Artillery for your laptop

Well, it's about time. I know I've always wanted to be able to trigger missile salvos from my laptop, but have struggled to find something I could fire from my office keyboard. And I wouldn't want to have to aim it myself, either -- I'd want the launcher to both traverse and elevate (a little artillery lingo there) under remote control.

Well, I've finally found it, and my enemies should now quake in fear. It even fires multiple missiles without reloading. And, best of all, it's only $34.95. Who said military-grade hardware has to be expensive?

Be sure to watch the video clip.

Crickets didn't just chirp...

So with the election still more than a year and a half away, Democrats had their first presidential debate, with a broad range of candidates representing the Left, the Far Left, the Extreme Wacko Left, and Dennis Kucinich. Best quip from coverage of the event goes to Mickey Kaus of Slate.com with the following about John Edwards:

Edwards kind of faded into the background. Crickets didn't chirp--they completed their entire life-cycle during the pause after Edwards was asked to name his 'moral leader.' ...

Yup, that about says it for Mr. Edwards, whose true moral compass always points to his ego.

One of those big ideas

One of the big changes in the auto industry that has gone largely unnoticed by the public is the increasing ability of tiny manufacturers to create, engineer, and put into production completely new designs. Many of these designs, such as those from Saleen, are more advanced than anything yet produced by any conventional auto maker.

This is a huge development. What once took a huge multinational corporation can now be done successfully by small, creative companies with a tiny fraction of the resources but a wealth of new ideas. While we've all been bemoaning the lack of great ideas in the big car companies, the great ideas have gone across the street, set up their own shop, and are turning out terrific new cars like the Saleen S7 and the Pagani Zonda.

The S7 and Zonda are both hyperexpensive supercars, both running well into six figures. But there's a conceptually simple way that this revolution in cutting-edge thinking and creative design could start turning out more everyday cars and provide the kind of worldwide support that regular car consumers expect. I'll have more in a future post.

Tigers on the moon? Not.

I recently watched the BBC's Planet Earth series, one segment of which featured a "DNA bank" which is storing the DNA of endangered species so that if they do go extinct, perhaps someday they'll be brought back to life. Well, that's wonderful -- I hope someday someone can.

But the segment ended by musings about someday repopulating those now-endangered species on other worlds, perhaps even "tigers on the moon." It was all in the tone of starry-eyed science fantasists of the kind you'd find at science-fiction conventions, the folks whose deepest conviction of faith is belief in Science as Omnipotent Savior. That whatever they can imagine, someday Science will make come true.

The curious theology aside, apparently it has never occurred to them that just because something is far-fetched today doesn't mean it'll become a good idea in the future. It's true that time and progress can cure ignorance, but stupid is forever. I mean, the moon is an airless body bombarded by radiation where the temperatures swing from over +200F to below -200F, and hundreds of years from now, when we know much more about science, putting tigers on the moon will still be stupid. Get a clue, people.

"Snow won't dampen global warming rallies"

That's the headline from a news story in Michigan's Grand Rapids Press, which continues:

The weather forecast for Saturday's global warming rallies in Grand Rapids and Holland calls for snow and cold rain and temperatures in the 40s -- about 10 degrees below normal.

For some, this might make global warming a tough sell.

"I've thought of that," said Lisa Locke, associate director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council, which is organizing the three Grand Rapids "Step it Up" rallies.

"I think that's an easy excuse, but if we're really reasonable about it, we're not talking about individual weather on individual days," Locke said. "We're talking about something much larger, on a global scale, which science has been tracking for decades."

Ms. Locke is correct: Climate change is about long-term trends, not the daily weather. But be sure to keep those words in mind this summer, too, when every passing heat wave is used as an example of "global warming."

And now for a prediction of my own: In the end, the global warming "crisis" will turn out not to be a lesson on caring for the Earth, but on how science and politics really work.