http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2074994/Plans-floating-city-California-coast-house-entrepreneurs-visas.html

In a previous life, I spent part of a year in college on an ocean-going tanker.  It does take a couple weeks to get your sea-legs, and not everyone can adapt.

But this is a very creative solution to the problem of high-tech entrepreneurs not being able to get the necessary types of visas.

It also illustrates that the United States culture/families/education system is not creating sufficient home-grown talent.

The evidence is persuasive.

I also recommend against business trips to Mustafar, or getting caught in your own Sith lightning.

Some WordPress files got munged. They’ve been replaced. You may notice subtle differences in the interface, since they got replaced with the latest versions and default settings. Make allowances.

New Zealand’s Green Party will hold thirteen seats after Saturday’s election. Among their new Members of Parliament is expatriate Californian Julie Anne Getner. (more…)

Not so different from the old ways.

Derek Lowe, incidentally, is well worth a regular read. A thoroughly terrestrial soul, and I mean that as a compliment.

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Evidently, as a Chinese slave laborer.

Bit of a tangent, but I wonder if we ought to invite Mr. Winnie T. Pooh to join the Junior Ganymede.

America, yeehah!

From the thoroughly enjoyable Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler:

“However, the only parts of the extensive territories claimed for France which received significant settlement by French-speaking colonists were the St Lawrence river area, known as la Nouvelle-France (New France), and the islands of modern Nova Scotia, then known as l’Acadie (originally la Cadie, derived from some Indian name). Here the original French policy had been to hope that ‘our sons will marry your daughters and we will become one people’. Unfortunately, this did not happen in a way that suited the French, since the early tendency was for arriving male settlers to go native, and bring up their children in their sauvage mothers’ languages. (more…)

This is too interesting to pass up. Recommended.

“Monsters and Mormons” is out. My own contribution to this volume is mediocre in the middle, but is the cat’s miaow in the beginning and in the end. It’s like a thin slice of American cheese between two big hunks of my wife’s bread. (more…)

XKCD comments.

It’s like the giant laser in the Death Star. So long as you hit more or less in the center of the planet, the exact targeting isn’t terribly important.

The antigravity Slinky.

The physics is perfectly correct and straightforward, but nonetheless startling.

His Hehness notices.

Colby Cosh is back to form with the best thing he’s written in many months, a sweetly gentle piece of cynicism.

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