In my travels around the net, it struck me today that, despite all the horrible things that occur in the world, we live in a pretty amazing time. Right now, as I type this on a machine that, when my parents were my age, was unimmaginable, two machines the size of golf carts are moving around another planet, controlled by a person in California. One of these was debugged from over 33,000,000 miles away.
Maybe there’s hope for this species yet.
This is awesome! If you’ve never seen the cartoon The Critic, you’re missing something great. Much like The Family Guy (which was cancelled far before its time), The Critic was not appreciated because (1) it was funny and (2) you had to work at it sometimes to get the joke. It’s easily the best thing that Jon Lovitz did post SNL.
Now, thanks to Atom Films, you can watch all the shows in Flash format.
From NASA:
NASA announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Opportunity rover in honor of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s final crew. The area in the vast flatland called Meridiani Planum, where Opportunity landed this weekend, will be called the Challenger Memorial Station.
The seven-member crew of Space Shuttle Challenger was lost when the orbiter suffered an in-flight breakup during launch Jan. 28, 1986, 18 years ago today.
Here’s a shot of the site
Jacques Chicrac wasn’t so much better-than-thou as he was cruder-then-thou in his opposition to the Iraq invasion.
Stolen from Slashdot:
“How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chauncer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe–the predecessor to the sextant. Read Chauncer’s ‘A Treatise on the Astrolabe here.”
Once again, completely stolen from Boing Boing:
Unlike many nonsensical prejudices, it’s roughly possible to trace the root source of all this hostility, identify a locus classicus of Ikeaphobia: in this case, the vastly-overrated Fight Club. Ever since the film hit American screens, some years ago now, it’s been hip among would-be cynics of a certain cohort to reserve a stream of vituperation for the giant Swedish furnishings chain. (For those of you who didn’t see the movie, it contained a very nicely-produced CG sequence that essentially laid the blame for all that is fake, mediocre and generic in contemporary life at the company’s blue-and-yellow feet: the minute-long rant that launched ten thousand sneers.)
You know, when I read things like this, it makes me just sigh deeply and wonder where all the good people have gone. I think the Python’s had it right; “We don’t have a lord. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week…”
I don’t think HP had this in mind when they turn their CEO loose at CES. Good job HP! You finally start making products almost worth buying, then you give everyone a political reason not to buy those products. Bravo!
