The Big Think

The FBI apparently considers fansites a potential terrorist breeding ground. This is embarrassing for the FBI.

Adam was first tipped off about the investigation when the FBI raided his and his fiancee’s apartment in May of 2002 and seized thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment. Adam later received a copy of the affidavit filed in support of the search warrant, and was shocked to discover that this document, prepared by the FBI, contained significant amounts of erroneous and misleading information. For example, two social security numbers were listed for Adam, one of which is not his. References were made to a cease and desist letter sent by the MPAA to an email address that did not exist. His online friendship with other Stargate fans across the globe was portrayed as an international conspiracy against the MPAA. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP

Happy Birthday to Jennifer Bateman!

Apparently, turning HTML off in my comments has not stopped the scalawag spammers from their nefarious deeds. (hey, the spell checker didn’t recognize “spammers”, but allowed “scalawag. ???).
I checked my edit page and found that some stupid bot put fifty-two comments in a single post just the other day. And they all had html.
Should be a law against that.

Just thought of this. What if I put a notification (in big flashing text) on my comments page. In the note I would state that advertisers would be allowed to spam my comments section for the low price of only $100/spam. Then sue ‘em when they post 52 comments! Hey, it’s printed right there, and filling out the form constituted acceptance of the terms of the contract. This kind of thing has been tried before.

Can someone point me to any other examples of this?

Coconut Macaroons are the greatest cookie in the universe. Erin made a bunch last night from a cookie book recipe she got at B&N.
It’s now a half-bunch.

Here is a good story on Lance’s impact on sports. Enjoy.

Okay, not really, but it’s still pretty high. Who wants to guess what it’ll be in a year?

Number 6!

I’m not a Guiness man, but I’m still curious about this.

It’s official, the third and final chapter in the new Star Wars trilogy is named Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Nice one, George. Wait a sec, I scooped Giles on Star Wars news?!? He must have a real job or something.

The University of Houston has announced the development of a breakthrough fuel cell technology. Some people have poo-pooed fuel cells (huh, he said poo) and said that they’d never amount to much, that it would take too many to produce any meaningful power, or that they were unreasonably inefficient compared to our current plug-in-the-wall-and-recharge standard. Well, eurekalert.org has this to say:

“Compared to the macroscopic size of traditional fuel cells that can take up an entire room, thin film SOFCs [solid oxide fuel cells] are one micron thick – the equivalent of about one-hundredth of a human hair. Putting this into perspective, the size equivalent of four sugar cubes would produce 80 watts – more than enough to operate a laptop computer, eliminating clunky batteries and giving you hours more juice in your laptop. By the same token, approximately two cans’ worth of soda would produce more than five kilowatts, enough to power a typical household.
Keeping in mind that one thin film SOFC is just a fraction of the size of a human hair with an output of 0.8 to 0.9 Volts, a stack of 100 to 120 of these fuel cells would generate about 100 volts. When connected to a homeowner’s natural gas line, the stack would provide the needed electrical energy to run the household at an efficiency of approximately 65 percent. This would be a twofold increase over power plants today, as they operate at 30 to 35 percent efficiency. Stand-alone household fuel cell units could form the basis for a new ‘distributed power’ system. In this concept, energy not used by the household would be fed back into a main grid, resulting in a credit to the user’s account, while overages would similarly receive extra energy from that grid and be charged accordingly.”

I want this technology! I want the ability to produce our own power at home using solar panels, fuel cells, heck, even a Mr. Fusion. I’d love to be free of the power grid, or at least know that we’re a net-zero consumer of electricity. Just imagine if it was a normal thing for all new homes to come with solar shingles and the ability to sell electricity back to the power company. More than just a good way to reduce your summer cooling bills, these technologies, used en masse, could make a significant impact in our use of fossil fuels, our dependence on foreign oil, and our contribution to global warming. Plus, you could run your A/C all day long and still get a check from the power company! Oh, and national blackouts? Thing of the past, my friends.
Read more about U of H’s exciting technology here.

The CapMac Picnic is today from 12 til 4. Come on by if you’re in the area!

SETI Predicts we’ll find ET’s by 2020.

“Based on the Drake Equation, Moore’s Law, and the Allen Telescope, a new prediction has been made that Earth will make first contact with aliens within 20 years. Of course once we find the first aliens there’s the question of can we decode their signals, would they spot our reply, and what’s the lag time.”

Now since the source for this is some guy with an email handle of “FTL”, I take this with a grain of salt, but coincidentally, I came across some data in this month’s Scientific American magazine. The SETI institute has been operating their SETI@home program for 5 years now. (Proud member, 1315 datapackets analyzed in 1.655 years of computer time- 96th percentile!. Been a member for 5.164 years. See my personal stats HERE). In that time, it has come up with over 6 million possible candidate signals. (Surprised?). SETI has done a quick analysis of 95.7% of the night sky so far. The next step is to go back and confirm the candidate signals, then start to weed out the ones that are explainable. Once that is done, I’m sure they’ll take the 10,000 or so that look like good hits and start concentrating on them in earnest. Who knows? Even if it doesn’t end up being the Plan 9 people, this kind of research is bound to uncover cosmic phenomena we’d never anticipated. Such an exciting time to be a science geek.

*UPDATE* Turns out there’s a better source than “FTL”. None other than Seth Shostak said it. Him I’ll believe.
wow

The behind the scenes Sing DVD is finally done! It’s a massive three hours and forty five minutes. Take that Peter.

“You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.” — Homer Simpson

“Being eaten by crocodile is just like going to sleep…in a giant blender.” — Homer Simpson

“Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing. Well I say, hard cheese.” — Mr. Burns

“What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mysteries?” — Chief Wiggum to Ralph

“We started out like Romeo and Juliet, but it ended up in tragedy.” — Milhouse Van Houten

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The original Knight Rider car (the original, er, KITT car) is for sale here on ebay.

If you have any doubt how influential Jerry Goldsmith was, check out his list of movie scores. on and on…

Film composer Jerry Goldsmith died today at the age of 75. During his nearly 50 year career, Goldsmith composed music for such wide-ranging projects as “Star Trek”, “Total Recall”, “Basic Instinct”, “Chinatown”, “Barnaby Jones”, and “The Omen”. Said a colleague: “He could write anything. He did Westerns, comedies,” Carruth said. “He preferred writing for more character-driven, quiet films, but somehow they kept coming back to him for the action films.”
Moment of silence as one of the Great Ones has left the concert hall.

The Apollo Archive is a huge source of original scanned photos and info from the Apollo missions. It’s been on and off lately due to the anniversary and high traffic, but as of 5pm it’s back online!

Krispy Kreme doughnut franchises will soon have frozen drinks available at their stores in several flavors- including a GLAZED DOUGHNUT FLAVOR. The large size is 740 calories.

Draw your own conclusions:

“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.”  - President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”  - President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998  

Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.” – Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998  

“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten time since 1983.”  - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb 18,1998  

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the US Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”  - Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry (D – MA), and others Oct. 9,1998

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”  - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998  

“Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.” >- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999  

“There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.” – Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001  

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.” – Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”  - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002  

“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” – Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002  

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002  

“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons…” – Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002  

“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force– if necessary– to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” – Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9,2002  

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002  

“He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do” – Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002  

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”  - Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002