How do drug companies come up with their crazy brand names? This is how...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2007-10-07-drug-names_N.htm

NAFTA's impact on U.S. employment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA%27s_Impact_on_US_Employment

NAFTA's opponents attribute much of the displacement caused in the US labor market to the United States’ growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. According to the EPI, the widening of the deficit has caused the dislocation of domestic production to other countries with cheaper labor and supported the loss of 879,280 US jobs. Critics see the argument of the proponents of NAFTA as being one-sided because they only take into consideration export-oriented job impact instead of looking at the trade balance in aggregate. They argue that increases in imports ultimately displaced the production of goods that would have been made domestically by workers within the United States.

The export-oriented argument is also critiqued because of the discrepancy between domestically-produced exports and exports produced in foreign countries. For example, many US exports are simply being shipped to Mexican maquiladores where they are assembled, and then shipped back to the U.S. as final products. These are not products destined for consumption by Mexicans, yet they made up 61% of exports in 2002. However, only domestically-produced exports are the ones that support U.S. labor. Therefore, the measure of net impact of trade should be calculated using only domestically-produced exports as an indicator of job creation.

78% of the net job losses under NAFTA, 686,700 jobs, were relatively-high paying manufacturing jobs. Certain states with heavy emphasis on manufacturing industries like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and California were significantly affected by these job losses.

Modern Library list of 100 best 20th century novels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Library_List_of_Best_20th-Century_Novels#The_List

theory on why Europeans are so white

All meats have some vitamin D. Fish have very high amounts. But grains have no vitamin D at all. People who eat grains do not get vitamin D from food; they must get it from sunlight. This usually works out fine because grains grow only where it is warm. And this means only in latitudes with bright sunlight, with one exception. People who live in low latitudes, where they can live off grains, get plenty of sunlight. People who live in dim sunlight cannot grow grains, and so they get vitamin D from the meat and fish that they eat. The exception? There is only one spot on the planet where grains will grow despite sub-arctic sunlight. It is where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream wash ashore. The Baltic is the only place on earth where ocean currents keep it warm enough to grow grain despite dim sunlight. When the inhabitants of this region switched to grain about 6 KYA, they suddenly got insufficient vitamin D to survive. They had stopped eating mostly meat and fish in a place where sunlight was too dim to produce vitamin D in normally pigmented skin. And so they adapted by retaining into adulthood the infantile trait of extreme paleness.


taken from: http://knol.google.com/k/why-are-europeans-white-e1#




another interesting article:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100057939

The Winter War (AKA don't mess with Finland)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcYo_eKGkCMUp9bP-0toI-NL1E4QG4xwBZwrsRpEkor_Vx5BJcNREDW7MBsn2CDU1uy39JELOyRUlUQz2_aTuY00Dzo4pcXRwa7bBxjEQj4-ZjUm1Xd2xKFlHUEcqax141mFGVOHhOZ8L/s800/fdccax.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcYo_eKGkCMUp9bP-0toI-NL1E4QG4xwBZwrsRpEkor_Vx5BJcNREDW7MBsn2CDU1uy39JELOyRUlUQz2_aTuY00Dzo4pcXRwa7bBxjEQj4-ZjUm1Xd2xKFlHUEcqax141mFGVOHhOZ8L/s800/fdccax.jpg

Apple & LaLa, Microsoft & NewsCorp, Comcast & NBC

The big thing right now is to try and gain more control over the channels of distribution.

Within the past few weeks Apple has purchased LaLa, Comcast has gained control over NBC, and Microsoft supposedly offered NewsCorp some financial reward for de-listing from Google search.


I just can't believe Comcast has control of the oldest and most important television network. It doesn't seem right.

A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits

- by Matt Taibbi


On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email

How Your Brain Works (mayo clinic slideshow)

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/brain/BN00033/RETURNTOLINK=1&RETURNTOOBJID=87550A09-A5DC-4475-BFE663DE6EAF63F1&slide=1

Seth's blog

Seth Godin consistently posts some of the most interesting and thought provoking blogs on the web.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Inventor creates inexpensive self-adjustable eyeglasses

It was a chance conversation on March 23 1985 ("in the afternoon, as I recall") that first started Josh Silver on his quest to make the world's poor see. A professor of physics at Oxford University, Silver was idly discussing optical lenses with a colleague, wondering whether they might be adjusted without the need for expensive specialist equipment, when the lightbulb of inspiration first flickered above his head.

What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be "tuned" by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them?

More than two decades after posing that question, Silver now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable - to offer glasses to a billion of the world's poorest people by 2020.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/22/diy-adjustable-glasses-josh-silver

Red vs Blue

Studies show that people who work in environments that display the color red show more caution and care in their work, while people working in a blue environment display more creative thinking.

This suggests that the colors you surround yourself with actually matter.


There are also studies that show that referees subconsciously favor a team wearing the color red over the color blue.

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - by Matt Taibbi

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email

Have You Ever Had To Answer These Interview Questions?

http://glipress.blogspot.com/2008/12/5-interview-questions-that-mean-youre.html

The "Good Enough" Revolution

Robert Capps wrote an interesting article for Wired called "The Good Enough Revolution" that was published in Sept. 2009 Edition of the North American version of Wired magazine.


"What consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high quality"."


This is what makes mp3s better than CDs. This is what makes DVD better than Blu-Ray, and instant netflix streaming videos better than DVD. This is what makes a 3 megapixel digital camera better than a $5000 35mm film camera.
This is what makes digital streaming over the internet better than physical, tangible objects.


http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough

When (not) To Use Flash

What is photography's greatest scourge? Cellphone cameras? MySpace self-portraiture? Neither even comes close to the insidious, creeping threat that is your camera's built-in flash. Here's when and how you should—and more importantly, shouldn't—use a flash.

Avid photographers, you already know the score, and this isn't a guide for you. Nor is it for the dude with the brand-new 5D Mk II with an external flash gun, or the weekend strobist. This is a reference to be passed around as a public service; a quick guide for the aquarium-flashing, face-flushing, baby-blinding friends and family you all know and tolerate love.
When You Shouldn't:

At Large Events
Every time I go to a nighttime sporting event or concert, I see hundreds of starry flickers coming from the stands. When I see them, I die a little inside. For your average point-and-shoot, the effective range of your built-in flash is about 15 feet. You might stretch this to 20 feet if you jack up your camera's ISO settings to 800 (or God forbid 1600), but under no circumstances will your camera's flash reach down to the field or stage.

http://gizmodo.com/5376271/giz-explains-when-not-to-use-your-cameras-flash
http://gizmodo.com/5376271/giz-explains-when-not-to-use-your-cameras-flash

The looming trade war between China and the U.S.

Don't worry about the U.S.-China trade war over poultry and car tires. Worry about the coming conflict over T-bills and derivatives.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216754?from=rss
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216754?from=rss

Comcast finally does something right

Comcast is launching a trial on Thursday of a new automated service that will warn broadband customers of possible virus infections, if the computers are behaving as if they have been compromised by malware. For instance, a significant overnight spike in traffic being sent from a particular Internet Protocol address could signal that a computer is infected with a virus taking control of the system and using it to send spam as part of a botnet.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-350878.html

This Is The Road I'm On, And There Is No Other

There is a teaching in Buddhist thought that says you shouldn't worry too much about the things that might have gone wrong in your life because there is only one path.
There is a destiny, and we are merely running the program.
Regret is pointless, dread is pointless.
We are living the only lives we can.
We are being the only versions of ourselves that we could possibly be.

CrimeReports.com maps where the crime is in your neighborhood

http://crimereports.com/
http://crimereports.com/

More Info. Leads To Less Knowledge

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson

Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?
You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven't.

Robert Proctor doesn't think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he's a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.

Cooking Is What Makes Us Human

The simple, everyday act of cooking could have given humans an evolutionary edge over apes, researchers proposed at a scientific meeting this week.

Preparing meals is a "signature feature" of the human diet that likely originated in the extinct species Homo erectus 1.8 million years ago.

"The hallmark of dietary evolution is our flexibility and plasticity. What made humans humans is the ability to find or make a meal in the environment," said William Leonard, an anthropologist at Northwestern University who was not involved in the new research.

H. erectus had a large brain and body size, and many believe that the species' hunter-gatherer lifestyle—associated with more cooked meat—fueled its growth.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090213-human-diet-cooking.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090213-human-diet-cooking.html

What Are You Good At? - written by Seth Godin

What are you good at?

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you've developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head.

Domain knowledge is important, but it's (often) easily learnable.

Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it's usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it's hard to accredit or check off in a database.

Venture capitalists like hiring second or third time entrepreneurs because they understand process, not because they can do a spreadsheet.

As the world changes ever faster, as industries shrink and others grow, process ability is priceless. Figure out which sort of process you're world-class at and get even better at it. Then, learn the domain... that's what the internet is for.

One of the reasons that super-talented people become entrepreneurs is that they can put their process expertise to work in a world that often undervalues it.


http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/what-are-you-good-at.html
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/what-are-you-good-at.html

Black Swan Theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

The theory was described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan. Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as "black swans"—undirected and unpredicted. He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, and the September 11, 2001 attacks as examples of Black Swan events.

The term Black Swan comes from the 17th century European assumption that 'All swans are white'. In that context, a black swan was a symbol for something that was impossible or could not exist. In the 18th Century, the discovery of black swans in Western Australia metamorphosed the term to connote that a perceived impossibility may actually come to pass. Taleb notes that John Stuart Mill first used the Black Swan narrative to discuss falsification.

Quit Every 3 Years - by Chris Anderson

"When I was at The Economist, there was a policy to rotate everyone every three years. The idea was that fresh eyes were more important than experience.

I was thinking about the three-year rule while reading about Malcolm Gladwell's observation that it takes 10,000 hours to become truly expert at something. If you really throw yourself into a job, you'll spend 60 hours a week working. That's 3,000 hours a year (allowing for vacation), which means you'll hit the 10,000 hour mark a few months after your third year.

So maybe that's where the three-year rule comes from. You're now expert at what you set out to master. Great. Now go do something else."

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/12/do-something-ne.html
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/12/do-something-ne.html

how to connect your laptop to your TV

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-connect-your-laptoppccomputer-to-your-tv/
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-connect-your-laptoppccomputer-to-your-tv/

ultimate boot CD for windows

http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm
http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm

the 10 most useful Linux commands

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=452
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=452

How To Make The Ultimate Haunted House

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Make_The_Ultimate_DIY_Haunted_House

You Cannot Escape McDonald's

The farthest from a McDonald's you can possibly be within the contiguous 48 states is 107 miles. (In South Dakota)


http://blog.dagoosh.com/post/2009/09/22/furthest-point-from-mcdonalds.aspx

Against All Odds

A slightly-perverted universal-truth is that great successes almost always occur against a backdrop of ridiculously-bad odds.

Why?

Because, if it wasn’t so unlikely or so hard, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn’t be considered such a great or unusual achievement. Life is one big risk. Seemingly daunting statistics and odds swarm all around us.

Consider the following:

* Ninety-five percent of new businesses fail within 5-years.
* Ninety-nine percent of all professional-speakers earn less than $1 million in their entire careers.
* Eighty percent of restaurants fail within two years.
* Ninety-nine percent of people trying out for a role in TV, theater or film will not get the job.
* Ninety percent of law-students don’t make Law Review.


read the entire article here:
http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/odds-are-for-suckers/
http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/odds-are-for-suckers/

this will make hypnotize you into giving me money...

http://www.401.no/baldrikk/plasmatest.html
http://www.401.no/baldrikk/plasmatest.html

the best way to get rid of rats - use religion

Creedocide
Uploaded by greenfaace. - Watch more comedy videos and sitcoms.

Blockbuster Video - Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

http://consumerist.com/5360321/yeah-blockbuster-is-pretty-much-f

http://consumerist.com/5360321/yeah-blockbuster-is-pretty-much-f


Back in the day there used to be these things called VHS tapes. They used to cost a lot of money — so there were these places you could go to rent them. The last surviving relic of this bygone era, Blockbuster Video (also known as the company that was almost stupid enough to buy Circuit City), announced in a regulatory filing today that it plans to close over 800 stores by the end of next year. This is nearly twice the number they previously announced.

The LA Times says that 18% of the chains stores are unprofitable — and 47% are barely profitable. The company plans to get away from physical stores and concentrate on opening kiosks to compete with the surging popularity of Redbox.

In all, the Times says that as many of 1,560 of Blockbuster's 4,356 stores could close down or be converted into "outlets."

GOD (B)LESS AMERICA

I saw a neon sign a few days ago that read "God Bless America"...
except the "B" was sort of shorting out.

It made me realize that our whole war in the middle east, and culture clash in America hinges on that B.

Water Found On Moon - sort of

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/water-moon/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/water-moon/

Wyoming Bank Forces Google To Close Gmail Account

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138619/Google_and_bank_end_dispute_over_Gmail_account

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138619/Google_and_bank_end_dispute_over_Gmail_account


As you may have already read, a bank in the state of Wyoming accidentally emailed confidential bank info to the wrong email address. They then asked Google to turn over the name of the account holder. Google said "no". A judge then ordered Google to close the user's gmail account.
This issue has now been resolved. We don't get many of the real details however.

The interesting thing is that the gmail user didn't do anything wrong. All they did was RECEIVE confidential bank info.
I guess if we've learned anything during the past 3 years, it's that when a bank screws up, it's everyone else's responsibility to fix it.

How Dangerous Is Plastic?

Plastic is one of the most important inventions ever.
but how safe is it to store food in?


News of possible health threats associated with plastic bothered Jeanne Haegele of Chicago so much that she has quit using plastic. The 28-year-old marketing coordinator chronicles her efforts online at www.lifelessplastic.blogspot.com. “Plastic is absolutely everywhere–our food is packaged in it, our clothes are often made out of it, and even baby toys are made of plastic,” Haegele says. “It was scary that something that was such a big part of my life might be dangerous.”

Scientists are mostly worried about bisphenol-A or BPA. “It’s an endocrine disruptor and in numerous animal studies it’s been linked to cancer, infertility, obesity and early puberty,” says Anila Jacob, M.D., M.P.H., a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit research and advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. “The CDC has found this chemical in 93 percent of people they have tested,” she says.

BPA is a chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic or items marked with the number 7 on the bottom. Some plastic dishes, cups, reusable water bottles and baby bottles are made out of polycarbonate. Heating foods in polycarbonate plastic increases the amount of BPA that leaches into food, Jacob says. Frances Beinecke, president of the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental action group, worries about BPA’s possible role in breast cancer. Beinecke, a breast cancer survivor, says BPA is a synthetic form of estrogen, and doctors know estrogen feeds breast cancer. “It ramps up cell division in pre-cancerous cells and it can prompt tumors to metastasize,” she says. “In animal studies, BPA has been found to cause the early onset of puberty and stimulate mammary gland development in females. The estrogen-like properties in BPA are so strong that even when male rodents were exposed to it, they had an increased risk of mammary tumors.” The studies done to date have all been on animals, Jacob says, because it’s difficult to study in humans as we have already been exposed via multiple routes. “We think the animal data is convincing enough that it warrants concern,” Jacob says.


more:
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/what-plastics-do-to-your-body.html
http://lifelessplastic.blogspot.com/

copy music from your ipod to your computer

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-computer
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-computer

Wireless Battery-Charger

http://www.wired.com/video/gadgets/ces-2009/6310841001/wireless-power-energizes-any-device/6751413001
http://www.wired.com/video/gadgets/ces-2009/6310841001/wireless-power-energizes-any-device/6751413001

Do Human-like Machines Deserve Human Rights?

interesting article in WIRED

If a machine really SEEMS human, or close to human; at what point do we offer it protection from abuse?

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-02/st_essay
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-02/st_essay

ninja cat

The Loneliest Place On Earth - Tristan Da Cunha

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/11/most-remote-place-on-earth.html

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/11/most-remote-place-on-earth.html

Wikipedia list of common misconceptions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Google Custom Search

You can customize your Google searches.
For example here is a Google .torrent file search box:

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=003849996876419856805:erhhdbygrma&ie=UTF-8&q=&sa=Search

PNC Park - Home of the Pittsburgh Pirates

link to the full-size picture:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Pedro_goes_to_Pittsburgh.jpg

As the Internet turns 40 it faces unforeseen issues

"NEW YORK -

Goofy videos weren't on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a billion people online.

Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and the World Wide Web.

There's still plenty of room for innovation today, yet the openness fostering it may be eroding. While the Internet is more widely available and faster than ever, artificial barriers threaten to constrict its growth.

Call it a mid-life crisis.

A variety of factors are to blame. Spam and hacking attacks force network operators to erect security firewalls. Authoritarian regimes block access to many sites and services within their borders. And commercial considerations spur policies that can thwart rivals, particularly on mobile devices like the iPhone."


read more here:
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090830/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_internet_at40

Detroit is on the brink of ruin

"DETROIT, Mich -- Detroit has fallen so far into debt that the only way out is through bankruptcy or mass layoffs, according to a former city auditor who is familiar with the city's financial structure.

Mayor Dave Bing is trying to plug a $60-million to $80-million cash shortfall and deal with a ballooning $300-million deficit. He is being hampered, though, with falling revenue from property and income taxes and state revenue sharing.

"I don't see the city getting out of this financial mess short of a bankruptcy," said Joe Harris, a former auditor general who was chief financial officer in late 2008 and early 2009.

Bing took the first step last week in addressing the cash crunch by laying off 205 workers, but Harris calls the move a stopgap. The city is bleeding at least $5 million a month, Harris said."

read more here:
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_story.aspx?storyid=113101

i hate my job - written by prehack

My job is so fucking unbelievable. I'll try to sum it up by first telling you about the folks I work with:

First, there is this supermodel wanna-be chick. Yeah, okay, she is pretty hot, but damn is she completely useless. The girl is constantly fixing her hair or putting on makeup. She is extremely self-centered and has never once considered the needs or wants of anyone but herself. She is as dumb as a box of rocks, and I still find it surprising that she has enough brain power to continue to breathe.

The next chick is completely the opposite. She might even be one of the smartest people on the planet. Her career opportunities are endless, and yet she is here with us. She is a zero on a scale of 1 to 10. I'm not sure she even showers, much less shaves her "womanly" parts. I think she might be a lesbian, because every time we drive by the hardware store, she moans like a cat in heat.

But the jewel of the crowd has got to be the fucking stoner. And this guy is more than just your average pothead. In fact, he is baked before he comes to work, during work, and I'm sure after work. He probably hasn't been sober anytime in the last ten years, and he's only 22. He dresses like a beatnik throwback from the 1960's, and to make things worse, he brings his big fucking dog to work. Every fucking day I have to look at this huge Great Dane walk around half-stoned from the second-hand smoke. Hell, sometimes I even think it's trying to talk with its constant bellowing. Also, both of them are constantly hungry, requiring multiple stops to McDonalds and Burger King, every single fucking day.

Anyway, I drive these fucktards around in my van and we solve mysteries and shit.

Remember Who You Wanted To Be

I generally don't pay much attention to bumper stickers.
They're usually kinda stupid.
A few days ago while sitting on the off-ramp on the way to work my eyes rested on the car in front of me and I noticed a bumper sticker that I actually liked.
It read:

Remember Who You Wanted To Be


I found that to be very thought provoking, and an important message for everyone to think about.
Pretty surprising for a bumper sticker.

Do you remember the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/
http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

how praying works - by Emo Philips

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.
Then I realised God doesn’t work that way, so I stole
one and prayed for forgiveness.

- Emo Philips

i know these xkcd comics are over-rated but i still like this one

the internet is making everyone smarter (even accidentally)

Conventional wisdom is that technology is responsible for the dumbing down of culture. Text messaging and social networking are teaching kids to not worry about spelling or grammar etc. etc.

Andrea Lunsford isn't so sure. Lunsford is a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, where she has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students' prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples—everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring.

"I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization," she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.

The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.

It's almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they'd leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.

read more here:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson

John Hughes > Michael Jackson

John Hughes died last week.
This was mentioned in the media for maybe 20 hours, while Michael Jackson got 24 hour news coverage for almost 20 days after he died.

Michael Jackson released 2 great albums: Off The Wall, and Thriller. Which amounts to 19 songs worth listening to. The rest of his discography was pretty much crap.

John Hughes wrote and directed Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Buehler's Day Off, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck etc.
He also wrote Pretty In Pink, National Lampoon's Vacation, National Lampoon's European Vacation, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone etc.

John Hughes was a more prolific artist, a more important 80s icon, made a larger cultural impact, and was more important in every way.

He deserves more attention than a dancer with a missing nose.

Yahoo! partners up with Microsoft... but why?

The big news yesterday was that Yahoo and Microsoft have come to an agreement in which Yahoo will get out of the search business and host microsoft's BING on the yahoo homepage, in return Microsoft will stop selling online advertising and let Yahoo take over that aspect of the search/ad-sales business.

weird.

Why did Yahoo turn down Microsoft's offer of $47.5 billion in May of 2008, and then a little over a year later basically give Microsoft what they wanted out of Yahoo anyway.
It makes no sense. They should have just sold the whole company to Microsoft last year.

my prediction: within 5 years Yahoo will be done. Their stock price will continue to plummet, and eventually Microsoft will pick the decent leftover parts of Yahoo like vultures pulling meat off dead bones.

so the big news yesterday really meant this:
yahoo, the internet giant of yesterday is now slowly headed to the dustbins of internet history like AOL or AltaVista.

further reading:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32193887/ns/business-us_business/
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/yahoo-microsoft-exchange-vows-for-search-and-ads.ars
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/microsoft-yahoo-2/
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/yahoo-gives-up/
http://www.thebigmoney.com/features/todays-business-press/2009/07/29/microhoo
http://www.thebigmoney.com/features/todays-business-press/2009/07/30/yahoo-and-microsoft-finally-team

the blue countries drive on the left

... and they need to get with the program!




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countries_driving_on_the_left_or_right.svg

100 things your kids may never know about

# Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
# Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
# Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio b0rk this concept.)
# Shortwave radio.
# 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
# Watching TV when the networks say you should.
# Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
# Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
# Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
# Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
# Phone books and Yellow Pages.
# Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.
# Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
# Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
# Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
# binaries from Usenet.
# Privacy.

more:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/100-things-your-kids-may-never-know-about/

Jon Stewart: America's Most Trusted Newsman

Well, in a result that he will probably accept as downright apocalyptic for America, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart has been selected, in an online poll conducted by Time Magazine, as America's Most Trusted Newscaster, post-Cronkite. Matched up against Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, Stewart prevailed with 44 percent of the vote.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/22/time-magazine-poll-jon-st_n_242933.html

Politicians are a lot like diapers...

they should be changed frequently and for the same reason."
- Ben Franklin

The Prisoner - remake - coming this fall

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/07/qa-sir-ian-mckellen-takes-on-the-prisoners-number-one-tormenter/

He Can Speak French... In Russian

The new Dos Equis ad campaign featuring "the most interesting man in the world" is probably the best advertising for beer that has existed during this decade.
here's an example of what i mean:







"He once had an awkward moment... just to see how it feels."
"He can speak French... in Russian."
"He lives vicariously... through himself."
"I don't always drink beer, but when I do... I prefer Dos Equis.
Stay Thirsty My Friends."

Neuromancer movie in the works!

A screenplay based on Neuromancer, the 1984 novel by William Gibson is in development.

The Great American Bubble - by Matt Taibbi

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multi-billion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden parachute payments as his bank was self destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailedout insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman — not to mention …

But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email


[excerpts]...
Beginning a pattern that would repeat itself over and over again, Goldman got into the investmenttrust game late, then jumped in with both feet and went hogwild. The first effort was the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation; the bank issued a million shares at $100 apiece, bought all those shares with its own money and then sold 90 percent of them to the hungry public at $104. The trading corporation then relentlessly bought shares in itself, bidding the price up further and further. Eventually it dumped part of its holdings and sponsored a new trust, the Shenandoah Corporation, issuing millions more in shares in that fund — which in turn sponsored yet another trust called the Blue Ridge Corporation. In this way, each investment trust served as a front for an endless investment pyramid: Goldman hiding behind Goldman hiding behind Goldman. Of the 7,250,000 initial shares of Blue Ridge, 6,250,000 were actually owned by Shenandoah — which, of course, was in large part owned by Goldman Trading.

The end result (ask yourself if this sounds familiar) was a daisy chain of borrowed money, one exquisitely vulnerable to a decline in performance anywhere along the line. The basic idea isn't hard to follow. You take a dollar and borrow nine against it; then you take that $10 fund and borrow $90; then you take your $100 fund and, so long as the public is still lending, borrow and invest $900. If the last fund in the line starts to lose value, you no longer have the money to pay back your investors, and everyone gets massacred.

In a chapter from The Great Crash, 1929 titled "In Goldman Sachs We Trust," the famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith held up the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah trusts as classic examples of the insanity of leveragebased investment. The trusts, he wrote, were a major cause of the market's historic crash; in today's dollars, the losses the bank suffered totaled $475 billion. "It is difficult not to marvel at the imagination which was implicit in this gargantuan insanity," Galbraith observed, sounding like Keith Olbermann in an ascot. "If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale."

...

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than potfueled ideas scrawled on napkins by uptoolate bongsmokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for mega-millions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

It sounds obvious now, but what the average investor didn't know at the time was that the banks had changed the rules of the game, making the deals look better than they actually were. They did this by setting up what was, in reality, a two-tiered investment system — one for the insiders who knew the real numbers, and another for the lay investor who was invited to chase soaring prices the banks themselves knew were irrational. While Goldman's later pattern would be to capitalize on changes in the regulatory environment, its key innovation in the Internet years was to abandon its own industry's standards of quality control.

"Since the Depression, there were strict underwriting guidelines that Wall Street adhered to when taking a company public," says one prominent hedge-fund manager. "The company had to be in business for a minimum of five years, and it had to show profitability for three consecutive years. But Wall Street took these guidelines and threw them in the trash." Goldman completed the snow job by pumping up the sham stocks: "Their analysts were out there saying Bullshit.com is worth $100 a share."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email

Buddhists have an idea that you can judge a man by the things he repeatedly does

They believe that your essence, or soul, is determined by repetition.
By repeatedly *doing* certain things, those things come to define you.

Modern science has proven this in a way.
The pathways between neurons grow stronger through repetition,
essentially turning a dirt path into an interstate.
This is similar to shadow image burn on older TVs,
and "muscle memory".

Physical Currency Hurts The Economy

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/st_essay

Over 800 million dollars of tax payer money is spent making coins last year in the U.S.
What is the point of this?

FREE by Chris Anderson

http://books.google.com/books?id=lLZbXN2odVYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s

poor language skills indicate future alzheimers risk

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/nunstudy/

turn thousand$ into million$

http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2009/07/08/make-millions-from-thousands.aspx

funny, but unfair advertising

Google Chrome Operating System

Apparently Google has built an OS that integrates with their web browser Chrome.
It is a version of Linux with the Chrome web browser, so you can purchase an inexpensive netbook, or laptop only for internet use.
I wonder how this is going to work. Didn't Microsoft get into trouble for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows? At least those were 2 separate things.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

reward for capture of cat torturer ( and future serial killer)

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/grand_rapids/Cat_set_on_fire



http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_story.aspx?storyid=111215



GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WZZM) The Humane Society of Kent County says the reward is now up to $5,500 for the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for setting a cat on fire.
Hadley, the 1 1/2 year old cat was brought to the Humane Society on July 3rd. He had third degree burns over his ears, neck, back and legs. Authorities from the Humane Society say it appears someone soaked the cat in an accelerant.
Hadley's owners brought the cat in for treatment, but could afford the on-going care so signed over ownership.
It's believed Hadley was burned by someone in the owner's neighborhood. They live on Turner Avenue between Ann and Leonard on Grand rapids Northwest side.
Hadley is now on three types of antibiotics and two pain medications.
If you know who might have set the cat on fire call the Humane Society of Kent County at 616-791-8218 or leave an anonymous tip at 616-453-8900 ext. 302.

open a banana like a monkey

unemployment map

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2435/3704510065_76349159a0_o.png



http://www.billshrink.com/blog/mapping-unemployment-out-of-work-in-america/

Artificial Intelligence or "AI" is a myth

The idea that humans will be able to create machines capable of independent thought is a myth.
I won't happen because it can't happen.
Machines don't think.
It doesn't matter how fast computers can process computations, they only follow commands, and don't "understand" what they're doing.

For something to think, and be intelligent it needs to be alive.
Computers and machines cannot be alive. Not unless people combine computers with something that is already alive. Like implanting chips inside a persons brain.
This is not AI though, it's an artificially augmented human being.

The modern concept of AI is splintered into two main groups of ideas.
Weak AI and Strong AI.
The Weak AI position is that machines can be programmed to *seem* human, but that they won't have a mind or consciousness. Weak AI is then theoretically possible, and it's already happening in some areas, but Weak AI isn't what most people think of when they think of "AI".
The Strong AI position is that machines can become intelligent enough to surpass human intelligence. neither of these things will ever happen.

what lies beyond our universe?

If the big bang theory is true, then the universe is shaped like a sphere.
Everything would have exploded away from a central point at essentially the same speed. Meaning we are on the inside of a giant ball.
WHAT'S ON THE OUTSIDE???


"On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen "structures" are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says.

Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour—a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.

The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger—a multiverse—and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The theory could rewrite the laws of physics. Current models say the known, or visible, universe—which extends as far as light could have traveled since the big bang—is essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time)."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081105-dark-flow.html

Roman Cat Sanctuary

In Rome the cats have an ancient temple all to themselves. The site is known as Torre Argentina and was excavated under Mussolini's re-building efforts in 1929, revealing extensive multi level temple grounds about 20 feet below modern street level. The site is actually composed of several temples as well as part of the famous Pompey's theatre, where in 44 BC Caesar was betrayed and killed on the theatre steps.

Today volunteers care for approximately 250 cats. After the site was excavated, Rome's feral cats moved in immediately, as they do all over the city. The gattare, or cat ladies began feeding and caring for them. Since the mid 1990s the population has grown from about 90 to the current nearly 250, and the organization has ramped up with care for sick or wounded cats, and an extensive spay & neuter program to try to keep the feral population in check. Most of the permanent residents have special needs - they are blind or missing legs or came from abusive homes.

On any given afternoon a small crowd gathers to watch the cats sunbathe on ancient pillars and steps. At first it may be hard to spot the cats, but once you start to see them they are everywhere.

Visitors can admire the cats and their ruins from street level, can volunteer, or even adopt cats.

http://atlasobscura.com/places/torre-argentina-roman-cat-sanctuary

cat catches bat

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Jeff Goldblum Addresses Rumors Of His Own Death

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/220019/june-29-2009/jeff-goldblum-will-be-missed

this is what a firefox looks like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda

you can also download the best web browser in the world here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html?from=getfirefox

download link

Vicodin & Percocet ban recommendation

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/health/01fda.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

for convenience sake some people are willing to abandon thier first language

I recently read this interesting post on the NY Times blog "freakonomics" titled:
How The Market Influences Which Language You Read In"
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/how-the-market-influences-what-language-you-read-in/

The article mentions how people in the Netherlands would rather read the English translation of a Swedish book than read the Dutch translation.
The reason for this is that there are many more Swedish to English translators than there are Swedish to Dutch translators.
Meaning the Dutch translations generally have more errors than the English translations.

The Dutch people say they'd rather read a proper English translation than an error-filled poorly translated Dutch translation.

If you take this to it's logical conclusion, you will realize that many Europeans in "smaller markets" are already, in some small ways, choosing English over their own language.
Which then means that... eventually... most European people will adopt a more popular language than their own, merely for the sake of convenience.
As languages like Dutch, Swedish, Kashubian etc. fade slowly away, more and more people will gravitate toward English, French, Spanish, and German.
Eventually, over time, English, French, Spanish, and German will be the only languages spoken in Europe.

Over, even more time, these 4 languages will likely blend into one language spoken by all people in Europe, Australia, North and South America.

Over even more time, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese will also merge.

So the good news for people 200 years from now is that there will only be two languages to learn in order to speak to everyone on the planet. European (Spanglish-Franco-Germanic) and Asian (Chinese-Korean-Japanese).


[doesn't really affect us just yet]

the art work of Erika Iris Simmons (aka iri5)

Frank Lloyd Wright Lego sets

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/frank-lloyd-wright-lego-sets/

JK Rowling - possible plagiarism lawsuit

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1193283/JK-Rowling-sued-500m-plagiarism-lawsuit-family-late-Willy-The-Wizard-author.html

Tom Cruise + Scientology =

Don't watch any more movies that feature Tom Cruise.
Why continue to support this?

create fake receipts and expense reports

http://www.falseexpense.com/

this is for "entertainment purposes only"

did they ever figure out who killed Bill?

What happened to David Carradine?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090607/ts_nm/us_carradine

Windows 7: the naming scheme is somewhat complicated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows#Product_progression

* Windows 1.0
* Windows 2.0
* Windows 3.0
* Windows 95 (Windows 4.0)
* Windows 98 (Windows 4.1)
* Windows Millennium Edition (Windows 4.9)
* Windows NT 3.1
* Windows NT 4.0 including up to Service Pack 6a
* Windows 2000 (Windows NT 5.0) including up to Service Pack 4
* Windows XP (Windows NT 5.1) including up to Service Pack 3
* Windows Server 2003 (Windows NT 5.2)
* Windows Home Server (Windows NT 5.2)
* Windows Vista (Windows NT 6.0) including up to Service Pack 2
* Windows Server 2008 (Windows NT 6.0) including up to Service Pack 2
* Windows 7 (Windows NT 6.1)

online journalism yesterday and today

Fred Armisen as Nicolaus Fehn

Iran: Ballots exceeded voters by millions

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/iran-ballots-exceeded-voters-by-millions/

The Prisoner

"i will not make any deals with you.
i've resigned.
i will not be pushed,
filed,
stamped,
indexed,
briefed,
de-briefed,
or numbered!
my life is my own."



A TV miniseries remake is slated to air on AMC in 2009,and Christopher Nolan has been widely reported to be considering a film version.

awesome!
i'm glad they're remaking this show.

the death of michael jackson

it makes me feel kind of sad that someone that seemed so cool back in the early 80s, turned into whatever he turned into.

he may have seemed quite crazy, and possible sick to some people; however i think it's important to remember that we're *allowed to be eccentric*!
a lot of people were CONVINCED he was guilty of certain crimes just because he was weird and weird looking.
and that's not evidence of any crime or criminality.
if we've learned anything from Michael Jackson it's this:
normal looking and normal seeming people from Wall Street or Washington DC have been tried and convicted of some pretty crazy things during the past 10 years.
meanwhile a very abnormal seeming and unusual looking Michael Jackson was *not* convicted of much of anything.
something to think about.

The right of American citizens to merely look or seem weird should be preserved.
individual uniqueness and individuality is what separates our country from being just like communist china.
"weird" ideas foster innovation.
if everyone was exactly the same the world would be quite dull.

interesting road signs

the fact that the sings even exist says more about this topic than I feel like saying right now.

cancer vaccines offer hope for some forms of cancer

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31019270/

sunblock is important

http://www.dangeroussunburn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/sunburn.jpg

Zicam nasal spray can make you lose your sense of smell

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_story.aspx?storyid=110389

my girlfriend's THEME SONG!!!!!

Weird Al: Jim Morrisson Craigslist song

Tetris turns 25 today

aside from Pacman, Tetris may be the most recognized videogame worldwide.
sometimes elegance and simplicity of design are the things that truly last.
I think it's pretty safe to say that zero of the videogames that come out in 2009 will still be popular in 2034.

project Natal for xbox-360 no controller needed

This was recently announced at E3.
project natal uses a camera to capture your body movements, making it so you control gameplay without a controller.

which countries do we import our oil from?

these are the top ten countries in order:

1. Canada
2. Mexico
3. Saudi Arabia
4. Venezuela
5. Nigeria
6. Angola
7. Iraq
8. Algeria
9. United Kingdom
10. Brazil

are you a Republican or Democrat? (1 question quiz)

Which constitutional Amendment is your favorite?
The First?
or
The Second?


if you answered "the first amendment" then you are a Democrat.
if you answered "the second amendment" then you are a Republican.


this is the truth, don't argue about it.

Flouride is Poison

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride_poisoning
click here

any scientist will tell you that it IS good for protecting your teeth, but you're not supposed to swallow flouride, let alone DRINK it.
i kind of wish they would have done a few more studies on this before they started pumping it into our drinking water.

Ray Kurzweil wants to be a robot

he's REALLY REALLY afraid of dying.
He takes over 100 pills a day, and wants to turn himself into a mechanized android.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/197812
click here

new Super Mario Bros Wii - sidescroller

what if email was invented today?

introducing Google Wave:



http://wave.google.com/

Hulu desktop

watch TV on your computer (without using a web-browser).

Hulu

Bing

Microsoft has unveiled its new version of search, to try to compete with google and yahoo.

Bing

it's just a search engine, but maybe the entire world doesn't want to continue using google forever and ever.

Winnie the Pooh and Swine Flu

motivational posters

Windows 7 to have virtual XP mode

click here

click here

NYTimes to close Boston Globe

Boston Globe to be closed

underground cities & bunkers

underground cities and bunkers

10 coolest underground tunnels

10 coolest underground tunnels

do you still have good hearing?

this website provides a test.
they claim most people over 25 can not hear this tone.
WARNING: your neighbor's dog WILL be able to hear it!

hearing test

digital cameras: megapixel count is irrelevant

This article neatly explains how a camera with 10 megapixels may take worse pictures than a camera with fewer megapixels.

megapixels explained

business models

*taken from Seth Godin's blog*


A business model is the architecture of a business or project. It has four elements:

1. What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? (or votes or donations)
2. How do you acquire what you're selling for less than it costs to sell it?
3. What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and a price war?
4. How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers?

the official white house Flickr account

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/

not sure how useful this really is, but it's cool that it exists.

Real Life Spy Gadgets!!!

real life spy gadgets

the future of the New York Times?

David Geffen wants to buy it and turn it into a non-profit.

If Geffen were successful in landing The New York Times, said one of the confidantes, he'd convert it into a nonprofit institution. He would regard the newspaper, perhaps the world's most influential journalistic enterprise, as a national treasure meriting preservation into perpetuity. His model would be the ownership structure of Florida's St. Petersburg Times, which is controlled by a nonprofit educational institution, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "David would hope the newspaper makes a profit," said the confidante. "But he believes that operating without the ultimate responsibility of paying dividends or necessarily having to be profitable is the best way to run an institution like The New York Times."

calendar proposed by Isaac Asimov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Season_Calendar

it's 4 months with 91 days per month/season.
kind of cool.

superdog

Wolfram Alpha launches soon

Wolfram Alpha homepage

Wolfram Alpha wikipedia entry

It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, instead of providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer. If this works the way they're saying it does, then this will be HUGE.




Type in a query for a statistic, a profile of a country or company, and instead of a series of results that may or may not provide the answer you’re looking for, you get a mini dossier on the subject compiled in real time that, ideally, nails the exact thing you want to know. It’s like having a squad of Cambridge mathematicians and CIA analysts inside your browser.

Nobody was born on October 5th in 1582

During the Middle Ages, astronomers and mathematicians observed that the calendar year was not completely accurate with matching solar years. Errors in the Julian calendar were noted by church officials and scholars because church holidays did not occur in their appropriate seasons.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII, and his astronomer and mathematician created a new, reformed calendar known as the Gregorian or New Style calendar. It was adopted first in Roman Catholic countries. Protestant countries adopted the calendar during the eighteenth century.

In order to make the calendar adjustment in 1582, ten days were eliminated from October. October 4th was followed by October 15th.

weird.

is our reality merely a cat's dream-world?

My cat sleeps 12+ hours every day.
Which means maybe to her this world is like a dream.

Chrysler (as of May 2009)

Chrysler is pretty much screwed.
When they merged into (or were purchased by) Mercedes the future looked bright.
It didn't go over very well.
They did make a few nicer looking cars that sprang from the time they were together:
the 300
the magnum (which is the station wagon model of the 300)
the pacifica
the charger
and the challenger.

However, aside from the 300, nobody bought any of them, and they lost a lot of money.

Chrysler isn't even technically a car company anymore. They're owned by a chop shop called Cerberus Capital Management.

Perhaps Ford will purchase the Jeep or Chrysler name from them, otherwise Chrysler is about to become history.

Ford motor company (as of May 2009)

Ford is in trouble.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s they were minting money.
They had two of the best selling vehicles of all time with the Taurus and the Explorer.
Those days are long gone.
They have since renamed the Taurus as the Fusion, and started calling the Escort the Focus.
Few people were fooled by this re-naming scheme.

Ford makes very few desirable vehicles at this point. When was the last time you heard a 16 year old kid say "I can't until I have enough money saved to buy a Ford!"
my guess is you've never heard that, and neither have I.

Ford has a decent chance of survival based on 2 things.
1. William Ford Jr. is the executive chairman, and he actually CARES about the company. It's HIS name on the back of all these cars. He's helped Ford get to the point where they don't need a government bailout.
2. Guys like Ford trucks. also, the current Ford Mustang is actually a cool car (unlike that souped up Escort they called a Mustang back in the 1990s).

General Motors (as of May 2009)

Pontiac, known for it's iconic red arrowhead logo, the split grille design, and perhaps an overuse of random chrome accents, has been officially declared dead. They will not be producing 2010 Pontiac models. The writing was on the wall when they renamed the Grand Am the G6, and then shut down Grand Prix, GTO, and Bonneville and replaced all 3 of those with the G8.

The goal is to sell off or shut down Saab, Saturn, and Hummer.
The focus will be put on Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC; for the time being.
The ultimate goal will be to sell Buick or somehow incorporate it into the Cadillac brand.
GMC will be merged together with Chevy trucks.
This will leave GM with two core brands in the U.S. :
Chevrolet and Cadillac.

Not a bad plan, but it's going to cost millions of dollars to implement it, and it's going to take a bit of time and skilled planning.
Neither of which GM has a whole lot of left these days.

We'll see what happens I guess.

Is This For Real (global warming pic.)

Is this polar bear floating out in the middle of the arctic ocean wondering where all the ice went, while he struggles for survival?
Or is it some trained Hollywood polar bear that just mugs for the camera?
It's one or the other.

The Power of God

God is said to be all powerful (omni-potent). Well, that's fine, except there are kind of paradoxical situations where that would seem a bit difficult.


Could God create a river so wide that he couldn't jump over it?



obviously the answer is that God is not in human form, and therefore wouldn't be able to do any "jumping over" in the sense that i described in the above question.

A Digital Crutch

this was in the editorial "rants & raves" letters to the editor section of WIRED last month. I thought it was interesting/funny.

"After reading "Inside the GPS Revolution" (issue 17.02), I realized that GPS is turning people into idiots. You need it to hail a cab, find a toilet, and wake yourself up? Are we becoming so narcissistic in our own little technological wombs that we can't do simple everyday tasks? Do we need an app to tell us to eat? To breathe? To take a dump? This isn't an advance; it's pathetic.
-Kevin Hall (Bristol, Virginia)

Watching The Evening News Will Make You Dumber

a few recent news items on the local news:

1. Susan Boyle - ugly lady with pretty singing voice. the world is stunned. we are now on day 12 of this ongoing news coverage. uggh.

2. Miss USA contestant thinks marriage should be between a male and female. The world is outraged and offended by her comments. WTF?! Are we living in the twilight zone?
B-list pseudo-celebrity-freak Perez Hilton calls her an effin' b*tch because of what she said. really? REALLY? is everyone such a fricken baby nowadays that anytime anyone gives their opinion about something everyone gets super offended?

3. ArtPrize. Grandson of one of the Amway founders decides to create an art contest where the winner (based on popular votes) wins cash prize. Anyone who knows anything about modern art understands that any "art" that is truly popular is as bland and boring as possible. pointless.

Mark "The Bird" Fidrych dies at age 54

Mark Steven "The Bird" Fidrych (August 14, 1954 – April 13, 2009), was a Major League Baseball player for the Detroit Tigers from 1976-1980. He was reported dead by the Worcester District Attorney's office on Monday, April 13, 2009 in a reported accident while working on his 10 wheel dump truck at his home in Massachusetts.

In the minor leagues one of his coaches dubbed the lanky right-handed pitcher "The Bird" because of his resemblance to "Big Bird" of the Sesame Street television program.

Fidrych made the Tigers as a non-roster invitee out of the 1976 spring training, not making his major-league debut until April 20, and not making his first start until mid-May. He only made that start because the scheduled starting pitcher had the flu. Fidrych responded by throwing seven no-hit innings, ending the game with a 2-1 victory in which he only gave up two hits. He went on to win a total of 19 games, led the league in ERA (2.34) and complete games (24), was the starting pitcher in that year's All-Star Game, won the American League Rookie of the Year Award, and finished second in voting for the Cy Young Award.

In the process Fidrych also captured the imagination of fans with his antics on the field. He would crouch down on the pitcher's mound and fix cleat marks, what became known as "manicuring the mound", talk to himself, talk to the ball, aim the ball like a dart, strut around the mound after every out, and throw back balls that "had hits in them," insisting they be removed from the game. On June 28, 1976, he pitched against the New York Yankees in a nationally televised game on ABC; the Tigers won the game 5-1. After a game filled with "Bird" antics in which he and his team handily defeated the Yankees, Fidrych became an instant national celebrity.

Every time he pitched, Tiger Stadium was jam-packed with adoring fans who became known as "Bird Watchers". In his 18 appearances, attendance equalled almost half of the entire season's 81 home games. Teams started asking Detroit to change its pitching rotation so Fidrych could pitch in their ballparks, and he appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, such as Sports Illustrated (twice, including once with Sesame Street character Big Bird), The Sporting News, and became the first athlete to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. In one week, Fidrych turned away five people who wanted to be his agent, saying, "Only I know my real value and can negotiate it."

He will be missed, and, did you catch that part about how he talked to the ball?

Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan, Ph.D. (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which has been seen by more than 600 million people in over 60 countries, making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.[2] A book to accompany the program was also published. He also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film of the same name starring Jodie Foster. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated skeptical inquiry, secular humanism, and the scientific method.

plan for Broadband Internet Access for everyone

by Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 9, 2009; Page A06

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday began mapping out a plan to bring high-speed Internet service to the entire nation, starting with questions on how to increase its availability, improve its quality of service and make it more affordable.

In a meeting yesterday, acting FCC Chairman Michael J. Copps invited comments from the public on the national broadband plan the agency has been ordered by Congress to complete by February 2010. He said the process for creating the plan will be "open, inclusive, out-reaching and data-hungry."

The meeting was largely intended to set the stage for greater debate on contested policies that could be included in the FCC's broadband plan and would likely be spearheaded by President Obama's nominee to lead the agency, Julius Genachowski. The public will be able to submit comments to the agency for the next 60 days and then reply comments will be open for another 30 days.
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Already telecommunications companies and public interest groups have weighed in at the FCC on things they think should be in the plan. Some carriers want rules on how much large network operators can charge carriers to use parts of their networks. Others say a $7 billion federal phone subsidy program for rural areas should instead be used for broadband.

eventually we'll all use satellite phones

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The vast, thinly populated expanses of the country that still lack cell phone coverage could be getting an interesting option next year: ordinary-looking cell phones that connect to a satellite when there's no cell tower around.

In June, a rocket is scheduled to lift the largest commercial satellite yet into space. In orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth, the satellite will unfurl an umbrella of gold mesh 60 feet across and aim it at the U.S. That gigantic antenna will let the satellite pick up signals from phones that are not much larger than regular cell phones.

trashed antartica

NEKO BAY, Antarctica — On the 2 percent of Antarctica that isn't covered in ice, the juxtaposition of man-made refuse and Planet Earth-worthy wildlife tableaux is far from rare. But cleaning up that prime real estate is complicated by the nature of the debris, much of which is deemed "historical" and thus unmovable.

link

Who Do You Root For On The TV Show COPS?

Here is an interesting passage from the book Scratch Beginnings by Adam Shepard. The premise of the book is that the author, having just graduated from college, sets out to see if — starting with the clothes on his back, a sleeping bag, and $25 — he can build that into a furnished apartment, a working car, and $2,500 in savings within a year without using any of his contacts or mentioning his college degree.

This is how Shepard describes the experience of watching COPS with the folks in his homeless shelter:

But we didn’t watch TV’s original reality show like I used to when I was a kid. Growing up, I used to love watching that show so that I could see what idiots there were around the nation and find satisfaction in the fact that no matter how crazy I thought I was, I was more stable than those people.

Nope. We watched it in a completely different light. We cheered for the suspected criminal the whole way through. It didn’t matter who was on the other end. We always cheered for the guy the cops were after. Guys would be huddled around the TV set hollering, “Go mother f—–r! S–t. Go! Hop that fence! Go! Go! Ah. Ah. Ah, damn, they got ‘im. Again. They got ‘im again. He shoulda hopped that fence like I said. Damn. They always get ‘im.”

And they would always give the criminal the benefit of the doubt. After a long chase, the cops would dig in the suspected criminal’s pockets and find some illicit drug or whatever, and the guys at the shelter would look around at each other and murmur, “S–t, that’s bulls–t. You know that’s bulls–t. They planted that on him. He ain’t have that on him before. They put it there so their stupid TV show can get ratings.”

And they were serious, too. Every night we would watch, every night we would pull for the criminal, and every night he would be dragged away in handcuffs.

Memory Editing Drugs

memory edit
This reminds me of that movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Economy Bad Enough To Justify Reverse Auction Job Applications

http://jobaphiles.com/Default.aspx
http://jobaphiles.com/Default.aspx

VanAndel Arena could host 2011 NCAA tournament first round

"We're in the queue for the first round Division I championship," said well-known Republican activist, West Michigan resident and businessman Peter Secchia.

Secchia, an MSU booster, has been talking to NCAA officials about bringing a regional playoff to Van Andel Arena in 2011. Sources with the NCAA confirm there have been ongoing discussions with high-ranking officials.

According to NCAA.com, the opening round will be March 15, with first- and second-round games played on March 17-20. The Final Four in 2011 will take place April 2 and 4 at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas.

Blockbuster Video to file bankruptcy soon

They have made 2 crucial mistakes.
1. alienating their customer base with years of ridiculously high late fees.
2. not buying Netflix before it became the number one company for movie rentals.

Blockbuster operates 7,400 stores globally and has a total debt of $780.9 million.
Shares of Blockbuster closed up 1.2 percent, or 1 cent, at 88 cents per share on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

cyberspies penetrate electrical grid

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials.

The intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but officials said they could try during a crisis or war, the paper said in a report on its website.

"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," a senior intelligence official told the Journal. "So have the Russians."

The espionage appeared pervasive across the United States and does not target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official.

"There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official told the paper, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not immediately available for comment on the newspaper report.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."

Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Protecting the electrical grid and other infrastructure is a key part of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review, which is to be completed next week.

The sophistication of the U.S. intrusions, which extend beyond electric to other key infrastructure systems, suggests that China and Russia are mainly responsible, according to intelligence officials and cybersecurity specialists.

While terrorist groups could develop the ability to penetrate U.S. infrastructure, they do not appear to have yet mounted attacks, these officials say.

(Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Jon Boyle)