Category: general

Sam has a great post up, covering two completely different subjects. The first bit is a response to the article I linked earlier today about Aubrey de Grey. It is the most interesting part of Sam’s post to me; in fact, it made me think of this post I made this morning about eliminating extreme poverty. I wondered, after I posted it, if it could ever really happen, if the richer nations would take responsibility and give what they needed to. It made me seriously want to write a letter to my president, and I may yet do that. Sam’s discussion of ethics broadens that topic to a general responsibility for our actions that many feel is lacking in the world.

The second part of his post is a nice discussion of issues of masculine and feminine roles in our society, and is also well worth reading. For me a lot of it seemed to be common sense. What’s interesting (and a little irritating) is that that sort of opinion may not be all that common.

Clark: You know, I was wondering…what if Chin is the hooded robber?

Lois: …a mild-mannered reporter, really a superhero? Clark, please.

Is it the air pressure?

…when you’re humming along to a new piece of music, and you’re doing the harmony, and suddenly the melody does exactly what you’re humming.

I typically have good instincts for stuff like this, but when it’s exact like that, it’s kind of spooky.

(I suppose I should disclaimdisclose that this piece isn’t exactly “new”; it’s “The Steward of Gondor” from Return of the King. But I really haven’t listened to it all that much, and I was fully expecting the melody to continue as it was going…)

Saw this alignment test over on Chris’ blog. Damn, the html it spits out for you is ridiculous.

As you can see, I tied Neutral and Lawful Good. It says I’m Neutral because I said that doing the right thing is more important than never stealing in the tiebreaker question.

Slashdot has an interesting roundup today entitled “Dancing Robots Help Preserve Japanese Culture“. Lots of links! From the Yahoo! article:

Katsushi Ikeuchi, a professor of engineering at Tokyo University, said the robot, which is usually used at construction sites, was taught traditional Japanese dance to preserve the art for the future.

The slow-paced dance, which is performed in groups and accompanied by lutes and other Japanese instruments, is rapidly losing ground in 21st-century Japan, with many young people only encountering it at local festivals.

Unfortunately, the articles don’t say what the dancing is called in Japanese.

From Japan Today:

Seventy-nine percent of people polled in Japan said they support a female monarch on the imperial throne, far outnumbering 4% who are against it, and 16% who said they are ambivalent to the idea, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said Tuesday.

There’s some good news for Koizumi in that article, too.

I previously mentioned the possibility of a female imperial ruler. To be honest, I think it would be neat. Maybe not as neat as a female prime minister…

The title of the article is “Taxman pays teen girl to fondle her breasts“. However, later in the article we see that

Morimoto paid the third-year junior high school girl 20,000 yen to let him fondle her breasts at a karaoke box in Yokohama’s Nishi-ku at about 3 p.m. on Sept. 11 last year.

So, you see, the tax man didn’t pay the teen girl to fondle her breasts. He paid her to let him fondle her breasts.

Sheesh!

From Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough:

The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of a “Family Guy” cartoon. Fox electronically blurred a character’s posterior, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.

“We have to be checking and second-guessing ourselves now,” Fox entertainment president Gail Berman said Monday. “We have to protect our affiliates.”

Everything should just go to cable. Or, better yet, programming on demand. People could just order whatever shows they feel like watching, whenever they want them.

David Pescovitz of BoingBoing links today to a lengthy profile of Aubrey de Grey. I previously mentioned his essay on why humans can live to be 1,000.

For reasons that his memory cannot now retrieve, de Grey has been convinced since childhood that aging is, in his words, “something we need to fix.”

Fascinating guy, that de Grey.

According to weather.com, it’s:

and it

So yeah, I’m not biking to work today.

I am driving, though, and I’d better, like, leave now.

According to this article on MSNBC, a 13-volume report has been submitted to the UN that indicates that if all nations meet their promised amount of development assistance to poor countries–0.7% of each nation’s gross national income–then extreme poverty would be eliminated by 2025.

I literally started to cry when I read this.

“PCs and lifestyle”? It makes it sound like English is my second language ;P

MSN and c|net are having something of a torrid affair, I guess. Here’s an article they collaborated on. It’s about PCs that fit a room’s design.

Behold the $55,000 PC

At the end of the article they link to another one.

Is that a Media Center PC–or an end table?

My hand hurts, so I don’t feel like retyping all the crazy thoughts these articles gave me. Instead, I’ll just paste part of my chat with Brooke. Sorry for the laziness.

me (15:02:27): I’m reading some articles about designing furniture to hide PCs

me (15:02:43): there was a show I saw YEARS ago where someone had designed their living room to be a home theater

Brooke (15:02:48): oh yeah? neat!

Brooke (15:02:54): I’ve seen those; they’re really cool

me (15:03:04): and all the electronics and stuff was hidden behind beautiful wood panels

me (15:03:11): but my favorite part was the coffee table

me (15:03:16): it had built-in controls for EVERYTHING

me (15:03:27): with like a mini LCD screen or something

me (15:03:52): I’m thinking it would be nice to have a specially designed coffee table with a fold-up section that would reveal a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse

Brooke (15:03:56): oh NICE

Brooke (15:04:00): heheheheheh :-)

me (15:04:06): you know, it doesn’t have to be especially fancy

me (15:04:15): just so it looks nice, and hides the peripherals ;>

me (15:04:26): you know what I also think would be cool…a recipe PC

me (15:04:29): for in the kitchen

me (15:04:39): of course, this is more silly

me (15:04:55): but it would have its own little printer so it could print recipes on 4X6 cards

me (15:05:05): and also a little LCD screen if you just wanted to look at it on there

me (15:05:20): and I think it should be able to access web databases of recipes…maybe through a subscription service

me (15:05:24): surfing the web would be too dangerous for that

me (15:05:32): you wouldn’t want to get a virus in your dinky little recipe PC

me (15:05:41): it wouldn’t even really be a PC, more of a function box

me (15:05:45): is there a word for that?

me (15:05:49): :>

Brooke (15:06:11): there’s one, now……. ;-)

Brooke (15:06:17): recipe pc

me (15:06:24): it could be connected to the house’s server, and all the recipes and things could be stored there

me (15:06:33): so basically, I’m thinking it would be a dumb terminal

me (15:06:53): man, there are so many cool things you can do with computers

me (15:07:04): I’d like to integrate them better into my lifestyle

me (15:07:14): right now if I want to do anything on them I have to come into the office

me (15:07:24): I’d like to have more convenience for tasks that I find useful elsewhere

me (15:08:30): “The design company’s other prototype is a wall-mounted system with a removable 12-inch LCD screen; it can be managed from a distance with a remote control, or the screen can be detached to function as a tablet for someone relaxing on a couch. Becker said the idea is to have a display option suited to traditional PC tasks such as e-mail and Web surfing, tasks that are often clumsy at best when executed via the screen of a TV set.

“For the most part, Media Center is geared toward media,” he said. “The idea with this is that you can also bring some of those common PC functions to the couch.””

me (15:08:32): see, that’s kinda neat

From Cornell News:

A Cornell University research group has made a sweet and environmentally beneficial discovery — how to make plastics from citrus fruits, such as oranges, and carbon dioxide.

I love science!!