Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Heh. According to the Washington Post, when asked about deficit

reduction measures, 53% of Americans oppose small tax increases for the

middle class, 56% oppose cutting military spending, 69% oppose cutting

Medicaid, and 78% oppose cutting Medicare.



That much is predictable, but apparently, 33% of Americans actually

oppose reducing the deficit at all. Wow.



--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

I convinced my friend Alex to Taze me last night. Wow. A number of

surprises here, from an experiential standpoint: first, while I was

expecting it to be painful, I was really quite surprised at just *how*

painful. Broken teeth and getting kicked in the nuts are nowhere close;

offhand I can't think of anything that quite compares.



Second, I was under the impression that once the darts go in and the

30-second zap cycle starts, the victim is completely incapacitated.

This turned out not to be the case. I was able to stay on my feet for

the first, oh, second and a half, and after I went down I was able to

pull one of the darts out while it was still zapping me.



Third, the darts are longer than you might guess, and barbed like little

fishooks. They don't come out easily, or painlessly, although the pain

of pulling them out seems like nothing compared to the actual zapping.



Fourth, recovery was nearly instantaneous once I got the first dart out

and dropped it. I was able to stand up and resume more or less normal

conversation right away. This is not like tear gas or pepper spray or

tranquilizer darts or a Star Trek phaser. There's not a lot of hangover.



Anyway, this is not something I'm eager to repeat, but I'm not at all

sorry I did it.



--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

It is not a bad idea to rate American cities based on their walkability,

but whatever rating system they used here is nonsense. Los Angeles is

more walkable than Denver, and Boulder doesn't appear on the list at all?



--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

An impetus for asteroid mining?







--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

I forgot to mention this to you at the time, but I think you'll find it amusing,

credible or not. There was an article in the NYT last week reporting on a study

someone had done of the educational attainments of various terrorists, that

suggests right-wing terrorists tend to be engineers, while left-wing terrorists

tend to be lawyers. (Okay, not knowing any terrorists, I do recall Bin Laden

was a civil engineer, and Castro was a lawyer [but wanted to be a baseball player].)

Our company, RavenBrick, has made a couple of "Best" lists for 2010.

Why all of these have 100 companies on them is beyond me, and the

listings are alphabetical so we don't really know where we rank, but it

is nice to be included.



Red Herring Top 100:





Business Week's 100 most promising:





Entrepreneur Magazine's 100 Brilliant Ideas:







--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

Know much about these?







I've heard rumors a cottage industry is growing up around this sort of thing.

--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

My seventh patent issued this month. This is a big one, the first of

the smart window patents that are the focus of our work at RavenBrick.



--

Wil McCarthy < >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon