Celestial "bling-bling"?

Wow, now that's a nice rock for the lady. Sorry, Katy....I think it's outta my price range. ;^>

If anyone's ever promised you the sun, the moon and the stars, tell 'em you'll settle for BPM 37093. The heart of that burned-out star with the no-nonsense name is a sparkling diamond that weighs a staggering 10 billion trillion trillion carats. That's one followed by 34 zeros.

The hunk of celestial bling is an estimated 2,500 miles across, said Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Goofy mistake?

From www.fark.com, the headline of the day for this article:

"Costumed Disney World employee ran over by float, killed during parade. Disney spokesperson attributes incident to goofy mistake"

Moo?

Word of the day:

mu: /moo/
The correct answer to the classic trick question “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”. Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer “yes” is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but “no” is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean “Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions”. Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm. The word ‘mu’ is actually from Chinese, meaning ‘nothing’; it is used in mainstream Japanese in that sense.

Kazaa down under?

Aussie offices of file-sharing software Kazaa got raided this morning. My favorite take on it, from the fark.com discussion:

Thank God the world is so safe that cops in all nations can spend their time breaking down doors to look for those two tracks of "Yanni Live at The Acropolis" you downloaded before you realized you didn't want the CD.

Next thing you know, there will be a waiting list to buy a CD burner, and you'll have to register your burner with RIAA. Then RIAA will subpoena the list of people who rent CD's from libraries, cross-reference it, and break down your door looking for burned CD's.

Painting your house?

Now featuring smog-eating paint. Cool. Nuff said.

Dark Tower VI updates...

Interested in the cover to Song of Susannah?

Thought you would be interested. Matches with the cover style from book 5, but I still wish then matched my first 4 in the series...ah, have to wait for the boxed set, which I'm sure will cost mad $$$. More info on the book here. (WARNING: the text blurb with it has some PLOT SPOILERS...not that some of you can't see it coming anyway.)

I desperately hope King doesn't go off the deep end, although it seem like he already has opened the door to the inevitable paradox of his characters running into himself. (...poll time!) Lazy un-creative writing, or just total insanity? You decide.

I originally liked the Dark Tower series because of its un-King-like epic style, but he's just getting back into his rut now, and while good reading, kind of a let down. Ah well. Ka.

Back in the political arena.

Ok, time to get back on the political soapbox.

Sort of hoping my boy Dean would take the Democratic nomination, but after last night's sound defeat, looks like John Kerry is gonna be the man. I'll probably end up voting Libertarian again, on principle, but hoping that Kerry can smack Bush outta there. I've had enough of the pre-emptive strike wars....don't need to give terrorists more reason to hate us. Just remember when Kerry repeals the tax cuts to fix the budget, then spends it on more social programs....don't come cryin' to me. </soapbox>

Lawrence Lessig and Janet's "wardrobe malfunction"

Yeah, I'm blogging an entry from another blog. Sue me. Anyway, censorship rears it's ugly head again...an excerpt from Lawrence Lessing's blog (nice Professor of Law at Stanford, defender of our intellectual rights among his hobbies):

We Americans need to rethink whether CBS and its parent company Viacom should continue to be trusted to broadcast on our publicly owned airwaves.

First, CBS turned down an ad by MoveOn.org discussing the budget deficit because it was too controversial for the Super Bowl. Then it proceeded to air an obscene halftime show produced by MTV. The show included Nelly urging women to take off all their clothes, and Janet Jackson performing with dancers wearing leather fetish outfits and lingerie, and then closing her performance by exposing her breast. MTV’s website promised on Jan. 28 that Jackson’s performance would include shocking moments, so it is clear that this was planned.

CBS deliberately suppressed and censored political speech and public discourse, the core reason behind the First Amendment, yet saw fit to air sexually exploitive performances during a family event. We cannot tolerate such failures in judgment.

Adaptive optics and other geek stuff...

While I'm waiting for the new carpet to replace my flooded 2 bedrooms...figure I'll get back to the site. So, some techno-geek stuff that's interesting out there: Adaptive optics for telescopes... (We have bigger telescopes and arrays down here, but the atmosphere makes the images blurry The mirror flexes to compensate for the turbulence in the air. Computer controlled, of course.

Blizzard of '03

Well, with all the snow around here (the likes of which I haven't seen since '83...26 inches this time), not much to do but work on the site (and of course, shovel).  Or pay off the neighborhood kids to do it...heh.