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10.20.02 Think you can do better than NASA? Try it, smarty pants. Wonderfully engaging in a nerdy sort of way: a tutorial on how to write the smallest possible program. The same people responsible for the Mathematical Lego Sculptures blogged a while back have now gone into impossible structures. Follow the links to see several other Escher prints rendered in Lego. Now this is the most encouraging news I've read in quite some time. And finally: Overdue, "a comic strip about a library." 10.19.02 Ah, heck. Let me just get these out of my system. One: Goodbye, All That. "The implication was evident: We deserved it. It would be a salutary lesson. It was the Pat Robertson wing of the Left in full flower: Sinful America deserved this Judgment from the sky. Crocodile tears could be shed for those people who died in the towers, but those buildings were so ugly, they were such eyesores, they were a symbol of globalist hubris -- it was as if the terrorists who flew the planes into the towers were really architectural critics, flying Herbert Muschamps, not mass murderers." Two: Civilization and Slaughter. "We've come too far and our ancestors paid too high a price to acquiesce in anyone's attempt to pull us back now to prehistory." Yes. One, two, and that's a knockout. Now you know how I feel about the issues of the day. 10.18.02 Relax -- I saw something shiny and got distracted. Instead of politics, here is the Best Amazon Book List Ever. 10.17.02 I'm probably going to get political on this blog soon, so just giving you fair warning there. Anyway, presented for your consideration: an anti-telemarketer script. And here's a brief profile of the guy who rebuilt the Pentagon. 10.15.02 I'm renting an apartment here in America's fabulous "Second City," but back in Monmouth I owned my own home. Hmm... how can I describe what that was like? Well, for now I'll just say that it was a learning experience that cost me upwards of eighteen thousand dollars. Bitter? Oh, a tad. No matter how certain you are of things (like, for example, what the city of London was called back in Roman times) it's still rather nice when you turn up something like this. This, meanwhile, is a jet-powered train engine, designed for use on proposed American high-speed rail lines where we can't be bothered to upgrade the tracks. And last but not least: Awwwwwwww! I believe this is what our British friends term a "moggie," right? 10.12.02 Hoo-ha! I guess that was slightly more than a week or two, wasn't it? Anyway, I am now here in Chicago, Illinois (Illinois being unquestionably one of the top fifty states in the Union, by the way) and I just want to point out that somebody obviously screwed up somewhere. How can someone like me be permitted to live in a place this nice? In my absence the planetary astronomy scene has been hopping. Besides the disk of dust around Fomalhaut everyone knows about and that Quaoar thing (even if you already know about it, visit the link anyway -- it's one of the discoverers' home page and includes this amazing animated GIF showing the discovery itself) there is also the suggestion that if we really want to find extraterrestrial life, perhaps we could just swing by Venus. Oh, and how can you possibly have lived this long without the invaluable Prior Art Generator? Small Small Step is a biro! It can play the trumpet! 9.22.02 No blog today, just this message: I will be out of contact for the next week or two as I move on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky. In the meantime, if you urgently need to get in contact with me... well, er, that's a shame. 9.19.02 Dear sweet Jesus! It's National Talk Like A Pirate Day and I almost missed it! Transparent Aluminum. Yes, you heard right. I'm also rather taken by this "electric armor" capable of protecting tanks and other armored vehicles from a variety of weapons: essentially, part of the vehicle's hull is electrified so that when a shaped charge warhead (such as those found in tank shells or rocket-propelled grenades) tries to pass through it, it closes a circuit and is vaporized like a fuse in a fusebox. One site comments in a rather deadpan way that "the system would probably also be useful against any enemy infantry who have climbed onto your vehicle."

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