While acknowledging that it would present its own raft of practical and ethical issues, I'm very frustrated by the fact that nobody in either big party would be willing to even consider the notion of rerouting, rather than eliminating, the $100 million in annual heroin revenues currently going to the Taliban. A policy of elimination costs more, takes longer, generates much more ill will locally, and requires constant maintenance to be even partially effective. And that's when our partner is a friendly, industrialized, Western nation.

Demand will beget supply; someone's going to grow the opium. Expecting a desperately poor agricultural nation to willingly ignore that enormous cash potential is ridiculous. If we're going to be over there, it's better and easier to put the opium farmers into our column. Reducing the global availability of heroin is not part of this mission.

It took a year and a half, a new moon, 45 minutes of adaptation to the dark, and nearly perfect atmospherics, but I finally and conclusively spotted the elusive M33. The equipment: a plain old pair of 7x50 binoculars.

I've been ignoring a FPS craving for several weeks. I'm talking Quake or UT `04 or something else along those lines. Can I get a "hell, yeah?" for sometime between now and next week? Anyone? I figure critical mass to be four people.

Willing to buy/download some new hotness if it's endorsed strongly enough or by multiple people. If nothing else, we can all download Sauerbraten, which is free and runs on pretty much everything.

...and any other baseball fans on my f-list.  I'm particularly looking at you, karzender .

http://www.baseballboss.com/

Open beta for now.  I'm sure it will cost something, eventually.  Use "techcrunch" as the referral code.  There were 1,000 open slots for that code when Techcrunch posted it two days ago.

I'm "Maximillian L. Bloomsworth," and my team is the Pottstown Planetoids.

Thanks (I think!) to bbendick for the tip.

I enjoy salmon and had read earlier news coverage of its increasing scarcity in the wild. This is still depressing. It also makes me wonder about the net healthiness of the fish oil capsules I take each day.

In our back yard a few minutes ago. It's times like this I wish I knew something about photography.

For those who enjoy such things, I am now Twittering. I'm setting the "How long will Dave stick with this?" over/under at 15 days, i.e., June 7. The pool is open in the comments.

Outdoor wall animation from Argentina. Memed from Penny Arcade. A must-see.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

I know I can't be the only person on my flist who spotted the ST:TNG reference on last night's episode.  First person to put it in the comments gets a cookie.

A very happy birthday to wyvernfree !

I thought I'd share a new web comic I'm enjoying. Link goes to the first strip in the archive.

Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich is now the owner of a drill bit that's 60 feet wide. As you'll see behind the link, there is speculation that he might use it to dig a to-be-proposed auto tunnel beneath the Bering Strait.

At first, I thought this was an April Fool item, but the links to earlier news reports suggest there might be something to it. Bloomberg carried a story about the idea last year.

I'd like to offer my early condolences to alyson_layn and grover173 on their school's first-round exit from the tournament.  They had a good run, guys.

Cool drawings.

Hot off the CF card:



ETA: This one is about 35 minutes later, during totality:



Go outside!

Anyone else surprised that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has, so far, been a decent show?  Summer Glau still seems like too much of an automaton, and the guy playing John has been barely distinguishable from an extra (though, to be fair, he hasn't been given much to do yet).  Lena Headey, on the other hand, has been great.  More importantly, it only took them about three episodes to establish the franchise's trademark sense of constant dread.  TiVo season pass: enabled.