16 Jan 2006
Make an RFID-proof wallet

This might be useful someday ...

via Slashdot

00:00 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

Corn Farmers Smile as Ethanol Prices Rise, but Experts on Food Supplies Worry

Oh, the joys of trying to thrive in a commodity market! These poor bastards will crank up production so much that the price will fall off a cliff, and bunches of them will lose their butts. And of course, the price of soybeans will rise, because less of them will be planted, and next year the cycle will repeat itself.

This is the crux of the problem with the Law of Supply and Demand - and no, I don't think that state planning would solve it or make it better. In practice socialism makes it worse. But on the scale as they exist today, commodity markets and future pricing are driving more and more producers out of business, and eventually that's going to produce some real problems - which we will undoubtedly try to solve by the application of a little state planning. Which will start a second level cycle all over again.

There has to be a better way, but damned if I know what it is.

High oil prices have increased the value of ethanol, and the price of corn, from which it is made. As a result, many farmers are altering their planting decisions.

(link) [New York Times]

00:00 /Agriculture | 3 comments | permanent link

Funniest Blonde Joke Ever

OK, so I have a 'Humor' category, but I normally don't post links to jokes. Especially not of the variety that it takes a while to 'get'. But this one had me laughing so hard I was practically crying: Are You Blond?.

via Secular Blasphemy

00:00 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Father of LSD Celebrating 100th Birthday

PsychedelicDr. Hofmann is certainly one of the most interesting fellows of our age ... may his "wonderful visions" continue!

AP - LSD is an unlikely subject for a 100th birthday party. Yet the Swiss chemist who discovered the mind-altering drug and was its first human guinea pig is celebrating his centenary Wednesday — in good health and with plans to attend an international seminar on the hallucinogenic.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

Update:Wired has some very interesting coverage of this event.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link