Empirical evidence is for sissies and commies

Global warming is such a joke. It's such a fear ploy enacted by politicians and money hungry environmentalists. Everyone knows that temperature change is dictated by the glorious breath of the Lord. When He inhales, it's chilly (thanks for the snow, Lord!) and when he exhales, it's warm (thanks for letting us wear shorts, Lord!). Anyone who suggests otherwise is a crackpot commie sissie who just wants to eat granola and hug trees.

The Breath Theory holds true throughout history. The Lord's breath explains why we're now seeing Warming Island (thanks for the clever name, Lord!).

In 1985 it looked like this:

In 2005 it looked like this:

Thank you, Lord for breathing your cold and hot breath on this island to show us that carbon emissions don't really help blanket the earth and help keep heat trapped. Also, please don't smote me in your wrath, as I do not subscribe to the high-falootin', "scientific", and heretical beliefs of Al Gore. Damn him and his snake-oil travelling salesman talents. You were right to give the election to Dubya, as he's a pinnacle of intelligence, tact, and integrity.

The Police illustrate history repeating itself

So, I haven't been able to post in a while because of this stupid thing called work. Gosh, how I hate work. It gets in the way of the real moments of your life. Stupid money...making me work for you so I can live in house and pay taxes to support a government that at this point is pretty good, although I have serious qualms about its current leadership.

On my way to work, I was thinking of a Police song while listening to the news about the Senate approving the spending bill for the war in Iraq. Dubya has promised to veto it because he says it forces an arbitrary exit date and doesn't support the troops. Meanwhile, the 'war' against terrorism is completely free of any ambiguity and makes complete sense, and it seems that most people don't seem to care because we're more inspired by what happens on Lost or we're more enthusiastic about the competition in American Idol because Sanjaya was voted off.

However, I think we're going to shake off our indifferent malaise, and realize that supporting the troops means bringing them home within a prescribed date. We've got a big mess to help clean up, and I don't think the continuation of large-scale military actions abroad is the best way to help people understand that America is about democracy and freedom. We need smaller scale, black ops insertions where we would execute missions about which we'd feel ashamed to tell our children we had helped execute.

Anyways...the Police song. It's a good one. It smacks of the 80s sound, and even though it's a commentary on the war going on during the Reagan administration, it could just as easily be sung and felt in 2007.

The general scratches his belly and thinks
His pay is good but his officers stink
Guerrilla girl, hard and sweet
A military man would love
to meet

The president looks in the mirror and speaks
His shirts are clean but his country reeks
Unpaid bills
Afghanistan hills

Bombs away
But we're ok
...

The general only wants to teach France to dance
His army life doesn't give him any romance
Guerrilla girl, hard and sweet
A military man would love to meet

The general scratches his belly and thinks
His pay is good but his company stinks
Guerrilla girl, hard and sweet
A military man would love to meet

Bombs away
But were ok
Bombs away
We all obey
...

We need ol' Dubya to obey the American people. We don't support his war, and he needs to listen to the messages that Congress is sending.

You see, George, Congress is supposed to be representative of the people in the 50 states. They're supposed to go to bat for folks who don't have a Karl Rove or Dick Cheney in the back pocket, because Lord knows those guys are evil, but have proven to be very effective in maintaining an iron grip on the rudder while crushing any opposing viewpoint.

Hmm...'iron grip'...'crushing viewpoints'? Sounds like Soviet communism to me. Hey! Karl (Karl Marx? hmmm, I smell something deceptively communistic about this) and Dick, do you happen to be card carrying members of the Communist party? I know...I shouldn't say that...it's not fair to Communists. Sorry guys.

Hmm. It's almost like the current White House administration wants us to emulate the Chinese government...they're no longer really Communists. They're more like Socialists with well-funded banks with G-men patrolling the Internet to make sure that no one is blogging about how they'd like to have more news about the outside world. The message now is, 'we'll let you get rich, but leave the politics to us'.

I digress. What I mean to say is that a song from the 80s, is just as appropriate now as it was then. And, of course, songs from the 60s are still just as relevant now. And the songs, poems, and literature preceding the 60s are just as germane.

History is doomed to repeat itself, but in the meantime, the weapons get bigger and badder. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we try something different this time around. If we've still a planet in 2008, let's wash the filth away and start clean...well, as clean as we can.

Rodrigo y Gabriela are awesome

Here they are doing a cover of Stairway to Heaven. You may now ignite your lighter and hold it up in the air.



I recommend the album. Rodrigo and Gabriela cite Metallica as one of their biggest influences, by the way. Check out their other videos on the internets.

And no, AG Alberto Gonzales does not listen to them.

Thanks to my buddy Juan for hooking me up.

Elevator lady, you are my favorite pod-person

I just want to say thanks to that extra special building maintenance woman who saw me waiting in the lobby. We were both waiting for an elevator. There are a bank of six, and we were both apparently going up. You looked cranky, but I thought, hey, the weather's crappy, it's the middle of the day and you're probably all sleepy from eating a meth sandwich, so no big whoop.

The elevator doors opened and I followed you in, and that's when you said the sweetest thing ever: "this elevator is out of service". Then you promptly began to set up your maintenance station. You busy little bee. I bet if you had a stinger, you would have stung me in the face.

Wow. We had a whole 2 minutes to hang out staring at each other knowing that we're both going up, and you could've mentioned that you had mind control devices installed on the elevator that came down and that you were going to do some work on it. Instead, you kept it suspenseful. That was awesome. It was like a cliffhanger directed by Michael Bay. In fact, you looked like what Michael Bay must smell like after he's done shooting a real crappy movie with a bloated budget...something along the lines of "Pearl Harbor".

Thanks elevator-lady. I hope we get to share a car together sometime, so you can not remind me of anything enjoyable. You are the yin to my yang. Without you, I would have no awareness of light.

My only regret of our interaction was that I didn't think to take your picture so I could share it with the world. At least I have your gritty, rodent-like visage stored away in my memory banks, from which I can recall at a moment's notice. Thankfully, the quality of the image will fade, like so much cheap denim from Old Navy, as I'm looking at my pants now, and realizing that nothing gold can stay.

[queue Stevie Wonder song]
[queue screen credits for "The Outsiders]

Victims at Virginia Tech and us

The NY Times has a good resource for information on the students who were killed at Virginia Tech. I recommend checking it out if you're tired of listening to his pyscho-babble manifesto which he sent to NBC. For me, his rant was a cathartic terminus of this whole tragedy, because after seeing it there's no doubt that he was some screwed up kid who thought that taping his hateful rhetoric before killing people was going to make him...who knows. I didn't watch the whole thing. After hearing him spout off self-righteous blame on others for his actions I changed the channel. I heart changing the channel.

The Times piece has short to relatively thorough descriptions of all the victims. I read some of the synopses, and thought about what motivated Seung-Hui to think that his only choice was to take a handgun and shoot them.

What caused him to do this? Are we as a society more violent these days? Is it because of our information era, which by nature fosters a sense of immediacy? Do we need to be constantly double-clicking a mouse button, typing on a keyboard, or texting on our phones in order to feel like we're part of the larger picture? Did he play too many shooters? Do we need to revisit gun control laws? Did this kid just need more hugs and attention when he was growing up? Did mom and dad not play with him enough, or support his development?

I think I just want to be able to wrap this up in a neat little package, and it's not going to happen.

They say "things happen in three's": we had the Imus blow-out, the Seung-Hui shooting, what's going to be the third? Do I count the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the partial-birth abortion ban?

Hey, here's something: had Seung-Hui's mom had an abortion all those people would still be alive. I guess hindsight is always 20-20...the Earth is round and revolves around the sun, we shouldn't have burned women as witches in Salem, etc.

This whole thing is just so senseless and I'm tired of hearing about the sensational details about this maniac, and wanted to devote some energy to remembering and acknowledging these people who were robbed of continuing this wonderful, brief, and challenging journey we call life.

For me, as a parent, this just cements my philosophy of remaining active in my child's life. When I came home today and saw my son, I spent extra time holding him, playing with him, making him an active part of preparing the salmon before baking it, and selecting spices to add to the hummus we made. Every little thing counts.

All laws must be followed [it's ok! i'm not going to take them away from you!]

Virginia Tech. Holy Mary Mother of Insanity. What a tragedy. It doesn't seem clear what the motives were, but regardless, what a tragic loss of life. The question now is, of course, how could this happen, and how do we make sure that it doesn't happen again?

I'm sure the media will be milking the details for weeks to come, and we'll have all the info soon enough, but I just wanted to say how pleased I was that Dubya took the time to address the American people and allayed my fears in his very first response to the horrible chain of events:

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," [Presidential] spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Man, does this guy know how to spend his political capital. And the warmth he exudes! As an owner of a .50 cal sniper rifle I brought back from Operation Faceshoot, as well as several other handguns I stash around the house in the event that I have to smoke some fool who's trying to rob me of my old school, pre-component video/HDMI television set, I was thrilled to hear Dubya tell me that my guns are safe.

I thought it was totally appropriate that in light of a massacre on a college campus, with hundreds, if not thousands of students and their parents worried about their safety, he went ahead to address his NRA-abiding constituents that he wasn't about to pursue any kind of restrictions on their firearms.

Stunned I was. I was stunned. First from the horror after imagining what it must've been like on that campus yesterday, then to hear the President of the United States tell me that he wasn't going to take my guns away in his initial press release to the American people.

What?

So, Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old legal South Korean immigrant acquired the weapons illegally? No. He bought them at a store. Still had the receipts in his backpack. He followed all the laws, and from outwards appearances, all looks to be nice, neat, and tidy. Just like the viewing room at funeral homes, which will probably be seeing some increased traffic in the Virgina state area.

Am I lobbying for more gun control? No, I'm not soapboxing that here. I think what troubles me the most, other than the fact that we also have our boys and girls getting shot or blown up every day in Iraq in a war that Americans don't support, and that the President messages Congress' passing of recent spending bills as "undermining the troops", are these 2 issues:

1. that Dubya framed the massacre within a Second Amendment context in a way that panders to the NRA bloc of voters.
2. that the campus officials didn't take more preventative actions after the first shooting, which allowed the shooter free access on campus for TWO HOURS, thereby allowing him to kill what sounds to be a classroom full of people.

Imus an advocate for Democratic candidates? Rush, Bill and Ann move in for the kill.

According to the LA times, the Democrats are going to be hurting from Imus' exodus from the airwaves. He apparently was a good way for candidates to reach independent white men...those voters who could swing a potential close race in one favor or another.

This doesn't really make Dems look great considering Imus' crash and burn with his comments about the Rutger's women's b-ball team.

But at least the Republicans have Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Ann Coulter to keep hope alive for the "moral majority". Now these guys never say ANYTHING reprehensible.

Wait...didn't Rush say inappropriate things about Obama owning Al Sharpton because Obama's mother's ancestors owned slaves. Yeah. He said that.

Or what about Bill O'Reilly? Aside from all his dirty boy sex talk that was swept under the rug, this conservative moral compass of dumbassity bad-mouthed Muslims in a way that could be construed as condoning genocide.

Ann Coulter...oh this lovely dumb husk of a human. Now here's a person who at every opportunity spouts negative and spiteful nonsense in order to...what? Destroy 'liberal' credibility? Incite people to hate? I mean, honestly, the words that come out of this woman's mouth would make the devil suck his teeth.

She's made hateful remarks about gays and Presidential candidate John Edwards in a rather clever 2-fer-1 remark. Good job Ann! You're soooo clever! Wow! What's it like not being able to go out in the sun, and are coffins really that comfortable? How does your hair come out looking so fresh? Does drinking all that baby blood really keep you looking young, because you're starting to look a little haggard. Maybe it's all that hate eating you up inside. I think you, Kennth Eng, Michael Richards, and Prof. Griff should get together and have a 4-way!

She's dropped hate bombs on Helen Thomas, the renowned and respected White House reporter who grills Dubya. She said something about her being an old Arab or something. Wow! That's great Ann! You're really helping to foster open dialogs with people. It doesn't surprise me that you have 100% cracka-ass cracka blood coursing through your veins. I hope Sasha Baron Cohen gets you to dance naked on a bar and denigrate other ethnicities while he's taping content for Borat 2.

Seriously, with the termination of Don Imus for his inappropriate remarks, let's hope that other folks in the public eye are held accountable for the trash that comes out of their mouth.

Clone-sicle? Ctrl+C-wich? I feel like I have eaten this before.

I was trying to come up with something that exudes good branding impressions for the new line of cloned cow, goat, and lamb we'll be seeing soon.

Highlights from an article on the topic:

"'It's very expensive. We're talking $15,000 to $20,000,'" LaGrande said, adding that ranchers will likely clone for breeding purposes rather than for food supply...
...Others said forcing food manufacturers to label their products when there is no reason to warn the public of health risks will only cause unnecessary confusion and fear among consumers...
Eric Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal," testified that his own research of the topic has found no definitive study on the short- and long-term effects of eating cloned animals. Besides, "if cloning is such a wonderful thing, these companies should be proud to put that on their labels," he said during a news conference organized by Migden earlier in the day....
...Also, cloned animals tend to suffer from deficient immune systems, which means ranchers will need to use more antibiotics to keep that livestock healthy, said Jean Halloran of the Consumers Union."

I posted something on this topic a while back, and it looks like it's still in the forefront of your state senators minds: should the public be made aware if the food they buy contains substances from a cloned animal?

A recent bill passed in the state senate says 'yes', so if it ever hits the grocery shelves, we should see a wonderful little blow-out that says something like "Buy 2, eat 1!" or "Gemini Farms: Cloned Cows 4 U!" or "Ditto the Cow says 'Eat my meat again and again!'" No? I'm still working on the marketing, but you get the idea.

And so it goes, Mr. Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., author of a number of amazing novels and short stories, died yesterday at the age of 84.

There's lots of articles all about his life, his birth, growth, and special relevance during the 60s and 70s getting pumped into the internets as we speak, but I just wanted to acknowledge the man. Kurt was one of the few authors who successfully bridged the invisible line between science fiction and literature. Of the novels I've read, his were the most uncategorical. It's hard to put his work in a box. He defied the boundaries of subject matter. He defied the conventions of traditional pacing and narrative.

I would go so far to say that he reinvigorated a modern movement of "questioning reality", of which we saw in recent movies such as the Matrix trilogy, Dark City, Abre Los Ojos, eXisTenz, and others where we see a common theme where there's a thin gauze hiding our view the truth; we only need to move the gauze and all would be revealed.

His tales are absolutely magical. I reread The Sirens of Titan, Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, Galapagos, Hocus Pocus, Slaughterhouse-Five, Slapstick, and others from time to time. When I first started reading him, I had actually given him a break as I had overdosed after reading 4 of his novels back to back.

I think for the most part, his books and stories were lessons he wanted to share with others. Typically, his characters had to go through some kind of arduous ordeal or experience, until eventually an overarching denouement manifested (typically outside of the pro/antagonists control) in which all was set in order, but in the least conventional or expected fashion. There were elements of bizarre coincidental mysticism, where he'd direct seemingly unconnected events into a logical stream of order designed to articulate his message to the reader. My personal opinion on what he asked of his audience: I think he wanted people to be good to each other because our time here is short.

Check out his books. I'm sure now that he's dead his publisher will release ALL NEW commemorative editions that cost $60, but you can go by the library and borrow a copy.

Personal favs of Kurt's books:

• The purpose of humanity, as described in Sirens of Titans...
• How becoming very tiny is a powerful thing, as described in Slapstick...
• Ice-Nine as an heirloom, as depicted in Cat's Cradle...
• How having a sleek bullet shaped head is the best thing that happened to anyone, as told by the ghost in Galapagos.

To Microsoft: My mom is the best mom ever

Microsoft is hosting a competition where gamers are invited to submit an essay that details how their moms are hardcore gamers. Winners will be awarded the new Xbox360 Elite and $100 gift certificate for flowers.

Well, here's my entry. Mom, if I win, I will need to make sure that the system works properly before I send it to you. You WILL get the flowers on time. Some of you will not get the gaming references, but rest assured, my mom is a diehard player, who TOTALLY hearts shooters. Sort of.

Dear Mr. Microsoft,

I grew up in the womb listening to the sounds of "Snake!?...SNNAAAAAAAAKE!", as my mom played Metal Gear Solid. She rested the controller on her belly, and chuckled each time the Ninja Cyborg would say, "Hurt me more!" For my fifth birthday, mom bought me a Raiden t-shirt, but I totally hated it, as I always thought he was a bit of a pansy. But when my mom looked into my face as I held the Hanes Beefy T screenprint up to my body to approximate the fitting, I smiled big and wide and told her I loved it. Mom always meant well, and she loved the game so much that if I hadn't worn the t-shirt at least once a week, she would've taken me to see a "talking doctor."

When the Xbox and Halo came out, she wouldn't let me go to school and she didn't go to work until we had both finished the game twice, and fragged each other in multiplayer mode. She didn't really like the fact that the first game in the series didn't support online multiplayer action, but she was pleasantly surprised by Halo 2. I'd come home from school, help dad prepare supper, then go into the entertainment room where mom would be blasting some online combatant in the face with the shotgun. She told me, "Son, Mommy totally hearts the shotgun." She always said that: "Mommy hearts this," or "Mommy hearts that."

Well, now that mom is under investigation for software piracy (she started modding Xbox and PS2 systems in the early 2000s in addition to burning and selling copied games on ebay), the FBI won’t let her out of the house or receive shipments of any kind. I really want to be able to bring her an Xbox 360 Elite for Mother’s Day. I figured out a way to sneak it in…Agent Smith totally hearts Car and Driver, and if I wave a copy under his nose and mention the article on the prototype cerami-plastid V10 block in the Dodge Hyper Viper, I know he won’t notice the large rectangular box shape in my backpack. All I need is Microsoft to help me help my mom by awarding her the Xbox 360 Elite.

She’s a good person, and if anything can be said about her, it’s that she’s TOO hardcore. The FBI is eventually going to make her develop simulation games for "training" purposes as part of her plea bargain, but what she’s really looking forward to is playing Gears of War and ultimately, Halo 3. She’s dying to play, Mr. Microsoft. Please help me make my mom’s Mother’s Day the best one ever.

Sincerely,

gamertag: CmdSgtMaj

Has blogging caused the rate of dumbening to increase?

There was a piece on PBS a few nights ago where bloggers, journalists, and the dean of journalism at Columbia were interviewed to discuss "citizen journalism" or "acts of journalism". As one might expect, the piece explored both the positive and negative aspects of blogging: some say that bloggers are, on the whole, too uninformed and are diluting the relevance of online information, while others countered that the technology empowers people by facilitating the ease of dissemination of information and perspectives.

Coincidentally enough, Andrew Keen, a SV entrepreneur, published a book "The Cult of Amateurs" where he goes on to skewer the majority of people who've exploited mashup publishing technologies making it easier for individuals to spout all kinds of uninformed nonsense. I'm assuming that he means folks who are making use of blogger, typepad, myspace or whatever to publish pieces on politics, sexism, racism, facism, what myspace friends are doing, porn, movies, games, porn, sports, friendster, stocks, blog tricks, news, various social commentaries, porn, etc.

From what I've seen so far, I'd say his tone smacks a bit of elitism and there are chewy undercurrents of hypocrisy, as Keen himself has a blog, and a book, which are used as delivery vectors of his perspective on the phenomenon, but apparently it's okay for him to make use of the technology or for him to speak about his ideas: he's mature and erudite enough.

The rest of us? Slack-jawed yokels we are.

Needless to say, I don't think he's giving people enough credit. Or maybe he's not considering that it doesn't really matter that there's a lot of chaff out there...people who want to use the internet will have to become savvy enough to locate what they're looking for, and in the end I think they'll be the ones to dictate what content is deemed worthy for consumption and therefore what will become usable and meaningful information.

He apparently also discusses issues of identify theft, online pornography, and online gambling and how these are eroding the core tenets of American culture, but of course, it would seem that the amateurs are at fault here. His bottom line is: less banal banter is more meaningful. We'll get there, as we're early in the game for Web 2.0. We're definitely going to go through some iterations first.

Or maybe, I'm just one of those people who's spouting off a useless uninformed commentary, or maybe I just need a book deal in order to validate my ramblings.

I think I'll check out his book, but I'll be borrowing from the library on this one.

I totally heart Google's creations

Have you ever kicked yourself after you passed on something that you thought was cool, but you just didn't commit to it because you weren't COMPLETELY sure that your hopes would dashed against the rocks? Well, I did that with Google's stock buying opportunity.

I remember all the Wall Street buzz was saying that it won't be as hot as everyone thought it would be. Hmm. Initial stock was offered at about a $100 a share. Since its initial public offering, Google's shares have surged more than fivefold. This growth has created more than $120 billion in shareholder wealth. The shares fell $1.58 to $471.02 on Wednesday. I promise next time Google has stock offerings at the original $100 I will buy some, assuming of course Chevron hasn't bought them out.

Whatever. Did you see the video bar at the top of my blog? Yeah. Pretty cool, huh? It's powered by Google, in case you didn't notice. Have you clicked on one yet? No? You should try...you can watch a video without leaving my blog, and the videos are determined by search criteria I've specified. This way, when anything gets added to YouTube or GoogleVideo, bloggers like myself can include the content in the bar. Of course, if you're on the distribution list (serviced by GoogleGroups) and accessing my blog through a link other than http://jromi.blogspot.com, then you're missing a lot of the links, graphics, videos, news feeds, etc. and overall presentation that's present on the actual blog.

Why would I include a video bar? Why not? If I want to include clips of Dubya saying "I hear there's rumors on the internets" (yes, he really says 'internets') or of Dave Chappelle showing us what the current state of affairs would be like with a Black George Bush and Tony Blair, then I'm going to do it. I'm not scared. In fact, perhaps one video could help get an allegedly wrongly convicted American out of a Nicaraguan jail.

Also, I recommend you check out the new GoogleMaps feature: MyMaps. You can make your own maps, complete with placemarks, annotated pictures, videos, lines, shapes, etc. Then you can choose to make your maps public or private. Are you a burgeoning tour guide with a web presence? Try your IP out on GoogleMaps, and see if you can drive traffic to your site with your value-added content! Yay!

Would God walk or drive to support reducing carbon emissions?

If ever someone summed up how caring about the air became a "liberal" plot to undermine family values, then it would be Jon Carroll. Did you see his piece in the Chronicle?

Excerpt:

One of the stranger things to happen in recent political discourse -- and this is a crowded field -- is the morphing of global warming into a left-wing plot, a conspiracy by godless scientists to ... well, it's not clear what benefit the scientists get from spreading lies about global warming. Maybe they just want research money to study this nonexistent warming thing.

I have a pretty good idea where that meme started. If you believe that global warming is man-made, then you believe that greenhouse gases are a bad thing. If you believe they're a bad thing, you believe they should be reduced. And reducing greenhouse gases would mean using less petroleum, in all its myriad forms. And since the current administration is dedicated to the protection of petroleum companies, it is only natural that it would try to convince its base that somehow global warming is being promoted by the same people who approve of gay marriage, abortion and secular schools.

It gets better. There's detailed information on the backgrounds of folks who Dubya nominated to government positions that could affect the environment on a global scale. Since when did caring about your progeny and the biosphere we'll leave them become a bad thing?

Those damned bespectacled eggheads with their "facts" and their "knowledge". What do they know about [wait for it] coming straight from the gut? Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book.

Seriously, though. The notion of post-partisanship is very appealing, but I don't see the situation getting any better with this administration. 2008 is so close. Please don't let me down, America. Please let's make it better the next time around.

"The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it." Marcus Aurelius

Amorphous blob to get new quad-core processing power

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which is the entity which comes up with tools to equip U.S. military entities recently posted a project which summons resources to create ChemBots.

According to the project, the Phase I milestone is to:

Demonstrate a ChemBot, approximately the size (but not necessarily the form-factor) of a regulation softball (i.e., 30 cm circumference; 10 cm diameter; 500 cm3 volume), that can:
a) travel a distance of 5 meters at a speed of 0.25 meters/minute;
b) achieve a 10-fold reduction in its largest dimension;
and c) traverse through a 1 cm opening of arbitrary geometry and reconstitute its original size and shape, in 15 seconds.

This means that your softball would be able to roll under your door, reconstitute itself, then perform some kind of function using its embedded payload. Picture the flying razor/drill balls from Phantasm, and you could see how gnarly the application could manifest itself. The bad guy from Terminator 2 is also an acceptable analogy.
Past projects of DARPA have involved achieving Metabolic Dominance (providing soldiers superior physiological qualities), portable medical triage devices designed for warfare, and mutant ill-tempered sharks with frickin' lasers attached to their heads.

For more information, I recommend you read Philip K. Dick's short story, "The Little Black Box".

Alanis rocks her junk in the trunk and lauds her lady lumps

By far, the best April Fool's ever.


I'm waiting for her and Trent Reznor to do a duet of Islands in the Stream.

Now you can finally buy your friends

Someone recently sold their myspace account on ebay. She (according to the picture) had over 100,000 friends. There were all these other great perks about the account (no domain profile registered, early account, etc.) and someone bought it for over $2,000.

I just missed winning the bid, and I'm so sad. As a result of my myspace participation I've scored so many virtual hot dates and landed so many virtual job interviews, and made some awesome virtual friends with people who didn't just want me because I have wonderfully juicy healthy organs that could be sold for a hearty profit on the black market.

If I could've won that stupid bid, I would've been set in my virtual world. I'd never need to leave the house. Sassypants27 and bigmikedogrules95 would've kept me informed on everything. I totally heart those guys.

Actually, in retrospect, I think if I would've won the bidding, I would've given the account to that guy I see when I walk to the train from work. He stands on a corner and just watches people go by. He looks all rugged and lonely, and I think he'd really have benefited from all those friends more than me. They could've given him a virtual home, virtual clean clothes, and virtual food.

Well, I can't do anything about it now. Guess I'll just see if ebay will let me bid on that guy's Blackness.

3 people who I think would buy KITT

KITT is for sale. Which means that there are at least 3 people out there who'll throw down some serious money for a car used in the hit 1980s show. Of course, Turbo Boost and Silent Mode won't really work, and the car doesn't really talk...

...BUT...the flashy swooshy red cylon [and Garfunkel] thing in the front is intact...sweet.

The 3 people are:

David Hasselhoff (duh, like he was the star of the show and has a special place in his great big curly-haired heart for the car)

Busta Rhymes (grabbed the title song hook and pimped a fresh remix of "Turn It Up/Fire It Up")U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (after the 5-4 decision [Scalia in the minority opinion]to allow the EPA to regulate automobile emissions, he'll want to preserve this car in all its non-street legal glory as the car is missing smog equipment)

Who will win? Hmm...Hasselhoff could persuade his German fanbase to reclaim the car for the glory of the Fatherland...Busta could easily outshout anyone in an auction...and Antonin (A-bomb) would first need the case to be brought to the Supreme Court before he could do anything. HA! Stupid process of appeals. It sucks to be you, Judicial Branch! It's all about the Executive Branch. We get to poop on Thomas Edison's stupid invention of checks and balances whenever we feel like it's a matter of national security. It'a a Patriot Act thing, you wouldn't understand.