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Just when you thought you've heard the bizarre, comes this little gem. A group of scientists have come up with a way of battling global climate change caused by heating up of the planet due to greenhouse gases. Their suggestion would cost somewhere between $6 to $500 trillion dollars, and calls for a dramatic effort to control the planet's climate. Their suggestion is for a space ring to be constructed around the planet , which would reflect just 1.6% of solar radiation, but be enough to overcome the slight rise in global temperatures. The ring could be constructed of small particles shepherded by spacecraft -- or small spacecrafts connected in orbit. The ring would be erected around the equator, providing shade primarily to where the planet is the hottest. If the particle solution is used, the materials could come from mining the Moon. A side effect of the ring would be the nightly illumination. We'd be able to see reflected sunlight, similar to the Moon's, at ...

Canada joins Belgium and the Netherlands in legalizing gay marriages across the entire country -- despite the efforts of the conservatives and religious wackos. Another reason for me to be proud to be Canadian. If two people want to get married, what should it matter to anyone else? I like to use the analogy of interracial marriages. It wasn't too long ago when such a thing was seen as an affront to the sanctity of marriage -- whatever the fuck that means. How different is this? Marriage isn't about having kids; it's not about raising kids -- because if it was, we would have to force married couples to have kids and single parents from raising them. Marriage is about two people sharing their lives together -- for better or for worse.

You may not have heard of the ' advertorial ' before, but if businesses have their way, you're going to be seeing a lot more of it, and won't even know you're viewing paid advertising. Advertisers are desperate . More and more, the lines are being blurred between what is paid advertising and what is news, opinions or entertainment. Already magazine spreads are filled with pages that pose as articles -- and you would be duped into reading the "article" if you didn't see the Special Advertising Section note on the page header. Then there is product placements in everything: television shows, movies, video games, books and music. Some advertising has become entertainment -- where the "show" stars the product. Things are about to escalate as businesses try even more for your eye. Now, advertisers are looking to buy articles -- they're looking to buy editorials -- where a product would be the feature of the article or editorial. Adver...

GE has joined the ranks of major companies issuing comprehensive statements about their efforts outside the regular business of making money -- on things such as corporate governance and responsibility, as well as the environment. With the report, " Our Actions ," [PDF] GE aims to tell the story of how GE does business, their impact on the communities they work in, and their efforts to be a good citizen of the world. The report, which is surprisingly candid and large, used the Global Reporting Initiative 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines . GE is known as a management trendsetter, and hopefully this report, which critics argue as being not as complete as it could have been, will nudge other corporations to become more transparent and open to employees, shareholders and the public. True, GE is doing this because it makes business sense to be transparent, open and honest -- they're not doing this for altruistic reasons -- but nevertheless, the report is a step in...

Last weekend, my wife and I happened on the Barbados on the Water Festival at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. It was the first time I've been to that festival -- the summer festivals at Harbourfront Centre actually kicks off next weekend. It was a bit cooler than is usual for the summer, but nevertheless, what we saw of the festival was great. We saw Andy Earle and his band perform, and joined by Structcha (sp); we also caught the Israel Lovell Foundation dance company performing. Between the shows, we checked out the Music Garden, and took too many photos -- which you can check out by following the thumbnail links below.

Russia is planning two missions to Mars , in their continuing attempt to explore the planet. Russia has sent 17 probes to Mars, of which only 3 were successful. The new missions, planned for 2009 and 2015, would land a craft on Phobos and place a lander on the Martian surface. The Phobos mission is quite intriguing, as it has been speculated that the Martian moons may make a suitable site for a Mars base. There is also the ongoing questions as to the origins of the Martian moons. The 2009 mission would land on Phobos and release a rover that will spend three years conducting science. At the end of the mission, the samples collected would return to Earth.

Just read a blog post on the Media Center Blog , decrying the death of mass media due to the proliferation of free, niche media. I had to respond. Sorry, I don't buy the argument that citizen journalism, aka free media, will lead to the collapse of the giant media organizations. What it means is that big media will need to change, just as the music and movie industry is having to change. There are more than one way to generate revenues from media when the distribution channel changes. The other premise, that smaller media companies will be worse off than large companies for the market is stupid. Smaller media companies can become more focused, more responsive to the market, and a hell of a lot more independent from the corporate interests that that's big media serve. The evolution of mass media is coming -- those unable to change and respond will die. Those evolve or are built from the ashes of the dead will be better equipped to serve the market that awaits them. Ther...

As China continues to lick its lips in anticipation of someday getting Taiwan, we should all be concerned. For those not in the know, China and Taiwan have had an interesting history, starting with Mao's ascension on the mainland, that resulted in a exodus of 2 million Chinese nationalists to Taiwan. The native Taiwanese were not happy with the move, and the unrest that followed resulted in martial law being declared by the Chinese minorities. It was only in the last 20 years or so that Taiwan gave up martial law and embraced democracy. Since then, Taiwanese have expressed a desire for independence from China -- which has at times caused China to hold military exercises in the waters between Taiwan and the mainland, and also prompted the US to send carrier battle groups to the region. The standoff today has China with anti-secession laws authorizing the use of military force should Taiwan declare independence, and Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian vowing to declare independence ...

Big companies with well known brands also leverage spyware and adware to get their messages out to potential customers. Hero to the common folk, NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, says those companies can no longer play dumb -- and will be held accountable. Spitzer made news on this topic for targeting the purveyors of spyware, but is now turning his sights on the businesses that keep spyware vendors alive. Some very well known names and brands use spyware: Orbitz, Priceline, Expedia, Vonage, JC Penney, Capital One, Mercedes, Monster, Sprint and Sony to name a few. Some get their ads delivered unknowingly via spyware -- but that just isn't an excuse. Even if that sorry excuse is used to stay out of jail, it's just stupid. Any business with a brand that's worth anything would think twice about not wanting to know the details of how their messages are getting out. Your brand is priceless. Spyware alienates potential customers and customers alike -- why would you ever...

Hubble Space Telescope has detected the Great Eye of Sauron 25 light years away. It's a newly formed solar system around the star Fomalhaut, in the constellation Pisces Austalis. The ring is offset from the star, most likely because of unseen planets are gathering stray dust within the radius of the ring. The large, outer ring around the star is most likely a cometary belt similar to our Kuiper Belt. Fomalhaut is around 200 million years old, and offers a unique opportunity for the study of an early solar system formation.

NASA is looking forward to future missions to the Moon, and possibly Mars -- involving people -- and are working on a host of issues that astronauts would have to contend with on their missions. One of the biggest issues is shielding astronauts from charged particles from the Sun or extrasolar sources. A novel concept that never took off, other than in SciFi, is the force field . NASA is currently looking at the possibility of erecting force fields around bases on the Moon. The current idea being explored is to surround astronauts with a powerful electric field [PDF] with the same charge as incoming charged particles. Since like charges repel, the incoming charged particles would be bounced back into space. The leading design sees inflatable, conductive spheres about 5 metres in diameter being mounted above a lunar base. Negatively charged spheres would be higher, blocking all negatively charged particles, while positively charged spheres would be lower, blocking positively ch...

(Nothing But) Flowers by the Talking Heads is one cool song. Click to listen [7MB, MP3] to a live version by a band I've never heard of -- Guster. They actually do a good rendition of the song. Nothing weird was done to it. It's an interesting thought -- I think most of us want to do right by the planet, but how many of us would actually want to give up this lifestyle?

Can digital piracy be an indirect marketing route to generate sales via legal channels? Chris Seibold takes that assumption with a post on the Apple Matters site. Take the piracy of music online -- surely there are those that have actually gone out and picked up a CD by an artist they've newly discovered. What about the ancillary products? T-shirts? Concert tickets? Other albums in the artist's catalogue? Could the move to the Intel architecture for Apple actually spur the curious to download a pirated copy of OS/X for their existing Wintel box? If OS/X works out of the box on Wintel machines, you bet the curious will -- especially if an underground movement starts to write device drivers and optimization parameters for the OS on Wintel. You never know, a golden age of Apple could emerge. Apple could end up selling a lot more than they planned on -- especially to users of non-Apple boxes.

Microsoft's researchers are developing a P2P protocol that promises performance gains of 20-30% over BitTorrent. The protocol, known as Avalanche, solves a problem with the current version of BitTorrent -- the problem of getting the final missing pieces of a file. Downloaders sometimes have to wait quite some time for those elusive last pieces to arrive. Avalanche solves this problem by leveraging on the concept of parity checking -- which adds information on the linear distribution of pieces to each torrent chunk. As you near completion of a download, the missing pieces you're waiting for can actually be reconstructed from the pieces you already have. Microsoft stresses that Avalanche is for legal file distributions only, and wasn't make to pirate copies of Windows and Office faster.

eWeek is reporting that BitTorrent is no longer clean. The file format and peer-to-peer network has been hijacked by Direct Revenue and Marketing Metrix Group, to distribute their Aurora product . Once installed, Aurora takes you into popup hell and doesn't let go.

Japan continues to hunt whales for scientific purposes -- as if the world believes that bullshit. Whales have been a traditional part of the Japanese diet, but industrial whaling has reduce stocks worldwide. Rather than curtail their hunt, Japan is planning on increasing their hunt to up to 900 minke whales. This is despite the International Whaling Commission asking Japan not to.

I went to see this documentary with a friend Monday night. The documentary follows the exploits of Ron English, he of hijacking billboard fame, and includes a smidgen on the culture jamming movement, especially those that skirt the law in defacing public billboards and parodying pop culture. For those who don't know Ron English, check out this site that is dedicated to everything Ron English . English takes some credit for personally causing the demise of Joe Camel. He also targets MacDonalds in his art, and does some stuff with Kiss and Jesus that simply makes little sense. He's a pretty good artist, and with his billboard hijacking, has succeeded in becoming the very thing he expressed his art against -- he's become a brand, a pop culture icon. The documentary itself just followed English's exploits. There wasn't much insight or analysis of his art or person. It was more of a fanboy documentary -- even a bit promotional of his art. Not that it was necess...

Ever wondered how Google ranks sites? Well, quite a bit of the secret is now out with US Patent Application 20050071741 . Well known is that Google relies heavily on relevant inbound links to rank a site -- what is not known is the details behind how the link information is used. Google apparently ages the links. Getting linked is important. However, if your site gains a lot of links quickly, it's probably indicative of some manipulation in the works. Google keeps tabs on how links change over time, and if they remain. The anchor words are also important for the site. If you the same anchor words are used over and over, it again indicates manipulation. More information on the patent is available on Buzzle.com .

Just read an article from BusinessWeek on the anime business , and why, despite its legions of fans, is still not a profitable business for anime studios. Anime is huge in Japan, and is growing export for the country. Anime is also very influential, influencing movie producers, fashion and western culture. What it has done to Japan is whole lot different. In fact, of the three top grossing movies in Japan, three are anime -- the biggest being Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away , which also won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Yet, despite critical acclaim and cult like following, the anime business isn't as robust as the animation industry of North America. Why? The artists. There is no industry. There are some 440 animation studios in Japan -- not much consolidation has occurred. Artists are bad business people. In fact, they routinely cut deals to sell their creations outright to distributors and toy makers, who make billions, while the artists hardly ...

The finale of the WWSFF was on Sunday night, and I caught the not-so-late-night show. Again, like with the other shorts I saw, this compilation was mixed. There were a couple of standouts, a few with potential and then some duds. What follows includes some spoilers. You've been warned. Skylab -- In 1979, NASA's Skylab came plummeting down. I was in Guyana at the time, and I remembered being scared that something really big and heavy was going to fall from the sky and kill us all. Apparently the film makers of this short had the same childhood experience. Skylab is falling, and for Benj Handle, the world was ending. His mom was also remarrying and he didn't really like his stepdad to be. The short had potential, but it got wasted. It was a personal story -- but that was it -- just a story -- no SciFi -- just what Skylab meant to the filmmaker as a child. The Eiffel Tower (Eiffeltornet) -- A guy wakes up from a dream, where he's running around Paris in search...

Another WWSFF series I indulged in this past weekend was the Midnight Mania Freaky show. Previously, Midnight Mania has been reserved for the horror crowd -- and this year, there were two shows: Freaky and Creepy. I chose Freaky based on the more appealing descriptions from the site. Freaky was not horror -- so I can only assume that Creepy was the horror show. Too bad. Not that Freaky was bad -- but it wasn't entirely good either. Forewarned, spoilers follow. Exhibit 42 -- Before you touch the displays at the art gallery, you would do well to see this short. One art piece on display is a fish in a blender that's plugged in. It's tempting. Just flick the switch and watch ... art? One patron flicks the switch and his entire world is transformed. He's taken, bound, and is hung over blades, about to repeat the fish's fate. Too bad he was only day-dreaming. Shaolin Delivery Boy -- What happens when a Chinese-Canadian actor can't get roles -- even as...

Today is Father's Day -- my daughters took me out to Tim Hortons, where we had something that passed either for breakfast or lunch, depending on the mood. We then went to Henrys, where I salivated on the Sony F828 . That's one beautiful camera. But I don't need it, neither do I have the $1,000 to spend friviolously. My girls were going to buy me either the TCON 300S or a wide angle lens for my Olympus E10 , but Henrys didn't have it. The camera is now old. So, I might get it off eBay eventually. First, I'll have to see more of my crap on eBay to earn money to plop down on what amounts to another toy. Again, not something I need, but something I want. While at Tim's, I sketched a fatman salivating too -- his want was a donut.

I went with a friend to see Slap n' Tickle of the WWSFF Friday night, at the Innis Hall Theatre, in Toronto. The show was hilarious, for the most part -- there were a couple of shorts that just didn't work. The ones that worked had humour -- the ones that didn't, just didn't make sense, or tried to be serious. The following is a quick synopsis of the show -- don't read if you don't want spoilers. Who Makes Movies? -- This is a hilarious spoof of the MPAA's anti-piracy campaign -- a spoof of the commercials you're forced through when you visit a theatre to watch a Hollywood movie. This spoof is geared towards saving the porn industry from piracy. Randy Palmer, a fluffer working in the industry, waxes eloquent on the plight of the little people that are a part of the porn industry -- the little people that are hurt when porn movies are pirated. The parody works, and had me laughing out loud from beginning to end. Pillow Talk -- A bored and lone...

I took my wife to a WWSFF showing -- International 9, Sundancing, at the Innis Hall Theatre, in Toronto. The films we saw were previously previewed at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. My wife has declared that I will never take her to see such bad films again. We have different tastes. I didn't find any of them bad -- stupid maybe -- ineffective maybe -- artsy fartsy maybe -- and one was definitely disturbing. If you don't want to know what the films are about, don't read any further, as I'll be giving away spoilers. Small Town Secrets -- This was a personal film of Katherine Leggett. She grew up in small town USA -- USA the good, where her parents had deep secrets that they kept from most, including their children. At an early age, Leggett's parents divorced. Mom shared a home with another single mom. Eventually, the women cut a door between their rooms. What Leggett didn't know until later, was that her mom was a lesbian, and her partner had moved...

How Stuff Works has an entry on how the Batsuit works -- makes the whole thing seems almost plausible. It's silly -- but fanboys will love it.

At approximately 1:52AM (EDT) on July 4th, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft will collect data as its impactor probe carves a crater a size somewhere between a house and a stadium, in the nucleus of comet Tempel 1. Launched on January 12th from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Deep Impact has traveled 431 million kilometres in 173 days to encounter Tempel 1, which has been traveling through space at 37,100 km/h. It's a mission described as "the astronomical equivalent of a 767 airliner running into a mosquito," by mission scientist Don Yeomans. About 22 hours before the encounter, Deep Impact will release the 1 metre wide, 372 kg impactor and settle back to observe. Two hours before the impact, as the 1 billion ton Tempel 1 comes hurtling at 10.3 km/s, the impactor will switch to autonomous navigation mode and move itself into a collision trajectory. On impact, a crater up to 14 stories deep will be created, revealing what is below the surface of Tempel 1's nu...

Microsoft is teaming up with the Chinese government to ensure that the Chinese population never sees blog entries mentioning "human rights" or "Taiwan independence" among other sensitive words. MSN Spaces in China, which is operated as a joint venture with the Chinese government backed Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd., pops-up a warning message that reads: "This message contains a banned expression, please delete this expression." when users post entries using banned words. Shanghai Alliance Investment is run by Jiang Mianheng, a son of former President Jiang Zemin. Microsoft isn't the first large American company to capitulate to the demands of the Chinese government. Microsoft joins Yahoo and Google in this regard. This is part of Chinese government's efforts to curtail the freedom of their bloggers. The government has given bloggers until June 30th to register their blogs, after which date, unregistered blogs will be shut down. These ...

The most Earth-like extrasolar planet to date has been discovered orbiting Gliese 876, about 15 light years from us. The planet has about 7.5 times the mass and twice the radius of Earth. It's most likely a rocky planet -- instead of the usual large, gas giants that have been discovered to date. The rocky planet orbits Gliese 876 every two days in a near circular orbit. The Gliese 876 system includes two other gas giant planets. Gliese 876 is an M dwarf star about one-third the size of the Sun, and is located in the Aquarius constellation.

I'm tired. Been a long day, and getting longer by the minute as I stay awake to hammer out a useless post. Here are a bunch of totally unrelated sites that I came across recently. Enjoy, and forget that your day is getting longer as you spend time on useless sites. World O Meters -- a collection of useless projections based on 2003-04 data. The JavaScript program taps into your computer clock to figure out when it is, and projects statistics covering world population, governments and economics, education, the environment, food and energy. Overwhelming numbers for the little blue marble. Bloogz -- this is yet another blog ranking tool on the net. It "assesses how popular websites and the topics of Blogs are, according to the number of visitors and quotes that can be found." Why do you care? Want to see what wave is moving through the blogosphere? Check this site out. Funnyfox -- check out these funny Firefox web commercials. Too funny! (What's more fun...

Barbarian Queen -- Oh, what a bad, exploitation movie. Made in 1985, the movie sought to take advantage of the Conan craze. There was no sorcery, just a lot of bad gladiators, warrior women, who can kick ass, but sometimes can't defend themselves when their tops are being torn off. What a crappy b-movie. The plot: evil emperor guy is nasty, rapes and pillages villages. Unfortunately he picked the wrong village. After killing most of the villagers, and taking the rest as slave, he retires to his castle to prance around torturing some captives and plan his big gladiator joust. Unfortunately, it all goes wrong when the Barbarian Queen from the village comes seeking revenge and her prince, who was enslaved by the dastardly evil emperor. A lot of cheesy fights ensue. Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires -- Another load of crap I watched. It was funny, but sometimes unintentional. The premise: a vampire seeks to turn a redneck town into her vampire army to defeat a gay, french Van ...

Microsoft is planning on taking on Adobe with a new offering that combines pixel-based painting with vector graphics features -- think of Illustrator and Photoshop combined. Combine this with Metro, that's coming with Longhorn and you have an Adobe killer for sure. Acrylic, currently in beta, is available as a free download from Microsoft. Acrylic requires Windows XP SP2. It will not run on prior versions of Windows. Not sure about the name though ... maybe Oil or Watercolour would have better.

Ever wonder why it takes so long for Microsoft to release a vulnerability patch for Windows or IE? eWeek has a detailed account on the efforts Microsoft goes through to release a patch. What the delays usually come down to is the testing. Microsoft supports a number of different versions of their products, in quite a number of different languages. Their commitment is to ensure that all supported releases and languages get the fix as soon as possible -- at the same time. So, while a fix may be available for a specific release in a specific language first, it must then be rolled out to other releases and languages, and tested, before a single patch is released. Still, I feel no sympathy for Microsoft. They are in the business of selling digital safes for my information. They need to ensure the digital safe they sell can't be cracked. They've made billions selling flawed products. It's time they cleaned up the mess they've left behind. I can't help but inte...

The double-slit experiment is quite famous, known to anyone who's taken high school, or at least, first year physics. In the experiment, light shines through the two slits on the left and results in the interference pattern on the right. The interference pattern is a result of the waves from the two slits reinforcing and canceling each other. If the above experiment was repeated with bullets, instead of light -- ie. large particles, not a wave -- the pattern above would not result. If small particles were to be used in the experiment -- say, electrons -- the above pattern would occur however. Even if the particles were sent one at a time through the slits, the interference pattern would still occur. Somehow, the electron is managing to interfere with itself -- somehow, it's traveling through both slits -- being in two places at the same time. This has been experimentally confirmed. Welcome to the weirdly, wonderous world of quantum physics. At atomic sizes, matter an...

Who the fuck is this guy ? I randomly find this guy's blog when I surf blogs using Blog Explosion. Randomly finding blogs is a good thing -- randomly finding this guy's blog is annoying. I've never seen such public display of narcissism in my life. This guy is in love with himself. How else to explain the many pictures of himself on this blog? Take a look. He obviously spends plenty of time loving himself, that the over-pouring of love has infected the internet. I tried reading some of his pointless drivel -- just couldn't do it however. I was going to drop him a comment or two -- perhaps giving him the verbal finger, but he doesn't allow comments on his blog. I wonder why? Hence this blog post -- a bit of venting on some of the shit I've found in the blogosphere. [Yeah, I know what his bio says he is -- but my question is still valid. Look, only the almost famous like Wil Wheaton can pull off a blog.]

My wife and I caught the Urban Womyn's Comedy Festival last night at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto. The show bills itself as a comedy festival, but there were some non-comedic performances. It also bills itself as a show of women, for women -- specifically women of diverse nationalities and sexual orientation. The show wants to be welcoming to all. And it was, although the talent on display was heavily Caribbean influenced, with a great big nod to Toronto's lesbian culture. None of which should come as a surprise, when you realize that it's a creation of Da Kink in My Hair's Trey Anthony . The show featured the talents of Sabrina Jalees , Jamillah Ross , Virma Benjamin, Ordena Stephens, Anita Majumdar , the Raging Asian Women, Lal, Black Ice, Naila Keleta Mae, Jemini, and Karen Williams . The best was the show's headline act of Karen Williams. She had the audience laughing with her opening declaration of, "I'm a lesbian." She was amazing...

Well, this will act as both a comment and a post. First off, here’s a link to Andy’s original post . Now that you have refreshed yourself to what he though of Massive Change, let me comment. Andy’s comment after seeing the show with me when we were having dinner, and I paraphrase: “I know that the world will save itself” he stated between bite-fulls “but I also know that it will take decades, maybe even centuries, and I am not optimistic about what will happen in that time. That’s the thing about reading a lot, about having a good education; you become less capable in the blissfully ignorant and optimistic departments, and more cynical of the world around you.” I agree with him there. He also said “If you read my blog, you would have known everything that was in Massive Change already”. Probably. But not having read his blog very much, I learned a lot during that art show. I learned about the camel pack a water bottle for cyclists, the army, etc., I was able to be in the same room as...

Ah ... physicists ... they need downtime too.

NASA recently discovered in a long forgotten room at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the spacesuits of Americans trained in the 1960s to become space spies. The suits were part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which would have seen Air Force astronauts spending weeks in space. One suit had the number 008 and the name Lawyer imprinted on it. It was traced to Lt. Col. Richard E. Lawyer. The other suit had the number 007, and it hasn't been determined who it belongs to.

This evening was the usual Thursdays for me -- I was driving around North York. I have two daughters, and I suspect they fancy the idea that I like driving around. At least I got some work reading in while waiting for the older one to finish her mid-term. We went to Tim's for what passes for supper before I had to pick the younger one up from band practice. After we got out of the car, a copy pulled up in front of us at the Tim's. She wanted to know if I knew that my front license plate was not one. I told her that I was aware of that -- it was due to an accident, and it now rested in my backseat. She replied, "I guess I will believe you." My older daughter commented that the cop was cute when she drove away. I don't know. My heart was racing because I thought I was going to get a speeding ticket -- even though I wasn't speeding coming up to the Tims. I told my daughter that the cop's gun was bigger than mine, and she probably was well versed in...

The world is filled with assholes -- and dumb people who listen to them. Apparently some asshole reported that some photos I posted on my webshots gallery were not mine. Then, the dumb people at webshots deleted my photos and sent me an email on the wonderful thing they did. Thanks for uploading photos to Webshots. We recently received notification that one or more of your images were uploaded in violation of U.S. copyright law, and, as required by law, we have deleted 15 image(s) from your Webshots photo albums. If you believe this is a mistake, and you are the sole copyright owner of these photos and you can provide the appropriate documentation, please contact our Customer Support department at copyright@webshots.com. The Webshots Terms of Use prohibit you from uploading photos that you did not take or other images that you did not create unless you have the permission of the copyright holder. The Terms of Use also prohibit you from uploading photos featuring individuals wit...

I just found two versions of the Tragically Hip New Orleans is Sinking that I had hidden away -- the Killer Whale Tank version, and the Scuba Cop version. If anybody has the lyrics to those versions, please post them in the comments. Let's face it, Gordie is either a genius, or really fucked up.

World Environment Day (WED) came and went on June 5th -- it was marked by the global theme: Green Cities -- Plan for the Planet! To commemorate WED, the UN, along with the USGS and NASA have released One Planet, Many People , an Atlas of Our Changing Environment. The atlas compares and contrasts some stunning views of the planet as seen from orbit over the past few decades. The images are beautiful and frightening. The global scale of human habitation; the misuse and abuse of the planet is startling in the images. The atlas shows human encroachment of pristine environs, as cities grow and human infestation follows. Deforestation is startling when you see once green forests turn to deserts. The rise in global temperature is quite apparent when glaciers disappear, and ice caps melt from mountain tops. We're doing this, we're doing it to ourselves. As Klaus Toepfer of the UN explains: "Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals ...

Oh, time flies when you're just having life live you. I forgot to mention the following previously: Kindness of Strangers -- Organ donors meet the internet -- and no, I'm not talking about selling parts of yourself on eBay, although there's a lot of useless shit of eBay these days. I'm talking about MatchingDonors.com. If you're looking for spare parts to replace organs that disease has ravaged, you have a good chance of beating the hospital waiting list after you pay the $295 membership fee. MatchingDonors.com will put you in touch with perfect strangers looking to part with pieces of themselves for free. They just want to do some good. I don't know -- it's a good idea, but the whole thing leaves me with the willies. (But at least, they're my own willies.) He Saw Lights -- Meet Nick Holonyak Jr. He's got bright ideas -- LEDs that is -- light emitting diodes. He first came up with LEDs in 1962, and it was a brilliant idea way before its ...

Part of Microsoft's Longhorn release will be Metro -- a file format, a document viewer and a "page description language" built on Avalon technology. Metro aims give printing a higher degree of fidelity than is currently supported by Windows. It's part of Microsoft's XAML markup language that Microsoft has created to build richer web-based applications. For Adobe, this sounds like a challenge to their PDF and PS formats -- the defacto standards for document portability and printing respectively, across platforms. Will Acrobat survice the onslaught? Well ... Microsoft still has to deliver Longhorn -- but when they do, Metro technology and specification will come, and it will be free. You be the judge on how much market share Adobe will lose.

This is a bit of a public service announcement -- which I usually don't do, but, I got a note from Jake Brown of Glorious Noise Records , looking to promote Quasar Wut-Wut . Quasar Wut-Wut is described as Frank Zappa meets the Muppet Show. I'm not entirely sure what that means. Regardless, Quasar Wut-Wut will be at the North By North-East show in Toronto , playing at the Bagel, on College Street, this Friday -- June 10th, at midnight. I'm all for supporting indie bands, especially those that have songs with a title like Enola Gay and another that was made famous by Leonard Cohen. If that isn't enough to convince you, check out a sample of their music online . If you listen to them long enough, they sort of grow on you. I didn't listen to them that long. But I've been told so by the voices. Besides -- look at those faces -- how can you resist?