We are so totally living in the future. Of course I would be so much more impressed with some kind of robotic octopus, but that’s what you get when science works towards some kind of practical application instead of just focussing on what would be cool. Brain-controlled ‘robo-arm’ hope By Michelle Roberts BBC News health reporter, in Washington DC Scientists… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
With the right kind of eyes…
Ace news hound Keith Loh brought this to my attention tonight. I bet it is the talk of the blogosphere tomorrow. I am a little saddened, since the world is now a little less ridiculous. Writer Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67 DENVER – Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in… Read more →
WP 1.5 stuff
Warning: geeky stuff to follow OK, I have the template looking more or less the way I want it to now. I’ve managed to make the necessary alteration to the wishlist thing to get it working with 1.5, so if you actually come to the blog (as opposed to reading the RSS feed) you will see a little box with… Read more →
More hate for Nova Scotia Power
If you are scheduling a power outage for an entire area for “maintenance”, that will last for two hours, you really need to notify the people in that area. For the purposes of this statement, notify does not mean “put a message on the outage line to let people know when they call in to report the outage”. The fact… Read more →
WordPress 1.5
I’ve upgraded the engine for this site to the shiny new WordPress 1.5 Immediate differences for you: 1) Until I have a chance to update my snazzy Terrence the African template, etc, you will see the default WP1.5 template. (This won’t really matter to people reading in RSS) 2) My plugins are gone until I can upgrade them too–so no… Read more →
Unbirthday
It’s hard to believe that it has been six months since Sarah was born. Sarah, of course, will not really understand that she is “a half” now, but she probably will enjoy the fact that tonight, for the first time, she will eat fruit. (Really she was ready yesterday, since she has tried all the cereals and vegetables now, but… Read more →
Where you might least expect it
I think I have mentioned this before, but one of my favourite sources for actual analysis of political events is a column, written by a comic book writer, on a comics web site. The columns are quite long, and usually start out with comic-related material, but they eventually get around to a few paragraphs (or a few dozen if Steve… Read more →
Happy / Sad
More on the continuing evolution-in-schools front, sent in by Mr. ReallyTryingToMakeMyHeadExplode. School Board Approves Biology Text Book Without Creationism UPDATED: 7:29 am EST February 15, 2005 ELKTON, Md. — The Cecil County Board of Education unanimously approved Monday night “Biology: The Dynamics of Life” as a textbook for next year’s 10th-grade science classrooms. The decision came after a board member… Read more →
One-liners
Please let this be the nail in the coffin of 733tsp34k.–if your Dad understands it, it’s not cool anymore. I can’t decide whether or not this is real, or a really good Onionesque parody; but intentionally or not, it’s hilarious. (And really, what sane person wouldn’t want to spend $400 US on a gold limited edition AvP tile?) Wow, a… Read more →
Tempusdetrimentomancy
Both of my primary email addresses–the work one and the IEEE one that all my friends should be using–have spam filters that run on the server side. Both of those accounts, and some other less important ones, feed into my client-side mail store, on which I run a Bayesian spam filter. Very occasionally the server-side filter on my work address… Read more →
Those would scare me away
I can understand the idea that wearing very obvious security paraphenalia can be a deterrent to crime, I guess–but I can’t understand an instantiation of this concept that involves things that look like a combination of a Dalek with the combat lingerie from The Linguini Incident. That’s an image from the detail page for one example of Existech’s “Domewear” line.… Read more →
Nicole Blackman
I’ve been sitting here for hours listening to Nicole Blackman tracks. What ever happened to her? She came out of the NY chapbook & spoken word scene and then there was that Golden Palominos album, then her poetry book, then she did those tracks on the Recoil album, then there was the Courtesan Tales thing, and then nothing for a… Read more →
Do these people not read Lovecraft?
If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: nothing good will come of exploring the intricately carved ruins of the undersea cities. NOTHING GOOD. Tsunami throws up India relics By Soutik Biswas BBC News, Delhi The deadly tsunami could have uncovered the remains of an ancient port city off the coast in southern India. Archaeologists say they… Read more →
Still more sadness
Just so Kansas, Georgia, and all the rest don’t feel lonely at the HillBilly Legislation Barbecue, Virginia has jumped right in with literal fashion police. Fines for ‘droopy drawers’ backed The Virginia state house has voted to outlaw the trend of wearing trousers so low that underwear hangs over the top. Delegates said the habit, popular across the US and… Read more →
Sometimes the world is not so wonderful.
So, you may recall I had a moment of hope a little while back, when the federal court kicked Cobb County in the ass over their proposed evolution stickers. And then that little bit of hope was immediately crushed. Well, now humanity, or at least the Kansas branch, is grinding salt into my wounds while I am down. Evolution disclaimer… Read more →
