It's a new year, and for the people of Romania and Bulgaria, today is a very special day - today is the day those countries officially became a part of the European Union.

It's interesting to see the EU continue growing and more countries adopt the Euro as their official currency. There is a great deal of promise in the vision of a grand unified Europe, but each member still has many of the same challenges that existed before. By no means does admittance magically solve your problems. Things take time to change.

What we now call the "European Union" was originally started as the "European Coal and Steel Community" back in 1952. Over the years, it has increased in size six times, and the sixth increase officially occurred today with the admittance of Romania and Bulgaria. The EU is now 27 members strong and represents about 500,000,000 people.

The BBC put together a nice page showing how the European Union has changed over the years. Check out the EU expansion page.

Here is another article: Romania and Bulgaria join the EU

Some folks out there have given Apple a hard time for selling music on the iTunes Store that plays only in iPods, and some blame Apple for not embracing an open music standard (of which there is none that the record labels all approve of, there are only other versions of digital lock-in). Anyway, I really like Microsoft's approach to this dilemma.

With the new Zune music player due in stores this month, Microsoft has announced that online music purchased through MSN - Microsoft's very own music store - will not play on the Microsoft music player.

So here are two choices:

1. buy a provably awesome player (iPod) and music online (from iTunes Store), and everything will work beautifully together, or
   
2. buy a brand new music player with no user base, no add-ons, and zero reputation (Zune), and also pay for a 2nd copy of the songs you've already purchased online through MSN Music since your old ones won't work on your Zune.

Vendor lock-in may annoy some people, but hell, the least Microsoft could do was get it right. You're not supposed to lock yourself out, too!

BBC article: Zune problems for MSN customers

Tomorrow (Friday November 3) is the opening day for Borat, a day I've awaited with much anticipation. But I just heard from the Alamo Drafthouse (by email newsletter) that they're postponing their opening! This looks like it affects the Drafthouse screens only, not all theaters. But I talked to somebody at Alamo by phone earlier today, and he said Fox was scaling back national distribution from 2,700 screens nationwide to just 700. So sucky.

Here is the full text of their email, sent early this afternoon:

Date: Thursday November 2, 2006 12:52:34 PM CST
Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control
BORAT'S ALAMO SHOWS POSTPONED
WITH ANY LUCK AT ALL, BORAT WILL STILL OPEN AT THE ALAMO SOUTH LAMAR ON FRI, NOV 10

It's a sad day at Austin Alamo HQ as we were informed today by Fox that we would not be receiving a print of BORAT this weekend. You can read more about FOX's rollback here. It's particularly disappointing to us because we've seen BORAT and it is awesome. We hope to show BORAT starting Friday November 10 at our Lamar theater, and we will know for sure on Monday, November 6, by 6pm. Check our website then for the latest news and showtimes.

Nobody is more excited about BORAT than we are and we hate to have to wait. When we do open the film we will have a stellar preshow of rare and imported Borat clips before the show and we may even dress up in green slingshot thongs (those of us who aren't handling food, that is). We hope those of you who are loyal to the Alamo will wait it out and see BORAT with us. Those of you who have bought tickets already can have your money refunded by forwarding your email confirmation to manager.lamar@originalalamo.com or manager.village@originalalamo.com depending on which theater you bought tickets for.

Thanks for your support and loyalty and please accept our apologies for the delay.

UPDATE: at 9:20 am on Friday November 3, John from Alamo Drafthouse sent me this update:

Kaan – Borat opens today at the Alamo Lake Creek in Austin. It’s the only drafthouse-cinema getting it on opening weekend in the U.S.!
http://www.drafthouse.com/lakecreek/frames.asp
- John

Still bummer news that they can't open the film in all Alamo theaters (and the other ~2,000 theaters nationwide that won't get it this weekend either). But hey, at least one Drafthouse has it. It's kind of funny, this whole situation of scaling back the opening weekend is probably going to create a stampede mentality to see the film, which can't be what production company intended to happen...

A recent Economist article (short version online: Really Big Oil; full print edition "Oil's Dark Secret", Aug 12th 2006) took a look at the distribution of oil reserves around the planet. As much oil as Exxon, Chevron and the other big companies control, they only represent something like 10% of all reserves worldwide. That's not much.

So who has the other 90%?

Individual governments, like Saudi Arabia and Venuzuela, and those state-controlled oil reserves are sold into the market, too (ever bought gas from Citgo? That's a Venezuelan state-controlled oil company). The whole process of who controls, buys and sells oil is fascinating to me. Everyone wants oil, especially the countries that don't have enough to meet their own demands. The U.S. is obviously at the front -- we use more oil than everyone else combined -- but China is on a steep incline of oil consumption (they're the second largest consumer of energy worldwide).

It's interesting then to see that Venezuela is really kicking up oil production for China (China seals oil deal with Chavez). It's good news for China, as this increase will help them continue to meet their increased domestic demands for oil. But it's also good news for Venezuela, because Chavez can sell more oil to China and - more importantly - less oil to the U.S., all without decreasing overall Venuezuelan oil exports.

So what? For starters, U.S. gas prices will probably go up a bit (Venezuelan oil imports are about 12% of total imported oil), but that could be the last straw holding together the already-weak U.S./Venezuelan relations. Without Venezuelan oil to buy, and it seems possible that Bush and his war-crazy hotheads will insist we go down to Venezuela and kick their asses to "protect freedom" (also known as, "take control of the Venezuelan government in order to protect U.S. interests in their oil supply").

And there you have it: our next "war".

Man, this is a glimpse of the future. I guess in 10 years we'll look back and laugh at how "small" a 10,000 x 10,000 pixel image is.

Record CCD image sensor has 111 million pixels

I remember seeing this guy in tv commercials when I was a kid. It never occurred to me that Juan Valdez was a ficticious character. I guess it's just product marketing, like everything else these days. And of course, it's only the actor who is going away; Colombia's coffee federation is trying to find a new person to portray Juan Valdez.

More info from bbc.co.uk: Colombian coffee icon steps down

I received email a few days ago about a Vonage IPO happening, and it said I could participate in the IPO since I'm a customer. Initially, I stated in this post that this was a phishing scam. However, I retract that claim, and I no longer believe it to be a scam.

The confusion was over their dumb interface which prompted you to log in if you were an existing customer (presumably an existing customer of Vonage, which I am). But the authentication information is different for the vonageipo.com website, so you log in with your valid vonage.com info but it gives you an error. Try again with valid info, still get an error. Classic phishing behavior.

I don't know if they added text later (this was confusing enough that it was a topic on slashdot earlier today) or what, but I did the new sign-up (shouldn't everyone be a new sign-up, then? why offer "new users" vs. "existing users"? how dumb is that?) and it found my info based only on my account id.

So there you have it. Vonage is indeed doing some sort of IPO participation for existing customers, and the url is www.vonageipo.com. It's just a sucky interface that is liable to confuse you.

It's about damn time.

Makers of Soft Drinks Accept Ban in Schools

The nation's largest soft drink makers, under pressure from parents and health advocates, agreed Wednesday to halt almost all sales in elementary and middle schools.Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Cadbury Schweppes will sell only water, juice, tea and low-calorie drinks in schools under a deal brokered by former President Clinton and the American Heart Assn. The companies will limit soda sales in high schools to diet drinks, Clinton said.

Tom Cruise has confirmed that he is a lunatic.

"I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there."

I cannot imagine anything nastier than eating that stuff. Ewwwww...

The news headlines crack me up:
Cruise: I will eat the placenta
Tom's Placenta Snack
Cruise to eat nutritious placenta
Cruise: I'll eat my baby's placenta

Last week, there was talk of Motive's stock being delisted from Nasdaq (Motive may be delisted).

On Monday, it happened (Motive being delisted by Nasdaq).

According to the articles above, Motive was delisted because they could not comply with the SEC's filing deadlines, due to the company's decision to restate financial records all the way back to 2001.

Alfred Mockett, the new CEO, said:

"The restatements are not a reflection on our core business or strategic vision, but an indication of our commitment to address past accounting issues, correct them, and put them definitively behind us."

Is that a true statement? I don't know. Could be. But maybe not.

In fact, there's a realistic chance that Motive is on a permanent, unalterable downhill slide, and he was brought in as the fall guy. I hope they're paying him a lot of money, because it will be difficult to find a new job when your last position was standing at the helm of a company that went straight into the toilet. That will never look good on your resume, no matter how you spin it.

Motive stock is now trading on Pink Sheets for about $3/share. Latest price info here: http://www.pinksheets.com/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=motv

A few choice tidbits from Extensive Cell Phone Use Linked To Brain Tumors:

... if you spend many years using your cell phone for at least an hour a day your risk of developing a brain tumor is 240% higher than a person who never uses one. ... even the location of the tumor tends to be on the side of the head where the phone is used.

Everyone probably knows by now that the Muslim world is really, really upset about the publication of insulting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Especially infuriating for Muslims is how many non-Muslims have dismissed their concerns with an attitude of, "It's not a big deal, sure it's offensive, but it's freedom of speech, get over it."

Well, an Iranian newspaper has decided to play the same game. The most popular newspaper in Iran, Hamshari daily, is launching an international competition to find the most offensive cartoons about the Holocaust.

This is the kind of thing they should have done from the start rather than destroying stuff. Unfortunately, any form of violence (such as burning the Danish embassy in Iran) isn't really going to win people over or make them see your point of view. Instead, it's going to make them mad. Not good for problem resolution.

But printing offensive cartoons about the Holocaust is perfect. The Muslims can use the exact same excuses and defenses that the non-Muslims used to dismiss their concerns in the first place.

From Iranian paper to run Holocaust cartoons:

Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust.

Donald Rumsfeld and many others in the Bush administration have shown again and again that they are incapable of interacting with the rest of the world like mature adults. Look at Europe. Most of the European leaders demonstrate an attitude of "we'll do our thing, you do yours, just don't mess with me about it", while Bush and his staff are much more like bandits in the wild west. "Do what I say, or I'll shoot you in the nuts!", they seem to say.

Whether you agree with what they say or do is irrelevant to the point I'm making now. Doing the right thing is not related to the manner in which they do it. Doing anything in a brash, bullying, forceful way is usually not a good idea. Nobody likes a bully.

Rumsfeld just gave the best example of this attitude while giving the US citizens more "fear the terrorists!" hype earlier today (Terror threat is greater today).

"They [the terrorists] will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs."

That pretty much speaks for itself.

Of course, there wasn't really any doubt about this. But our "leaders" usually try to avoid directly associating themselves with anything negative. That is to say, they can act like jerks but tell us they're not acting like jerks. And for some reason, that seems to work. But they usually don't act like jerks and tell us they're acting like jerks. So that's the interesting thing, I think.

Surely, Rumsfeld isn't stupid enough to miss the obvoius 3rd option: America could stop pissing off the Middle East, and the terrorists would then have no reason to be angry with us. Or is he? He and the rest of the Bush drones have a history of being big, tough bullies. Maybe they're all too dumb to realize every conflict does not have to result in a fist fight.

I bought one of the "old" 4-blade razors last year. Over the following month or so, I tortured myself with some of the worst shaving experiences I've ever had. The head is too large to get in tight spots, and the blades clog very quickly. Every stroke left me swishing through the water trying to unclog the blades. It took much longer to shave, and the experience was extremely annoying.

Why do I need 4 blades? The shave is worse, and costs more. What's wrong with 2 blades? They work fine. I did eventually throw my fancy 4-blade razor out and replace it with an old skool 2-blade razor.

So now Gillette is spending $6 million (!) on two Super Bowl ads to build hype for a new, 5-blade razor called "Fusion" (Gillette's New Edge). What a crock! The only reason razor manufacturers keep releasing new stuff every few years is that their rights expire and generic models flood the market. So we get lower prices with more choice. Good for the consumer, bad for Gillette.

The only way that Gillette (and Schick, etc.) can keep us buying their brand exclusively is to offer a product that isn't available elsewhere. With each new product, Gillette will hold exclusive rights to it for a period of years. Then they spend millions on fancy ad campaigns, hoping they can convince a bunch of men that they've been wasting their time with 1, 2, 3, or even 4-blade shaving razors. You need FIVE blades! See?!

Morgan Stanley predicts the new Fusion razor will grab 15% of the U.S. market this year. That is absolutely depressing.

This is pretty wild. Honda UK has just announced a car that can drive itself on the freeway (Honda Builds Accord with 'Autopilot' Tech).

It's called the Honda Accord ADAS (Advanced Driver Assist System). Using a millimeter-wave radar sensor on the front of the car, it can scan ahead for other vehicles and slow down/speed up accordingly. It also handles turns in the road by using cameras to watch the white lines separating each lane. The auto-pilot system requires the driver to touch the steering wheel every 10 seconds, so you can't fall asleep or hop in the back without the car noticing. But the article makes no mention of what the car will actually do if the driver doesn't check in. Will it coast to a stop? Will it turn off the road? Possibly slam on the brakes? Who knows.

This new Accord will go on sale in the UK in March for $25,880 pounds (US$46,500). The price seems a bit steep for a feature that requires me to stay behind the wheel, but I guess that proves I'm not the target audience. Driving on a freeway is easy, and it just doesn't seem worth the extra US$20,000 (I don't know what a regular Accord goes for, but I'm guessing around $25,000).

Finally, it isn't clear how well this will work, or if people will actually feel comfortable using it. Regardless, all Hondas are due to have ADAS by 2016.

Here's a little more information from a Honda press release dated September 1, 2005:

New Civic Leads Quartet of Models Debuting at the Frankfurt Motor Show

New Accord for 2006

An enhanced version of Honda’s award-winning D-segment contender will also have its first public outing at the show. As well as receiving an interior and exterior facelift, the Accord range will also benefit from the first application in Europe of Honda’s ADAS (Advanced Driving Assist Systems) technologies.

The innovative suite of systems is aimed at making the driving experience relaxing and, above all, safer. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which regulates the speed of the car and its distance to the vehicle in front, will be equipped. In addition, the European first Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS), which detect lane markings on motorways and applies the appropriate amount of torque to the steering, will also be available (as a factory-equipped option on right-hand drive models only).

After 19 years, Alan Greenspan stepped down yesterday as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Today, the UK Treasury announced that Greenspan will become the only adviser to the Treasury (Greenspan signs up to UK Treasury), helping the UK with global economic policy. They're not paying him anything, and he will be the only adviser to the Treasury. He's also launched a new consulting firm named Greenspan Associates. It will be interesting to see how his influence changes over the coming years.

From California tobacco smoke 'toxic':

California has become the first US state to classify second-hand tobacco smoke as a toxic air pollutant. The decision by the California Air Resources Board puts drifting smoke in the same category as diesel exhaust, and could lead to tougher regulation.

After plenty of speculation and rumors, Disney is officially acquiring Pixar in a stock-only deal worth $7.4 billion. Steve Jobs will become the single largest share holder with 7% of Disney stock.

This is good news for Disney, as the Pixar folks will provide a huge infusion of creativity and energy. But I'm not so sure it's good for Pixar. What will Pixar gain from Disney? Better distribution deals? Better marketing? Most companies would do well to have the Disney name on their product, but Pixar has proven themselves and created their own reputation of excellence and quality. And for the past decade, Pixar has already had marketing and distribution agreements with Disney. So I'm not too sure what Pixar stands to gain from this vs. the risks of being acquired by a mega company.

One key point of positivity: John Lasseter will remain with the group as a creative director. Lasseter is probably the single most important person to retain, and keeping him around is critical to the success of the Pixar acquisition. If John Lasseter ever leaves Disney/Pixar, or "transitions" into some other role, that will signal the beginning of the end for Pixar.

Disney to Acquire Pixar for $7.4B in Stock

Americans are a little closer to a non-prescription, over-the-counter drug to fight obesity (FDA panel OKs drug for obesity). Called orlistat (same thing as prescription Xenical), it will help block fat absorption in the body. Trials showed that over 6 months, people who took orlistat lost 5 or 6 pounds more than those without orlistat (not much other information on their trials, so it isn't clear if the study participants were eating well/poorly, or exercising at all).

The manufacturer is careful to set people's expectations realistically. John Dent, R&D executive at GlaxoSmithKline, said, "There is no magic pill for weight loss and orlistat is definitely not a magic pill. Orlistat is a tool that will help people control their calorie intake."

It will be interesting to see how the public responds to this. WIth 2/3 of the adult population obese or overweight, one might be tempted to think that most of those people would take a pill to lose the extra pounds. But social trends have been changing in recent years, and more adults say they are comfortable with being overweight. So will they care about this new pill? And if they do, will they try it out immediately? Or perhaps they'll wait to see if it's safer than the last anti-obesity drug, Fen-phen?

Levi Strauss has designed a pair of jeans that will have an iPod remote control and docking station in the pockets, and they will also have headphones attached. One pair will cost about $200, and should be available this fall.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a really, really dumb idea?

Levi Strauss Designs iPod Jeans

Young's decision yesterday to join the NFL is not much of a suprise, he's an amazing player. We watched the Rose Bowl from the hospital, easily the most exciting football game I've ever seen.

Longhorn is long gone -- to NFL

Pat Robertson is in the news again after he said God made Ariel Sharon have a stroke for trying to divide the holy land. I think God should end Pat Robertson's life for being an antagonistic idiot.

US attacks TV host on Sharon slur

As usual, when Pamela covers a story at Groklaw, it's extremely informative. She included specific details on the terms of the proposed settlement.

A Proposed Settlement in NY Class Action Sony Litigation

Starting in February, public libraries in Dallas can ban people who smell bad. They can also ban people for sleeping, eating, loud talking, fighting, bare feet, sex and washing. Is it a person's right to smell bad if they wish? Is it discriminatory to restrict public services (like libraries) due to excessive smell? Is this really such a big problem that they had to make a law about it?

Dallas bad smell ban sparks row

Sony has reached a settlement in a New York class action lawsuit regarding their awful DRM blunder. As part of the settlement, Sony will compensate those who purchased infected CDs and fix their computers (that's gonna be fun). Also, Sony has made 200 albums downloadable as a possible compensation, and Sony must make the albums available on iTunes Music Store.

Sony 'rootkit' settlement clamps down on DRM

Doubts on Tamiflu as four patients die

Fresh doubts have been cast on the efficacy of Tamiflu as a bird flu treatment, as one of the world's most prestigious medical journals published new reports of resistance to the drug and deaths in patients in Vietnam.

Menno de Jong and colleagues at the hospital for tropical diseases in Ho Chi Minh City have recorded in the New England Journal of Medicine that four of eight patients suffering from the H5N1 flu strain and treated with Tamiflu had died, including two who developed resistance.

Intelligent design supporters and opponents alike should be happy that intelligent design has been banned from classrooms as of today ('Intelligent design' teaching ban).

Here's why: even though ID proponents argue that they're not teaching creationism, they are in fact teaching a modified, updated, more current version of creationism. This is not an opinion, it is not subjective: if any topic is discussed in relation to God, it implies a certain amount of religious context. In biology, these discussions of intelligent design are about God helping out with evolution. The issue has nothing to do with whether you believe in God. Nobody has said "God doesn't exist", nothing of the sort. We merely have to recognize and accept that the topic has touched religious ground.

It should be a red flag as soon as any school topic discusses religion. Why? The United States Constitution says we should keep the church and state separate. That means religion should be taught in churches, mosques, synagogues, and other places of worship. Not in a school. That's all.

This entire issue has been one of protecting and upholding our constitution, and has very little to do with religion at all (other than to say it should be kept separate from the state).

The ruling judge, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, said in his ruling:

"It is ironic," Jones said, "that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the I.D. Policy."

Broadband over power lines is coming to Texas, starting with about 2 million residents in north Texas.

Texas to get broadband over its power lines

Good news for the city of Austin.

The mayor, city council members, a bunch of other elected officials, and people from various associations are all working together to ramp up downtown Austin. (City of Austin to begin downtown planning process)

And the economy for the Austin area is set to grow at a rate of 4.58% over the next 5 years. This data says the Austin metro area will be the fastest growing area in the entire state of Texas. (Austin economy forecast to be better in 2006)

A hospital in Switzerland says it will allow assisted suicide on its premises for terminally ill patients. From the start of next year terminally ill patients in Lausanne's main hospital will be allowed to take their own lives on hospital premises, as long as they are of sound mind, are already too ill to return home, and have expressed a persistent wish to die.

Swiss hospital to allow suicide

Post on Austin Action: Walmart ditches Helotes plans. Nice.

Does the Iranian president like Israel, the United States, or Europe? Not at all. So it shouldn't come as any suprise that he would say, "they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets." (Holocaust a myth, says Iranian president).

Excluding the world view of a few fundamentalist nutballs, the Holocaust did occur, leaving an indelible mark in history. Most people agree on this. But if you take a step back, one can see that extreme comments such as this are caused primarily by frustration and unhappiness over the existence of the Israeli state. It is on this topic that he makes an interesting point, "Give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them [Jews], so that the Jews can establish their country."

It's only been a matter of weeks since General Motors announced they would cut 30,000 jobs and close 9 production plants in an effort to reach profitability. Today, Ford Motor Co. says they will make a similar move by cutting 30,000 jobs and close at least 10 plants (possibly more?) during the next five years.

Ford to slash up to 30,000 jobs, 10 plants

As of this week, the push for .xxx domain names is dead ("ICANN kills .xxx porn domain").

The creation of .xxx web domains would have provided an extremely valuable segregation of porn and non-porn sites. Just as .edu is for an educational institution, and .de is in Germany, .xxx would have been for porn sites.

Advocates hoped it would clarify website names, making it easy to block adult content from children by simply banning .xxx websites from a certain computer. Corporations could achieve the same results. But opponents feared it would make it too easy to find pornography, claiming it would create a "virtual red light district" on the internet. This argument is dumb, because anyone who has ever actually used the internet knows that it is already challening to avoid porn sites, much less difficult to deliberately look for them. Even legitimate web searches might return mountains of porn-related search results.

Should you decide to actually look for porn, you'll find that it's unbelievably easy. For example, Googling for "sex" returns 218 million results, and plenty of them are very obviously porn-related (page through the search results and you'll see, it's kinda hard to miss).

So how could it possibly get any easier to find porn sites if we had .xxx domain extensions? Isn't it obvious that there already exists an easy-to-find red light district without .xxx?

Microsoft has announced Windows Live, a new software service that does several different things. I haven't played with it much, but it looks like it's trying to compete with Google's numerous services and offer a little bit of security for Windows users. There's a news viewer (think news.google.com), an email client that's probably undoubtedly stole features/ideas from Google's excellent www.gmail.com, and there's some stuff aimed at improving Windows security. Given the existing options for web-based news and email, I believe the security features are what stand to make the biggest impact for Windows users. It claims to do "stuff like virus scanning, firewall settings, tune ups, and software backups".

For non-Windows specific stuff (news, mail), I cannot imagine leaving Google's excellent, proven applications for a new, unproven offering from Microsoft. Why should I? Microsoft has proven again and again that they cannot innovate; they simply steal good ideas from everyone else. Given this established fact, it leaves no reason for users to expect any new features in this "new" service. Instead, users should expect to see Microsoft's best attempts at ripping off old products from Google and Apple.

As a Mac user, it's amusing to read through the list of security-related "features" and "benefits" that are only just now available to Windows users (from Microsoft, not counting 3rd-party add-on software) - just about all of that security stuff has been present on Macs for years, and not a just-released, unproven beta offering like Windows Live. Apple left Microsoft in the dust a long time ago.

Microsoft will of course spend a great deal of time, money and energy trying to convince everyone how great Live is. And while there are other features beyond the security enhancements of Live, I think this post summed up Live very well:

"The company that invented software vulnerability has launched a new AntiVirus application. Microsoft executives say the new initiative, when combined with the relaxed security in such products as Office, Internet Explorer, IIS, and Outlook Express, allows the company's revenue streams to come full circle; making them both the cause-of and solution-to most of your computer's security problems."

John Murtha has been all over the news today for his stance on the war in Iraq (Top Democrat urges Iraq pullout). There are a handful of things that really set this guy apart from most people in the anti-war movement.

He's a member of the US Congress, and is a member of a House panel that oversees defense spending. In 2003, he fully supported the invasion of Iraq. He is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. Each of these points (and probably plenty of others) show that he has credibility in matters of war.

Considering Murtha's credibility and experience, his comments today are extremely striking:

"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency, they are united against US forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence. [...] We need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis."

Wow. "We have become a catalyst for violence."

I do not support the war — I have no issues with the troops and their families, I think all of them have been asked to make a huge sacrifice — however, I do not support the war. But I know many people out there (especially here in Texas) are fully supportive of the entire Iraq effort. So I hope those pro-Iraq war folks are paying attention when somebody like this steps up to the microphone.

John Murtha is not some "quack liberal" or "anti-war hooligan" or [insert common derogatory term used by war supporters to describe anti-war people]. I'll bet he has more experience in war and military than most of the folks who say the US should remain in Iraq. But frankly, I prefer to pay attention to people who do have relevant experience, rather than listen to others who (like myself) have never been involved with the military and don't really know what we're talking about.

So instead of listening to you or me, let's listen to John Murtha instead: "we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis".

As things go from bad to worse, the SEC has launched an investigation of Motive. So not nice. It's not clear yet, but Motive thinks the investigation is related to the restatement of its financial results and stock sales by certain unnamed executives.

Having worked there for about 13 months (at which point I came to my senses and quit), this comes as no suprise to me. I worked in development, so I cannot comment on anything specific about Motive's financial dealings, but things sure seemed sketchy to me. Lots of re-shuffling of money, finances, sales, etc. I kept wondering if this was the kind of thing that bigger companies (like Enron) got busted for doing, but Motive was able to get away with it because they were relatively small.

Again, I can't prove anything, but I never, ever the warm fuzzies about how Motive handled itself financially.

Ouch, this is bad news for Motive. It's never good when two dozen shareholders sue your ceo, cfo, and the company itself.

Motive shareholders file class-action suit:

Some shareholders of Motive Inc. have filed a class-action lawsuit that accuses the company and two executives of misleading investors about the company's prospects before reporting quarterly results that fell well below forecasts.

The Austin software company declined to comment Thursday on the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Austin against Motive, CEO Scott Harmon and Chief Financial Officer Paul Baker.

Three other law firms issued news releases Thursday saying they also plan to file class-action lawsuits against Motive. Shareholder lawsuits are not unusual when a company's stock takes a drastic dive.

Attorney William Federman, whose Oklahoma City law firm filed the suit, said about two dozen shareholders have joined the suit.

"It's difficult to judge the damages, but it appears to be well in excess of $10 million," Federman said.

The lawsuit claims that Motive executives knew demand for the company's software was decreasing but continued to issue positive sales projections. Specifically, the suit points out that when the company released preliminary second-quarter results July 11, Harmon said revenue didn't meet expectations because of a missed deal and a shortfall in consulting services, but he expressed confidence that general demand for its management-automation software remained healthy.

On Oct. 4, the company warned that third-quarter results would fall below forecasts and said it would look at the possible sale of its automation-software business and focus on its telecom products because of disappointing financial results. On the news, Motive's stock fell 36 percent to $4.01.

The company also later restated first- and second-quarter financial results, causing the stock to drop to $3.66 a share. It rose 20 cents Thursday, or 5 percent, to $3.95.

Interesting op-ed piece from the Los Angeles Times: The dark side of faith. Excerpts below...

Too much religion may be a dangerous thing.

This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States.

Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality.

He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. -- which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) -- also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

More bad news for people at Motive: Layoffs will occur.

Austin software provider Motive Inc. confirmed Thursday that it will lay off some employees, following a warning Wednesday that its third-quarter finances won't meet expectations. Although a number wasn't disclosed, Cybele Diamandopoulos, Motive's director of public relations, says layoff details will be disclosed when the company releases its third-quarter financial report Oct. 26.

Hopefully, another one of these crony bastards might get what he deserves if they can follow through with a conviction. And of course, DeLay and his crony lawyer are complaining about this being a "witch hunt" by an evil Democrat. That makes sense, right? I mean, come on, this is America, land of the free, where a congressman should be allowed to pay his wife and daughter $500,000 for providing "big picture, long-term strategic guidance and helping with personnel decisions" and "assissting in arranging and organising individual events"!

If those are the going rates for "strategic guidance" and "event planning", I think I need to switch careers.

Details from Jury indicts top US congressman:

The Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives Tom DeLay has been indicted with criminal conspiracy by a grand jury in Texas. The charge relates to a campaign finance scheme in which two of Mr DeLay's associates also stand accused. Mr DeLay, the second-highest ranking member of the house, said he would step down temporarily to answer the charges. He is a key fundraiser for President Bush and is seen as yielding immense political influence. Three of Mr DeLay's former aides had already been charged with illegal fundraising.

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This satellite photo of hurricane Rita was taken at 11:15am EST Friday.

From hurricane updates at www.nhc.noaa.gov:

WTNT63 KNHC 211955
TCUAT3
HURRICANE RITA TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
255 PM CDT WED SEP 21 2005

DATA FROM RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT RITA HAS REACHED

CATEGORY FIVE INTENSITY WITH ESTIMATED MAXIMUM SUSTAINED SURFACE

WINDS OF 165 MPH.  THIS WILL BE REFLECTED IN THE 4 PM CDT ADVISORY.

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All kinds of data out there tracking hurricane Rita and its projected path. This one shows the storm moving inland just to the east of Austin, and it's pretty likely that we'll see at least 50 mph winds on Saturday as a result of Rita. More info at crown weather.

Recent polling data shows that support for Bush is dropping, even among those who used to support him. Interesting bits snipped from the article:

• about 60% said Bush does not share their priorities for the country
• about 60% said they were uneasy about Bush's ability to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq
• about half said he has strong qualities of leadership
• about 60% said the country was "pretty seriously" on the wrong track
• about 40% approved of Bush's overall performance

We're about one month away from the biggest change in bankruptcy law in more than 25 years. Nolo posted a good article about the coming changes. Here's the high-level info:

After eight years and three failed attempts, the credit card industry has finally got the bankruptcy law "reform" changes they've been lobbying for. Signed into law on April 20, 2005, most of the new law will take effect 180 days later, on October 17, 2005.

The new law, which marks the biggest change to bankruptcy law since 1978, prohibits some people from filing for bankruptcy altogether. And for those who manage to qualify for bankruptcy, it makes it harder to come up with manageable repayment plans and it has fewer protections from collection efforts than the prior law.

BBC.co.uk posted these illustrations showing how the flood waters are spread through the city of New Orleans, and how the drainage plan will work. They're kinda high-level, not a too much detail, but still informative.

Michael Brown, director of FEMA, said the victims in New Orleans are responsible for their own situation. Specifically, according to CNN, he said, "Unfortunately, [the death toll in New Orleans] is going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings. I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there."

So let's get this straight: the director of FEMA is telling the world that it's the peoples' own fault for getting caught in this situation. Everyone got that?

Now we'll go back to November 2004, when Shirley Laska published a column discussing the potential outcome if Hurricane Ivan had hit New Orleans. She cited specific details about what would have happened, including:

• huge storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain (her prediction was correct, Katrina caused this),
• levees between lake and city break and fill the city with water up to 20 feet deep (again, correct prediction, Katrina caused this too)
• flooding of suburbs with water pushing as far as seven miles inland (I don't have exact numbers on this, but I think this is either correct or really close to what Katrina caused), and finally
• inundated areas south of Mississippi River (again, correct, Katrina caused huge destruction all over the area)

Less than one year ago, Shirley wrote: "Up to 80 percent of the structures in these flooded areas would have been severely damaged from wind and water. The potential for such extensive flooding and the resulting damage is the result of a levee system that is unable to keep up with the increasing flood threats from a rapidly eroding coastline and thus unable to protect the ever-subsiding landscape."

Additionally, she points out that researchers had already estimated that 40% of the New Orleans population (1.2 million total, so we're talking about 500,000 people) would not evacuate if "the big one" threatened and an evacuation was ordered.

Her column goes on and on, and it's absolutely frightening that she wrote all of this nearly one year ago. You could almost believe that it had been written yesterday, after Katrina had already devastated New Orleans.

So Michael Brown, who's fault is it?

Is it the citizens' fault for not leaving, even though researchers already knew a large percentage would not follow an evacuation order?

Or could it possibly be the government's fault for being informed about scenarios such as this, with fully detailed articles such as Shirley Laska's, only to follow it up by doing absolutely nothing to prepare for this situation? (And by the way, hers was not the only voice that warned officials of this scenario.)

As quoted in this BBC article, Pat Robertson just told viewers of his influential TV show, the 700 Club, "I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he [Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

Newsflash to Mr. Robertson: If you are trying to convince everyone that you did not call for the assassination of the President of Venezuela, as you clearly seemed to be doing in the press this week, you might consider refraining from making comments like, "we really ought to go ahead and do it". You are making yourself look like an idiot, along with the rest of the United States citizens. I wonder, would this country, and indeed the entire world, be a better place if somebody assassinated you instead of Chavez?

The leader of the free world, George W. Bush, gave a speech today. He said some stuff, and probably talked about a bunch of different things.

I think I read somewhere that he said, "I apologize that I am still unable to correctly pronounce the word 'nuclear'."

Did I listen to his speech? No.
Did I read about it? Nope.
Am I gonna? No way.

Things are heating up between the United States and Venezuela. Hugo Chavez threatened to stop exporting Venezuelan oil to the U.S. (Venezuela is the 5th largest oil producer in the world, exporting 1.3 million barrels per day to the U.S. alone). Meanwhile, Venezuela is building a large-scale satellite tevelision channel that will present Latin America as it really is, not the way that CNN and other biased U.S.-based news agencies choose to portray it, so the people of Latin America will start to see the reality of Latin America, not a sugary, watered-down version from U.S. media. And the US State Department is all bent out of shape because religious fanatic Pat Robertson broadcast that the United States should assassinate Chavez. Right or wrong, folks in Venezuelan are obviously unhappy about this, and the State Department is scurrying to condemn Robertson for being an outspoken idiot. Robertson's actual words were, "We don't need another $200bn war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." I'm not saying Chavez is a great guy or anything (apparently he's not), but there are certain things a high-profile radio broadcaster should avoid talking about, and one of them is discussing which world leaders the US military should assassinate.

And now that everyone is paying attention, Pat Robertson has come forward to say, "I didn't say 'assassination', I said our special forces could take him out. Take him out could be a number of things including kidnapping. There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted." So did he really mean we should send special forces down to Venezuela to kidnap Chavez? Or did he actually mean we should devise a scheme to assassinate the leader? Personally, I think it's nothing short of expected that Robertson would tell everyone he did not mean assassination, especially since it's a crime in the United States to assassinate the leader of any other country.

If you think Bush should meet with Cindy Sheehan, you can cast your vote by adding your name to an online petition. If you're not in favor of their meeting, obviously you'll want to avoid the above petition. (Perhaps somebody will create an anti-Sheehan petition asking for Bush to not meet with her?)

Anyway, at the time of this posting there were 18,579 signatures on the petition. I wonder how many it would take to have an impact.

Copied directly from slashdot:

The Zotob MS05-039 worm mentioned on Slashdot last Sunday may be the most recent virus that has gone global, hitting Windows 2000 desktops at CNN, ABC, the New York Times, and many others. The virus is spreading around the world rapidly as compromised systems become bots and propagate the worm, with reported outbreaks in Germany and China. InformationWeek has a decent article titled Zotob Proves Patching "Window" Non-Existent. Microsoft calls it a "low impact" threat and tells you What you should know about Zotob. Symantec has W32.Zotob.D removal instructions. Trend Micro thinks that this is a new, different worm altogether and says it is one of the fastest-spreading infections in history.

Soon, Round Rock (and thus Austin, along with the rest of central Texas) will have their own IKEA.

A 20+ acre site in Round Rock at I-35 and Chandler Road will be the location of a new IKEA store that's set to open in 2007. The IKEA company said it will occupy a 252,000 sq. ft. building and employ 250-300 people. Construction starts in 2006 with a targeted opening date in the spring of 2007.

More details here: IKEA to open Round Rock store in '07

Apple Japan has sold more than a million songs to Japanese consumers through iTunes Music Store since last Thursday. According to Steve Jobs, "iTunes has sold twice as many songs in just four days as all the other online music services in Japan sell in one month. iTunes has become Japan's number one online music store in just four days." Slightly more details available here: iTunes Japan shifts 1m songs in four days

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Just before September 11, 2001, Bush's approval ratings (compiled from 15 different polling organizations, including Gallup, Time, ABC, CBS, etc..) were in the 50-60% range. Then September 11 hit and suddenly everybody loved Bush! His approval rating jumped to the 80-90% range. But since then, his approval ratings have steadily dropped down into the 40s - lower than his pre-9/11 ratings.

So the poll data shows that the U.S. population likes Bush less and less as time goes on, and there's no sign of that changing.

I wonder if he knows how to pronounce "nu-cle-ar" yet.

Microsoft is all over the news today after they revealed the official product name for the next version of the Windows operating system. But the actual product won't be available for another year (possibly longer).

They missed a huge opportunity to come up with a unique name, and I'd like to know how much money they spent before deciding on "Vista". I just google'd "vista" and it shows 20,400,000 results. Nice.

The Register put together this informative, concise description of what Vista will offer, according to the announcement video (Microsoft passes da Vista baby):

The corporate video accompanying the announcement went some way to filling in the details. It seems using Vista will, at last, enable you to: sit in front of a computer, show someone your tablet PC, show someone else your mobile phone, get into cars while carrying a laptop and walk through sun-soaked rooms with highly polished floors, even while being buffeted by pulses of multicoloured light.

According to the video, it will also make you clear - confident - connected. Which sounds like the job description for a Microsoft major accounts manager, or possibly a mafia hitman.

Oh well, at least Microsoft can start printing up the baseball caps, T-shirts and coffee cups that journalists, partners and developers will be happily dropping into wastepaper bins within minutes of the official launch.

After a 5-4 vote in Kelo v. City of New London, the United States Supreme Court ruled that local governments may now seize peoples' homes and businesses, whether the people consent or not, so that their land can be used for private economic development.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, one of the 4 justices who sided with citizens and home owners (and thus, ruled against the rights of governments, big business and wealthy land developers), wrote,

"Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded.

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

Who among us can say she already makes the most productive or attractive use of her property? The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory.

The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

This is really, really bad for homeowners and small-business owners in the United States, and further empowers the wealthy class, who arguably have too much power already.

So be prepared to say goodbye to your home, and welcome more Target and Home Depot stores instead. That's what you wanted, right? To have your home knocked down in exchange for another huge retail store... isn't that the American Dream?

This case was brought by 15 homeowners of a working-class neighborhood in New London, Connecticut fighting to keep private property that they have owned for many years (one of them is an 80+ year old woman who has lived in the same house for her entire life). The city government of New London wanted to take their homes, destroy the buildings, and use the land to build a hotel, health club and office building. According to the Fifth Amendment, governments are allowed to take private property if the land is for "public use", but that used to mean something like laying new railway trarcks, building a new school or public park, not building a privately owned hotel or health club, or another Home Depot.

Before this ruling, any big business has been able to (and often does) use their financial and political power to influence city and state governments to act in the interests of that business, not in the interests of the citizens or tax payers. This kind of thing already happens all the time, all across the country. City and state governments are constantly falling over themselves to offer incentives and special deals to big companies if they would please, please, please just open a huge office building or factory in their city. The eternal claim is that big companies will bring jobs and boost the local economy. But who funds these big business deals? The taxpayers. And now, citizens won't just watch the government hand over their tax dollars, now they'll watch the government kick them off of their own property, then turn around and use their own tax dollars to fund (both directly and indirectly, through perks and incentives) the very businesses that displaced them.

Case in point: Dell Computer is currently being sued for using fear tactics and unfair bargaining to win $240,000,000 (!) in tax credits from North Carolina, and another $37,000,000 in local subsidies from the city of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County (both in North Carolina). The bottom line is that the local and state governments in North Carolina are falling over themselves to lure Dell to build a new manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem. The governments are going to throw nearly 300 MILLION DOLLARS at Dell, and run through a laundry list of city improvements, new roads, and other local changes (the local government will pick up the tab on that, but it shouldn't be more than 10 or 15 million...). Read about it yourself here: "North Carolina residents sue Dell to keep their $270m", or go here for the full details of the Dell/North Carolina agreement, complete with full terms and conditions.

After this ruling, the local government can now seize and destroy the private homes owned by local citizens, so that instead of Dell showing up and taking more than a quarter of a BILLION dollars from your local and state economies, they might take your house, too (and your neighbor's), so they can build a factory that will allow them to make even more money than they already have. And don't go looking to the government or the courts for assistance -- it's the government and courts that made things the way they are, so you can bet your ass they're not gonna do a damn thing to help you. That's just super, isn't it?

Here's a good article providing background information for Kelo v. City of New London: "House not for sale", an article at The New York Times: "Justices Uphold Taking Property for Development", an article at CNN: "High court OKs personal property seizures", and another at CNN Money: "Eminent domain: A big-box bonanza?".

I've been following this for a while, and I'm glad to see that Austin skaters will soon enjoy a 12,000 sqft. public skatepark, free for all to use. The skatepark is being built in Mabel Davis park (click here for a map).

Here's a nice write-up in the Daily Texan: City will build skatepark - The Daily Texan - Top Stories, highlights below.

After six years of pushing for a city skatepark, the skateboarding community will finally have their haven. The City Council approved the construction of Austin's first public skatepark at the May 19 council meeting. Construction begins this month and should be completed by the end of the summer.

"I promised a whole bunch of kids a long time ago that we would build this skatepark, and I'm very pleased to be able to deliver on that promise today," Mayor Will Wynn said in a written statement. "This skatepark is going to rock."

Netcraft: Lax Security Cited in Massive Credit Card Data Theft

Inadequate security at credit card processor CardSystems Solutions Inc. is being blamed for a break-in that has exposed more than 40 million credit card accounts to potential theft. The company says the system compromise was discovered May 22, after a MasterCard inquiry into a wave of fradulent transactions.

MasterCard International said it "worked with CardSystems to remediate the security vulnerabilities in the processor's systems. These vulnerabilities allowed an unauthorized individual to infiltrate their network and access the cardholder data." Officials at affected institutions were not specifying the vulnerability and exploit used to breach CardSystems' security. The CardSystems web site runs on the Windows 2000 operating system and Microsoft IIS Server 5.0.

Oh joy, a credit card processing company had an insecure Windows machine running Microsoft's IIS webserver, it got owned by some haxor who stole credit card data for 40+ million accounts that belong to regular ol' people who didn't do anything wrong. That's just effing super.

This is one of the most twisted stories ever. Details available here: Sperm: Court dismisses man's theft claim against lover who kept semen, or through these Google results.

What it basically boils down to is a man and woman had a an affair 6 years ago. Affair? Yes. Sexual intercourse? No. But she did perform oral sex on him, and afterward she saved the semen (without telling the man) and used it to artificially inseminate herself (again, without the man's knowledge). She was successful in impregnating herself with his semen, and eventually gave birth to "their" child. Two years would pass before the man found out he was a father, thanks to the woman filing a paternity claim against him. DNA tests confirmed that he was the father, and basically he's been forced to pay $800/month in child support to this lady for the past 3 years (and probably for the remainder of the kid's life).

It is absolutely stunning that the courts upheld her side of the story, saying that the semen was "a gift, an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee." This entire thing is just wrong.

Firefox, one of the best things to happen to web browsing in a long time, recently hit 25,000,000 downloads. That's pretty damn huge, and is yet another wake-up call to Microsoft that their self-proclaimed "dominance" of the web browser market thus far has been largely due to them practically forcing Windows users to surf the internet with Internet Explorer and nothing else. Blah, everything coming out of Microsoft is a bunch of marketing nonsense, but it's nice to see the masses exercising their ability to choose something better.

Wowza, this is crazy neato. "Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy" describes the work of scientists in Shanghai who created human-rabbit embryos. This raises all sorts of interesting questions... should these things be considered people or house pets? Do they have rights? How will they fit into society?

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras - a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

...

Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in California, has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human. Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.

Yesterday, Apple announced all kinds of neato stuff, including iPod Shuffle, the Mac Mini, iWork, and a new version of iLife... (drool)...

This is just sad... Verizon got all bent out of shape when the City of Philadelphia tried to offer free or low-cost citywide wireless internet access, including in low-income neighborhoods. So Verizon lobbied heavily, and it looks like they won: Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell just signed legislation that gives phone companies (like Verizon) the right to deny municipalities the ability to build their own wireless networks. See "Law restricts municipal Wi-Fi networks" for more details.

The Chief Idiot of Disney, Michael Eisner, and one of his idiot minions, Dick Cook, have announced their intention to create Toy Story 3 without Pixar Animation ("'Toy Story 3' in the works"). Basically, Pixar and Disney had a business agreement that is up for renewal, and Pixar realized that they were being screwed in many ways by Disney, so they have announced that they did not intend to renew the Pixar/Disney parnership in 2005. That leaves Disney with their pants around their ankles, still sucking in the modern world, and with few good options available. So Eisner is pushing for the big move that every big Hollywood idiot studio would do - squeeze another sequel out of a movie, even if the original creators want nothing to do with it, and even if it runs a serious risk of becoming a huge, huge catastrophe at the box office. That doesn't matter though, as long as Disney can convince enough innocent people to go see the movie within the first few weeks (before word spreads that the movie is horrible, which it most certainly will be).

This chart shows the voter turnout (of the total eligible voters) over time. Clearly, this election produced one of the biggest turnouts ever, and was a sharp increase from previous elections. End result? Not much, but I thought it was an interesting chart.

Maybe one of these presidential terms, Bush will learn how to pronounce it correctly: nu·cle·ar. (he did graduate from Yale, right?)

The campaign organizers for both sides are claiming victory (big suprise). In addition to the standard details on most news sites ("Candidates claim debate victory"), I found this interesting chart showing the results of two different polls. The first poll, from Gallup, shows that the majority of the viewing public (at least those who were polled) thought that Kerry beat Bush. ABC News conducted a poll, too, and also concluded that Kerry beat Bush.

This is the third person to assume the role of U.S. Cybersecurity Chief (heading up the Department of Homeland Security), and he is now the third person to quit ("U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns"). Other sources say that he (and the previous people before him) quit because of organizational and structural problems that prevented him from getting anything done (aka, red tape). It also suggests pretty strongly that the Department of Homeland Security might not be useful or helpful, and should probably go away.

News flash! Kids are getting bigger and bigger, and it's not because they're getting older. The National Academy of Sciences says that during the past 30 years, the rate of childhood obesity has tripled among 6 to 11 year olds, and doubled for those aged 2 to 5 and 12 to 19. These days, articles make it into the news on a regular basis ("Panel calls for anti-child obesity effort"), but who says anything is actually changing? If there's one thing we can count on, it's that in another few days, weeks, or months, we'll see another report the states the same findings ("those damn kids are still gaining weight!").

I can't help but think that in 10 or 20 years, our society will be in a much different (and hopefully better) place and we'll have the luxury of looking back on how backward things once were. What interests me is the massive social change required to get from where we are to where we probably ought to be. I want to see the changes coming, see the wave, watch society as it is swept from one place to another.

Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) Seismicity Press Release:

Mount St. Helens Volcanic Advisory (Alert Level Two)
Mount St. Helens Daily Update 9/29/04 5:30 PM PDT

Increased seismicity overnight prompted raising the alert level to Volcano Advisory (Alert Level 2) at 10:40 A.M., PDT, this morning. Throughout the day the seismic energy level has remained at an elevated with a rate of 3-4 events per minute including an increase in the number of events between Magnitude 2 and 3. All earthquake locations are still shallow and in or below the lava dome. In addition, initial data from the GPS instrument on the lava dome that was repaired Monday morning suggest that the site moved a few inches northward Monday and Tuesday, but has since been stable. Such movement is not surprising in light of the high seismicity levels. A USGS field crew continued their deployment of GPS equipment today in order to monitor any ground movement on the lava dome, crater floor, or lower slopes of the volcano. Another gas flight this morning produced a result of no significant volcanic gas detected, as was the case on Monday. Two press conferences were held at CVO to update the media. Tomorrow's field work includes continued GPS deployments.

Nice. "World 'wants Kerry as president'".

A new poll in 35 countries suggests that people around the world would prefer Democratic challenger John Kerry as US president over George W Bush. Global research company GlobeScan Inc and the University of Maryland found clear leads for Mr Kerry among those polled in 30 of the countries. Only Filipino, Polish and Nigerian respondents clearly backed Mr Bush. Most said Mr Bush's foreign policy had made them feel worse about the US since his election in 2000.

So what are the numbers? Listed below are several of the countries who most strongly opposed the re-election of Bush.

• Norway: 74% for Kerry - 7% for Bush
• Germany: 74%-10%
• France: 64%-5%
• Italy: 58%-14%
• Spain: 45%-7%
• UK: 47%-16%
• Canada: 61%-16%
• Mexico: 38%-18%

... for $160 million in cash to join in the world of online music sales -- "Yahoo Flexes Its Music Muscle"

Segway across America at 10 MPH

Our small film crew is slowing down to 10 mph to cross the U.S. by using a Segway HT. Through our 10 mph expedition we are producing an ongoing online documentary featuring daily video stories that capture a sense of America and keep tabs on how the American Dream is living today. About 80 days after departing Seattle, WA we'll complete the expedition in Boston, MA and wrap up with a feature-length documentary.

The UK just slapped Microsoft's wrists for running a misleading advertisement that claimed Linux (an increasingly popular alternative to Windows) was "10 times more expensive than running Windows" ("Microsoft slammed over misleading Windows Linux claims"). This is good because it means that Microsoft has been busted for being a bunch of cheating, lying bastards, but it's bad because they're still a bunch of cheating, lying bastards that require truckloads of legal attention from all over the world.

The grounds for complaint against Microsoft were that the "comparison" (discussed in the advertisement) was performed using two completely different computer systems; the simpler system ran Windows, while the more complex and advanced system ran Linux. The end result is that the study was total bullshit, and any operating system on the more complex machine would have cost more to maintain (even Windows).

While reading through slashdot, I found an interesting post. This person related an experience at a company 9 years ago that happened to be responsible for marketing Windows 95 for Microsoft. Here's what the poster wrote:

I used to work in an advertising company. Oddly, the one that held the Microsoft account in 1995, when MS released Windows 95. At that time, there were a few 'jinks' planned for the release that were not, strictly speaking, legal. They knew that they'd get their wrists slapped, perhaps fined heavily. The company take on it? They knew they may get caught up for it, and slapped hard. But these jinks would get the 'message' across in a spectacular way. Nobody looked too hard at the slapdown and retractions, because they simply avoided the limelight. They had to look apologetic to the right people in private, and it was all forgotten. But people at large simply remembered the original advertising stunt.

In this, it's the same thing again. They knew they'd be held up by the ASA, and torn down a strip, and forced to stop the advertisement. However, they also know that the tech-unsure IT Managers and CIOs and so on will probably see it, and start saying "See, this Linux thing isn't so cheap after all! Stay with MS". Advertising like that is meant to stay in the head along with the words 'survey' and masquerade as fact, so that in a future discussion that's on the subject, they won't say "I saw an advert that said Linux is more expensive than Windows", they'll say "I saw a SURVEY that showed how windows was cheaper to run than Linux". Damage already done. Although the lie has been caught it's already spread, masquerading as fact. They've earned their money, MS will pay any required fines (they've probably already been built into the pitch before it was released), and MS will be smiling all the way as the flung mud sticks, as it always does.

Technical glitch grounds American flights

A computer glitch grounded American Airlines and US Airways flights from coast to coast Sunday morning, causing delays that were expected to last all day.

American had its planes back up after two hours, while US Airways flights were grounded for about three.

Who will get in more trouble: the people responsible for halting airline traffic for two major airlines, or the people who broadcast the profanity during the Democratic nomination last week?

I don't know which is more shocking:

• watching the Democratic nomination of Kerry last night on CNN and hearing the convention producer shouting, "Where are my goddamn balloons? What the fuck are you guys doing up there?!"
• or, finding almost no evidence of the event on news sites today

I know I'm not the only person who saw this happen, since it was broadcast live on CNN. There must have been millions of people who saw the same thing, and heard the same audio of the convention producer freaking out on live television.

The Boston Globe wrote this article, and here's another article that puts a polite spin on last night's balloon fiasco:

"Go balloons," said convention producer Don Mischer, instructing the balloon droppers. "Go balloons. Go balloons!" His voice was becoming increasingly frantic -- and it was going out over CNN.

"I don't see anything happening," he said angrily. Unknown to him, CNN was running his name and title across the bottom of the screen.

Long minutes after the place was supposed to be a blizzard of balloons and confetti, Mischer was still shouting that it wasn't happening, at least it wasn't right. Viewers saw a lot of balloons, in fact, and Kerry, family members and delegates happily batted them around. But nothing like the 100,000 that had been supposed to cascade down.

At one point Mischer used a profanity to rebuke his balloon-dropping crew. CNN was still broadcasting his voice.

So what's going on here? Why are all news sites pretending this didn't happen? And how many people are going to say that it didn't happen because it's not all over the news?

After a stunning track record of being completely insecure and hackable, Microsoft has been hit with negative press about Internet Explorer ("Mozilla Feeds on Rival's Woes").

U.S. Steers Consumers Away From IE

The virus initiated this week inserts javascript into certain web sites [running Microsoft's web server, IIS]. When users visit those sites [using Microsoft's Internet Explorer], it initiates pop-up ads on home and office computers, and allows keystroke analysis of user information. The target is believed to be credit card numbers. CERT estimated that as many as tens of thousands of Web sites may be affected.

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued this security advisory stating the specifics of the browser vulnerabilities, adding that "functional exploit code is publicly available, and there are reports of incidents involving this vulnerability."

Among their suggested solutions...

Use a different web browser

There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME type determination, and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites. Such a decision may, however, reduce the functionality of sites that require IE-specific features such as DHTML, VBScript, and ActiveX. Note that using a different web browser will not remove IE from a Windows system, and other programs may invoke IE, the WebBrowser ActiveX control, or the HTML rendering engine (MSHTML).

Don't believe the hype? Do ya think someone's out to make Microsoft look bad? Are they being framed? If so, maybe you should do a little reading...

http://62.131.86.111/analysis.htm http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2004-06/0104.html http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2004-06/0031.html http://secunia.com/advisories/11793/ http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/sp2preview.mspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/methods/execscript.asp http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/methods/showmodaldialog.asp http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/howto/security/settings.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/settings.mspx http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=833633 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=182569 http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/download_ject.mspx http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-06-25 http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/10473 http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/16361

A 15-year old girl with a previously unknown heart condition had a heart attack while playing Dance Dance Revolution at a video game arcade. "Heart Condition Strikes Girl Down At Arcade" has more details, saying she fell to the floor while playing DDR with her friend, and while still lying on the arcade floor, paramedics zapped her with a defibrillator to get her heart going again.

No need to stop playing DDR yourself, unless you too have been diagnosed with hypertrophy cardiomyopathy.

The Texas Department of Transportation is seeking bids to add free wireless access connectivity to all Texas highway rest stops. The idea is that people will be more inclined to take driving breaks if they can pull over and surf the web or read email. I think it's a pretty cool idea, and might encourage me to tote my laptop along on future road trips, just to keep in touch with friends and read news. What will be really cool is when free wireless access is the norm, no matter where you are, so that people will be able to interact with their computers with total freedom, as cell phones did for regular telephone lines.

Texas Using Wi-Fi to Encourage Motorists

To encourage drivers to take more frequent breaks, the Texas Department of Transportation wants to set up free wireless Internet access at rest stops and travel information centers.

The department is accepting bids until next week and plans to choose a vendor in July. The chosen company won't be paid, however, to provide the free access.

TxDOT, which says Texas is the first state to provide such free access at rest areas, began experimenting with Wi-Fi hotspots last fall.

"The feedback we've received so far has been very positive," said Andy Keith, manager of TxDOT's maintenance division. "Texas' highways are seeing an increasing number of business travelers, truckers and RVers and access to e-mail is important to them."

Keith said there are also plans to install special kiosks where motorists can access Internet-enabled computers with the swipe of a credit card. A price hasn't been set.

Keith said the state hopes to reduce fatigue-related accidents by encouraging drivers to stop more often. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (news - web sites), about 1,500 people die annually in fatigue-related crashes in United States.

My summary: the President was on the tail end of a 17 mile mountain bike ride when he crashed his bike and landed on his face. He had a throng of people riding with him, including a personal doctor who touched him up on the spot. The White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, thinks Bush is a risk-taking mountain biker, "You know this president. He likes to go all out".

I wonder, has anyone invited the President to a TMBRA race? On second thought, that might be a bad idea, because the pack would be filled with his bodyguards and secret agent henchmen. I guess that would make a very uninteresting race.

Article below, originally from this story, "Bush biffs while mountain biking":

President Bush suffered cuts and bruises early Saturday afternoon when he fell while mountain biking on his ranch near Crawford, Texas, according to White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

Bush was on the 16th mile of a 17-mile ride when he fell, Duffy said. He was riding with a military aide, members of the Secret Service and his personal physician, Dr. Richard Tubbs.

"He had minor abrasions and scratches on his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand and both knees," Duffy said. "Dr. Tubbs, who was with him, cleaned his scratches, said he was fine. The Secret Service offered to drive him back to the house. He declined and finished his ride."

Bush was wearing his bike helmet and a mouth guard when the mishap occurred. Duffy said he didn't know exactly how the accident happened.

"It's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose," Duffy said. "You know this president. He likes to go all out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes."

Duffy said Bush probably would be wearing a bandage on his chin during a party Saturday night for his daughter, Jenna, who graduated from the University of Texas earlier in the day. Bush left Crawford shortly after the bike mishap for the party in Austin.

Earlier this month, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry took a spill from his bicycle while riding with Secret Service agents through Concord, New Hampshire, about 18 miles north of Boston. Kerry fell when his bike hit a patch of sand. He was not injured.

The results of the 2004 Webby Awards are out. Among the winners and nominees are Google, the iTunes Music Store, the BBC and How Stuff Works. Of course, most of us have probably heard of these sites (at least some of them), but plenty of Webby Awards/nominations go to the truly random. For instance, where can you go if you've got a fetish for women who drive their cars into mud and sand, and get stuck? Well, thanks to some publicity in the 2004 Webbys, I now know that you can go to www.carstuckgirls.com! (No, I'm not joking, and yes, there are not only pictures for you to see, but you can also buy VHS and DVD videos...).

It looks like IBM is taking a stab at building a web-based application suite to replace common office needs of email, spreadsheets, word processing (IBM plans Web-based desktop software). This is basically what we were trying to do at Agillion (previous job, long dead in the dot-com bust) only the Agillion pricing model was $20 per user, per month, whereas IBM says they'll charge $2 per month per user, with an additional $1 for each IBM application (messaging, document management).

It will be interesting to see if this gets any real momentum behind it. I still think web-based apps are a great idea, and it's pretty clear that Agillion's death was due to poor marketing and ineffective pricing choices, not a bad product idea. I could see spending $2 per month if that meant I would never have to use Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, etc. again. As it is, I refuse to pay Microsoft for their bloated, feature-crammed applications that sometimes end up wasting more of my time than they save.

Found this article at The Register this morning ("Major labels 'force 70% price hike' on Apple | The Register"). I guess the record executives weren't happy with a sales model that people actually liked, so they thought they'd ruin it by charging a whole lot more.

Highlights: Apple has signed agreements with EMI, BMG, Sony, Universal and Warner that will see prices on some songs rise from $0.99 to $1.25. Many albums will remain priced at $9.99, but some will be priced as high $16.99.

Update: Follow-up article from The Register reports that an Apple spokeswoman said: "We have multi-year agreements with the record labels and our price remains 99 cents a track."

Spyware is absolutely everywhere

"an Average of 28 spyware programs run on each computer and more than 30 per cent of PC's have a Trojan Horse to call their own.

A report from EarthLink and Webroot Software bases its findings on scans of more than a million internet connected computers.

Most of the 29 million spyware programs that were found were harmless "adware" programs but there were more than 300,000 instances of programs capable of stealing personal information or providing unauthorized access to computers.

Of course the information would be even more credible if EarthLink didn't sell a program called Spyware Blocker as part of its TotalAccess package of software programs and tools."

Actors Whip Easter Bunny at Church Show

"A church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.

People who attended Saturday's performance at Glassport's memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, "There is no Easter bunny," and described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.

Melissa Salzmann, who brought her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. "He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped," Salzmann said."

On April 3, 2004 University of San Francisco will host the first Flash Mob Computing computer, FlashMob I, with the purpose of creating one of the Top 500 Supercomputers on the planet.

FlashMobComputing has an interesting idea: gather random people together (as many as possible), all with computers, and temporarily connect them together to make a supercomputer. They had their first gathering a few days ago, and produced some decent performance results. The organizers say they'll submit their benchmark data for inclusion in the Top 500 supercomputer list.

This article at The Register ("Sony talks up PS3") offers a peek at the upcoming PlayStation 3 console, as well as some other Sony gaming products in the works.

A group of really mature Iraqis decided they would set an example for other Iraqis (and perhaps people in general) by directing their frustrations at some American workers, killing them and hanging their burnt bodies from a bridge. Way to go, guys.

Here's an excerpt from a New York Times article ("Enraged Mob in Falluja Kills 4 American Contractors"):

"An enraged mob attacked four American contractors here today, shooting them to death, burning their vehicles, dragging their bodies through the downtown streets and then hanging the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River."

It looks like things just took a bad turn for Microsoft in Europe. Talks broke down between the EU and Microsoft, and it looks like Europe is going to finally do what the American judicial system doesn't have the balls to do: punish Microsoft for behaving unfairly.

From this article: "The EC is expected to fine Microsoft between €100 million (£67 million) and €1 billion for having broken the European Union's antitrust laws."

Here's the statement from Mario Monti, the European competition commissioner:

Brussels, 18 March 2004

It is essential to have a precedent which will establish clear principles for the future conduct of a company with such a strong dominant position in the market.

Four U.S. missionaries killed in Iraq

This is definitely not good news, but I don't see why people in the U.S. should be suprised. What else should we expect? There's an extremely volatile situation in Iraq now (political, social, governmental) and a car full of white, American Baptist missionaries doing their best to spread their faith in a region that already has its own strong religious beliefs. I think it's great that these missionaries were over there to help, but it seems like we all should have seen this coming from a mile away.

Look at it another way: what would the Southern Baptists do if there were groups of hardcore Muslims scouring the southern states trying to convert them to Islam? I think it would be extremely likely that a few Baptist crackpots would respond badly. Don't forget, after the 9/11 attacks, there were several incidents around the U.S. where rabid Americans attacked mosques and caused serious damage to both people and their religious structures. But if we send a group of Baptists over to Iraq and they get shot, we act like we weren't expecting it. I guess most of us weren't, which is another good example of how ignorant Americans can be.

Jeeeez, this sounds really dumb. Low-calorie donuts? Come on! Hey people, how about stop overeating.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, long known for its high-calorie treats, says it plans to offer a low-sugar doughnut to attract dieters and diabetics. - CNN article

Yucko... "Pork products processed and distributed from the farm of accused Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton may have contained human remains, police and health officials said Wednesday."

Full article

This is pretty absurd. The Register has a brief news clip about the new 400gb hard drive from Hitachi. The claim is that the drive can store "400 hours of standard TV programming, 45 hours of HDTV programming or more than 6,500 hours of high quality digital music."

From a Yahoo news feed: "It turns out that Dasani, which is labeled as "Pure, Still Water", does not come from a bubbling brook or a mountain stream. It's tap water from a city water supply processed and bottled in a London suburb. Coca-Cola, the water's manufacturer, hasn't commented on the findings."

Update from The Register: "Tests showed [Dasani] water had high levels of bromate, which is sometimes linked to increased cancer risk. Coca Cola has since recalled the product in the UK. The British press already had a field day with Dasani after learning the product was purified tap water instead of spring water."

Rockstar Games announced GTA San Andreas today, currently slated for October 19, 2004 release. It's likely going to be the same engine, and targeted exclusively for PlayStation 2. Having just finished Vice City a few months ago, I could easily spend another few months playing through another Grand Theft Auto.

From their news release posted today:

"Rockstar Games is pleased to announce Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the next iteration in the globally successful Grand Theft Auto franchise. Developed by world-class designers Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be available exclusively for the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system and is expected to be in stores in North America on October 19, 2004 and in Europe on October 22, 2004."

"It's time for music fans to stand up and demand change from the music industry's copyright cartel.

Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI's attempts to censor this work."

Check out Grey Tuesday for more info.

From this NASA press release:

"Thanks to two orbiting X-ray observatories, astronomers have the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star and consuming a portion of it.

The event, captured by NASA's Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories, had long been predicted by theory, but never confirmed."

There was a screw up at Amazon.com where the anonymous book reviews accidentally started showing people's real identities. This wasn't some big privacy issue, but it revealed that many authors write crazy, glowing reviews for their own works. Somebody from Amazon said, "we'll examine whatever happened and make sure it won't happen again." Full article here

The Register is reporting that Jonathan Ive, designer of the original iMac and the iPod, has been named the most influential person in British culture.

Wired has a story about a virus-like game that's spreading itself around through AOL's instant messenger client. Problem is, it's not just a game. Anyone who tries to install it will soon discover unwanted advertisements and other junk on their computer. And once it's on your computer, it sends itself to everyone else on your buddy list (without your consent) so it can burrow itself on their computers, too.

High-power image of cholesterol
Click to enlarge

The Molecular Expressions Photo Gallery is full of crazy pictures like this highly-magnified image of cholesterol. They've got ultra-zoomed-in images of beer, computer parts, butterfly wings, fragrances, neurotransmitters, pesticides, ...

There's also a neat video/interactive page that shows some perspective on how small Earth is compared to the rest of the universe.

This article from the Associated Press has more updates about the baby:

Twins are born conjoined at the head when an embryo splits to make identical twins and then stops growing, leaving them fused. Such twins are rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births.

Although the second head is only partially developed, its mouth moves when Rebeca is being breast-fed.

This is kinda freaky. Excerpts taken from the full story at The Register:

A team of US scientists has created viable monkey sperm in mice, using transplanted testicular tissue. From the date of the transplant, it took seven months for live sperm to be produced.

Amusing as the image of a mouse with monkey balls on its back is, the research is being done for a purpose, not just the entertainment of the faculty staff. The technique will initially be used to reduce the amount of experimentation on primates, but could be used to help conserve endangered animal populations. Researchers also say that it is possible that human sperm could be grown in the same way - a novel, if controversial, approach to human fertility treatment.

This is really unfortunate. Hopefully the little guy will be alright. I copied the full article below, story online here. Here's another picture (different from the one currently shown).

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - A Dominican infant born with a second head will undergo a risky operation Friday when surgeons try to sever the appendage and prevent hemorrhaging from shared arteries.

Click for larger version

Led by a Los Angles-based neurosurgeon who successfully separated Guatemalan twins, a team will spend about 13 hours removing Rebeca Martinez's second head, which has a partially formed brain, ears, eyes and lips.

Eighteen surgeons, nurses and doctors will take several rotations to cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries and close the skull of the seven-week-old baby using a bone graft from another part of her body.

"We know this is a delicate operation," the baby's father, Franklyn Martinez, 28, told The Associated Press this week. "But we have a positive attitude."

Cure International, a Lemoyne, Pa.,-based charity that gives medical care to disabled children in developing countries, is paying for the surgery and follow-up care.

Microsoft has leaked plans for Xbox Next, version 2 of their not-so-popular Xbox console. They're going to exclude the hard drive this time, since they realized it was a dumb addition to a gaming console. They also say it will be powered by three 64-bit processors from IBM (a shift from the current Intel-powered Xbox), just like those that power Apple's G5 machines.

As good as any Texas weatherman, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today signalling a long winter this year.

Do you care about privacy? Dossier program alarms Utahns.

"It sounds like a sci-fi thriller: a super computer program that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child - everything from birth and marriage and divorce history to hunting licenses and car license plates. Even every address you have lived at down to the color of your hair.

It sounds surreal, but former Gov. Mike Leavitt signed Utah's 2.4 million residents up for a pilot program - ironically called MATRIX - that does just that. And he never bothered to reveal details of the program to Utah citizens or to state lawmakers who, upon learning of the program on Capitol Hill this week, are now worried the state could be involved in a program that jeopardizes basic civil liberties."

This is old news from 2000, but I mentioned it during a conversation at work and thought I'd post it here because it's both interesting and freaky.

The basic idea is that the brain of a lamprey was removed from the body of the animal, then hooked up to a little robot. That robot responded to output signals from the lamprey brain, and it sent input signals to the brain. I imagine that things have come a long way since then.

More news on banning the word "evolution" from Georgia schools, this time from former President Jimmy Carter. Excerpts taken from this CNN article:

"As a Christian, a trained engineer and scientist, and a professor at Emory University, I am embarrassed by Superintendent Kathy Cox's attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia's students," Carter said in a written statement.

Carter also predicted ridicule for the state, along with discredit on Georgia's university system.

The "evolution" topic made it onto Bunny after it showed it up in this New York Times article.

raven: Nothing really new here. But always fun to laugh at stupid people.
rnorris: fucking idiots
corncob01: She added that people often associate it with "that monkeys-to-man sort of thing."
raven: and that galileo was not considered reputable at first either . . .
lvaughn: That argument always pisses me off. Most visionary scientists are considered a bit whacky at first, but what they fail to consider is that for every Galileo, there are tons of people who sound like crackpots who really are just that, crackpots. Given a person who science of the day doesn't accept, the odds are pretty good that they are a crackpot.
rnorris: http://objective.jesussave.us/creationsciencefair.html
raven: oh my god: Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.
rnorris: the site may be a hoax, but it's a good one
raven: must be a hoax. did you see Habu's Corner in the Just4Kidz section? Question to Hindu looking elephant: Hey Habu how many god's do you have? Habu: I don't know. I lost count. Zoinks!
corncob01: http://www.creationdiscovery.org/cdp/events.html
corncob01: Wayne Williams CS grade 4 showed us how God created gravity, and how gravity controls the universe.
rnorris: kindergarten 1st prize: "On the 6th day God made Rabbits"
corncob01: On the 6th day God made Rabbits
corncob01: :-)
rnorris: good times

It is strange, but true, that evolution has never existed in the deep southern states of America. It exists in the rest of the U.S., just not in the southern states. How can this be?

See, the south is known as God's country. In God's country, science is a bunch of nonsense, and everyone knows that species do not evolve. For all those who think the southerners are wrong, you're missing one glaringly huge detail: it's written in a book, and therefore it is true. Got that?

So in keeping with the undisputed reality that evolution doesn't exist, the state of Georgia is trying to ban the word "evolution" from use within the Georgia public school system.

Pixar and Disney currently have an agreement where Pixar is responsible for content and Disney is responsible for distribution and marketing. But today, Pixar broke off 10 months of negotations over the future of the Pixar/Disney relationship, saying that Disney unfairly wanted too much of the profits.

From this article at CNN:

"After ten months of trying to strike a deal with Disney, we're moving on," Pixar CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. "We've had a great run together -- one of the most successful in Hollywood history -- and it's a shame that Disney won't be participating in Pixar's future successes."

This is too crazy. In response to numerous security problems with Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser, Microsoft produced this informative page.

I'll spare you the time of reading through it all, and point out the most important piece (taken verbatim from Microsoft's own text):

The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself.

Just to be sure we're all clear on this, Microsoft has said that people should stop clicking on hyperlinks in web pages, because that's insecure. Got that? No more clicking urls.

Update: this is now on slashdot with plenty of silly comments in the discussion threads (though none as silly as Microsoft's advice of not clicking urls).

From this BBC article:

A dead sperm whale has exploded while being delivered to a research centre near the southwestern city of Tainan.

Passers-by and cars were soaked in blood and body parts were sprayed over a road after the bursting of the whale, which was being carried on a trailer.

Update: A friend sent me this link about a whale that washed up on the Oregon coast several years ago. They didn't know what to do with it, because it was too big to move and they couldn't just leave it there, so somebody had the utterly brilliant idea of using a half ton of dynamite to blow the whale up. Their thinking was that the seagulls would eat the small pieces after the explosion, and nobody would have to do any more work. Things did not go according to plan. A quarter of a mile away, some poor guy's car was smashed by a huge chunk of whale. Go the the site and scroll to the bottom, there's a QuickTime video that shows the scene before, during, and after.

This article at CNN says that citrus growers are having a hard time due to the popularity of Atkins, South Beach, and other low-carb diets. Having personally lost more than 30 pounds (without gaining any of it back), I have to laugh at this stuff.

Any temporary change in your lifestyle, such as going on the Atkins diet for 3 or 6 months, will only bring temporary changes. That is, when you go back to your old ways of eating and living, you will put more weight on. Why don't people realize this? There are zillions of crazy diets, but most of them are just a temporary break in bad habits. What's more, gaining or losing weight isn't just about what you eat. If you change what you eat to lose weight, you'd better prepare yourself to gain that weight right back when you switch back to eating like you used to.

When I wanted to lose weight, I took the advice of every personal trainer, coach, and nutritional expert out there - increase your caloric needs so that you are burning more calories than you consume. Simple as that. Following this rule, you could eat 2,500 calories in a day, but be sure to expend enough energy to burn 500 calories. Guess what? At the end of the day, you're at a 500 calorie deficit, which means your body will burn extra energy from your fat stores, and you'll lose weight. It takes about 3,000 calories to equal one pound of fat, so if you maintan the same eating habits but burn 500 calories more each day, you'll lose a pound a week. That's exactly what I did.

I ate whatever I wanted, just in moderation, and always included regular exercise. I dropped a pound a week, and continued like that until I lost more than 30 pounds. Since then, I still maintain the same eating habits I had before (which include protein and carbs).

I guess I should drop it, because the real issue with this country isn't about finding a healthy lifestyle, or healthy habits. People don't want to work for a healthy lifestyle. This is about quick fixes, and how to continue being lazy. Being lazy is how we end up putting on weight in the first place, right? Soon, laziness becomes the norm. Over time, it becomes less and less possible to get away from that lazy behavior, so you're stuck there. I just wish people would take a break from all of the eating and the food-centric perspectives, and go take a fricking walk outside...

Groklaw has converted all of the Novell/SCO correspondence (previously available as pdf documents) into text. I just read through most of the letters, and I'm left wondering what SCO is really trying to accomplish. Both Novell and IBM (and others) have repeatedly demanded proof from SCO of the purported "violations", and SCO continually fails to demonstrate anything to anyone. If Linux is running code that was stolen from Unix, SCO should be able to say "here it is" and produce evidence that proves what code was stolen. SCO has consistently ignored this demand, and has chosen instead to focus its energy in other matters (specifically, matters that are not helping their case at all).

This whole situation seems incredibly strange. The popular claim is that SCO (and more importantly, SCO's CEO Darl McBride) are trying to inflate SCO's stock value. Whatever their intentions, the general posture and approach taken by SCO is antagonistic and greedy. Furthermore, it's a strong indicator that all those involved with this SCO battle (on SCO's side) have little to no character, and are probably shallow people who won't be missed when their time has passed.

I think somebody should start a small business making and selling "SCO Is Dumb" t-shirts. I'd probably buy one.

Prior to this, I have not heard much of anything about Novell's involvement in the current SCO legal mess (where SCO is trying to claim that all versions of Linux are based off of SCO Unix, and thus every Linux user must pay SCO a $699 license fee. Yes, just about everybody thinks it's idiotic, except for the people at SCO.)

According to Groklaw, Novell has been doing all kinds of things behind the scenes, and they've recently disclosed correspondence that, among other things, waives all of IBM's alleged violations (alleged by SCO, and thus extremely vacuous in the first place).

Here's a letter from Novell to SCO's lawyers. It points out that when SCO bought the rights from Novell in 1995, they signed a Technology License Agreement. In that agreement, there are two clauses that provide Novell with the right to "authorize its customers to use, reproduce and modify Licensed Technology (including related documentation)."

The closing sentence is priceless, "In view of SCO's continued harassment of Linux users based on exaggerated and unfounded claims, Novell reserves the right to exercise its rights under the TLA."

The letter was also cc'd to Darl McBride, SCO's chief who leads the charge in this idiotic legal battle.

This is so funny, I don't know whether to file it under "news" or "humor". Basically, Microsoft is mad because Apple is blowing them out of the water with the iPod and iTunes Music Store (both of which are hugely successful, and significantly more popular than any offerings from Microsoft, because they are simply better and people know it).

So the general manager of Microsoft's Windows digital media division, David Fester, is all bent out of shape because Apple and Hewlett-Packard have teamed up to make an iPod clone and bundle iTunes with all new HP computers.

Fester said (this is the funny part), "Windows is about choice - you can mix and match software and music player stuff. We believe you should have the same choice when it comes to music services."

Choice? How about the fact that the iPod is supported by both Windows and OS X, and it can play standard MP3 files as well as AAC (aka MP4, another encoding standard that is not owned by Apple).

I think that what he meant to say is, "Windows is about choice, as long as you choose Microsoft-based technologies that exclude other companies from competing fairly. For instance, only after years of legal battling do we feel that users should be able to not use Internet Explorer if they choose, even though it will be used throughout their computers anyway. See, users have the choice to try to delete Internet Explorer from their systems. We happen to know that it's not possible to delete it, but we give them the choice to try! Isn't that beautiful? Microsoft is beautiful. And everyone else is ugly. And stop buying iPods because it makes Microsoft look bad."

Netcraft's server graphs show that Microsoft's IIS web server has lost a lot of ground to Apache during 2003. Since October 2002, Apache usage has grown from 53% to 64% overall (a 20% gain) while Microsoft IIS has shrunk from 36% to 24% overall (a 33% decline). Conclusion? The majority of server admins realize that Microsoft's IIS is a hunk of crap.

This seems like a natural progression in the organic/healthfood market. From this CNN article:

Designer eggs, produced by chickens fed sea kelp, flax seed and other nutritious ingredients, are finding their way to more and more markets and menus. Some consumers say they even taste better than regular eggs, and sales are booming.

Eggland's Best Eggs, the nation's largest producer of designer eggs, saw a 25 percent jump in sales from 2002 to 2003.

Yum.

Farm-raised salmon contain significantly more dioxins and other potentially cancer-causing pollutants than do salmon caught in the wild, says a major study that tested contaminants in fish bought around the world.

Salmon farmed in Northern Europe had the most contaminants, followed by North America and Chile, according to the study released Thursday. It blames the feed used on fish farms for concentrating the ocean pollutants.

Articles at Wired and CNN.

From this Apple press release:

Working to provide consumers with the most compelling digital content whenever and wherever they desire, HP and Apple today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple's iPod the number one digital music player in the world, and Apple's award-winning iTunes digital music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP's customers.

Most of us have probably heard people joke about leaving a bunch of monkeys in a room with typewriters, and they would eventually (given enough time), produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The theory is that the random input of a monkey would eventually produce something that looks like the English language.

The Guardian explains that Geoff Cox at Plymouth University designed a test to show what a bunch of monkeys could do with one computer and four weeks.

So what happened? Here are some highlights:

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"At first," said researcher Mike Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it."

"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened."

"They get bored and they shit on the keyboard rather than type."

More stories here.

From this CNN article:

Every day, nearly one-third of U.S. children aged 4 to 19 eat fast food, which likely packs on about six extra pounds per child per year and increases the risk of obesity, a study of 6,212 youngsters found.

Maybe one day I'll no longer find this kind of thing shocking.

This New York Times article says that Russia, Thailand and Hong Kong have joined the others in banning all imports of U.S. beef. Also, McDonald's, Burger King and Wal-Mart Stores quickly said they did not believe they had received meat from the animal.

An interesting coincidence? From the same New York Times article:

The diagnosis in Washington State came just a week after a federal appeals court in New York revived a lawsuit brought by an animal rights group that says that the Agriculture Department has not done enough to protect consumers from mad cow disease. The group, Farm Sanctuary, maintained in a 1998 lawsuit that the government's policy of allowing the slaughter of animals that cannot walk poses a significant health risk to consumers. A judge threw out the suit, saying the danger was remote, but the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned that decision last week.

There's a cow in Washington state that is infected with Mad Cow disease. But don't worry, it's only one cow. And don't just take my word for it, this excerpt from CNN includes the following:

"Consumers should continue to eat beef with confidence," the National Cattlemen's Beef Association said in a statement. "All scientific studies show that the BSE infectious agent has never been found in beef muscle meat or milk and U.S. beef remains safe to eat."

I guess Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan don't trust the nice people at the NCBA, as those countries have already banned all imports of U.S. beef.

The NCBA released this statement today.

Usability News recently conducted a study on website usability, with the goal of gathering information on where designers should place logos, search boxes, and ads.

They studied eye movements of people using three well-known newspaper sites - The
Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times. Participants in the research were asked to complete a number of very simple tasks on the three sites.

People learned very quickly where advertisements were likely to appear on a site and subsequently ignored those areas of the page when browsing. For example, while people viewed the adverts on the right hand side of the Guardian home page they rarely, if ever, looked to the right hand side of subsequent pages on the Guardian site - they had ‘learned’ that this area was reserved for advertising and therefore not of interest to them.

Michael Jackson has more to worry about than being charged for allegedly molesting a young boy. Why, you ask? Because he's extremely underweight. The charges filed against him today in court show the following stats on Michael Jackson (bottom of the last page).

Enter his info into a BMI calculator and you see that a 5'11" person weighing 120 pounds has a Body mass index (BMI) of 16.7, which is way below the 18.5 to 24.9 range of a normal, healthy adult.

...they kill tigers that eat little boys.

Jeez, whatever your views are, shouldn't you at least be consistent?

From CNN: An attorney for the family of former U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina on Monday confirmed that at the age of 22, Thurmond fathered a child with a teenaged African-American housekeeper in 1925.

Wired article

Spain and Morocco say they have agreed to build a 39-kilometre rail tunnel beneath the Mediterranean Sea, to link Europe and Africa. full article

Yes indeedy, a Danish company has discovered a new exploit in Internet Explorer (it appears to only affect Windows versions of Internet Explorer, not Mac). The idea is that I can make a link to a website, say www.microsoft.com, and from all that you can see, you would think you're about to visit www.microsoft.com. But I can make your browser go anywhere I choose.

For instance, here is a regular link to www.microsoft.com, no funny stuff, click it and your browser will take you to www.microsoft.com, as you would expect.

Now try this one: www.microsoft.com. After you click it, you browser will show you the content at www.yahoo.com (note that I could make you go anywhere I want) but the address bar will say you're at www.microsoft.com.

Nice, huh?

By the way, if your browser didn't show that you were at "http://www.microsoft.com" for both of the above examples, then you were not using a vulnerable browser. AFAIK, this only affects Internet Explorer on Windows.

Even though SCO would still have the world believe they're innocent, it seems that their wave of B.S. may finally be catching up to them. Check out these recent articles at The Salt Lake Tribune, TheStreet.com, and The Motley Fool.

It has taken years to happen, but finally some of the large food corporations are facing the reality that they produce unhealthy foods. For instance, PepsiCo no longer uses trans fats in its snack foods, which includes all of the chips sold under the Frito-Lay brand name. And the FTC has announced that it will start cracking down on all of the bogus weight-loss programs out there.

This is more good than bad, but we're still at the foot of the mountain with a long way to go. Even if there were no trans fats in today's foods, there would still be a gigantic selection of high-calorie foods with little or no nutritional value. Anyway, I thought this was interesting, and I'm curious to see what happens next.

End draws nearer for Moore's Law

Computers are built using various components that each play some specific role. One particular component is the hard drive. Most computers have one, and some have more than one. For a standard Intel-based PC (what most people use to run Windows), the addition of a second hard drive means you need to help the computer understand which drive is primary and which is secondary. But it's more than just a hierarchical configuration, as the primary drive will (to some extent) control the secondary drive. The terms used to describe this relationship are Master and Slave. The Master drive would be the primary drive, and if a second drive exists, it would be the Slave and thus controlled by the Master. Well, that's the way things have been for a very long time, but times are changing. Just as janitors are now Custodial Engineers (did they have to study Calculus at some point? Just asking, because every other engineer I know has had to take a few semesters of Calculus), we are now witness to the beginning of the end for "Master/Slave" (to be replaced by what?), thanks to Los Angeles County. See this article at snopes for full details, or this article at CNN.

I can't help but feel like we're collectively taking a huge step backward when people in this country think so hard about things that really don't matter. If it's ok for an individual to take offense to a term that I think is benign, and initiate social change as a result, I would like to state that I'm offended by the person who started this Master/Slave protest, and I would like to have that person banned from existence because I am uncomfortable knowing that person is running around my country taking offense at silly things. Should we ban the use of a mouse because it insults those without hands? Perhaps we could come up with a better name for "computer memory" (aka "ram"), because it might be offensive to people who are extremely forgetful. Sadly, there's a fine line between the true story of L.A. County banning the use of "Master/Slave", and humorous fiction from The Onion.

Very promising news for cancer treatment, and thus should appeal to most of the American population (according to the American Cancer Society's reference information, one out of every two American men and one out of every three American women will have some type of cancer at some point during their lifetime; cancer accounts for 25% of all deaths within the entire country).

A group of graduate students and professors at the University of Calgary made discoveries during the 1990s that something called the reovirus had the ability to kill many types of cancer cells. The nice thing is that the reovirus has almost no other effect on the human body, so the patient doesn't experience the terrible side-effects that are common with treatments like chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

Oncolytics is producing Reolysin, the drug based on the reovirus. More info available from their faq.

Even though they're not the first to do it, a group of 13 students from Middlebury College in Vermont took to the road in May 2003 driving a school bus that was powered by used vegetable oil. Their trip? Drive across the country, from Vermont to Washington state. Gas stations? Try stopping at cafeterias and fast-food joints to collect their discarded cooking oil. Smell? One of the students said, "it smells a little bit like whatever it was used to fry -- sometimes you get onion rings, french fries, chicken patties".

In the late 1990s, activist Joshua Tickell drove all around the country racking up 25,000 miles on his Veggie Van USA tours. Joshua Tickell wrote a book "From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank: The Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as Alternative Fuel", and it helps illustrate the inner-workings of a biodiesel engine.

Future impact? In 2001, the John Deere Company approved the user of biodiesel in all of its diesel-powered equipment. With the threat of petroleum sources running dry in the near future, perhaps other vehicles might crop up. Used vegetable oil isn't anything other than waste, so finding a way to re-use it seems like a great idea (especially in fast-food crazy America).

Related links:

• Project Bio Bus website
  
• a brief write-up at Middlebury's website
  
• CNN article
  

One of the largest known solar flares erupted from the sun on Tuesday, producing a storm of superheated gas that's predicted to hit Earth by mid-day Wednesday.

Solar flares are categorized on in three categories, with X being the strongest. Within each category, there's a number (from 1 to 20) that describes the intensity.

If I understand this correctly, the numeric portion is measured like the Richter scale that measures earthquake activity. For earthquakes, a magnitude 4.0 is 10 times more powerful than a magnitude 3.0 quake. And a 5.0 is 10 times more powerful than a 4.0. With a solar flare, the X17 that just occurred is way up there on the top of the scale, especially given that X20 is as high as we measure and the only outbursts that were more powerful than the X17 (in recorded history) were two X20's. Additionally, the recent solar burst happened to be directed straight at Earth, which is something that has not happened in the past.

Consequences? Probably nothing devastating, but communications systems might go down for a while and various electronic systems might freak out. Obviously those kinds of things could indirectly cause devastating results (for instance, if hospital equipment were to malfunction), but those kinds of cases will likely be isolated and certainly nothing really crazy like people melting if they look at the sun during the solar storm.

I found this cool story about the solar storm of 1859, apparently the oldest solar storm we have on record.

General info from this article, and more specifics from spaceweather.com's main site or their page about solar radiation storms.

Dateline has this interview with the mother of the alleged D.C. sniper, Lee Malvo. Her English isn't great (she's from Jamaica), but she offers some info about her son and how things turned out the way they did. Includes a few excerpts from letters written to her by her son while in prison. An interesting read if you followed the D.C. sniper events last year.

The future of energy, the end of the Oil Age

The University of Quebec study found that off-the-shelf video games like Half-Life and Unreal Tournament created a suitable simulation for various phobia scenarios (arachnophobia, acrophobia), while maintaining a safe environment that produced the mid-range levels of anxiety that are most useful in therapy.

Regular, off-the-shelf computer video games are an effective method of treating people's fears, using a style of therapy that exposes people to what scares them in a controlled setting, according to a new study released on Friday. -- full article

"At first glance, this new girl on the block doesn't give Barbie much of a run for her money. After all, Barbie is everything Razanne is not -- curvaceous, flashy and loaded with sex appeal.

But that's exactly why many Muslim Americans prefer Razanne, with her long-sleeved dresses, head scarf and, by her creator Ammar Saadeh's own admission, a not-so-buxom bustline." full article

How long until we see dolls for all other social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds? On one hand, this seems like a good idea as it appeals to young Muslim girls living in the United States. But on the other hand, it contributes to further separation and division between social groups, and discourages social blending. For the case of Muslim dolls, it's really not too big of a deal one way or the other. But I hope this doesn't set a precedent that every culture represented within this country needs or deserves equal representation (beyond toys), because that could really get out of hand in a silly way.

It's too bad that teachers in the United States can't rough up the students like they can in other countries. Sure, it would stink to be thrown out of a window, but you can be damn sure that none of the other kids are gonna misbehave!

RABAT, Morocco -- Two Moroccan schoolboys were injured Monday when their teacher threw them out of a first floor classroom window for being too noisy, an Education Ministry official said. full article

This is both a good and bad reflection on American life. On one hand, the reality is that the majority of people in this country are either overweight or obese (the other way to look at it is that you're in the minority if you're skinny). Does anybody really care? Apparently less than 1/3 of us think it's really a problem. So this article is interesting, because it's the first thing I've seen that actually embraces and accepts this country's trend in gaining weight. The entire article appears below, and is copied directly from a Reuters article.

Catering to Obese Becoming Big Business

It's big business.

Caption from the article titled "Man sentenced for selling body parts":

"A crematorium owner who removed heads, knees, spines and other parts from dozens of bodies and sold them to medical researchers was sentenced to 20 years in prison." full article

I think the title pretty much sums this one up. Yuck.

I found this article from July 2003 announcing free wireless access throughout downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The whole goal is to lure more folks to hang out downtown.

The city of St. Louis is setting up what could be the nation's largest, free, wireless Internet network in hopes of drawing techno-savvy businesses, tourists and residents to the downtown business district. The city has teamed up with a local company, O2Connect, to offer the service in a 42-square-block area. full article

There's a similar effort in Baltimore, Maryland.

Tourists and residents with laptop computers and hand-held digital organizers will be able to receive free wireless Internet access in a limited area along the [Baltimore Harbor] waterfront as part of a new service provided by the city. full article

I'm curious to see how well this will do, because my guess is that usage will spike in the beginning and then drop off sharply soon after. I think it's one of those things that sounds ultra-neato until you actually try it a few times and realize that it's more hassle than it's worth.

President Bush plans to sign legislation Monday that will give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to administer the national "do-not-call" registry -- a move that will be largely symbolic because of a court challenge to the list. - full article

Thursdays' ruling by a federal judge in Colorado places the fate of the popular list in limbo. The decision was slammed Friday by the FTC chairman, who vowed to take "every recourse to give American consumers a choice to stop unwanted telemarketing calls." - full article

After both houses of congress voted overwhelmingly to reinstate the do-not-call list yesterday, a second federal judge (this time in Colorad) has ruled against the list. Distrcit judge Edward Nottingham blocked the list on the grounds of protecting telemarketers' free speech rights. Another interesting point to consider is that, regardless of whether the list actually becomes law, it will only apply to telemarketers but not to nonprofit organizations, politicians and pollsters. Meanwhile, President Bush says he will sign the do-not-call list into law next week.

Southern Methodist University shut down a bake sale Wednesday in which cookies were offered for sale at different prices, depending on the buyer's race or gender. - full article

Wow. I can't decide if this is good or bad, but I definitely find it amusing.

<rant>I'm still waiting for a reasonable response to why affirmative action should be considered fair when it doesn't exist until we reach college; to elaborate, the evaluation criteria that we grow accustomed to throughout grade school and high school are changed drastically when race and social background enter into the picture at the college level. If we're going to have affirmative action, shouldn't we start it in kindergarten?).</rant>

Article highlights:

• students selling cookies on campus
  
• they had a sign that said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie, white women paid $0.75, Hispanics paid $0.50 per cookie, and blacks paid $0.25
  
• similar sales have occurred on college campuses in at least five other states since February 2003
  
• a black student filed a complaint with SMU saying that the sale was offensive
  
• SMU officials halted this sale after 45 minutes because it created "a potentially unsafe situation"
  
• the sale drew a crowd outside the student center and several students jumped into a shouting match
  

Man's best friend, in this case a male poodle, is genetically more similar to humans than is the mouse, a more commonly used laboratory animal, according to researchers who have completed the first rough draft sequence of the genes of a dog. - full article

Sweet. For years we've thought that humans were so similar to mice, it turns out that we're even more similar (genetically, anyway) to a male poodle. Also interesting in that humans and mice are closer together in evoluation than humans and dogs.

A day after a federal judge ruled the Federal Trade Commission lacked authority to create the national "do not call" registry, the House granted the agency specific power to maintain the list. - full article

The national do-not-call list has attracted 50 million people - 730,000 on the first day alone - and was all set for use by the fcc until a gederal district court ruled that it was invalid. Today, the House voted to override the judge's decision, and the senate is expected to do the same later today. Will this mean the end of tele-marketing calls within this country? Probably not. My vote: go with a cell phone instead of a land line.

A Swedish man has allegedly tried to smuggle eight dangerous snakes into Australia by strapping them to his legs, according to customs officials. - full article

So this guy had eight cobras stapped to his legs, and four of them were king cobras. It sounds like the intro to a really bad joke ("so a guy walks into a bar with eight cobras strapped to his legs, and the bartender says..."). We may never know why a 28 year old man would do something so idiotic...

Would it be possible to read this story without thinking of the obvious (and dumb) joke, "Do you have eight cobras in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?"

Here are two cool satellite photos of the northeast region of the U.S. - before the blackout, and then after.