A perfect snapshot of my life

I mean, should I be worried when a comic like this seem to describe my life with such relevancy and accuracy?

You Tube amusements

Ah, the hilarious musings of weblings...

Solar Power 2007

Well, I'm most of the way through this year's Solar Power 2007 Conference and Exposition, and am overall pretty impressed with the offerings and the attendance. Apparently there was something like 8,000 attendees pre-registered, and another 1,000 or so that came without registration (don't quote me on those figures, that's what they announced).
There were all sorts of exhibits and booths, run by the various companies that are trying to gain a foothold in the burgeoning US solar industry; the really interesting thing was that unlike a lot of the exhibitions that get run on US soil, there was a very large contingent of foreign participation. Germany and Spain are really the big solar power markets right now, with Germany's industrial base installing something like 40% of the world's solar energy production last year. However in the long run, the US is in a far better natural position to take advantage of solar power:
As you can tell, the southwest US is an excellent area; we're just faced with lots of challenges as far as distribution (transmission), regulation, carbon-tax and/or renewable energy incentives, high capital costs, and a myriad of other issues plaguing the US solar industry. Most of these issues are being addressed actively by literally hundreds of companies from a dozen countries; so it's nobody fault but ours if the US doesn't get its piece of the pie from the get-go.

Jesus is Magic!

A short clip from Sarah Silverman's standup work...I just spit out a big piece of my lunch as I was watching this, laughing uproariously. It was unfortunate, but hilarious.

It's a Celebration, Bitches.

I'm sure most everyone has seen this, but I just stumbled across it on youtube and felt inspired to corrupt everyone's work ethic just a little bit more...

Mary-Kate Olson is Funny?

How did this happen? I'm a little taken aback, and my world is shifting slightly on it's side, as I discover that not only is she still alive, but somehow managed to stuff enough carbohydrates into her body for normal brain stem functions...and she is apparently funny. What a twisted freaking world...

Borat on the interview circuit

Ahhh, classic. I don't think I'll ever get tired of of the ridiculousness...

Media-Undefended

Man, these guys are sure taking a beating. I have to admit, though; i'm sort of on the fence about this kind of thing. I have a soft spot for the sort of vigilante justice that some of these hackers are executing, but by the same token these acts on their own are not something we would want to encourage. This eventually leads to the idea of balancing the age-old question of do the ends justify the means, and as usual the answer is fairly nebulous. I detest the stupid stupid fair-use rules and RIAA/MPAA bullshit that pushes these companies and their questionable practices into existence; but as we develop a counter-culture to run interference against them, at some point it seems almost inevitable that those retaliatory acts will become more atrocious and damaging than the original problem was. If this argument seems familiar, it should; it's really some of the same questions we have to ask ourselves in national security, schoolyard bullies, police brutality vs. violent crime, and a hundred other balances we are asked to assess throughout our daily lives. I don't think there's a silver bullet, be-all-end-all answer; the solution is simply one of never accepting the status quo and continuously questioning the processes and initiatives that are put in place. It is that dialog that will maintain the oversight required to keep these movements in check.

Robot Expression

Yeah, I'm with them. This is pretty incredible stuff, but the primary result is that it will end up freaking the shit out of me. And who knows, maybe we'll really be forced into the realm of Philip K Dick's paranoid future of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", where empathy tests are the only way to distinguish (superficially) a robot from a human.
Crazy shit, folks...

Google's Moon X-Prize

There are so many jokes that we could make here, and I just don’t even know where to begin. I guess the article that calls it relatively straight is probably a good start, but after that you should peruse the comments on slashdot’s post. And maybe then you make up some of your own! Yahoo for school!

Photonic Laser Thruster Demonstrated

I am literally salivating at this science. Earth to Mars in ONE WEEK? Incredible, fantasy, crazy, possible. All things I feel could be used to describe the scenario. Nonetheless, the fact that he has demonstrated a prototype is very promising, and the capacity for scaling up lasers has been shown to be relatively easy; the big problem is usually issues involving focusing said lasers at high power over distances because of the air heating up so much and refracting the beam. This, of course, is not even an issue for propulsion systems of this sort, so I think the long and short is that we could very well have a producible high-yield propulsion system in place for spacecraft in 5-10 years.

Again, actually drooling on myself right now in anticipation. It’s a little sad.

Ride The Snake.

Jimmy Tango's Fat Busters... it's been a long time since I watched this, but holy crap is it funny. But then again, you have two masters facing off, Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell in the same skit. You gotta love it...

Ninja Babysitters

Ask a Ninja : Babysitters

Racetrack drives to become a reality?

Really interesting article on the possible future of storage technology, coming out of the IBM physics labs in Cali…

Flying Boobs! I love science...

I don’t care who you are; a legitimate scientific report on how breasts move around during exercise is hot. Fact.

And speaking as a standard-issue chauvinistic male, I barely even noticed that there was some sort of science being conducted, choosing instead to focus on visualizing the test procedures required to conduct the tests and perhaps even the process of recruitment into the study.

<sigh>

To be fair, as long as news networks continue to pander to my low moral code and infantile sense of humor, I will certainly support any stories they would like to run involving breasts, nakedness, poop, stupid animal tricks, bodily functions, and general Darwin-award-style reports.

Way to know your audience, MSNBC.

It's Every Cuss Word We Know!

These dudes are basically right on my wavelength. And probably every other man with a heartbeat and a pair of testicles. Ahhhh, the infantile...does it ever get old?
(get it? ahhh, I kill me....)

Kanye West goes Rural

Heck yes! That darn Zach Galifinakilagackisburgstein and his comedic amusement… somehow Kanye decided it would be a great idea to have him just make a video to his song. Turns out: really f*king funny.

I especially like the hydraulics on the tractor. Such a bizarre parody of hip hop videos that I simply found myself chortling uncontrollably at my desk. Ahhhhh, sweet release.

 

(kudos to Vinay for rooting around the interweb and finding such things)

Spider-Speed Vessel

I want one. And apparently it can take on modular attachment cabins as easily as Dr. Claw can take on attachments for his hand. Interesting how Inspector Gadget was simply the bungling overabundance of the very simple gadget present on his arch-nemesis....hmmmm

Dance, Monkey! Dance!

iRobot. Will I still have to download iTunes?

Jed, I’m looking directly at you for this one, man.

A robot inserting a remote presence so you can telecommute? Oh hell yeah. Where do I sign up?

The PDA Health Revolution

This is interesting not just in the way that it’s being applied or the fact that it is helping to revolutionize healthcare in the third-world (it is), but also that it is reinforcing the concept that some technologies require a much lower barrier to entry than others. Cellular technology requires towers, but not anywhere near the infrastructure involved in land-lines. As a result, many of these countries depend almost exclusively upon the wireless communications medium rather than the land-line infrastructure that you find throughout most of the first-world. This allows these countries to quickly shrink the technology delta between the first and third-world, and hopefully shrink the economic gap as well.

Mmmmmm...Spaceport

yes. I likey.

Scientology. The First of the Comic Religions.

Ahhhh, Scientology. Where even to begin? I mean, I think it's funny that Belgium decided to prosecute Scientology. I mean, this makes basically two contributions from that country. And the first one was waffles. Actually, that might have been better than this.

Nonetheless, I find myself caught between two amusements: the idiocy of the religion and its followers, and the utter brilliance of L. Ron Hubbard as a manipulator of people's minds paired with his utterly horrible forays into literature (Battlefield Earth...I mean really, I just threw up in my mouth). Although I *do* find it interesting that the very process described by Heinlein in his fantastic novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" parallels on about three levels the way that Hubbard came up with Dianetics and his whole philosophical miasma.
Who was clowning who? Hmmmm...I'm actually too lazy to look up which came first. But neither scenario would surprise me.

Arthur Dent Should Be Getting Worried...

Submarines, Aerial, and Satellite Photography

Although his rant is a bit uncohesive, he still brings up a bunch of interesting questions and points relating to the ba lance of national security and an application of personal cs. collective rights.
All of which is very important dialog for people to have. Here's to hoping our collective interactions will result in something more than inflated emotions, grandstanding, and general buffoonery. I'm only mildly hopeful.

Borat becomes a Cat

Man Steals a Bridge

As is often the case with these stories, i'm really just amused at the title of the article...