Showtime's show with Penn and Teller is called "Bullshit" and it's usually really entertaining. Not exactly scientific method here, but I appreciate how they dispense with nonsense somewhat ruthlessly. I don't know why Penn is so compelled to say the F word so often, but the show is a very entertaining way to examine silly, bogus, or stupid claims by health, government, and others. Bullshit is a...
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It is easy to dismiss Fox News as pretentious and partisan, but many people cannot see through the choices the news organization makes to shape public opinion. In the video, the photographs of...
First, read this about one-time (the important lead up and starting time) rabid Iraq War supporter Christopher Hitchens. Here's some background and context for that. Now read this....
Here in Southern Oregon we were rooting for the "other" Cook in American Idol Christy Lee Cook, rather than American Idol winner David Cook. On the way home from California Sunday we dropped in to the Country Folks restaurant of Selma, Oregon. My wife and daughter had been there before but I hadn't. In addition to being "Christy Lee Central" for local fans who would watch the show from...
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The FLDS has a clothing line for kids - like the ones you saw the Feds take away from them. I shit you not. This site is dedicated to provide children with clothing that meets the FLDS standards for modesty and neatness. Our commitment is to offer quality, handmade, modest, affordable clothing. Each piece is made with joy and care....
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More bad news for Startups and Venture Capitalists from the New York Times "bits" section about technology trends. Not only is the number of IPOs falling (zero in Q2 of 2008), but it also the number of mergers or aquisitions of startups appears to be way off as well. Venture capital folks look to the most favorable "liquidity event" and generally that is an IPO where they may realize tens or...
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With apologies to Nate who sounds like a sharp and nice guy.... Today's "only in the Silly Silicon Alley" post comes from Nate who is a new entrepreneur in residence at Rose and therefore really deserves more respect I suppose, but his idea, parroted over at Silicon Alley Insider sure sounds dumb to me - too dumb in fact to make it through the Silicon *Valley* peer review needed since the most...
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TechCrunch is reporting that an insider at Facebook is shopping his shares at 80% off the normally quoted (and probably absurd) 15 billion dollar valuation. TechCrunch is also suggesting that even Mark Zuckerberg is willing to sell shares at a price consistent with a 6 billion valuation for the company. Like Arrington, I’d also like to take one share of Facebook. For me please add a Coke...
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Yahoo's plans for reorganizing their reorganization have now been announced. Kara seems to have the best scoops on this. Meet the new boss Sue Decker, same as the old boss. I am paraphrasing somewhat, but IMHO this is the gist of the Yahoo reorganization, sung to the tune of the Who's: "Won't Get Fooled Again": Yahoo's fighting on the screen. Over revenues unseen. All the money that we...
One of the really intriguing aspects of the blogOspheric chatterfest is how the big markets tend to react to rumors from key business related blogs. When TechCrunch reported yesterday that talks between Microsoft and Yahoo had resumed Yahoo stock increased, only to fall after several other blogs reported the rumors as false or weak. Although I have no reason to believe that Mike Arrington or...
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Noted without comment: The Fuhrer's sense of humour, which included disturbing jokes about concentration camp victims, has been revealed in a book called The Last Witness, to be published in Britain later this year....
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One of the fun parts of hanging out in the technology world is getting a good sense of the next big thing before folks really tune into how significant the next big thing will be. I remember about 12 years back - in the early days of the commercial internet - when it became clear to me that a huge shift was happening that would send virtually everybody online. No amount of explaining or...
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Fred Wilson has a fantastic post today discussing the critical subject of Website metrics, which remains one of the murkiest of online topics. He compares reports from several services and concludes that Google Trends may be a lot like Alexa, which means not very helpful except in the most general of senses. He also notes that Comscore has big challenges if the traffic is below 500k (visits per...
I've edited the title to this post. You don't need to know what it said before. This is a Newsweek article. It's an extremely depressing read. Pvt. David Dietrich had a history of cognitive problems. He struggled in boot camp at Fort Knox, Ky., striking at least one of his superiors as unfit for the military. Dietrich was so slow at processing new things, some fellow soldiers called him Forrest...
The AP's tiny battle with Rogers Cadenhead over copyright issues appears to have ended with a whimper and no bang as the AP met with Cadenhead and has issued a vague statement about upcoming standards. Rogers noted today: I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle...
Most of the commentary about Yahoo's short term troubles has focused far too much on Yahoo's short term troubles. Danny Sullivan offered a little more insight today suggesting correctly that Yahoo has got a lot more going for it than most, including the market at large, seem to suggest. Yet Danny may still be barking up the wrong tree to suggest that modest changes and a better Google deal will...
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I was wrong about Apple's 5 Billion songs sold statistic as I confused it with their *movies* stats.
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Today Reddit, a community driven news and information website like Digg, is going full bore open source, For some time many have suggested that more openness is not only inevitable, it is the best thing for both users and for companies, essentially acting as a sort of miracle grow fertilizer for the internet ecosystem, allowing cross pollination, mashups, and broad use of good ideas. I'm still...
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The largest city wireless project in the USA (and the world?) is in Philly, and was just revived by an investment consortium after being nearly abandoned by Earthlink due to poor signal quality and only 6000 subscriber signups (despite the zero cost where profits will come from advertising). Google's Mountain View project never took off the way people thought it might. Attribution for...
There is a huge story brewing that covers the intersection of mainstream news and blogging. Associated Press (AP) decided to crack down on what they felt were copyright violations by blogs quoting AP stories. Spoof site "The Drudge Retort" is under legal fire from AP, and this has prompted action by other blogs that coudld become one of the most interesting developments in the history of...
I've gotten a response this morning to a link I posted on Saturday about a 30-year-old doctor who had a seizure while driving in Palm Beach County, crashed his car - and was taser'd when he confusedly fought with paramedics. The response is from his cousin: Mark is my very dear cousin. He is a compassionate and loving young doctor who puts everyone's need before his own. The idea that after...
More kudos to Zakaria's GPS on CNN for bringing key global thinkers to the news table. Today GPS featured Bjorn Lomborg, a figure who is controversial for the very simple reason that he has challenged sacred cows with common sense. When the sacred cow includes global warming alarmism even many otherwise clear thinking scientists have attacked Lomborg, generally on personal grounds rather than on...
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John McCain called the recent Supreme Court decision to grant detainees in Guantanamo the right to habeas corpus "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country". They're "not citizens of this country," he said, and they're "bad people." McClatchy news reports today that many of the men imprisoned in Guantanamo were innocent: "He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend...
What did the normally very insightful Tim O'Reilly and Fred Wilson have for lunch, some free hallucinogenic deserts over at Google? Both are criticizing Mike Arrington for stating the obvious - Yahoo's not acting in the best interest of shareholders or Yahoo or anybody except Google, who clearly is the big winner in Yahoo's squandered megadeal with Microsoft. Fred very correctly notes that...
My sixth Saturday Sonata has just gone up over at the Peace Tree. I'm doubling the post up here. * * * A very simple one today. I wrote this song in around 1995 on a picnic table on the deck of a bar in Austin, Texas. It had been growing in my head as I drove and drove and drove through the heat of I10 from LA, and it poured all out pretty straight away in probably an hour or so. Later that day...
That's what they're saying: Martins and her colleagues said they discovered uracil and xanthine, which are precursors to the molecules that make up DNA and RNA and are known as nucleobases in rock fragments of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969. She explained that “early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoritic fragments for use in genetic coding which...
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Very cool photos of an ovarian follicle, structures found inside ovaries that each contain a single oocyte, or egg, expelling said egg. They've never had such clear photos, they say. And the egg is beautiful, like a drop of golden honey. They were taken by Professor Jacques Donnez of the Catholic University in Louvain, Belgium. He was about to peform a partiel hysterectomy on a 45-year-old woman...
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Get ready for a *lot* more talk about the technological singularity. IEEE Magazine has several articles this month about what many believe will be the most profound change in the history of humans: http://www.spectrum.ieee.o rg/singularity...
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Thanks to Glenn for this story suggesting a new study making a possible connection between early life and meteors. I've always been comfortable with the idea that life as we know it could emerge in slow and steady steps from the primordial soup that certainly existed on the millions of years ago, but it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that meteor material may have played a role as well,...
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Damn, one of my old haunts is on fire. Redwoods and mountains and coastline and just as beautiful as anywhere on Earth. Go firefighters. 6/12: Not good....
Richard Branson sure has a fun life. He's got his own island and is running a space travel tourism company that may actually break down the cost and technological barriers to mainstream space travel. USA Today Reports...
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Nasty. Great photos, though.
Ashland
