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I want you all to know, I almost didn’t post this. But then I thought, “self, this is not your life.” And I thusly decided to reveal to you the secret innermost workings of the internet. It is, manbabies.com. Yes, you heard me correctly. Now when you visit this site try to image yourself in one of those pictures. And from now on, consider how you compose your facial features in a picture. Because you never know when someone may swap your head with a baby’s head. Just sayin’.

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.

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.

Unrest in Georgia. The president there is American backed, yet the Soviet Union (Yes, yes, I call it that on purpose) still considers it to be in it’s sphere of influence. And they like to play the same way the US does: economic sanctions. Despite the fact that they are trying to westernize (they are even part of the EU) a large part of their economy still depends on trade with Russia. This is the way it is in Eastern Europe. But trust me, they make excellent wine. Support them by ordering a bottle or two. By the way, the protests are blamed on Russian insurgent types, but also because people are blaming the current president/pm on not being faster about the economy and land grabbing.

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.

Wired reports on the makers of Guitar Hero expanding their repertoire. I unfortunately haven’t felt like having a full sized video ipod since I inherited a family member’s nano. I’ll try and get my brother to get it so I can try it out. I like Harmonix’s idea of find something good then repeat the hell out of it. It’s great for making money.

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.

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?

Spring-Ford Reporter:

To the Editor:

Halloween. I like it. Lot’s of people like it. There’s much to do with Halloween. From decorations and cooking to costumes and candy, people busy themselves with preparing much for the merrymaking involved with the holiday. Decorations have always been a great way to communicate the holiday spirit. But to my recollection, the decorations of Halloween never rivaled the intensity of Christmas decorations, that is, until recently.

Houses and store windows alike are now full of pumpkins and gravestones, ghouls and monsters alike. They draw the attention of the passer-by and capture the imagination of children seeking out their Halloween treasures of candy. One particular store had windows that absolutely blew my mind to pieces. After a pleasant night of said Halloween Merrymaking, a small group of my friends and I decided to have our own Halloween parade along the sidewalk of Main St. in Royersford. During that walk we passed a store that many of us had passed countless times before without much scrutiny. Its windows are usually decorated in concert with the season and are always pleasant to look at in passing by. But this night my friends and I were intent on finding entertainment and so, I was surprised at the gravity with which this store’s windows held our attentions and our wondrous amazement.

Not that many store’s don’t make windows worth examining, but to me I think there was something more, something that made these windows worth more than just examination, something that made these windows special. Something so quotidian to the daily by-passer, but so sublime when one slowed the pace of their life to really take in the artful arrangement that actually spoke with such a beautifully haunting narrative. Windows done well will always have a narration, but windows that narrate with a voice that has no other purpose than to whisper the haunting prose of the artist’s visual memory have the ability to enslave the viewer’s mind’s eye and wholly capture their imagination.

But how could such a simple and everyday window arranged with simple and everyday objects be arranged for a holiday to speak with such a voice? I would say that this is an example of the idea that the sum of the parts will always have a greater effect that the parts themselves. With dolls and chests and lace, ghosts and ghouls and picture frames, the obvious elements simply looked like Halloween. But with more examination the details became the basis of the haunt. Dolls that hid in a chest beside an over-sized hand and seemed to be peeking out on a world that was totally foreign to them. A ballerina on point refused to face her audience. Perhaps she was in the middle of a spin, but most seemingly, she was not interested in her audience or she had something to hide. Faces of famous people like Michael Jackson painted in gaudy exaggerations of facial color then framed as if they were the masterpiece - stared out into the window scene. At the center, a woman whose face was unspeakably rotted was comforted by a headless husband as she sat silently on her rocking chair. But behind it all was the orchestrator of the scene. It was the silent partner that stared straight into your soul, but could not be found. And when you did find that head hidden in the far back corner of the scene, you spent all your energy not to reel away in complete terror at what you had found.

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.

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.

This is a long time coming and a really late post. I apologize. I got so busy surfing, I forgot why I was surfing - to editorialize my little slice of the web. So here’s three gems from this morning’s surf.

CNET has a decent article about search engine privacy. There’s plenty of interesting survey data linked to in the article. Search engines are basically reacting to the insane security breach AOL had last year when users could pull up all the search terms that went through AOL at a certain point in time. These privacy issues are also being addressed because, as the article points out, search histories are beginning to be used for criminal convictions.

Have you ever sealed a bacon and an egg in a sealed environment and let them rot? I haven’t. That’s why I like the internet. I can learn from other people’s experiences in a fraction of the time. Great pictures included.

Companies like FOX have equal access to wikis. Surprise? Not really. Changing articles to reflect their company in a more flattering light? Priceless. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were entire PR armies bent specifically to monitor and edit wiki articles to serve a corporation’s pleasure.

AppScout posts a little article about a webapp called 71 miles. I haven’t been able to check it out for myself, but it looks promising.

If you’re going to get a new cellphone, you may want to check out exPhone to find good directions on how to donate or recycle your old cellphone.

Also in the cellphone sphere of the webernet, check out cellswaper. You can sign-on and swap around your annoying contract to either get a shorter one or get rid of your old one.

Freak out about oil? Freak out about water? Just freak out because humans will destroy the earth? I dunno, but here’s a couple articles about 1) running out of water and 2) stop drinking bottled water.

A really boring article about yawning.

Hilarious blog entry about Iranian news reporting that 1)the US (implied) is using squirrels to spy on Iran and 2) that

Maybe, Imam will use UFOs to attack his enemies.

Now, I’m not saying this is a valid source (note the massive attack of popup ads), but it is at least entertaining.

I’ve probably blogged about this before but, the open sourced cellphone has begun selling developer editions for 300$ or so. I’ll be keeping my eye on this over the next couple of years. I’m not sure but as far as I know this is the first example of a commercially available opensourced hardware/software object.

while i’m still skeptical about carbon output issues, makemesustainable is a neat take on social webbing that let’s you calculate your carbon footprint and take practical steps to reduce it.