes me really glad I’ve grandfathered my Immix contract for as long as I have, the ‘feature set’ for the price is really sweet…

Hopefully I won’t drop or break this expensive little thing, and can sell it for what I bought it for on eBay if the Android phones reach their potential.

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The netbook market is really expanding, this one looks like a lot of quality equipment for $400.  The Acer Aspire One looks pretty interesting as well.  I don’t know what it is about small electronic devices, but I’m hopelessly hooked…

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This is an excellent idea for subsidising the cost of a solar electric system for your house.  If electric companies were smart, they’d be doing this themselves: allowing customers (at no up front cost of their own) to choose to have renewable installed.  The system would be owned by the power company (say PPL or Southern Company) but the energy would be (mostly) used by the customer’s household.  The bill of course stays the same, just the source of the energy would change.  The customer gets the satisfaction of knowing that their TV and lights aren’t radically changing the environment, and the electric company gets to keep their customer and increases their generation capacity without building additional, massive plants.  As with all things that I think “if it is that simple and necessary, it should simply be DONE”: when I’m dictator, things are going to be different…

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Taxes.  We pay them, and what do we get back?  Bombs, guns and spilled blood. The average individual pays at about a 40% rate, pretty similar to what you see in European countries, and yet we have none of the benifits that your average European country has…because we’re blowing so much money on ‘defense spending’.  How the hell can we justify this war machine that is draining our treasuries like a damn cancer.  But even suggest trimming the military budget and suddenly your a fucking terrorist, soft on defense, aren’t a patriot, or some other mindless drivel.  Oh, and let’s cut taxes on the wealthy while we’re at it.  Fucking baby jesus, what is wrong with this country?  Moronic imbiciles, so easily controlled.  Just turn the TV on and read the corporate message…

…when I’m dictator, things are going to be different…

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Energy.  We need it.  We’re doing it wrong.  Denmark is doing it right.

“Denmark is the model that the United States should be following,” said Steve Pullins, executive director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Modern Grid Initiative.

How’d they do it? Distributed energy.

Unlike traditional “centralized” systems, distributed energy relies on small power-generating technologies like solar panels or ultra-efficient natural-gas turbines built near the point of energy consumption to supplement or displace grid-distributed electricity.

Consumers can not only draw power from the grid, but can feed power into it as well. For instance, homes equipped with solar-power panels could feed unused electricity back into the grid, adding to the total available supply.

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Peru has an energy problem too, as in a lot of rural villages don’t have it!  They also went with the obvious answer, decentralized local generation.  This story made me smile, the entire article restored a little faith in humanity.  The project is just getting started, but it…well, it is just freaking awesome!

To say that this experimental project has been a success so far would be an understatement. Last year 21 homes in Alumbre were equipped with 100-watt wind turbines that power their homes, and the village’s school was powered with a 500-watt turbine. The wind turbines store energy into what are known as “deep cycle” batteries, and the batteries when fully charged can potentially provide energy to homes for up to three days. The batteries need to be replaced every 3-4 years, and for this reason each family with a turbine must contribute to a battery replacement fund on a monthly basis. They pay about 10 nuevo soles each (~ $3 American), a sum that’s less than what most families were previously spending each month on candles and kerosene for lamps.

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I want to try Weight Watchers now:

As I watched her poke around on the screen, managing inventory, calculating points, staying within her range, it hit me:

Weight Watchers is an RPG.

Think about it. As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers’ points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you’ve used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up — by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren’t apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I’ll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!

Even the Weight Watchers web tool is amazingly gamelike. It has the poke-around-and-see-what-happens elegance you see in really good RPG game screens. Accidentally snack on a candy bar and ruin your meal plan for the day? No worries: Just go into the database and see what spells — whoops, I mean foods — you can still use with your remaining points.

The alternative pretty much sucks:

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Found that article on Provigil that I had misplaced.  I may have found and posted it before, but I can’t remember.  Have I ever mentioned I have a terrible memory?  There was this smart drug I had bookmarked a really cool article about, but I can’t find it now.  Or maybe I had posted it before.  What was it called, pro-something?

A contrasting viewpoint.  I already have the creativity of a ’special needs’ toddler, so I don’t really see this as a downside…

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Hulu: TV without the TV.  Between this and Comedy Central having TDS and the Colbert Report online, I wouldn’t be sad one bit to get rid of my fucking $70 a month pile-of-crap cable TV bill…

No, seriously, you should watch Arrested Development.  This is the pilot, it is hilarious but doesn’t have the production values of the rest of the series.  Hopefully it gets you hooked:

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And while I’m sharing things I find awesome, check out Liam Finn:

This is a bit shorter than the version they played in the live show, but it gives you a small taste. These guys were just fucking awesome…