"May you live in interesting times."

A cup of coffee cost more than a share of GM last Thursday ($1.89 vs. $1.61). These are heady times, omybrothersandsisters, heady times. A woman in CA had 8 babies: Octomom, the media call her. Ann Coulter, harpy of the Right, must have another book out. She's all over the TV, waving her skinny arms, raving about liberals and how FDR was a traitor. Rush Limbaugh screeches "top o' the world, Ma! top o' the world, GOP!" from atop an empty oil tank. His new , legal , prescription must be working. Lucky bastard, in his own little world; he's happy, sucking on his Havanas and gibbering.

The Missus and I are planning our Victory Garden.Less grass to mow. I can hire my unemployed neighbor to be a scarecrow and my unemployed brother-in-law will take swing shift;graveyard shift is still open.

There are still some interesting things going on , if my daily saunters through the Web are any indication. Here's a man who built a 1/3 scale Spitfire Mk.IX. Amazing; he talks of building 1/3 scale working Merlin and Griffon engines. We shall see on that one.

Smaller and lower power will be the key in future appliances. Nanotechnology firms are building the foundation needed before the incredible things found in K.Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation, read many years ago, can come to fruition. A 12 year old boy works on increasing the efficiency of solar cells by their absorption of UV light along with visible light. My professional duties this week have required me to read up on 2D barcodes (think vertical arraying of information) and 3D scanners and printers.

It is an amazing world.

Spitfire in the jungle.

Spitfire in the jungle.,
originally uploaded by scp2695.

God I wish I could paint. Isn't this photo of a couple aces and the dog evocative? I enjoy this genre of photograph, particularly the British ones. RAF and, in this photo, RAAF personnel were a little more eccentric in dress than their American counterparts (especially when they are out in the boonies like these guys: they are in Borneo: quick, find Borneo on a map), and, in this case, cooler aircraft. That's a Mk. IX Spit they are leaning against; meant to be a stopgap Mark, it was a potent aircraft,and I believe the most produced version. And of course, there is the general look of elegant lethality in Spitfires of any mark.