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Desert camping, and Dr. Strangelove’s all-zeroes password

Life: I’ve learned one thing this weekend — humans are not designed to function in the desert. I went bush-camping in the Anza-Borrego Desert state park with a few mates, and we quite simply baked in the 45C/113F degree heat. Walking 3 miles in that heat was easily equivalent to 15 miles in normal temperatures.

We did manage to catch a good look at one of the endangered bighorn sheep that live there — the poor sheep was clearly trying to get to some water, but those damn humans kept getting in the way!

On the way back, we passed the aftermath of a forest fire near Temecula. Scorched earth.

Security: via IP — a very scary article at Bruce Blair’s Nuclear Column — apparently, the secret unlocking codes on the launch control mechanisms of Minuteman nuclear missiles were deliberately set to ‘00000000’ throughout the height of the cold war, because the Strategic Air Command ‘remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders.’

Green: A couple of good /. comments on renewable power sources: one from a wind farm designer, and some anti-FUD figures for solar panels.

Music: The full text of
The Timelords’ The Manual (How To Have a Number One the Easy Way) is online:

        THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU
      REVEAL THEIR ZENARCHISTIC METHOD USED
        IN MAKING THE UNTHINKABLE HAPPEN.

                  KLF 009B
          1988 (YOU KNOW WHAT'S GONE) 

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