Terrorists in the Worlds Largest Democracy

This is about 100 miles from many of my coworkers.

Gene mixing

What are the ethics of mixing human genes in with animals? What about when you talk about doing it to bring extinct genes back to life and one of those patterns is our closest genetic relative?

Copernicus grave found, sun blows off solar system for universe

The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.

Please let me be the first to congratulate Sol on it's recent promotion.

Madlebrot TSQL Implementation

Really!

Totyota- no layoffs yet

I wonder if the quarterly wringing every last penny of profit out of the US car companies has really led so such a corporate culture difference as this.

Alternate Paths

It's an interesting exercise to think about what could have happened to me had I been born a bit earlier, slightly more skilled, or just (un)lucky enough to score a real penetration. I am probably lucky that my pre-teen ego let me think I was a great hacker when, in fact, I could barely pass for a script kiddie by stealing other folks hacks. I hung out on the edges of real hackerdom-- I met all sorts through friends of friends-- a guy who got a millon plus dollar phone bill and was hauled out of high school in cuffs. Another time, one of the most famous C64 developers actually came to my house and gave me a copy of Fast Hacke'em.

Later on I got to meet a white-hat hero too. I chose to work at NAI in part because Phil worked there and I believe that privacy is a right. Too bad management was more about making money by any means instead of investing in and building useful and desirable product.

When my childhood morals allowed for this sort of thing all they could bust you for was electricity theft. There were no laws covering unauthorized access to a computer system back then. Even if I had been successful and copied some data, the legal consequences would have been nothing compared to today.

HIV curable?

The treatment kills 30% but apparently a bone marrow transplant from a person with a genetic mutation that causes immunity to most strains of HIV has cured at least one person.

The accidental discovery has been replicated in the lab.

There are also some Chinese women with a different (?) genetic mutation that prevents AIDS.

Marriage Joke

I made up a joke a while after the majority of Wisconsinite voters chose to codify bigotry in the state constitution...

Me: We should just outlaw marriage. All marriages. When folks want to get together from now on they can go to the courthouse and get a civil union license.

Other: Huh?

Me: If it were available in the county where my wife and I got married, I would have chosen a civil union license instead of a marriage license.

Other: Really, why?

Me: What's the difference? Religions can still do a ceremony in a church, it could still be legal to allow church officials to sign civil union certificates. The state can accommodate all religions equally that way.

Other: What about all the people who are already married?

Me: Yeah, all the married people, just commute their sentences from marriage to civil union.

About half the people actually get the punchline right away-- if you missed it go reread the last line. It's difficult joke to tell sometimes because you have to improvise based on responses. But it's my joke, and it's clever, so I'm publishing it.

In any case, someone is apparently actually proposing the idea as a compromise in California.

Two Interesting (to me) ones today

Genes aren't the only genetics?

The sounds of failure. Hard drive failure, that is.

From tehkillya to diamonds

"There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."

Front Page Obama

Very simple, but clever enough I wish I thought of it.

Biodiesel

There is a fungus in nature that creates biodiesle by consuming cellulose. Fuel purely from surface carbon anyone? Let's hope it can be industrialized!

Politics, Policy, or Ineptitude

By all accounts I've seen, Iraq is settling down. Why would we stir up Syria when, again by all accounts I've seen, it's past time to start transition at least some forces to Afghanistan?

Also of note: we're not the only NATO country not committing the needed resources.