Silicon Valley Redneck

Product idea!

Totally not what I'm supposed to be doing, mind you, but these things just kinda pop into my head.

What the world needs now, for the WuFlu Zombie Apocalypse?  We've seen those non-contact fever thermometers in use, right?

Well... how about a version that mounts on a Picatinny rail?

Engineered bioweapon, hmmm.

In our last installment of Doctor The WHO and the Chronovirus, Dr. Tedros Boutros Boutros-Gallifrey finally conceded that the Virus had achieved pandemic status, a little.  The effect this admission will have upon the world remains to be seen.

Back in the tinfoil-hatted world of the Interwebs, there's (inevitably) ongoing speculation that the Kung Flu virus is a bioweapon engineered by a Chinese lab.

Various sensible people have pointed out that the known attributes of the virus (especially the incubation period) are not at all consistent with a good military weapon, unless its origin is extraterrestrial (Purple Death, Drakh Plague, that sort of thing).

On the other hand... what if it's a bioweapon, but the purpose is other than military?

• It shuts down commerce, and thereby greatly reduces carbon-dioxide emissions.
• It reduces the human population.
• It preferentially thins out the elderly population.
• A mechanism has been proposed whereby it could cause male sterility.

Could it be some sort of Green Plague, designed by an extreme misanthrope to do exactly these things and thereby usher in a fancied new Green Golden Age?

I can't help thinking of Jimmy Bond:

Handle these capsules with care. Dr. Noah's bacillus is highly contagious. This germ, when distributed in the atmosphere will make all women beautiful and destroy all men over 4'6." Please handle these capsules with care.

And some more-than-half-forgotten Charles Sheffield reference is floating around the back of my head, looking for something to connect to.

(Yeah, this is some real tinfoil-hattery here.  But, with home DNA-splicing kits and some hard-core crazy people out there, the category of worry is at least on the horizon.  See also: whichever Sheffield novel it is that's rattling around in the back of my head.)

Freedom of association...

... is not the same thing as free association, though both are generally considered to be protected by the First Amendment.

I did a bit of idle free-associating after finding myself behind a car bearing two window stickers featuring the logo of what turns out to be a supplier of skateboard underpinnings.

The word that springs to mind is "cruciform".  Cruciform, cruciferous, luciferin, luciferase.  Hm.

Wonder what would happen if you threw a bucket of luciferase at the Devil?

I need funding for a project to send bottles of synthetic firefly enzyme into the afterlife!  Maybe as burial goods for dead evil people.

Yeah, my brain is functioning erratically this week.  I did manage to maintain focus for a few hours today, and get some real work done.

Here's a concept for ya

"Fractional reserve blood banking."

Update: That particular thought was brought on by something in the morning funnies. Here we go: this morning's F-.  But...

Now I remember another concept, from yesterday, following from the observation that ATMs only dispense twenties.

Print-on-demand money!

Well... banks can create dollars, right?  So why can't they commit those dollars to paper?

Don't think too hard about it.

If your parents were gay, chances are you will be too.

Science! has at long last identified the Gay Gene, proving once and for all that it's hereditary.

The obvious implication for social policy is that we ought not to allow gay marriage, as it only encourages them to reproduce.