200711081448

This guy’s an idiot. It’s just so banal and ignorant of the larger picture that I don’t even want to discuss. I feel sorry for you if you don’t get my frustration.

And while I’m really TO’d I’ll include this cute but useless little invention. Hint: YOU STILL HAVE TO USE THE F’ING TONGS.

200711061517

Two articles on the same topic, from the same associated press release with two very different titles. I don’t really care to speculate on what gives. All I’ll say is, source matters. And also, it’s pretty clear that 1) the government is totally clueless about what it does and 2) people are dumb enough to trust this government with things like their healthcare and their retirement. I’d get the links for all that, but I’m lazy and you’re smart: FIGURE IT OUT. the sad thing is that of all the things we shouldn’t trust the government to do, protecting us and our borders is one of the things we should trust them to do. guffaw, guffaw.

And while I’m on the topic of the government of the people, I HOPE YOU PEOPLE VOTED TODAY. Whining on and on about how you aren’t properly represented. I know state and local elections are a lot more confusingly gray as opposed to the highly media-cized presidential popularity contests, but seriously if you care so much about your government and your rights start at the local level. You’ll thank me.

From the psycho teen angst department, I read this today in the headlines. I’m just gonna go out and say it here, that kid needs to be checked in. Look I know we all get dis-associative at times, but this is a little ridiculous. Plus his mom at least seems likable based on what I read in the article. And to the mom who took him to the hotel room: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Ok, telling his mom was the right thing to do, but helping him get into that situation in the first place. I’m betting that if that hadn’t have been a cop, you could be an accessory at worst and at best you’d find yourself wading in a pool of your friend’s blood. You get the gold star for the day.

Also, unless I’m mistaken, FOX or some idiot scientist/numerologist/statistician/whatever needs to check the math on this one. While it certainly is an interesting useless factoid, 1 in 10 IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM 407 out of 7634.

I must do this because I’m bored. Some kid in VA won the right to have an anti-abortion club in her school.  Now look I’m all about not killing babies, but some of these religious fanatics (I’m one of them… on some issues), need to get it in their skull that just as much as they have the right to an anti-abortion club, some smart-aleck’s gonna have the right to a pro-baby killing club. That’s the way free-speech swings and if you don’t like it, TOO BAD.

The airline industry sucks. I don’t know why it’s still around. Oh wait, yes, it’s coming back to me… consumers are idiots. Between the FAA’s ridiculous regulations and people practically dying while they’re trapped for hours in a plane taxiing around a totally inefficient runway system, the airlines are trying to take away your little peanut snacks. But apparently they’re getting better at leaving on time. Woooooo you also get a gold star for the day. I hope you airline moguls are happy.

I give up. I’m so burnt out on being negative and edgy that I just can’t go on. Here’s the rest of my links for this post sans-witty commentary.

Moron the farm bill – excuse me… More on the farm bill.

Radiohead goes out on good faith and the cheap punks take advantage of them. I said I was done commenting, well I lied. Now I download albums, I’ll be the first to admit it (as long as the moochers over at the RIAA aren’t knocking at my door). But seriously, what did you think would happen. Most of the people on the torrent networks are LEACHERS. And I’ll reasonably bet that the 60% or so who didn’t pay for the album are the punks that don’t share on the torrent networks.

And now for some software.

Visuwords – I really like this. Particularly because it’s like a thesaurus, but better.

Mofuse – This looks interesting, especially if you’re big into accessibility/mobility. I used to have my blogs compatible with the iPhone and some Mobiles at one point.

And finally, of interest to some in my close circle: This dude lived in Trappe.

200711061033

i’ve had netvibes for some time. i just now took the time to add a good number of news feeds to it. i’m thinking this will be an improvement in my blogging process since i can see at a glance what’s being talked about on the news line and i don’t have to deal with the ranking crap of reddit and digg (but i do have digg in my netvibes, never know what you’ll find)

First up today, girls gone wild? well, yes, but on facebook. probably NSFW, I braved it, though somewhat suspiciously. Now I haven’t been able to check the credibility of this, but I at least can say that I haven’t noticed anyone in my network of friends posting that stuff. I myself am not exempt either. I just post it elsewhere for everyone to find it.

Science blog article from wired about dumping urea into the sea to offset CO2 by stimulating the growth of O2 producing algae. To me it seems like environmentalist infighting. Here are some people who have an idea of how to fix a problem, and the people who want the fix are saying “not really gonna let you do that.” It’s oversimplification, I know. But the topic warrants looking into the source article referenced and the related topics as well.

Is the human race mutating? No not really, actually it was probably pretty insensitive of me to say that, but I digress. This is a pretty popular story among the news outlets. This girl was born with 8 extra limbs. I can’t really tell from the picture which ones they are. If I had a say I wouldn’t take them off unless it really adversely affected her health (it does, I’m just saying..), because hey, who hasn’t wanted to be a human spider? I kid, I kid.

This is just one of many many articles analyzing Google’s announcement of Android – an open mobile technology platform. I just happened to find this one. I’m psyched about this if it pans out. I’ve always been sick of ATT et. all locking phones up and limiting my choices as a consumer through contracts. I recently shelled out a good wad of cash just to say FU and bought a phone not sold as a contract package by ATT. Yay me, right?

I’m really not a financial expert, but if the dollar keeps falling I’m gonna be pinching for my vaca this winter. It seems this is largely based on irresponsible borrowing and lending. With our GDP so high, what gives?

200710021011

Hello October! No posts for this serial, but I have started tumbling, or collecting all of my various data feeds into one blog. it’s etherealnation.tumblr.com. Check it out and subscribe to it. It’s information overload, trust me.

200709251346

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.

200709241614

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)

200709241405

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.

200709211126

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.

200708161012

What is the first sale doctrine anyways? But my favorite question in this whole thing is: Do you actually own anything digital that you’ve bought? According to most software EULA’s you don’t. But fortunately, as the article points out, this guy isn’t the only person who’s fought this, and won.

Some scientists have sped up the speed of light, or as they say, broken the speed of light. They used a bunch of quantum mechanic mumbledy-jumbledy, but in general the comments on this are skeptical at best.

In quite a scandalous uproar, reddit users found an article that actually advocates the GWBush become the president for life, or dictator. I’ve heard rumor that if he did ascend the throne of America to become the dictator, American citizens have the constitutional right to kill him (but I need to do the fact checking). Needless to say, Family Security Matters took down the article and the only way to read it now is in the google cache.

I would like to now say two things: 1) We’re in Iraq under false pretenses, please find and kill Bin Laden then remove ourselves from the Middle East for good, we’re just making things worse. And 2) I would like to point out that they didn’t kill Americans, they killed innocent civilians. These people are animals.

America should have this holiday.

Scientists found that squirrel’s have a secret weapon: heat. They’re tails give off infrared information that confuses certain predators, particularly rattle snakes.

200707101124

i just found this blog/zine/whatever site that keeps track of web-based apps. it is now both in my reader and in my del.icio.us and i plan on reading it frequently to learn of new and awesome apps to use on the web.

another site worthy of a del.icio.us tag, bust-a-name helps you find the domain name that you want and that is available.

i don’t usually link to lew because i typically find the articles interesting enough for myself, but rarely enamoring (or MOtR) enough to post here. this particular article addresses the quagmire that is US involvement with nuclear weapons.

Snow in Buenos Aires. I’m not too good with international weather patterns, but apparently this only happens every hundred years or so. For those who are geographically challenged: google maps.

Apparently not an uncommon thing to do, but the guy who is Harry Potter wears the same clothes everyday to fool the Paparazzi. I’m not sure how effective it is, but it at least sounds pretty clever.

GOP conspiracy theories are in the thick these days. My ole buddy santorum has been hinting about attacks on the us. now if i hinted that there would be attacks on the US in the upcoming months you can be sure as hell i’d be sent to Gitmo. I’m just sayin’s all.

and to continue my hegemony against the us, this Irish economist points out that the international community is pretty fed up with our economically retarded policies of borrowing more, spending more, and saving nothing. somebody needs to be saying it. bread and circus??? and in case you’re wondering, here’s what he means by two fingers.