Redesdale was the officer; Parker, the enlisted man. If Redesdale did not kill the squirrel, he would never be able to lead. And had his family not led for 1,000 years? So we drove to an isolated parking lot, and Parker took the cage out of the trunk. He put the trap — “it’s me killing trap,” he said — on the asphalt. This was the place this animal was going to die.

The squirrel, large and dark gray with just a hint of red to his fur, wheeled around the cage looking for a way out. Then it made a piteous noise, a whee-whee-whee sound. Parker handed the air rifle to Redesdale, and he pointed it.

“That’s the, uh, trigger?” Redesdale said.

“That’s right,” Parker said.

The squirrel paused. Redesdale steadied the barrel over its head. Then came the shot.

“You’ve got it,” Parker said softly.

But he hadn’t.

“Is it dead?” I asked stupidly.

The squirrel raced around the cage, blood dripping from somewhere around its mouth. WHEE-WHEE-WHEE. The same noise.

“I know it’s bad when they run,” Redesdale apologized. I thought I saw the warm-vomit look in his eyes.

The squirrel kept running and finally stopped when it realized there was still nowhere to go. Redesdale once more placed the rifle over its head. POP! The squirrel fell on its side and shook, scrabbled and shimmied twice around the cage like a break dancer.

“They’re dead when they do that, aren’t they?” Redesdale said, sounding more Macbeth than Prince Hal. Parker assured him it was dead: these were just the death throes.

See also:

About 2,500 squirrel enthusiasts belong to the online group The Squirrel Lover's Club. This week you can do what they do year-round: honor squirrels. The first week in October is Squirrel Awareness Week, so maybe you can keep track of the number and the kinds of squirrels you see in your yard or while walking to school. Here's something else to be aware of regarding the furry creatures: There are 35 types of squirrels in North America. The most popular in this area is the Eastern Gray Squirrel.

Back to Redesdale:

“Can I, um, suggest something?” Redesdale said to the three women. ... “I was thinking ... it would be great to form a sort of mobile kill group.”

He added, “We’d get a lot of publicity.”

“And the fun of killing them as well,” Parker said. Parker and Redesdale laughed again, Falstaff and Prince Hal. This time the women smiled too, a bit nervously.

The Squirrel Wars

The world freedom atlas is a geovisualization tool for world statistics. It was designed for social scientists, journalists, NGO/IGO workers, and others who wish to have a better understanding of issues of freedom, democracy, human rights, and good governance. It covers the years 1990 to 2006.

World Freedom Atlas

Built for the budget-conscious space traveler.

More here. You might also be interested in the NASA collection at the Photosynth technology preview.

Your Personal Moon

The moons of Jupiter (well, the 4 major ones) are in their own right, a Solar System within a Solar System. There is volcanically explosive Io; Europa with its cracks and ridges hinting at its huge internal ocean; Ganymede the largest moon in our celestial neighborhood and Callisto one the most heavily cratered bodies we have anywhere. The 4 moons are also called the Galilean moons as they were discovered by Galileo and have since been revealed to be more fascinating than most planets are. The images below represent what I think are likely the best representative images of these places that can fill a 2560×1600 screen. At this size, the details are quite impressive… do take a look even if you can’t make use of the images as wallpaper images.

More here.

The Moons of Jupiter

Remember this?

According to a significant study published in the prestigious British journal Nature recently, the H5N1 bird flu virus is at least two large mutations and two small mutations away from being the next human pandemic virus. This virus attaches deep in the lungs of birds but cannot adhere to the upper respiratory tract of humans. Since we can't transmit the virus to each other, it poses little immediate threat to us.

Well, you might be interested to know that:

The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said Thursday.

The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

"We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans," said Kawaoka, who led the study. "The viruses that are circulating in Africa and Europe are the ones closest to becoming a human virus."

Now, about that escape rocket ship you mentioned ...

Bird flu mutates, more easily infects people

Building a new nation is never a straight, steady climb upward. Today can sometimes look worse than yesterday -- or even two months ago. What matters is the overall trajectory: Where do things stand today when compared to what they were five years ago?

You know it's hard out here for a pimp. It's even harder, let me tell you, for a whore.

America looks to the day when the people of the Middle East leave the desert of despotism for the fertile gardens of liberty, and resume their rightful place in a world of peace and prosperity.

Americans love gumption. We believe that stupid ideas become brilliant ones if you just keep working on them with bullish tenacity.

This not a war against terror any more than World War II was a war against kamikazes.

I have a distinct memory of the first place and time I saw soxmas.mov.

Counterinsurgency is more like an election than a military operation.

Curiosity becomes yearning, and yearning becomes obsession.

The report of the 9/11 Commmission is now available as a comic book.

The level I work at is at the juxtaposition, say, of Prada and Santeria. But it's not about Prada or Santeria. It's not about having ideas about either. It's about seeing what happens when the two are put together.

He has built "unplayable" musical instruments -- including a 25-foot-long accordion -- and created such signature works as "Video Quartet" and "Crossfire," film clip remixes powering mind-bending interactions among images, soundscapes and music.

Indeed, only 63 words ... are needed to make up half of everything said on TV.

He was free to be less than perfect, which is more interesting than perfect.

Brian Eno once famously remarked that the problem with computers is that there isn't enough Africa in them.

Escape the rat race.

... attempting to fasten a usable structure around a continually evolving computational ecology ...

To the extent that ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Although many have studied various incarnations of Internet–based reputation systems, past analyses have mostly been piecemeal in method and have focused only on market applications. I propose a general “reputation–based governance” framework that has interesting properties and implications. The concept also provides useful insights on the issues of openness (as in “open source” software) and of participative forms of design and production.

Reputation-based governance

Hierarchy is an entrenched social concept. The Internet however, presents the possibility of envisioning social relations as a level or ‘flat’ configuration. The Internet fosters relationships that are networked, heterogeneous and horizontally distributed. This article contemplates the surface features of networked structures like the Internet by using topographic imagery.

The aesthetics of networks

There's something interesting happening right now. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper.

It's so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. And if the pattern holds true, that should cause dramatic changes.

...

Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business plan and trying to convince them to fund it, you can get a product launched on a few tens of thousands of dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a working company instead of a plan for one. Then instead of having to seem smooth and confident, you can just point them to MemeStreams.

This way of convincing investors is better suited to hackers, who often went into technology precisely because they felt uncomfortable with the amount of fakeness required in other fields.

... if you hear someone saying "we don't need to be in Silicon Valley," that use of the word "need" is a sign they're not even thinking about the question right.

If startups are mobile, the best local talent will go to the real Silicon Valley, and all they'll get at the local one will be the people who didn't have the energy to move.

This is not a nationalistic idea, incidentally. It's cities that compete, not countries. Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich.

There's something about big companies that just sucks the energy out of you.

The Future of Web Startups

Everybody writes. Not everybody is a writer. Or at least, that's what some of us think...

Now the web — and its democratizing impact — has spread for over a decade. Over a billion people can deliver their text to a very broad public. It's a fantastic thing which gives a global voice to dissidents in various regions, makes people less lonely by connecting other people with similar interests and problems, ad infinitum.

But what does it mean for writers and writing? What does it mean for those who specialize in writing well?

I've asked ten professional writers to assess the net's impact on writers. Here are their answers to the question...

Is The Net Good For Writers?