Another Ray of Sunshine...

....From Orson Scott Card.


A fairly long post on just how things can fall apart...

...utterly.

A very well thought out piece with a good bit of historical perspective...and quite scary.

No asteroids, global plagues, climate change, robot uprisings or super-volcanoes are mentioned or required....they just add less savory variables.

Suddenly Blue Ray Looks a Lot Like Beta

Stephen DenBeste links to this report that Sony has decided to discourage Adult film companies from releasing their movies on Blu-Ray.

Given the sheer volume of Pr0n watched this strikes me as a rather stoopid move. People just aren't going to go buy a seperate machine for their smut, and enough people buy smut that excuding them is enough to tip the scales in HDDVD's favor.

More here.

It is hard to get ones head around the sheer stupidity of this decision...

COMMENCE PANIC ON MY MARK!!! TYPEFACE TO RED!! BLINKY LIGHTS TO CRISIS SETTING NOW!!

The Drudge Report has announced that Israel is going to nuke Iran.

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

"secret"

I don't think that word means what you think it does.

This is certainly serious and worrisome but, my stock disclaimer notwithstanding, there are 3 reasons why I think the blinking Drudgereport blue-lights and above-the-fold breathlessness hysteria is unwarranted.

1The costs for Israel in such an attack even barring Pakistani involvement are going to be severe: Latent antisemitism, Europes Oil Dependancy, the feckless corruption of the UN, and Europes tolerance with any despot who will utter the right egalitarian platitudes and various other factors including an abominable double standard in the press coverage have Israel already teetering on pariah status. An attack such as this would get Israel the same diplomatic cold shoulder as South Africa in the late '80s, US security council veto or not.

2This would not be armageddon even if it happened. Hitting Irans nuclear sites with bunker-busting ground penatrating nukes would release less radiation than many of the above ground tests we set of in our own country in the '50s (*). Despite the propoganda putsch of Al-Jazeera and the media in general Israel does have a good record of trying to minimize civillian casualties. There is unlikely to be a response in kind from France Russia China India the US or the UK. So as terrible a thing as this would be for those in the proximity of Irans ill-concieved nuclear infrastructure it would be very unlikely to initiate global nuclear war.



3The fact that this is being leaked indicates 2 things, perfidy in the Israeli military or a calculated message. In other words warning/ red-flag whatever. The latter seems more likely...at this time. Glenn Reynolds pithilly points out another aspect to this.... I'm pretty sure that if they do they won't leak it first. They didn't leak the Osirak raid, or the Entebbe plans, or . . . . Well, you get the idea.


So the momentary freak-out response of certain press outlets seems to be a bit over the top.
More on this at the Moderate Voice, Captain's Quarters and Wizbang


OK so lets go play...

Ummm...no.

This is not impossible and may not even be unlikely in the longer run.

One quibble with Capt. Ed: Of course they would deny this, even if true; it would be an attack on a sovereign nation and just the plans could present Iran with a casus belli. Does anyone see Ehud Olmert as the man most likely to launch such a war?

Casus Belli?
Iran has announced that it does not recognize Israels right to exist, It has sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the planet. I has sent it's proxies to murder and kidnap Israelis, firing rockets into civillian towns and supplied them with Iran's most advanced weaponary. And now it is on the cusp of having its most advanced weaponary split atoms....I'd say Casus Belli already exists, the Iranians have quite adequately provided it with no help from the Israelis.

If (and that is a big "if") this happened one must also ask if letting Iran have nuclear weapons is any better an option.

The Iranians began their regime with terrorism they support terrorism around the world hate us with almost as much fervor as they hate the Jews. On a the theological front they see themselves on the cusp of taking the mantel of Islamic expansionism back from their greatest competition (Sunniism...which got a boost from the antics of AlQuaeda). In as little a 2 years (perhaps sooner) they will have nuclear weapons with Pakistan, and North Korea also running around as loose cannons, a nuke going off here in Hampton Roads, in New York of the District of Columbia would even have some plausable deniability.

We are talking about MLLIONS of deaths here. That is if they get the bomb.

.....so if this terrible step is taken what then?

In reason #2 as to why one should not panic yet, I mentioned a list of all the countries with full nuke capability.....except Pakistan.
Pakistan is one heartbeat away from becoming what Iran wants to be, a purveyor of nuclear weapons, the arab world openly cheered the "Islamic bomb" and with or without even Musharrif's admitedly imperfect arestor switch on the designs of many of the mullahs in the country and members of Pakistans intel services, (who put the Taliban in power BTW) that there is a possibility that an attack by the US and Israel could push some in the country to launch a strike or release some of these weapons to unsavory elements...if they haven't been already.




This is not the doomsday scenarios of the cold war with tens of thousands of nukes flying across the northern hemisphere destroying nearly all cities and enveloping the planet north of the equator in a frigid and radioactive little ice age ....but it is darned bad. Regards that (*)asterix in point 2, ground bursts tend to release orders of magnitude more fallout than airbursts, so any bunker buster however "clean" it is designed would likely have a greater short term fallout problem than, say, Hiroshima.

One argument against military action is that it would radicalize the Iranian regime....but I do wonder exactly HOW radical they need to be before some people will determine that that cost/benefit reasoning no longer applies....they think that the Holocaust as a PR ploy pulled by the dirty zionist Jooooooz!(tm) who rule the world. The Iranians are killing Israeli citizens as we speak, via Hezbollah rocketry. They are killing our soldiers pretty oppenly in Iraq, they are supporting terrorists....they want nukes.
This is pretty damned radical.


A few more points to ponder:

The positioning of multiple US carriers in the Arabian Sea.

The appointment of Admiral Fallon to lead a ground war in Asia.

Any Israeli strike upon Iran will involve considerable aquiesence by the US simply because it will involve passage through huge swaths of US controlled airspace and midair refueling therein. It is not inconcievable that it could be a "joint op" to varrying degrees. Certainly given the American blood Iran has spilled in Iraq and Lebanon and their support for terrorists stymying their nuclear ambitions is in US interests though the costs for us both meaningful(closure of the Hormuz straits, oil at 130 dollars a barrel, possible santions) and irrelevant (sanctimonious fingerwagging by hyppocritical, panzyass, Chaimberlainesque Euros) would be steep indeed.

IF this came to pass, it would be a terrible thing. But it may not be the worst posible outcome.....

Like Iraq , and everything else on the plate handed the US Government after 9/11, the situation in Asia and the 'stans is a buffet of bad worse and terrible choices, with few if any good ones. What is not recognized by many of those who are quick to criticize the choices made is that the absolute worst decisions are often the most tempting as they involve doing nothing or engaging in the smug cathartic security of endless talk....while monstrous evil transpires, (See Rawanda, Darfur)but there is no flow chart for sucess, and those who oppose us for reasons both misguidedly noble and obscenely evil are not generally incompetents.
The future is always an unlit road, but our future is a bit more complicated than that.
Our enemies are hard to detect and tend to be quite cunning. Our intelligence apparatus has not covered itself in glory vey often, thus we are often left fighting fires in the dark, but to stop means the whole of civilization burns down.


I am not optimistic about this year, but Armageddon is not at hand and hysteria does not in any way help us deal with the dark days that may well be ahead.

Update: Instapundit links to this piece...which makes some related points, though I must point out, though, that even the Democratic leadership has come out gainst Iranian nukes...what they intend to do is whats unclear.

New Years Predictions

Harry Irwin who posts interesting UK news on Jerry Pournelle's website every Monday, has an especially long roundup with a series of predictions for the new year.

Christmas Cheer (Humbug)

Anonymous PHD just sent me this interesting vision of the year 2020 by a UK leftie. Of course, my usual disclaimer applies.


The Afganistan operation has gone rather well. There is still an insurgency but the situation is not at all hopeless.

Iraq is a bit of a mess (though again...not hopeless) as that operation suffered from wretched intelligence, and a bit of ineptitude regards both administration and bricolage, but given the elections and the closing of the people shredders I think the US was a force for good there. This is especially true given the result of the two closest cases to Iraq that have been dealt with as per the Iraq war critics preffered method for dealing with Iraq: (ie:carrots...carrots multi-lateralism....talk...speeches: repeat).

Those are, of course, Afganistan 1991-2001 and Sudan today.

Astonishingly, the big foreign policy initiative proposed by many of the advocates of precipitous withdrawal from Iraq is to go into the Darfur region of Sudan (multilaterally of course) to take sides in a race war. Wow. This operation is not without some merit on both a humanitarian and strategic level, but if done by a POTUS with an (R) after his name will surely see its considerable theoretical support dry up in the fires of protest over "no blood for oil"....but I digress....the point is that even the most hardcore Bo-Bo's still see the US as a force for good when they aren't bad-mouthing it.

As to the non-rise of Russia...well, I pretty much agree there, though my assessment is rather more grim.

The EU in its current form may well collapse around 2020 due to demographic pressures from its low birth rate, aging population and the somewhat (but not entirely) overblown "Eurabia" issues. Given its total dedication to socialism, it is hard to see any dynamism really saving them from collapse. Note though they are old nations and there is a tremendous inertia there that can be stabilizing as well as inhibitive. Also, Ireland the UK and Eastern Europe MAY provide enough leverage to pry them out of their self made pit. The brave talk of equity in foreign policy and human rights is a bit laughable when the Europeans tend to support any butcher who mumbles a few egalitarian platitudes irregardless of what they do to their own people. We had some rotten soldiers act like compleat dicks and so we threw them in Levanworth for years....that gets them to care. Perspective is not a European trait apperrently.

I'm more optimistic about India than this papers speaker. It has tremendous potential and has cast off the worst arrestor switches of socialism without going all Randian or Hobbsian the way the former USSR did for a time. A rare case of what was a third world nation in the cold war emerging into first world status. They are a polygot nation but like the old Austria-Hungary they are making it work. There are terrible problems (untouchables ect) but they both acknowledge them and are making real efforts to deal with them. I think they will certainly fill a niche similar to the turn of the XX century USA....a near superpower. we have a LOT of Indian engineering students at ODU of various backgrounds and hues, they are almost universally optimistic and profoundly determined....in marked contrast to many of the EU students. (Note: this may reflect different attitudes in their universities and exchange students tend to not be a typical demographic of any nation)

I am VERY pessimistic about China. China's economy is a ponzi scheme propped up by foreign investment on the backs of slave labor and to the exclusion of the peasantry. (Hell, I have real doubts about the ability of any nation to achieve greatness when they even HAVE a peasantry.) They are engaged in a precarious balancing game that will be very difficult to maintain. It is not impossible that China live up to its potential, but I think it is a longer shot than most believe.

There are historical, demographic and cultural precedents that are all working against China. This is not to say that China cannot carry on or succeed....but I don't see it happening in a good way. A peasant/working class uprising would fit perfectly with China's history and would likely be motivated by the darkest angels of Maoism....millions would die capital would flee the nation like a Paris Hilton would a convent...and as in all such revolts, the revolutionaries would grow enraged at the lack of utopia being produced in exchange for spilled blood...they would fall upon one another like a bunch of little Robspieeres.....and thus scores of millions more would die.

If this did not tear the country apart it would end up most likely once again experimenting with another great leap "forward".

Of course the ethnic tensions could divide China into 2 or more states....a return to the warlords of the early 20th century...there is precedence for both of these options all through China's history....they have a LOT of history they've been around longer than any of us.....which dovetails into the more "optimistic" asessment for China...they have been lower than this before and historically, in China it is always darkest before the dawn, China has had cycles of bad luck precipitated by foreigners or peasant uprisings...or both...and those have sometimes lasted 1-2 hundred years....China is VERY old. China is the oldest human civilization to still exist and they see themselves as the middle kingdom. To them we are a bunch of uppity foreigners like the Mongols....and they've dealt with the likes of us before. It is quite possible that China could flex and reform....China's history has several examples of ethical beauraucrats cleaning house, fighting corruption and setting the country straight...then conquering neighboring countries to expand. Given its huge population of military age males and a need for space, mineral and energy sources, it is not inconcievable that China might try to grow out of its problems, vast swaths of Russia and (less likely) SE Asia being absorbed, possibly along with Taiwan in the process. Russia is moribund, mineral and oil rich Siberia is unsexy but it a very tempting target. As for "Elbow room" the taiga might even be an alluring bit of real estate if global warming trends continue....I'm sure that China's being by far the worlds worst polluter is unrelated ;)

Which gets to another point I disagree with. The buggaboo of global warming. Oh it is measurable, it is happening, but given that it is happening on Mars and Jupiter as well, (no really) I think that there are larger forces at work than cow farts and industrial emissions. Kyoto like protocols only serve to inhibit first world economies and these economies are the engines of innovation. With thorium and pebble bed nuclear reactors built in a crash program powering both the grid and thermal depolymerization plants to produce biodiesel from waste and cash crops we could reduce our net emissions to near zero in 15 years...but the people who worry about emissions are largely (though not all of them) opposed to nukes on a visceral and religious level.

We have now facing humanity:
global mercury poisoning
dwindling/polluted drinking water supplies
ozone depletion
increasing vulnerability to pandemics
insect borne diseases (malaria alone kills millions)
famine
acid rain
the potential for nuclear terrorism
Apohis and other wayward space rocks


...and these people are getting the vapours over a longer growing season.

The appeal of Kyoto style agreements has nothing to do with reducing emissions...it is about putting a brake on capitalism and thus artificially making it less appealing than the train-wreck that is leftism. That is why the left supports it.

I'll do a longer post on that later....it's a pet peeve of mine.

One other thing that I find myself in disagreement with. I'm not sure that the USA will fair as well as they propose. The US is heavily invested in China....very heavily...see above for why that might be bad.
The dollar is going through a phase of considerable vulnerability and both the Arab States and Russia are trying to destabilize it. We suffered near total collapse in the 1840's and the 1930's from similar problems without active meddling. The 1970s saw similar economic problems to what we face today, dealing with them in exactly the same way a democratic congress is likely to deal with them today....that did not go well. The republicans seem to be cherry-picking the worst aspects of the dems as their strategies....which makes it a bipartisan problem.

Why must the Libertarians be such nutjobs?

A bank collapse caused by a sudden precipitous appreciation of the reality of China's actual situation.
A huge energy crisis and vulnerability to petro-blackmail due to an irrational aversion to noookulur power and the concurrent stagflation.
An idea deficit caused by a need to punish those in non-PC industries for existing...rather than see them as part of a solution.

These could all be in our future. And this assumes that the remarkable combination of skill and good fortune since Sept.11 continues and we don't suffer a confidence shattering terrorist attack....or lose a city.

Of course we could turn it around too, though none of the likely presidential canidates from either party give me confidence at the moment.

2020 could indeed be a very interesting year.

Delphic Ponderings

What is to happen? Wretchard comments here on a piece in The National Interest on where we go from here.

Chester has a link-rich post on various Iraq plans being mooted currently and points out that this is a crucial time in the war. He also posts a long well written critique of certain intellectuals love of defeat, which is not so very different from Flagellants or other religious groups desire for piety through self-punishment.

Of course, if we bail on Mesopotamia, it will not be us who suffer, but those we abandon who will be slaughtered or live in a Taliban like hell. This is of little concern to those who want to see the US taken down a notch but it should inform our actions.

The Dems, fresh from their recent victory, seem determined to turn a bad situation into disaster if this Drudge-linked story from Roll Call is to be believed. Murtha is an ethical, and strategic disaster. The Dems seem to be going out of their way to prove that hey are worse than the foetid Hastert regime they replaced. Unlike Blackfive I can't chuckle, as the stakes are quite high. They are higher in the immediate short term for those in Iraq and Afganistan caught in the middle of this war, they are very high for us in the long term given the inexorable march of technology if the pathologies of the middle east go unchecked as super-blogger Chester points out in this podcast.

What is of most concern to me is that the entire plan of many of this wars critics is to snipe at past decisions that others made, yet make no meaningful contribution to available options themselves.

We have no oracles, no Tardis, nor even a map for the dark road that is the future. We should all remember that 20/20 hindsight is not the same as vision as the future is met through the windshield, and not the rearview mirror.

Hopeful Tinfoilery....

.....but not likely.

1618, 1799, 1914, 1939, 2006

Lets hope one of those years is the answer to a "What does not belong?" question of the year 2020.


I see no other option for Israel.

This is big, perhaps really big.
Israel does not activate its reserves lightly....Israel's reserves are the general population...they are planning for a big long and tragically necessary war.
Iran and Hezbollah are playing a game of dangerous brinkmanship, hoping perhaps to distract attention from Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Israel has been attacked and its people killed and kidnapped. Rockets are raining death down upon northern Israel.
Ohlmert cannot let this stand.
The long suffering people of Lebanon are caught in the middle.

I've got a very bad feeling about this.

Sgt. Chester has the best overview I've seen, and it is scary....as is the title of his post. This has a terrible 1914 feel to me as well.

UPDATE: Chester has added part 2.
Murdoc is theorizing.
Meryl is keeping an eye on the disgustingly biased coverage.
Pajammas Media is
blogging up a storm on this.
PJM also links to a lebanese blog mosh, which is quite edifying.

Instapundit posts an E-mail from an American trapped there. The US Embassy is pretty much screwing the pooch. This is really bad given Hezbollah's history of hostage taking.

Lebanon is just coming out from under Syrian control and this is likely a move to roll that back. The Lebaneese people are victims in this and reportedly HATE Hezbollah, but The Major is right....no one wants to get bombed and anyone who thinks they are on the whole cheering this is a bit addleminded.

I stand foresquare with Israel on this but I really am sorry the Lebanese are suffering for the horrid crimes of the Hezbollah squatters.

The bigger implications are scary.
Syria and Iran are the source of this terror. What do they do when Israel begins stamping out Hezbollah? This is something that could cascade rather quickly.

What does China do?
What does Russia do? They have a lot invested in Syria and a good deal of money invested in Iran.

Lots of powers are vested in this suffering little patch of land, just about as many as were invested in the Balkans in the the fall of 1914, when brinkmanship and miscalculations led to a very dark place.


Another Update: Annonymous PHD Forwards an subscription only analysis piece that points to Hezbollahs Iranian revolutionary roots and their history. Remember the 80's remember 1979.
I would not want to be an American in Lebanon now.

"To A Dark Place Does This Path Lead."

There has been much handwringing over the New York Times aparrant blowing of national security secrets recently. (link requires registration)

There is a good reaction to the NYT explanation for this wretched article here, here, here, here and here.

For my part, I'm horrified.

These unelected, prima-donna Bo'Bo's have not only compromised a program that they admit was legal and reportedly effective, the have played Russian roulette with not only national security, but the first amendment as well.

"Huh? How's that?" asks the reader.

NEARLY ANY PRECEDENT THAT IS SET BY THIS FIASCO IS BAD.

If nothing happens and there are no consequences for the 'Times or its informants, then this sort of thing will keep happening, the aura of 'untouchable royalty' that causes them to feel that they can do this with impunity will grow and they will eventually publish something so big they get millions of people killed (assuming this does not do so indirectly).

If, as is being proposed by some hotheads, and the 'paper of record' is prosecuted for espionage under the espionage act then the camels nose will be even further under the tent on the sort of press censorship that will make the prudish asshats at he FCC look like the writers for South Park...(but without their talent). Given the inevitable racheting and empire building of govt. administrators, the ultimate implications for talk radio as well as netroots campaigns and barren unvisited blogostanic wastelands like this are troubling. This seems odd to some calling for prosecution of the Times editors, as at at first blush national security would not seem to be involved in any of those things, but as we have seen with political corectness and hate speech legislation (and willie-nillie classification of information) what beauraucrats decide constitutes a public menace can be broad indeed.

The best option at this point might be to revoke the NYT's press credentials and find, then prosecute, the jackasses who leaked this in the first place. That sets up it's own set of very troubling issues, regards whistleblowers, but is likely the best response to the bad situation that the NYT's frothingly stupid lack of judgement has dropped upon us.

This bitch of it is that we DO need a free press constantly nagging and pushing for information, and there ARE things that need scrutiny (like the Patriot Act, secret tribunals and other things), as an unacountable government is or soon becomes a tyrrany. My great fear is that this terribly irresponsible act on the Times part may not only endanger us indirectly (by aiding Al-Quaeda financing) but may set the stage both legislatively and in the publics mind for a very troubling slippery slope.

Update: For some reason my draft posted initially.All the links now work. Also added 2 very good Anchoress posts to the list of above links.

Wow!...Just...WOW!

A 3-D printer for organs!

And it is WORKING! they built a working chicken heart in 19 hours with this thing, and it started beating!

More Proof That This is the Future

New Scientist reports on the upcoming launch of the test rig for a space hotel design being pushed by Bob Bigelow.

Cool!

1918 or 1347?

The enigmatic Major Kusanagi is not optimistic regards the bird flu.

I'm pretty much in agreement.

More on bird flu here.

The Majors larger point is that even if we dodge this bullet we are still not taking steps to deal with a real pandemic threat. Weather we have the technology to start doing the things she suggests is beyond my current expertise, but logically we should be pretty damned close given the strides being made in the necessary areas. Simple bioremediation experiments, which I do know something about are almost there.

Regardles of weather we have it yet, it is a perfectly linear development of current technology as far as I know, hence it is foolish to not start investing ina proactive aproach.

We need more Irascibelles.

Proof that the Future has Arrived!

So, I was at dinner a bit ago. I was flipping through the Virginian Pilot as I consumed my curry, when I spied the story about the glowing green pigs.

Not mentioned in the article is the most obvious application for this new technology. Given that medical testing on pigs are generally a precurssor to human trials....we could be just a few years away from ORION SLAVE GIRLS!!!

DISCLAIMER: That this was the first thing that popped into my head is likely more a comment on my sad sad life than any likely avenue of medical research.

Futurism Turns Perfidous!!!!

The Carnival of Tomorrow is up! But this week it's at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy!

Buckethead and company have put together a particularly perfidous one this week by simply linking to Jefferry Bell, who is the absolute master on "NO!" with regards to reuseable launch vehicles. Read the link Dr. Bell does have some points.

In the above linked paper he pooh-poohs the idea of SSTOs, but this is a bit off the mark IMHO. A reuseable launch vehicle need not be single stage, a 2 stage fully reuseable design would work nicely ala' Spaceship One (and IIRC was proposed for the Venture-Star when they ran into problems with their LH2 tank...but not proceded with).
Jerry Pournelle has a different take on the "cold equations" here. Note that the DC-X, with its 52% propellant weight fraction was a TEST BED never intended to achieve orbit. Even if this was impossible, or is impossible now we are VERY close to being able to pull it off. If the unobtainium Dr. Bell refers to is necessary it may not be unobtainable for long. :)

There are scads more cool links on all manner of futuristic topics at the Ministry so go check them out! :)

Half-Life of Privacy

Rambling Rebuilder put me on the mailing list of Mysterious Informant who, true to name, sent me these two disturbing links regards tech advances and privacy issues.

This is disturbinng to say the least, but some of the things that they are trying to fight, in particular identity theft, really are worse than loosing ones internet anonymity...at least at first glance. On the other hand,it is easy to see how anonymous bloggers to name just one example could really be hurt by this especially given the potential for abuse against whistle blowers. Still identity theft is a huge problem, I've had two friends all but cleaned out by it. I'm sympathetic to the efforts to stamp it out, but the loss of privacy is really disturbing at first glance. On the gripping hand however, how much anonymous interaction did we have even 15 years ago? The anonymous 'trolls' and thieves are as empowered by the anonymity of the web as we are when we hide behind silly handles like Brickmuppet. Tough call....

The spychips in merchandise are really disturbing on all levels and there seems to me no merit to them at all. Ban them! Hunt down their users and apply tar, feathers and run them out of town. This is frigging cyberpunk come to life! Hangin's too good fer 'em! Buurninns too good fer 'em! They need to be cut up into leeetle bitsy pieces and buried alive!!

ahem...

This needs a lot attention that it is not getting.

Apophis

Yep, they went and named it for the Egyptian Gawd of destruction and sure enough.......

According to the Guardian scientists are looking at the possibility of an impact in 31 years.

This has the potential to be a real GOOD thing actually. It is just far enough out that we can do something about it and this could easily galvanize the public in favor of space settlement.

Note that the odds are one in 5,500 but this is still a fine opportunity for a mitigation mission.


And next time...don't tempt fate...name it Bubbles or Smurfette or Minky Momo or something.

THIS if just effing creepy......

Via Drudge.....

A remote control for people!

"I felt a mysterious, irresistable urge to walk to the right whenever the researcher turned the stick to the right. I was convinced_mistakenly_that this was the only way to maintain my ballance."

Ghaaaaaaa!!

This has all SORTS of creepy implications.

(and what do you know? It really IS because of computer gaming.)

"Where DOES he get those wonderful toys?"

One more item on the caped crusaders utility belt has actually been invented......

Yet more proof that we are living in the Fuuuuture! :)