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My major news outlets are some feeds on my rss, reddit, digg, and am radio. The only place I’m hearing anything worthwhile about this is from the autoblog feed I subscribe to. From their articles, I’ve clicked through to some Detroit news outlets and I infer that CNN and other television news networks are covering it. Maybe it’s being looked over by the mortgage “crisis” or Ahmadinejad speaking these past two days. Or maybe the economy isn’t really determined by the US car makers anymore and I’m just getting old. At anyrate, I’m keeping tabs and things aren’t looking good for GM. CAW is joining UAW, and in the midst of everything, GM is simply playing temptress with an export deal to China (which pretty moot considering how many parts they have have to import from China just to build the product they will export). But the GM stock seems to be holding steady today, so who knows?

Just a simple, interesting article about how a guy won an award (or awards) for a piece of software that was actually a text file that simply read something like, “this is not a program.” How? Because the software download sites just want you to post a badge on your website saying that you won the award so people check out their site (really basic version).

If you’re not following it, you should be. We very well could be at war with this man’s country because of things that he says and things that our government says. The transcript of Ahmadinejad at Columbia University is much easy to understand than trying to listen to his translator’s voice superimposed over his voice.

Here’s the afternoon edition because I somehow forgot that Ahmadinejad is here in the states, talking to students at Columbia U. (The bastard) The question I would like to ask is this: are non-citizens afforded the right of free speech in America? They aren’t afforded the right to work or make wages, are they? IMO, if the US believes that democracy is the way for the world to go, we should be the big people and put our freedom where our mouth is. So here’s some pics of the circus of the day. (I would check out the source blog, but as an opinionated, experiential source. Not necessarily a factual source. Also, the newyork daily news has an interesting opinion of the Iranian. Finally, the transcript of the A-man’s interview with 60 minutes. A read that makes me wish I could believe him. But he’s so shady on some of the key questions that, IMO, I can’t believe him anymore than I believe the US gov’t. (I don’t). But you can’t ignore the fact that he’s damn intelligent, making the reporter eat his ill-thought words right from the start.

Strangely enough (or not) MS has released a downgrade patch for vista. I’m not surprised if there is a patch, but I’m not totally convinced that the source is solid.

Finally, for a bit of monday fun: the relative/comparative sizes of sci-fi vessels. WHERE’S FIREFLY YOU HOES?!?! (I know, I know, the Serenity is probably only like one or two pixels comparatively, but surely that alliance ship could go on there)

Phewf, what a day.

GM is officially on it’s way to bankruptcy. I remember hearing stories about exactly how long it could survive a strike before it went kaput, but that was all hearsay. At any rate, UAW went on strike at 11am after GM and the UAW failed to reach an agreement. GM has about a one month supply of cars in stock, so we’ll wait and see what happens. If the car industry is an indication of the national economy, I hope this doesn’t go as poorly as it could.

Remember that Sci-fi Sliders? Yeah they’ve proved that there could be an infinite number of parallel universes mathematically. Duh duh duhhhhnnnn. Maybe I’ll wake up and women are ruling a world where we’ve taught apes to talk and they tell us that they want to eat dolphins.

No cheap, urban wifi? Say it ain’t so. But not like you didn’t see this coming.

I will be using this tool to setup my upcoming new desk space in my new apartment. I also recommend anyone to use this who really hates sitting at their desk because it’s so damn uncomfortable.

I first learned about Jobs and Wozniak when I did a research paper called something like, “The history of hacking: an introduction to monopolies, politics, and phreaking.” (or something like that… it was awhile ago). I found this historical article through Fake Steve Jobs (I’m too lazy to link, just google it). They were hackers before Jobs, Woz and Gates turned evil. (Gates went first, and probably the farthest into user-rights-hell, Woz just got completely lost, and Jobs probably just figured everything was too ugly for him and then realized he could make everything pretty once again and came back… evil).

What I hope will be the ugly-evite-killer. Complete with party to-do lists.

in a nearly recent world record i have posted twice in one day. i’m not really bored so much as overly productive. that’s right… productive.

found an interesting blog on reddit regarding life in highly radioactive areas (read: Chernobyl) . followed up with the reference article from science a go go (WTF?). the blog author goes into some interesting stream of consciousness regarding the relationship of melanin and radiation as parallel to chlorophyll and sunlight. at first i was not too surprised that melanin (chemical that is widely known as what gives color to skin) changes its composition when exposed to gamma radiation for this reason (in my limited knowledge of the subjects): we turn the suns radiation into vitamin D. it makes sense. at any rate, these are two interesting reads on the evolution of the idea of life as we define and understand it in science.

some interesting surfing for you today. though not very exciting. I was listening to my music this morning with my awesome sony headphones when i noticed some earwax. eww. well, i was curious, so here’s some random, probably useless info on earwax via wikipedia.

also via wikipedia, by way of my brother. Fernet-Branca, a liqueur we had last night that tasted like someone mixed whiskey and gin together. I enjoyed, he enjoyed it, and come to find out, its base is a grape, with a lot of herbs and spices (not unlike gin). So good, i think i’ll be getting a bottle in the not-to-distant future.

i have been toying with idea of getting rid of this blog as a link sharing method. my commentaries, while enlightening and witty (i’m sure), can be time consuming and tedious. plus in my social web surfing way of life, i’ve come to be the generator of several social feeds (del.icio.us, etherealnation.net, flickr, digg, google reader, and several others). a while back i found tumblr, made an account, didn’t figure out what it could be useful for, and just gave up. well, in my quest to minimize my data output (more accurately, simplify) i went back to tumblr, and added in a ton of my data feeds. here is what has happened: my tumblr. sorry to say it doesn’t look like it backfills anything, so there isn’t anything posted there. but don’t worry, it will soon be waaaay too full of stuff for most normal people. so eat your hearts out (on glaring lack of privacy). similar, quicker, but not quite as nice is soup.io.

i do a lot of work with people who work with a lot of other people. do you know what this means for me? MAJOR SCHEDULING ISSUES. so i found timebridge. i’ve recommended it to the people in my life who swear that it would take a full day just trying to schedule 30 minutes with 5 busy people. and the good news is they’ve actually started using it, and so far, it’s really nice. simplified, it’s almost like a business version of evite. but, it allows for alternative date suggestions and it can put the agreed upon meeting time into your google, msoffice, or ical calendars.

and finally for a bit of science, check out nasa’s page for a neat article about a sun spot taking on the shape of the trilobite. also, here’s the video. it’s pretty intense. i mean for one thing, you’re watching the magnetic waves emanating from the surface of the sun. and for another thing, according to the article you’re actually seeing into the sun.

Finding good content can be a bit hairy. I usually bum off the community of editors at reddit or digg. I have a plethora of subscriptions with which I can literally waste an entire day reading. But posting can be somewhat tiresome, even tedious. Well enough of that.

Old wired article from ‘97 RE: 101 Ways to Save Apple or something like that. Fake Steve mentions it in his blog. I remember I had a Performa. I don’t remember who was the CEO then. I just liked to play Marathon (which they have since released as freeware, and yes, I got it.) Then the family switched to PC. My next computer? I haven’t decided. If I get a tower, probably PC. If I decide to go notebook, it’s a Mac.