Canadian DMCA
Won't spend much time on this, since others are covering it far better than I. Suffice it to say that if you are Canadian and don't want to let the government sneak in a major trojan horse to take...
View ArticleGuiding Hands
Interesting chat with one of our friends this evening. We were batting around the big problems of the day; energy crisis, resource exhaustion, pollution, that kind of thing and looking at the various...
View ArticleNuclear Genies and Racism
Had a conversation a little while back that keeps echoing. The topic was a mildly racist event of some sort, I don't particularly remember what. The key question was this: "what's the big deal?"...
View ArticleLook, but don't worry about them...
One of my colleagues was mentioning a book he'd read in which the author claimed that the most important thing we should be doing was figuring out a way to deflect "killer asteroids" (I assume or...
View ArticleTED seems skipable
Wanted something to stretch my mind a little this evening, so I figured I'd listen to some of the lectures from the TED conference. Started off with "The Universe on a String", "Open Source Economics"...
View ArticleSomething that was dropped in the debate...
Some thoughts on the Canadian elections under way: o C's response to job losses in Ontario and Quebec o "Last place to invest" o We'll create jobs elsewhere (read: Alberta)...
View Article50 Year Nukes, Good Governance, Prosperity and Education
Headed out to the "Net Change Week" event this evening. Got to ranting to Alfonso before the presentations about a few of my pet theories and wound up with this chain:we've got a maximum of maybe 50...
View ArticleFrom where the short posts come...
Have been seeing weirdly trivial blog-post spam lately. Someone will post a single-line comment that is entirely generic, no real content, just a bland "nice post" or "thanks for the article" where...
View ArticleWhy would you delete (valid) pages on Wikipedia?
Why the heck is wikipedia *deleting* articles for not being universally notable rather than simply assigning a "notability" level to them? It's a computer system, and you store all of the revisions...
View ArticleHyperloop Read-through
So somehow instead of working tonight I found myself reading through the Hyperloop plans from Elon Musk. Basically it's a very-low-pressure, but not true vacuum, steel tube held up on pylons from LA to...
View ArticleWhat would a realistic Carbon Tax look like?
So if we (Canada) were to set flat carbon cost at a reasonable $.6/kg ($600/ton) instead of our current $.02 rising to $.05 in two years with the big polluters excluded, what would happen? Would it be...
View ArticleSocial Cost of Carbon and Ethics
It is unreasonably frustrating to me that discussions of the Social Cost of Carbon by Economists are seemingly using models that read like a Libertarian's Fancy Footwork to Excuse Desired Behaviour....
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