In an article at the daily galaxy, there’s an interesting idea postulated that perhaps the next space war is between software companies. I would agree. HAL 9K anyone? I mean we meandered through the days of WIN 2K, I just figure it’s the next logical step. But I digress. I think previously, I linked to google sky. It’s a fun program right up to the point where you sit down and try to figure out exactly where you are in the sky. That’s the trick. You’re behind you. Oh nevermind. It’s an interesting article. Go read it.

The New York Times must always be patting itself on the back for naming their “BITS” section. I mean come on, who comes up with all those clever little acronyms. However, they do have an interesting, not so assumptive article about a media giant mfer who is now without express permission, as a part of their “service”, going to log EVERY WEBSITE THEIR USERS GO TO and sell that information to an advertiser. In Karl Marx language, they are flexing untapped capitol created by their users to create more profit. Now, I’m a business likin’ kind of guy, so I don’t mind profit too much. But I do particularly care about personal information. Who is to stop them from selling to the highest bidder? What if that bidder was the US Government? Would you like it then? What if the ad company was simply a shell company created by the government to legitimately purchase private information without the oversight and overbearing (dis-)approval of the public? This is dangerous folks, and it should not be allowed.

Finally, my google dear hearts (also cutthroat advertisers) have integrated their photo service and wikipedia directly into google maps. I recommend you all check it out. It’s a lot of fun.

A quickie: an engine falls off a plane during take-off. Where’s superman when you need him to make sure airline timetables are kept?

The girl with 8 limbs continues to recover. She showed movement in the limbs they kept, which is a good sign apparently. Among the stats: it was a 24+ hour surgery, it took  30+ doctors, it cost $625,000 (I assume that’s US$), they were charged $0, being thought of as a reincarnated god: priceless. (I know, I know, lame… pfft)

If I could invent a disease to get out of life, this is what it would be. 30 Students walked out in protest, 300 or so students simply aren’t coming to school, and parents are flipping their lids because some students and teachers have a weird “twitch”. How rich…

A neat looking program I’m going to be using asap.  Xentient thumbnails does a much better job putting your images into icon thumbnails in windows.

LA Times article on some totally awesome political positioning by the do-nothing congress of 2007. They’re reporting that the Republican Right wanted to force a quick vote on the impeachment of Cheney and that the Democratic Left wanted to delay the vote. Boy, I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. But I think I’ve gotten to the psychology of it all. Congress is simply overwhelmed with everything they have to do, they’re just procrastinating. Don’t worry though, in my experience this predicament is easily solved by SUCKING IT UP AND DOING THE JOB I’M PAID TO DO. (And I shouldn’t need to remind you that the American people are the ones footing the bill for this circus.)

Is the American school shooting epidemic? spreading to Finland? American school shootings are still bloodier and more bizarre. Just sayin’. I mean look at that kid who hired a hitman (admittedly not related to school), and that kid in the Philly area who was stockpiling guns.

And I found a picture of the 4 legged, 4 armed girl with all her appendiges (down at the bottom). I regret it. It’s really gross, not spider-like or cool at all. Also, probably not really SFW. At any rate, some good doctors fixed her up! Yay for modern medicine.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.