Cruisin' on my scraper bike!

Ever wanted to know where a ship is? Well now you can know instantly.

Tired of the same old send your kids to boring old summer camp in the middle of the woods somewhere? Would you like your offspring to learn the important skills on canvassing, polling, and organizing fundraisers? Then Camp Obama is for you! And if they do well enough, they too could even end up as a Whitehouse staffer and eventually in front of a Senate committee not remembering meetings with people that they see everyday!

It puts the lotion in the basket...the tribute song.

As some one that has done a fair amount of ceiling painting recently and has some more in the next month, I am excited that Glidden has come out with a new ceiling paint. Painting ceilings is so difficult because you can never tell that you have completely covered the ceiling with new paint. You can usually only tell after the paint is dry and by that time you have moved on to the walls or trim. But this new paint is pink when you first put it on. It will then dry white. So if your ceiling's 100% pink, you're done. This reminds me of another pink'ed product, DAP spackling compound.

16 Words. via William Gibson's Blog.

How pop stars are manufactured. Great documentary preview.

What is Circuit Bending? Interesting short about the hacking of new sounds through everyday common electronic circuitry.

From 1950-2000 the earth was in relative stability. Two camps controlled most of the power on the planet. But less as a result of the weakening of the Soviet Union and more result of the globalization of trade, the old ways are showing to be ineffective in the new world order. This paper is an interesting insight into this potential new future. And it certainly works with the ominous opinion of Peggy Noonan back in this 2005 article. What I find disconcerting is how quickly it is unraveling. I am fear, as our current leadership has shown, that governments are unable to understand the radical changes taking place. When we look at the changes being made to our liberties, it becomes quite apparent that the West has decided that Totalitarianism is the way to go. But as Dr. Albert Bartlett explained, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." All of the systems are beginning to fail and I am afraid we are in for some very interesting times. Totalitarianism will fail just as it has done in the past. I just hope that humanity can survive another global conflict in one peace. Or will this be the breaking of the world?

Absolute proof that everyone in Hollywood is an idiot hack without an ounce of creativity. But alas, they do light up the sky.

Boobies!!!

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No more secrets.

Björk introduced this really amazing new electronic instrument called a reactable on SNL last week as well as at Coachella. Check out this video to see why it's really amazing. It reminds me of some sort of alien interface. via bOINGbOING

The real reason everyone hates IT support. While this ordinary and every day call was made to HP, this could have been almost any company that has phone support for their customers. I cannot say that our helpdesk is any better. via Digg

For all of you wondering, here is where NASA is on the road to faster than light travel. I guess we will have to settle for SciFi. via digg

UPDATE: Here's some interesting speculation.

Scientists have found no link between intelligence and wealth. With the amount of rich idiots out there, how could this not be true? Who buys a gold plated iPod anyway? Amassing wealth is a learned skill. It's just that it has been purposefully left out of the curriculum. Or maybe it's accidental. I would imagine that what is true for wealth is especially true for power. They just don't know better.

Get ready for the super cheap car. It may be ugly, but it bothers me to no end that a significant amount of my money goes into the payment and support of my transportation. But they probably won't even sell them here, because they would rather sell us a $25-50K vehicle that sits in a parking lot most of the day.

Why does your waistline correlate to your income? Because in America, higher caloric junk food is cheaper than lower caloric good food. And the main reason for this is, of course, politics and corruption.

I am amazed at all of the commercials everyday for weight loss products when the solution is very simple, stop eating crap! All that stuff in the middle of the supermarket that comes in pretty packaging is BAD for you! It's bad because those companies get LOTS of money to sell you crap. Do yourself and take two simple things out of your diet and I promise you will lose weight. The first is high fructose corn syrup. I am not going to debate whether or not it's good or bad for you, but I can tell you that anything it's in also has twenty-five things that are bad for you. The other thing is processed carbohydrates It doesn't matter if it's wheat, corn, potatoes or rice. All of it is lacking the nutrients and fiber your body needs. Processed carbs are also in the packaged junk food you don't need to eat as well. I have lost over fifty pounds in the last two years by removing these items from my diet. I still eat lot of things that are considered bad for me like steaks, sweets, cheese, and pasta. But my waistline has dropped eight inches and my cholesterol has gone from 185 to 115.

Do yourself a favor and do like my wife says, buy only items along the edge of the grocery store and buy organic as much as possible. If you live in Alabama, try Grow Alabama. They will deliver fresh organic produce directly to your door!

Do you cry? Do you eat? Do you cry while you eat? via whaddyathinkin

Ismail Ax was the strange red inscription found on the arm of the Virginia Tech killer. An obscure reference to it can be found in a public domain book called Ishmael.

But there, my dear! that boy has slipped out, and is cutting the wood; I'll go and do it for him," said Reuben, as the sound of Ishmael's ax fell upon his ears.

Hannah arose and followed Gray to the door, and there before it stood Ishmael, chopping away at random, upon the pile of wood, his cheeks flushed with fever and his eyes wild with excitement.

"Hannah, he is ill; he is very ill; he doesn't well know what he is about," said Reuben, taking the ax from the boy's hand.

"Ishmael, Ishmael, my lad, come in; you are not well enough to work," said Hannah anxiously.

Ishmael yielded up the ax and suffered Reuben to draw him into the house.

The only other references to it can be found in this list and on this site referring to the guy in the middle of the photo.

UPDATE: There is also the Muslim connection that I didn't want to report initially, but is making more and more sense. Ismail is the son of Ibrahim (or Abraham to most Americans.) Ismail Ax is considered to be the ax Ibrahim used to destroy the idols in the temple as well as attempt to sacrifice Ismail to Allah. One of Islam's festivals is Eid ul-Adha which celebrates this tradition. Writing a persons name in red is traditionally taboo for Koreans because it symbolizes death. It appears that he might have viewed himself as a symbol of both Ibrahim destroying the false idols of the West as well as Ismail sacrificing himself to Allah Why?