Greg A. Brown

I gotta write a ten-page paper tonight so instead of a thoughtful post on the substructure of things, you’re gonna get a boxing kangaroo. Sorry?

Top Gear is one of the best shows out there. Where else can you see a race between a jet fighter and a really fast car?

China Mieville, a sci-fi/fantasy/hard-to-classify author and part-time writer on international law, wrote a scathing indictment of libertarian philosophy that also laments how they stole the original coolness of floating city-states, giant ships that only function under their own laws. It’s a great, great read.

I spent so much time in high-school playing puzzpack in my math (and other) classes. A ridiculous amount of time. Good to know it’s still around.

Charlie Rose talks to Jeffrey Toobin on the latter’s new book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, as well as other Supreme Court-related topics.

“If newspapers are windows onto the world, what are the consequences of shrinking that window to the size of an ipod screen?”
Ben Vershbow on The Institute for the Future of the Book’s blog

Chewbacca is the new Virgin Mary.

This is probably the cutest thing physically possible. It’s all downhill from here, cute-wise.

The New York Times Magazine this Sunday featured an excellent article on the clash in southeastern US between diminishing water supplies and ever-growing cities. A teaser:

A catastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River — which mostly consists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains — has always served as a kind of thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outer edge of their practical imaginations. Some 30 million people depend on that water. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. An almost unfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federal government; cities suing cities; states suing states; Indian nations suing state officials; and foreign nations (by treaty, Mexico has a small claim on the river) bringing international law to bear on the United States government. In addition, a lesser Colorado River would almost certainly lead to a considerable amount of economic havoc, as the future water supplies for the West’s industries, agriculture and growing municipalities are threatened. As one prominent Western water official described the possible future to me, if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, “an Armageddon.”

Lawrence Lessig fought the radical extension of copyright for 10 years, and now he’s turning his attention to the deeper problem of corruption in democratic institutions, with this presentation an early attempt to begin grappling with the issue. Over an hour long, it’s pretty much quality all the way through.