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BusinessWeek has a review of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good For You , that makes me want to pick the book up, should I find it cheap at the local used book store (I refuse to pay full price for books anymore). The book proposes that as culture has grown more complex over time, we have had to cope -- and the coping, especially with today's pop culture, is actually making us smarter. Why? Pop culture challenges our minds in "new and productive ways." From television, movies, video games and the internet -- culture consumers have had to deal with multi-threaded narrative that requires inference. The consumption of new media requires to become an active participant -- and exercises different parts of the brain. Johnson credits the new complexity in culture for the fact that our collective IQs have been increasing. Steven Johnson also authors an article with a similar topic for the latest issue of Wired magazine . In the article, Johnson further assets th

This is amusing. Indra Nooyi, President and CFO of PepsiCo, recently gave a speech to Columbia Business School graduates, where she said, amongst other things, This analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents leaves the long, middle finger for North America, and, in particular, The United States. As the longest of the fingers, it really stands out. The middle finger anchors every function that the hand performs and is the key to all of the fingers working together efficiently and effectively. This is a really good thing, and has given the U.S. a leg-up in global business since the end of World War I. However, if used inappropriately –just like the U.S. itself -- the middle finger can convey a negative message and get us in trouble. You know what I’m talking about. What is most crucial to my analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents, is that each of us in the U.S. – the long middle finger – must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business

BusinessWeek has a special report on the FBI's takedown of cybercrime organization Shadowcrew , in October of last year. Shadowcrew was an organization that operated on the internet, specializing in "identity theft, bank account pillage, and the fencing of ill-gotten wares on the Web." They had members in the thousands, spread across the world, and organized online in a strict hierarchy. Organized crime has gone global, exploiting information technology for their profits. Shadowcrew's demise came at the hand of a gang member turned snitch. The law was hot on the trail -- surprisingly, collaborating across jurisdictions -- but still, the web allows for a level of anonymity that needed to be cracked. The aid of the snitch allowed the FBI to create VPN for Shadowcrew, thereby having all their traffic routed through the FBI's systems. It was analogous to an old fashion wiretap. It was high tech meet old fashion tactics, and it made a public dent in the $17.5 b

This site is just a fun-filled waste of time. Enjoy! [And some stuff there just ain't for the kiddies.]

Iomega was granted a patent in the US for what they call an Articulated Optical - Digital Versatile Disc (AO-DVD). Iomega has found a way of encoding data on a DVD disc using reflective nano-structures in a highly multi-level format. It will allow future discs to store anywhere from 40-100 times more information and achieve transfer rates of 5-30 times that of today's DVDs, while costing the same price.

The following announcement was made on the Project Orange website: The Blender Foundation and the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time Based Arts , have agreed on producing a 3D Animated Movie Short, to be created with the Open Source 3D suite Blender and other OS tools such as Yafray, Python, Verse, Gimp, and Cinepaint. The resulting movie will be released under an open source license -- including all the production files and software created to make the movie. The movie will be released on DVD and to theatres -- of course, it will also be available to download from the internet -- most likely as a torrent -- legally. If it's entertaining, people may actually shell out money to watch it. But that's hardly the point. It's about the art open source movement changing the world. If you have talent, apply at the Project Orange site -- they're looking for contributors.

It was recently confirmed by NASA that the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed through the termination shock region -- the region of space where the solar wind starts to mix with the thin interstellar gas of the space between stars. In this region, the solar wind slows as it encounters the interstellar gas and becomes denser and hotter. In December of last year, Voyager 1 started to measure increased magnetic field intensity that has persisted -- an expected result from the accumulation of electrically charged particles from the solar wind. Twenty-seven years and counting , the Voyager spacecrafts are expected to continue operating for at least another 15 years. Check out the NASA site above for some cool animation and detailed explanation of what scientists think the boundary of the solar system and interstellar space looks like.

Alan Moore, comics writer extraordinaire, is departing from DC Comics -- owned by Warner -- for good. The reason? Moore doesn't want to be associated with the movie based on his V for Vendetta comic, which the Wachowski brothers are writing and producing. However, in a press conference, producer Joel Silver announced that Moore was involved and was excited about the movie adaptation. So why is Moore pissed? He's been burned too many times by the movie industry and has just had enough. So, in retaliation for not getting Warner to publish a retraction of Silver's statement, he is pulling his future work from DC Comics. For those who don't know, Moore is the writer behind some of the most well written comics, such as, Watchmen , From Hell , League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Constantine. V for Vendetta should be in theatres in November 2005, and stars Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving.

In anticipation of returning to the Moon in 2015, NASA plans to launch LOLA in 2008 to map the lunar terrain using a high-precision laser altimeter in orbit. The mapping will produce a 3D map of the lunar surface -- good enough for any crazy buggy ride. I can just picture it -- 2015: astronauts return to the Moon -- they get lost while out on a buggy ride. No problem. They pop up the laptop, open Firefox, and Google themselves a map of their present location (GPS helps) with directions home.

Here's an entertaining article on the pre-release of Star Wars Episode III on the BitTorrent network. The MPAA has come out swinging [DOC], blaming the BitTorrent network for providing the illegal copies of the movie. I'm out with the guys tonight to see the movie -- it's supposed to be the better of the three movies. After all the fuss, it had better be.

Garnet Hertz, a grad student from University of California, Irvine, has built a robot that is controlled by a giant Madagascan hissing cockroach . The roach sits affixed on top of a ball that functions similarly to a trackball mouse you use to move the pointer around your computer screen. The cockroach moves the ball, and controls the direction the robot travels. Sensors on the robot detect obstacles in the robots way, and triggers a flash of light into the cockroach's eyes. Cockroaches tend to avoid bright light, and the roach changes direction, causing the robot to change direction. In this contraption, I believe roaches are disposable. Many were harmed in the making of this robot. One day, when the roaches take over the world, they will get their revenge.

Here's a concept to give the folks at the MPAA a heart-attack and have the lawyers rubbing their hands in glee. BitTorrent works by leveraging tracking sites that distribute .torrent files. The .torrent files are the heart of the BitTorrent network. But with the recent legal onslaught against tracker sites, it's becoming harder for your average internet criminal to break the law. Welcome to Socialized.Net -- a technology demonstration of how a P2P search infrastructure could be leveraged to help you find .torrent files, while reducing the exposure to a centralized legal salvo. Instead of using trackers to centralized the distribution of .torrent files, they will be found amongst your peers in a social network. Navigating a social network for .torrent files would be difficult of course, unless that network also had a handy-dandy search engine. Very interesting.

I've uploaded some new pictures, taken during my first bike ride this spring, on May 14th. Click on the photo below to be taken to the gallery on Webshots. Enjoy!

Another interesting presentation from IT Conversations is a presentation from November 2004, by Douglas Engelbart -- credited with bringing (or helping to bring) the mouse, hypertext, multiple windows, bit-mapped screens, shared screen teleconferencing, and outline processing into the world. In this presentation -- available in audio from the site, with a link to the PowerPoint slides -- Engelbart discusses the acceleration of change which in turn accelerates change. The perspective is technology impact on society, and the ability of organizations to keep up with the pace of change, its complexity and the urgency to change in order to stay ahead. To keep up, organizations need to "become increasingly faster and smarter at their core missions" -- which in turn drives them to "become faster and smarter at how they continue to improve." I haven't listened to this presentation yet, but it's on my list -- once I have an hour to spare.

Lawrence Lessig waxes eloquent on his favourite topic at the Web 2.0 Conference. There's nothing new in his talk, but he's always a dynamic and funny speaker. His topic is the changing media landscape. A democracy thrives on open dialogue -- where ideas can be discussed, analyzed, and critiqued. Traditionally, this role has been filled by broadcast journalists -- but more and more, the general public can wade in on the discourse via the internet -- especially using blogs. Copyright protection of broadcast works however, potentially stymies the discourse -- as expressing views via "remixing" of media can lead to collisions with the law. Lessig discusses the dangers of moving from today's free to a permission culture, where permission must be granted before media can be reproduced. Lessig is always interesting to listen to -- and his presentation can be download in audio from the IT Conversations website .

The New York Times reports on the latest revelation by the US Army on the torture-deaths of prisoners -- suspected as innocents -- in Afghanistan. The article itself is quite disturbing. It details the events leading up to the death of a 22-year old taxi driver who was picked up after a bombing in front of a US Army installation. He was interrogated. He was tortured. He was left hanging by his wrists. Beaten repeatedly -- beaten on his legs so much, that he could no longer bend them to walk and had to be dragged to the interrogation room. His US Army captors would come by and beat him, like other prisoners, because they found it funny when the prisoners screamed out in pain for "Allah" (God). All this perpetuated by those from the land of the brave and free -- those that were sent there to bring freedom, democracy and a better life. For those that were beaten and tortured to death, I'm sure their families can take comfort in the knowledge that in war for democrac

I am not a capital “C” Catholic but most of my high school friends are. I do not feel the need to go to church every Sunday, but they do. I am not the type of person that you are likely to find in a missionary. In fact, the very mention of the term “missionary” brings images of horror (thankfully) beyond my imagination to play in front of my mind’s eye. When I think of the word “missionary” the first thing that comes to mind are the Jesuit missionaries in the ‘new world’, trying desperately to beat the Natives into accepting a faith that is not their own. It makes me wonder why Catholic figures like Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha actually gave in to these missionaries. This woman for instance, was of Catholic Algonquin and Mohawk descent – why couldn’t she have chosen to live out her life as a non-Catholic Algonquin, or a Mohawk? There is one simple answer: because people of my religion have forced upon others their own faith as superior. The line: the Native Americans need a patron saint

Here's an interesting use of Google, as reported on unmediated -- finding torrent files that are associated with lots of illegal content. Using Google's file type search -- filetype: torrent Illegal Content -- you can search and find torrents. If you know the torrent hash for the file you're looking for, you can also search for that -- and it works. Drazen @ unmediated suggests that this may be a way of using Google to find those who pirate illegal content. Interesting.

A Top 10 List : 1 Adware.NewDotNet 2 Adware.180Solutions 3 AdWare.WildTangent.b 4 AdWare.BetterInternet 5 AdWare.ToolBar.MyWebSearch 6 Adware.Gator 7 Adware.Gator.a 8 AdWare.FunWeb.d 9 Adware.ToolBar.ISearch.d 10 AdWare.BetterInternet.b Here's one that is just an abuse of the legal system. Adware vendors -- you know the people who infect your computer with pop-ups, advertisements and secret applications that log your surfing behaviour and cough up ads when you surf -- are taking the anti-spyware fight to the vendors that are making anti-spyware software or hosting discussion groups. They don't want to be accused of being malcontents who make their living at the expense of end users. So they're suing. The big anti-spyware vendors can fend them off, but the smaller players, without the deep pockets, are having to turn tail. Check out this site for the results of the litigations.

I usually don't blog on shit like this, except that it was weird? a spectacle? kinda like that piece of something on the floor that you're not quite sure what it is, so you have to investigate, even though you highly suspect it's your pet's poop? Something like that anyway. Here's stupid Britney Spears and her dumb-ass husband Kevin Federline doing Letterman's top 10 on his show.

New Strategies in Consumer Goods -- CPG companies have survived in the past due to strong brands and productivity improvements. The landscape for CPG is changing however. Customers want lower prices; retailers are getting the upper hand on CPG companies and are selling their own brands; CPG companies have reached the limits of what productivity they can squeeze out of their operations; and competition is coming from the emerging markets. How will CPG compete in the future? Build capabilities in their core functions; serve emerging markets better; improve execution -- market and innovate better; sell value, not just brands; leverage their scope and size; and offer new services. 2005 Innovation Awards -- from Network Magazine comes another award. It's a rundown of the innovative network companies that developing new products to help IT deliver on business needs. More and more, companies have to do more with less and do it cheaply. Forget wasted CPU cycles, under-utilized st

The kids who make to MIT are nerds . And proud of it. While they have led quiet, socially isolated lives before arriving at MIT -- when they got there, they found a university teeming with people just like themselves. Smart, eccentric, craving challenges, and incredible under stress. MIT's grads have gone on to change the world. You may not know who they are, but there is a great likelihood that some part of your day touches on something dreamt up by an MIT grad. Read an excellent profile of the MIT student at Discover magazine -- and if you've ever made a nerd's life miserable -- or are thinking about doing it again -- think twice. It would be like a gnat laughing at a human for not being a gnat.

I just came across the "intellectual disability" label. Not sure what it meant, so I looked it up . It's the new label (for me anyway) for those with mental handicaps. Fine. But "intellectual disability?" To me it's an insult. Intellectual disability just means someone doesn't have the ability to be smart. That applies to a lot of people I know who suffer from no mental handicap. A lot of people with mental handicaps are actually smarter than some of the dummies I know that would qualify for the intellectual disability label. I don't know -- maybe I'm harping about nothing. Maybe I'm not accepting of change -- but I just don't think another euphemism was needed -- especially one that went from labeling a person with a disorder as having a mental handicap to one that just calls them a dummy. Please folks -- enough with the euphemisms -- enough with the dumbing down of language for the politically correct. OK, I'll shut my t

You scored as Existentialist . Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 94% Materialist 88% Modernist 75% Cultural Creative 75% Postmodernist 56% Idealist 56% Romanticist 31% Fundamentalist 13% What is Your World View? (corrected...hopefully) created with QuizFarm.com

Japanese researchers have developed a breakthrough fuel cell that runs on human blood. The fuel cell draws electrons from glucose in the blood to produce electricity. The application for such fuel cells would be in artificial organs -- such as hearts -- where surgery usually has to be repeated every so often to replace batteries. With batteries powered by the person's own blood, such repeat surgeries may be a thing of the past. Naturally, some people will be wanting to hook their iPods up to their veins. It would be a new and novel use for needles.

Ever want to surf the web without all the annoying content? Ever just want to see those cool Google AdSense Ads? Then check out this spoof . [ Thanks for the link Darren. ]

The universe is made up of two types of particles -- together, they carry the fundamental forces of nature. The particles: bosons , such as photons and gluons , and fermions , such as quarks and leptons . Together, bosons and fermions make up everything. Supersymmetry is a theory that binds bosons and fermions via string theory -- the theory that states that all fundamental particles are vibrations on tiny ( supersymmetric ) strings, at sizes of 10 -33 metres. Of course, none of this has been observed -- mere speculation with a hell of a lot of math. Now, researchers from the Utrecht University in the Netherlands have proposed making a "non-relativistic Green-Schwarz superstring" by trapping an ultracold cloud of fermionic atoms along the core of a quantized vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate . [See a short article on PhysicsWeb .] What does it all mean? Check out their proposal [PDF] and try to understand it -- but what it does mean, is that if it works, for

This past weekend, a coronal mass ejection from the Sun hit Earth's magnetic field, lighting up the sky. For those who saw the spectacular colours -- lucky you! Apparently it was quit brilliant -- visible as far south as California.

The next installment of the Harry Potter movies , Goblet of Fire -- slated for a November release -- has a teaser trailer posted on Apple's movie trailer website. Check it out!

Google has drifted into the movie review business and more, with what is apparently a new service. Unfortunately, the service is only fully available in the US so far. Compare this search for Kingdom of Heaven at Google.com and at Google.ca . With the US service, you can also get showtimes and theatre listings. To get the reviews on any Google country pages, Google introduces the "movie:" search operator. Just type in "movie: Name of Movie" without the quotes, and you'll get reviews galore. Keeping with their image of a company with sense of humour, Google also places the following text at the bottom of the review listing: "The selection and placement of reviews on this page were determined automatically by a computer program. No movie critics were harmed or even used in the making of this page."

Greetings all esteemed readers of floccinaucinihilipilificate. It's concert season for the North York Concert Band , a community based band in the northern Toronto region of North York. I am a member of said band and as such, here is my sales pitch. This is directed towards those of you with an appreciation of music. Our concert is on Sunday, May 29, 2005 at the Al Green Theatre located at 750 Spadina Avenue. Tickets for "Music without Borders" are $15 each for adults, and children under the age of 12 are free. We will be playing a variety of music that is sure to please all, including pieces written by Canadian composers, gospel/blues, swing medlies, classical music and even a piece arranged by one of our very own. I encourage you to visit our website where you'll find this informaiton and be able to listen to pieces that we've performed in past concerts. If you wish to order tickets or require more informaiton, Syd Gangbar is the guy you'll want to talk t

A new rodent family has been found in Thailand, where it's known to locals as Kha-Nyou. The rodent is a nocturnal vegetarian, preferring the cover of the forest. It gives birth to one offspring at a time instead of a litter -- and DNA analysis suggests that it diverted from other rodents some millions of years ago. In Laos, Kha-Nyou is usually found in the food markets.

Reseachers at the University of Rochester are developing a new battery that will last decades and be potentially hundreds of times more efficient than conventional nuclear batteries . Such batteries would find a niche in applications where power is needed in inaccessible places, or places under extreme conditions, where the option of replacing or recharging a battery is limited -- applications such as implanted medical devices or space and ocean probes. The process being exployed to create such a battery is betavoltaics , where electrons from nuclear decay is captured and used to generate an electrical current. Unfortunately, electrons emitted via nuclear decay are sent off in random directions -- mostly missing the electron capture mechanism. The innovation made by the researchers was to make the capture mechanism with pits -- each pit being filled with radioactive gas. Decay then occurs in the cocoon of capture mechanism pits -- increasing electron capture yield and therefore

The MPAA, fooling themselves into thinking they can stamp out file sharing, have now upped the ante and are targeting sites that host torrents for television shows . Lawsuits have been filed. It's still OK to record TV shows -- but if you share them, even for free, you're in trouble. Yet again, another industry is failing to get on top of the innovation bandwagon and exploit the net. Suing customers and fans is an act of desperation from an industry that can't seem to come up with other options.

Tip! That's right, tip. Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book The Tipping Point just before he wrote *blink . (Pretty good cover design and typesetting, I might add.) The premise of the book is the tipping point, or the point in time at which something reaches critical mass, and has the ability to affect drastic social change. This book is very well written, and is based on an accumulation of examples to illustrate this simple concept. Gladwell goes on to explain that the tipping point is something that cannot be quantified, because, like a trend, it catches like wildfire. He uses the New York crime reate in the late eighties and early nineties as an example, saying that there was a point in time were crime ran rampant, even in New York's subways. To stop the crime, the new transit police chief, William Bratton, simply cracked down on fare beating, arresting dozens of fare beaters with concealed weapons and, incidentally, criminal records. After a short period of this strict adhe

On Friday the 13th in April, 2029 , the world will come to an end -- or at least, that's what some people will want you to think in 2029. That's when asteroid MN4 will have a close encounter with Earth. It will be visible as the brightest star in the sky, moving at the speed of satellites in orbit. Will the world end? It all depends on how much you faith you have in the calculations of the guys from NASA.

The Flight of the Creative Class -- a book by Richard Florida that I may be interested in picking up if I find it at a the local used book store. The premise of the book is that increasingly, the entire global economy revolves around innovations coming from the world's creative classes -- and America is becoming more and more unattractive to those people, who favour social and economic equality, political tolerance and education, because of the changing values in America. OK premise, but I don't think America is any danger of losing its creative classes to the world. America is still rich and free -- and that's good enough for most people. Just What GM Needs -- Kirk Kerkorian has come a-knockin' on GM's doors. The billionaire investor's interest is hardly philanthropic, but neither is it like carrions circling in the sky. GM is still viable, and Kerkorian's 9% stake in GM is sure to pan out when the company makes a turnaround. The speculation now i

I was reading some very interesting articles today in the National Post, now that I work there. I read an article titled Mayor Kisses Off Protocol by Planting Two on Princess in the front section of Wednesday's National Post. What an article! I don't see the problem with the mayor of Montreal, Jerald Tremblay, greeting Dutch royalty with two pecks. I think that if the action had been grossly unappropriate, then the papers should have made a big stinkin' deal out of it, but as it was it was just a greeting. The Princess was taken aback by this greeting and temporarily forgot about proceeding directly into the prepared speech for the occasion. What I do object to is how the paper described the Dutch Princess Margariet's husband as having to 'save' the situation. What he said bothers me, "You start all this kissing, it's easy for her to forget what she has to do". GRRR!

My family and I were over at my Mom's this past Saturday. It's difficult to buy gifts for parents (and spouses for that matter), so perhaps the best gift for my Mom was to have us over, spending time. My Mom wanted us to watch a Bollywood movie with her, so she put on Dil Ka Rishta . It's been a while since I saw a Bollywood movie (Bride and Prejudice doesn't count) -- and it was typical of a Bollywood movie -- singing and dancing and all -- although I was surprised that there wasn't as much singing and dancing as I was expecting. The story is formulaic. I've seen it before. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. But ooops! Boy can't have girl, as she's in love with some other guy and they're about to get married. An accident occurs, and girl loses her memory -- chaos ensues, and boy finally gets girl. The movie stars Aishwarya Rai (the star of Bride and Prejudice), Arjun Rampal and Priyanshu Chatterjee. I'm only familiar with A

GM's in trouble -- and it represents a frightening prospect for America. GM is "no ordinary company." It's representative of the American industrial might -- it's a conglomerate. It's huge and sprawling, with annual sales of $193 billion and supporting close to 1 million jobs. Annually, it puts $8.7 billion into assembly workers pockets. In 1998, a union sponsored strike that lasted 54 days, shutting down GM, resulted in 1 percentage loss to the US economic growth rate for that quarter. What's bad for GM is bad for America -- and there may be nothing that anyone can do about it. GM is about to shrink, whether they like or not. The trouble: GM lost $1.1 billion in the first quarter of this year. They have a $1,600 per vehicle legacy cost -- mostly due to retiree health and pension plans. That's $1,600 off every car sold going to retirees that its Japanese rivals don't have to worry about. In the last five years, GM has lost 74% of its ma

It appears that Steve is gay after all. In a letter to employees , Steve Balmer has reversed his position on the issue of supporting anti-discrimination legislation that makes it illegal to discriminate via sexual orientation. Too little, too late however. Balmer is coming in from behind with his support after the legislative session is already over -- but he does promise to support such legislation in the US in the future. As for the rest of the world -- Balmer doesn't want anything to do with you.

Just when you thought certain things couldn't be improved upon, along comes an engineer tinkering. Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed concrete comprising of 2% tiny fibres. The addition of the fibre had the remarkable effect of making the concrete 500 times more resistant to cracking, 40% lighter and flexible. This summer the concrete will be put on a real world test , as the Department of Transportation in Michgan retrofits a section of a bridge -- limited real world use is already in place, and there are plans to use the concrete in more roadway construction.

Today's acronyms are: BPM, BPA, SOA, ESB and POA. It's the stuff of an IT architect's wet dream. BPM (in addition to BPA and POA) is supported by the SOA and ESB technology plumbing -- and, as this article from Intelligent Enterprise summarizes -- can be exploited to automate real-time enterprises -- who's defining trait is "for squeezing time and associated costs out of processes, transforming how companies operate and even the very businesses they're in." Time-based competition leverages the capabilities of real-time enterprises and BPM to give the business the ability to "build and manipulate end-to-end processes." With this flexibility, businesses can respond to the real-time changes of their business climate; meet the ever changing demand of customers; execute dynamic marketing strategies to increase customer base and sales; and deliver competitive advantage. Changing from an information-based to a process-based IT department isn

On the eve of the final Star Wars film, AtomFilms releases the 2005 Star Wars Fan Film Awards . Talent? Comedy? Adventure? People with no life? Yup, all of the above.

America continues to baffle me. This turn from the land of the free to the land of fundamentalist christians is looking more and more like the axis of evil country, Iran. The following details an act of Texan police misuse of authority to uphold the right-wing, fundamentalist, hate-filled, bigoted agenda of the American christian conservatives -- in this instance, as represented by the woman hell-bent on destroying the achievements of women everywhere, Ann Coulter. Read it all. Be disturbed. It's happening to Texas. How long before it happens where you live? This shit has got to stop. [ This story came via the Canadian Cynic . ]

Well, so says Texas, which recently approved a bill to restrict “overtly sexually suggestive” cheerleading to more ladylike performances. I got this from habitatgirl . Are Americans going mad?

The US recently attacked Canada in its Special 301 Report on intellectual property rights. Apparently, Canada's amendments to the copyright act just doesn't go as far as the US would like. The US would like Canada to adopt provisions that is mirror to the US laws. Yeah, OK. Too bad the US isn't as vigilant in protecting the environment -- ratifying the Kyoto Protocol isn't as important as protecting the "property" of big business apparently. I know, I know -- you've gotta have your priorities straight.

They must feed the students at MIT specially formulated brain food, because they keep coming up with ideas that are sheer genius, if they weren't so silly. The latest brilliant idea is to host a Time Traveler convention on May 7, 2005, 10:00PM EDT at MIT's East Campus Courtyard -- coordinates: 42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W. There will only ever be the need for one such convention. That's the brilliant idea. Publicize the convention so that thousands of years from now, when time travel is possible (you've got to be an optimist), time travelers will converge on the time and place for the convention. As the convention gains notoriety through time, it will continuously grow, becoming more and more popular -- perhaps needing a bigger venue. On May 7, 2005, we'll know if the brilliant idea was really just a silly idea. If no time travelers arrive on May 7, 2005 -- then the date wasn't made sufficiently public -- so there's always next year. After all, if

Celera has announced that it will be donating its DNA database to the public. Finally. After racing the government's Human Genome Project to map the human genome and won, Celera kept its data under wraps, selling subscription access to it, while the National Human Genome Research Institute made its findings public. Celera is realizing that what it is selling is freely available. Celera will also make available its mapping of the rat and mouse genome -- important genomic data for researchers. So what's up with Celera? They're hoping to reap rewards from their drug research business.

This past week, the following kept me awake on the subway rides to and from work: Desktop Factories -- a short review of Fab, by Neil Gershenfeld . Fab refers to fabrication, and in this context, personal fabrication -- the creation of almost anything at home. Fabrication systems usually include "a milling machine for making precision parts, a cutter for producing simple printed circuit boards, and software for programming cheap chips called microcontrollers." With these machines, conceivably anything that can be imagined, can be manufactured, including the fabrication machines themselves. If the concept takes off and prices drop, the results would be nothing short of a revolution in manufacturing and retailing. For more related to this topic, check out Building from the bottom up [PDF]; Fabrication of novel biomaterials through molecular self-assembly [PDF]; Ink-Jet Printed Nanoparticle Microelectromechanical Systems [PDF]; FAB LAB: An Alternate Model of ICT for De

The Stella Awards are made out for the "most most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States" -- and are named for 81 year-old Stella Liebeck who successfully sued McDonald's in 1992 for spilling hot coffee and burning herself. It Is What It Is has the top 5 listing of Stella Award winners. Check them out -- they rival the Darwin Awards. (Yes, and I know -- two different lists -- they're equally funny.)