But Mr. Hand. Isn’t this OUR time?

  1. Totally awesome supercomputer simulation of the ribosome may give us keys to improved antibiotics. Plus, it’s just totally awesome.
  2. Totally awesome mathematical investigation of soap films produces a new type of surface! It’s a helicoid with a handle for easy carrying, and it’s totally awesome.
  3. The totally awesome Rands has once again diagnosed my horrible illness, in this case “Repetitive Information Injury”. You may well have it too. If you have to have a horrible brain problem, this one is actually totally awesome in a lot of ways.
  4. M.C. Hammer visited Google. That must have been a totally awesome day there.

Eagerly awaited preorder: The Book of Imaginary Beings

creaturesThe Book of Imaginary Beings, by Jorge Luis Borges, Peter Sis (Illustrator), Andrew Hurley (translator).

Borges is one of my favorite writers. Hyperintelligent, funny, bizarre, fantastic without being self-indulgent, cryptic without being annoying, calm. civilized, and an obsessive craftsman of words. I want to learn Argentine Spanish just to read him in the original, sometimes.

This work is a compendium of 116 imaginary beings from myths and stories, some well-known and others deeply obscure, some from traditions and others from more recent authors. It’s almost literally magical to me. If you don’t have the cash or the interest to buy it, there’s a nicely done web interpretation of the book. A sample: The Eater of the Dead.

Tupac is still upper-class

  1. Got a stalker? Carry a stealth pepper spray cellphone!
  2. Here’s another reason to be terrified of birds: you can get eye cancer from them. Not that psittacosis was a fun disease to start with, but this is really icky.
  3. William & Mary College has posted a delightfully contorted letter defining their reasons for keeping their team nickname “Tribe”. As Veronica Geng once said, I love the sound of anxiety being rationalized. (via Bobby Isosceles). Personally I’d settle for a ban on “tribal tattoos” and a good caning for anyone who uses the word as a noun, as in “the dude had a tribal on his arm”. What the fuck is a “tribal”? Which tribe? Cherokee? The Jews? BOO-Yaa?
  4. Not only do I dislike the principles behind the Amy Foundation Writing Awards, I really really really wish they wouldn’t use “disciple” as a verb.
  5. I don’t much care to hear that our nuclear bombers are getting an “unsatisfactory” on their report cards.
  6. Wow, I can date a WHAT? (Thanks, exploding aardvark!)
  7. So, we, like, dumped a bunch of chemical weapons? In the ocean? Until 1972 or so? And they’re totally, like coming up on shore now? (Thanks again, vark!)
  8. Local alert: does anyone else know this Italian market/deli in Tustin? I just read a good review of it on the interweb and I like me some Italian sandwich.

Hey Sony! You gonna get JAILED!

Thanks for installing malicious stealth software on people’s computers when they play CDs.

It would be a terrible shame if someone put one of their CDs into a machine that happened to control some part of the infrastructure here in the U.S. that is responsible for people’s lives, and that machine happened to fail, because then they would be guilty of industrial terrorism. And that would be bad.

If that first link above makes your eyes glaze over, a simpler version of the story can be found at the WFMU blog, where I found the story in the first place.

Don’t buy copy protected CDs. And if you happen to get one, join a class action suit. They need to get spanked hard for rootkitting people’s machines like this.

In the radio hobbies they warn you about this kind of thing.

Area Man Jams Cop Radios, Goes To Slammer.

Best quote:

Mitra testified the Nov. 11 episodes were accidental transmissions that occurred when two wires rubbed against themselves and the transmitter. He said the sex sounds were broadcast because he was listening to them on a loop in his bedroom, and when he heard them on a police scanner and realized what happened, he threw the transmitter away.

managing your expectations for over 40 years

  1. Kick ass! An aurora borealis webcam! Night hours only. pbd will be pleased I bet.
  2. These people will replicate any vehicle in mahogany or teak, hand-carved.
  3. So, are we back to only two phone companies now, or what?
  4. H5 bird flu has arrived in Canada. Let’s all hope it isn’t H5N1.
  5. At the Chipotle burrito chain today they’ll give you free food if you show up wrapped in foil.
  6. This is sort of sweet. Somewhat innocent wack-job “Minutemen” anti-immigration terrorists are proudly guarding Vermont’s border with Canada, unaware that the whole thing is about hating Mexicans. Subtexts are hard.
  7. We seriously might be better off washing our hands with plain soap and yogurt rather than antiseptics, even in hospitals.
  8. In related news, 4000-year-old Mesopotamians were apparently pretty good at medicine.
  9. This CMU robot geek would like to help you survive the Robot Holocaust, whether it comes in 2084 or sooner.
  10. Indicted White House staffer Lewis “Scooter” Libby also writes bad dirty books. Really bad.
  11. Hey, they found two more moons of Pluto! YAY!