George Soros, convicted felon

Read all about it here, thanks to Betsy's Page.

George Soros, convicted felon. George Soros, convicted felon. Oh, it sounds so good. In fact, I think George Soros' name ought to show up first on search engines under "convicted felon". Who wants to help?

Yo quiero Geno's

I've never managed to stop in Philadelphia. When I do, I'll have one of this guy's cheesesteaks even if I have to eat it through a straw.

A bust for a bust

An high school art teacher in TX (Austin, of course) has been busted for appearing topless on a website.

Heavens, it must be those Bible-thumpers on the march again, eh? Of course, at least according to some of the more ignorant commenters on the linked page. Never mind that in any case it's an example of very poor judgment. If she can't stand sacrificing some artistic liberty to be a teacher, then she's in the wrong field anyway.

For you artistic freedom über alles types - if it'll make you feel better, pretend that a Muslim objected.

Dancesport! - Chicago's Crystal Ball is this weekend

...at the O'Hare Marriott. Forget "Dancing with the Stars" - this is the real thing, done by amateurs and professionals of all ages.

More here.

Overreaction?

You know, we really don't need anyone idolizing Adolf Hitler. But this is really stupid.

At a HS in NY, seniors were permitted to choose a quote to accompany their pictures. Two of them chose quotes from "Mein Kampf":

The quotes picked by Christopher Koulermos and Philip Compton, both 18, were attributed to Hitler in the yearbook. Koulermos' read "Strength lies not in defense, but in attack." Compton chose "The great masses of people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."

Right offhand I'm thinking that someone wasn't paying enough attention - Hitler's name might have been something of a red flag. (Is it possible to graduate from an HS nowadays without knowing his name?)

But really, what harm was done to justify such an abject response from the school district? I'm sure that the creep said "please" and "thank you", etc at various times too, and they're about as relevant to his evil as the quotes chosen. And it would be interesting to see if the same book contained any quotes from, say, Stalin, Chairman Mao or Che Guevara.

The rest of the story

What do you know? - we have ads on TV telling women about how they can get cervical cancer from human papillomavirus (HPV). The one I've seen shows several astonished women swearing to tell everyone.

But why stop there? Why not tell them how they get HPV?

Do they get it from toilet seats? Riding horses? Swimming in public pools? Contaminated tampons? Golly, how do the bugs get up there?

It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that, yes Virginia, it's transmitted by sex. Which means that these ads are opportunities to promote those most sacred of objects, condoms. And sex is never inappropriate in the media nowadays lest we commit the deadly sin of "censorship", so why are they so coy?

Recover waste heat

Now *this* is the kind of technology we can use. A lot of heat goes down residential and commercial drains, and under the right circumstances it can be reused.

Of course the economics have to be right. For example, if a device took more energy or cost more money to fabricate than it could ever recover over its life, it would make no sense.

Anyway, although the article doesn't mention it, this appears to be an application of heat pipes. A heat pipe is a device which can transfer large amounts of heat at small temperature differentials when properly applied - lots of technical background here.

Why is this a big deal? The rate of heat transfer between two objects ordinarily varies increases with increasing differences in temperature between the objects that are exchanging heat, and it decreases as the distance the heat must travel increases. And heat energy is the "leakiest" stuff around - the farther it must go the more of it you will lose even under ideal conditions. So it's terrific if you can exchange a lot of heat at low difference of temperature, because then it "leaks" the least for a given amount of useful transfer.

The bottom line is that you don't want to have to transfer heat very far, and that the less of a temperature difference you have the less useful the heat is. And those two factors account for the fact that you don't see a lot of household waste heat recovery systems.

Put that back!

Little kids want to put everything in their mouths. We adults often tell them things like "spit that out - you don't know where it's been!"

Alas, similar logic applies to flash drives:

according to a recent Secure Network Technologies Inc. audit of a client credit union, 100% of the trojan-laden, password-collecting, network-compromising USB flash drives they planted outside the client's building were unwittingly plugged in, used, and infected their respective host machines.

If you can't stand the heat...

Awww, it seems that some are crying for the 9/11 widows who chose to go public with their opposition to Bush administration policies.

Were they known as authorities on public policy issues before 9/11? If not, why do they suppose that the media has suddenly found their opinions to be worthy of publication?

It's not as if their opinions differ from those of any of thousands of other moonbats. They *do* differ from most of the rest of the 9/11 widows, however, in a way that the media approve, ie, they oppose the current administration.

So they owe their status to their losses. If they enjoy their status, they're enjoying their losses.

No, they can't trade back.

But they can't have it both ways either: once they start running their yaps in public, they lose their halos.

More here.