August 2007 Archives

Cutest animal video ever...

Watch through to the end.

These critters know what's important in life. They made me cry, actually, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

UPDATE: AT&T calls editing Pearl Jam "an error." Right.

In case you thought you could trust globocorps to, you know, not fuck with the freedom of the Internet, newsflash: you were wrong:

Over the weekend AT&T gave us a glimpse of their plans for the Web when they censored a Pearl Jam performance that didn't meet their standard of "Internet freedom."

During the live Lollapalooza Webcast of a concert by the Seattle-based super-group, the telco giant muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric against President George Bush. The lines -- "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home" were somehow lost in the mix.

"What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band," Pearl Jam band members stated after the incident in a release that urged people to take action.

There’s all sorts of links to more info on the dangers of letting the likes of AT&T control the Internet, and what we can do to stop it, at Huffington Post.

(Technorati tags: AT&T, Pearl Jam, net neutrality)

We don’t think about these things being related: global warming and mass transit? the mortgage meltdown and disease? But look:

We had three and a half inches of rain in an hour in New York City very early this morning -- that’s basically a month’s worth of rainfall in sixty minutes. (A warmer atmosphere is a wetter atmosphere, remember.) That much rain falling that fast doesn’t have much of anywhere to go, except down to the lowest level it can find. In NYC, that’s the subway. Just in time for the morning rush, every single subway line was flooded and out of service in Manhattan, where the trains are underground; some sections of some lines in the outer boroughs are elevated, but they can’t run if there’s nowhere for them to go. We’ve had weather-related subway problems before -- most typically with extreme cold and ice -- but I cannot recall another instance in which every subway line was impacted. It was so bad that the city was telling people just to stay home, or at least to delay their morning commute.

Still waiting for your jetpack? We were promised jetpacks by the year 2001, weren’t we? Well, turns out they do actually exist... and the second -- yes, second -- Rocketbelt convention is happening this weekend in Niagara Falls, New York.

It doesn’t really seem like this is technology that could get you to work or anything, but still: at least someone is working on the cool tech sci-fi has been promising us for half a century.

(Technorati tags: rocketbelt, jetpack)

Via Slashdot and Feministing, an article at Computer World that serves as a reminder that it’s still hard out there for a girl with geek tendencies. Bits and pieces:

You can balance an IT career with your home life, but it means making choices that are true to your priorities and understanding the trade-offs. “Having it all” is a fantasy.

Except for men, of course, whom no one expect to choose between work and family...

Oh, crap, the world is literally falling apart:

How’s a geek to cheer up? LOL cats!