Sunday, February 24, 2008

I, NSA


I love spy stuff, especially the James Bondian variety, but I sure don't want my government using any of this stuff on me.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

As an aficionado of spy novels I worry that our government is using the nastier stuff found in the genre.

hipparchia said...

nothing else i have can top my collection of murder mysteries, but my collection of spy stories is probably running a respectable[?] second.


nxonhd nixon, on hd tv

Anonymous said...

The overwhelming majority of this stuff is designed to solicit defense industry welfare - proposals get funded by some idiot in contracts and never go anywhere.

As I remember from my days, the best thing that good have been developed would have six-copy NCR paper that produced a readable bottom copy without driving the type through the top layer.

That Bond stuff may work in books, but in the real world, while you are trying to use the appropriate setting on your 100 function lighter the bad guy has planted a ball point in your brain.

Unknown said...

It seems we have similar reading habits! I, too, am a reader of murder mysteries. I rather prefer the English detectives, even when the books are written by Americans—for example, Martha Grimes.

hipparchia said...

all the best people love murder nysteries, i've decided.

yes, the british are my favorites, too. i've got every word agatha christie ever wrote. in triplicate, for some of them. i've only got a couple of martha grimes' books, 'the horse you rode in on' being the one that first drew my attention.

hipparchia said...

sigh... typos, typos....

hipparchia said...

... while you are trying to use the appropriate setting on your 100 function lighter the bad guy has planted a ball point in your brain.

your one-liners are an endless source of delight!


anything that improves the process of government paperwork is to be celebrated [i hated those copies].

i honestly don't mind funding a lot of pie-in-the-sky research on gadgetry that might or might not ever work. being a die-hard redistributionist and an inveterate tinkerer myself, i approve of the government employing lots and lots of people at decent wages to try new stuff.

what i object to is [1] the obscene profits made by a few, and [2] the kinds of gadgets and the uses that the money-givers want to put them to. pain rays? record and mine every photon of internet communication? etc....