Best Of What's New 2009: Bombproof Wallpaper Test from PopSci.com on Vimeo.

Brad DeLong has, this morning, put up a rather oblique post citing the lyrics of a classic song (Last.fm Chumbawumba song link) about Nedd Ludd. And immediately after, one about Swing. I can hardly imagine the motivation for it at this moment.

Wikipedia has this interesting comment about the Luddites that may put Brad's post into a certain perspective:

Thompson argues that it was the newly-introduced economic system that the Luddites were protesting. For example, the Luddite song, "General Ludd's Triumph":

Obama's shifting positions on technology

It is not encouraging.

If anything is going to slow China down, it’s going to be shit like this. I was reading somewhere a few weeks back about execs not wanting to live in Hong Kong, for fear of what the air blown from upwind industrial facilities is doing to their kids. The Chinese will have to clean up enough so that their upper-middle classes have a nice patch with sunshine in which they can live. For the Chinese, that will prove a lot of work.

Who's there?

Domestic applications/copycats are interesting concepts to contemplate.