Outputsi The Enforcer!
I have not had taco pie for a while. This is a crime against Taconity and will be addressed as soon as possible.  ¶ 12:06 a.m. 0 comments

  HR4077 Passed the House
This sucks. If you live in the states, RIAA can send you to jail.

But we just found out that HR 4077 passed in the House this afternoon. This major label dream-law would send people to jail for sharing 1,000 songs, or just one unreleased album. That's right, up to 5 years in jail for sharing one album. It passed on a voice vote, so you can't even go see if your Congressperson supported it-- their votes simply aren't on record. They'll send hundreds kids to jail as a favor to some corrupt industry but they won't put their names on it. Cowards.

Just what the world needs - more people tossed into jail for no good reason. I suppose using the space for those who really should be locked up was just a silly plan, then.

I'm going to go listen to Prison Song now. At least System of a Down understands.  ¶ 11:59 p.m. 0 comments

  How very interesting...
Possible cure for HIV?

The "cure", or therapeutic vaccine, was developed from the blood of HIV patients. It appeared to clear the deadly virus from 20 people with HIV, claims a report by Jeremiah Abalaka at the Medicrest Specialist Hospital in Gwagwalada, Abuja in Nigeria. A therapeutic vaccine aims to bolster the immune response of a person already infected with a disease, to reduce or stop progression.

I am curious, however, about the ethics of developing a vaccine based on the blood of those already infected. Kinda makes you wonder.
Update: It um, well, it was pointed out to me that most vaccines are from the blood of people who already have the disease. It's how they're made. If I had a blog-hand to smack my blog-self with, I would.  ¶ 2:01 p.m. 0 comments

  On Corporations
I just watched the movie The Corporation, and man oh man is it awesome. Riveting stuff, seriously.

I really need to go to bed right now, but I'd like to put forth the meme that someone run a Turing test on Corporations. Go ahead - ask them. Lemme know what happens - I'm curious.  ¶ 12:31 a.m. 0 comments

  Here here!
Yet another article I punt forward to y'all: Canadian-funded research should be available to Canadians

I don't really have much more to say about this, since it seems to me to be a good idea overall. I can't really see how you could argue against it, but I'm sure people will.  ¶ 3:19 p.m. 0 comments

  Badger, badger, badger...
MUSHROOM MUSHROOM!!!

If you don't get it, go here.

  ¶ 3:11 p.m. 0 comments

  Great for Uganda - now bring it here!
Another piece in Wired:

Anywhere Books has piloted a digital bookmobile -- a van outfitted with a laptop, laser printer, bookbinding machine and cutter -- in remote areas of Uganda to print free books for children since November 2003. Now the project has plans to expand to Ghana and Macedonia.

How cool is that? Walk up to the bookmobile, browse their catalog of books on a laptop, pick the one you want and walk away with a printed out, brand new book. This is the future of publishing, people! Vive la revolution!  ¶ 3:06 p.m. 0 comments

  Take two tabs of blotter acid and call me in the morning.
Cool story up today from Wired News about the fight by doctors to be able to prescribe psychotropic drugs. Apparantly, psilocybin (which I believe are a form of shrooms, for those unaware) can disrupt the cycle of headaches that sufferers from cluster headaches experience, which just goes to show that most drugs are not necessarily the demons they are made out to be. Mainly, the parallels between this fight and the fight for the use of medical marijuana are quite striking, but the bit I found interesting was this bit here:

Another reason progress has been slow is because NIDA-funded studies performed by Dr. George Ricaurte and Dr. Una McCann found that MDMA had ill effects on the brain. A 2002 study was particularly worrisome because it showed that ecstasy caused Parkinson's-like brain damage. But a year later, the researchers retracted the study because they discovered they had accidentally used methamphetamine instead of ecstasy.

I clearly recall the whole "E causes Parkinson's" furor that was whipping around at the time, but I don't ever remember hearing about the mistake they made, which is not surprising in the least. Just another reason not to take any statistics or studies at face value...  ¶ 2:33 p.m. 0 comments

 
  ¶ 12:05 p.m. 0 comments

  A pillow for me!!!
I think that if I woke up on my birthday or on Christmas or something and found this pillow in my bed, I would be pretty happy. Even if it does symbolically mean that I'd pissed off the mafia.  ¶ 9:32 a.m. 1 comments

  Good. Freaking. God.
It took me a while to digest -- please forgive the pun -- this site: The Mineralarianism Movement. Seriously folks, these people think that eating anything that was alive is bad and advocate eating -- I'm not joking -- rocks.

ROCKS. To use the intar-web vernacular, OMGWTFBBQ!?!?!? ROCKS.

Isn't this all a bit unnatural?
Certainly it is more natural to eat meat and vegetables than chemicals made from rocks and air, but natural is not always good. Many of the finest creations of the human spirit, music for example, are not natural. Nature, for all the good that can be said about it, is full of cruelty and suffering, and there can be no nobler application for our vaunted intelligence than devising ways to mitigate cruelty, especially when we are the cause. If a "primitive" hunter were offered the chance, through technology, to spare his prey, would he not, like Abraham, thank God for freeing him from the hateful duty he was about to perform?

Please Lord, deliver unto me a brick, so that I might smite these people greatly about the head. They, like all of us, have the right to live the way they please, but I am thinking only of their welfare. Perhaps some sense could be knocked in...  ¶ 4:45 p.m. 0 comments

  Let my own lack of a voice be heard.
Me again -- I'm still not dead, but neither have I been blogging, as it has probably been rather obvious. I have every intention of starting again, but not quite yet. Probably, it will be when I get my Pocket PC.

Until then, however, I thought I'd share this little tree/coffin story. If you're expecting me to wax philosophical on it, you'll be disappointed, but I thought it was a cool enough idea that it should be passed around. Really, which would you rather have -- a cemetary, or a forest? My vote is for the trees any day.

So yeah -- I shall return, and with a new look to the site, and maybe even a comic or two. We shall see...  ¶ 5:01 p.m. 0 comments