I know that my sense of humor tends toward the demented, but this picture really made me laugh. (But then, I just can't get enough of this whole Howard Dean thing.)

(Link edited)

OK, who's planning to see this?



I want to, although I'll probably wait for the DVD.

Reactions to the Moon-Mars thing, nicely collected in one place.

(via Paul Riddell, my source for pithy science commentary)

Rolling Stone has a story about Justin Frankel, the inventor of Winamp and Gnutella (via kottke). I didn't know he wrote both of those. My thoughts:

- this guy's value on 'what he wants to do' is too high.
- AOL does stink.
- like Jaq has said, you can't be naive enough to think that, by empowering people you're not gouging the recording industry. Surely most of Gnutella's traffic is illeagal.
- there should be ways to listen before buying. But music that you keep listening to should be paid for.
- however, the current industry is messed up and charges too much.
- some of his motivations sound noble, down to 'taking the wind out of Napster's sails', but, again, it's naive to think there won't be abuse and to take no responsibility for the abuse, isn't it? What would the analogs with guns or cars be (oh, wait. Those industries shirk responsibility, too.)
- more naivete: AOL pays you 100 million dollars, they own you What'd you think? If you don't want them to own you, give some of the money back or negotiate a buy out or something.
- re: Frankel's question at the end, for my part, I think people tend to do what they want, even if it hurts others. We need structures in place to discourage some of those hurts, to keep all of us reined in a little. The tragedy of the commons seems obvious to me.

I've got a post on Metallica, too, that I'm going to put up on interact.

We now have an RSS feed for Collaboratory. Blogger added the feature this morning. I'm hoping it'll start showing up on BlogRolling as recently updated, but it has other advantages as well, like RSS readers. Any of y'all use those?

Did we get our first comment spam?

Futility has nagged at Caroline for a long time. Four years ago, at the dawn of the new millennium, she sat at her kitchen table in Claremont, N.H., and added up her life. It was the height of the economic boom. The nation wallowed in luxury, burst with microchips, consumed with abandon, swaggered globally. Everything grew larger: homes, vehicles, stock portfolios, life expectancy. Never before in the sweep of human history had so many people been so utterly comfortable.

Caroline was not one of them.

Crooked Timber's Harry Farrell has some pointed commentary regarding comments made on other weblogs regarding the New York Times article, "A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class", a vignette about one member of the working poor.

"You want to convince me of something, give me numbers." - young Jed Bartlet in the episode "Two Cathedrals" from The West Wing.

Filched from MeFi, here are some numbers on the Bush Administration.

Keep up the good work Start up the good work anytime now, Mr. President.

Collaboratory demographic survey time:

How many of you have taken the Best Places quiz before? I took it several years ago, but then again this morning.

What do you all consider the most important aspects of places to live, according to the categories they use? If you got to pick exactly where you lived, where would it be?

WE'RE GOING BACK TO THE MOON!!!!

(butwe'regonnacanceleverythingnotrelatedtothemoonormarsincludingkeepingHubbleworkinguntilareplacementisready! Shhhhhhdon'ttellanyonehaveaniceday)

Via Bookslut:

1. Someone named Caitlin Flanagan somewhat-favorably reviews Dr. Laura's new book.

2. Someone named Maud Newton isn't impressed.

3. I'm not sure why I'm posting this, but it struck me as interesting. I find Dr. Laura to be one of the most nauseating people in American life, and pretty much purely on that basis I tend to desperately want to ignore everything she does, which is pretty much what I do. Oh well.

Darn, I'm so easily amused. At the moment I'm collecting interjections which do a fairly bad job of masking swear words or mild blasphemy.

I'm looking for ones that are fairly well known although I know that many of these are actually obsolete and tend to only be used in ironic contexts. They also tend to be identified specifically as American, British or Australian words.

Here's my current list, I've grouped them around their root cuss word.

Christ	Jesus	God	Damn	Hell
crikey cripes crums	gee jeez sheesh bejesus (scared the...) heeby jeebies (gave me the...) jiminy (Jesu Domine?) jiminy cricket jingo jeepers creepers	golly gosh gadzooks (god's hooks) drat (god's rot) zounds (god's wounds) begorra (by god) strewth (god's truth) cor blimey (god blind me) by gum (by god)	darn durn dang dashed dog gone (god damn)	heck (Surely there are more of these?)

Can you think of any others?

When we think of Internet geeks, we often think of people like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, right? Big fat shut-ins who are social misfits?

Well, according to a new study, that's not accurate. Among other things, your typical Net geek has an active social life and shuns television.

Keeping with the air-related theme as of late:

It begins with an idea. The idea becomes a sketch. Which becomes a blueprint. Which becomes a wind tunnel model. Which becomes a prototype...

...and sometimes it just stops with the sketch.



Concept Aircraft of the past.

A day on Earth is roughly 24 hours. A day on Mars is roughly 24 hours, 40 minutes. The difference doesn't sound like much, but it adds up and it's screwing up the sleep patterns of the scientists in charge of the Spirit Rover.

The sacrifices for science, eh?

(Free LA Times registration required)

If this article is to be believed, the RIAA has come up with some new strategies to deal with "pirates" whom they think may not have as much knowledge of US legal procedures as others. Hmmmmm.

(Talk about losing in the court of public opinion, eh? I wonder sometimes if the RIAA sits around saying, "Hey, this ought to make people hate us even more!")

(via Lynn Sislo)

I got 10/10 on this space quiz. I'm something of a space buff, but this one's still pretty easy, I thought.

At the end of this blog post, I found the following generalization of what differentiates liberals from conservatives:

Conservatives measure how far they are from the bottom and are mostly satisfied. Liberals measure how far we are from the top and think we need to work harder.

Anyone agree? Disagree?

Here's an interesting thought experiment/parlor game question, via Terry Teachout: You have a lot of money -- a seven-figure amount -- that you're can donate to one arts institution in the United States. Who gets your money? Just one. (And no "Arts Councils" who will spread the money around to a bunch of artists!)

I'd give it to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, myself.

So what do you do when a President you really don't like proposes something you really want? Like Bush's impending space policy announcement?

I'm a bit surprised by this, because Bush has never struck me as the kind of President who's remotely interested in science or much else in that realm. It's an election year, and obviously they kept this in a drawer just in case the Spirit Rover mission failed. But, I've long felt dismay over the "ho-hum" attitude toward space we've pretty much embraced since the Apollo missions ended, so if he's sincere, well -- it's not remotely enough to make me vote for him, but I'll be sorely disappointed if the eventual Democratic nominee pooh-poohs the idea.