Comprehensive study of Household Wealth

Worth taking a look at to get an idea of how the bottom 98% need to start holding on to some wealth.
Launch of WIDER study on the World Distribution of Household Wealth

The muppet matrix

Found this gem, The Muppet Matrix thanks to a yelp thread. Someone recreated the original matrix theatrical trailer using muppet characters. Teh quality isn't great, but it's still pretty freakin awesome

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger - WikiHow

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger - WikiHow...the blogscape is filled with crap, and while I enjoy occasionally adding to the slurry, here's how I could have avoided this :) ( of course there are some good blogs ot there, just check my sidebar)

Someone help me out, is this satire?

Stolen from fark:Facebook 'poke' leads to awkward one-nighter I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not, it all sounds too ridiculous. Eiter way it's hilarious, and a nice post to follow the "science is hard" post

Science is hard, cry more

This article at MentorNet News suggests that the reason why kids don't go into science and engineering as much in america is because it's tougher to get good grades and the classes are impersonal. I only have one response CRY MORE, maybe someone who cares will give you a hug. At some point when the job market gets really bad and technical skills and backgrounds come into vogue again, people will suck it up and go into difficult majors. Till then, there will be a steady supply of indian, asian, and east european immigrants to take up the spaces in high quality science and engineering majors. Of course once the level of competition rises high enough in liberal arts programs, they will have to start creating weeder courses just like other disciplines. Unfortunately, grade inflation combats the correction, but at some point there has to be a backlash.

New tracks from DJ Hyjinx-- Wicked!!!

One of my good LA friends is an accountant by day and a drum 'n' bass dj by night. In college he was dj cheshtang, but keeping with his philosophy of making dnb more fun and accessible he changed his name to hyjinx. You can find the new tracks at his beta records page, and you can also check him out on myspace.

Spark Fun Electronics-Rotary Phone

If you follow the link to Spark Fun Electronics(lifted from uncrate), you'll see a sweet rotary phone that accepts a sim card, has 10hrs talk time and 4-5 day standby time. The reason why I love this so much is that when I was growing up we had a rotary phone until like 1990. Towards the end we kept it around because it was a great little curiosity. I was thinking of getting vonage service just so I could use one at home, but now I can just get one of these!

St Crispin's Day

So for no apparent reason I've decided to post the St Crispin's day speech

Westmoreland: O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work today!

King:
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No my fair cousin.
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

God's will! I pray thee wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous of gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It grieves me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith my cousin, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honor
As one more man methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. Do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the Feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors
And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with added luster,
what feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so lowly,
This day shall enoble his rank.
And gentlemen in England, now abed,
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Jet-Beetle, that's right, jet beetle

On engadget today I saw a link to a jet scooter to be, boldly following that link took me to Ron Patrick's site, primarily focused on his:Jet Beetle. This thing is amazing. Everything is milled an painted with such precision and love that the car looks like it was designed to have a jet engine sticking out of it. All I can say is, I want one! Admittedly I probably wouldn't have picked a bug, but man does this thing rock. Really, the only way to have improved it would have been to build it as a batmobile

Apparently, quality dates quality

I picked up this hilarious link off a yelp conversation: Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey: Dating tip: Quality dates quality. Let me tell you this is fantastic. This woman goes througha laundry list of her wonderful qualities to convince herself and the rest of the world that she's quality people. Now there's nothing wrong with some well placed confidence, but posting your hot-or-not score starts to smell a little desperate.
just to whet your appetite I've given a little snippet below:

"The above list explains why I typically receive 50-100 (sometimes more) responses whenever I post personal ads. This is in addition to getting hit on almost every time I go out alone (and all that those men know about me is that they like the way I look, they don’t even know about all the other qualities I have that make me more appealing than most other women)."

I think that sums it up. So gentlemen, if you're quality, have I got the gal for you!

Hot Skills, Cold Skills- rise of the "versatilists"

The computer world articleHot Skills, Cold Skills talks about how hard IT skills are going to be less important than soft skills and non-IT tech skills like math and finance. What can I say but...jackpot! I knew that engineering would come in handy someday

Andy Warhol watches

From 15minutesof.com,Warhol watches. I'm a big fan of the banana and the Campbell's ones

Another sweet japanese watch

So one of my fascinations is watches with novel ways of displaying time. This one at tokyflash is a nice example:i-Pattern LCD grid time Latitude. A little odd, but no worse than the eleeno G I wear these days.

lead poisoning from pipes did not cause the downfal of rome

So some very bright person I overheard today was telling a friend in loud english that lead pipes destroyed the roman empire because they all went mad and down went Rome. So aside from that being absurd for lots of historical reasons it's also chemically unlikely. As many of us may remember from the REACTIVITY SERIES of METALS. Lead is way way less reactive than calcium, so so It could never displace it from solution. Roman water has tons of aqueous calcium in it, and it would actually cake over the inside of the pipes because calcium oxidizes with water really easily. So it's very unlikely that enough lead would be exposed to get leeched into the water to drive the entire ruling class of a large empire mad. And yes, I'm a bit of a nerd

Advanced manuvers in euro-style

So I've oft joked about, and once posessed, albeit accidentally, the ridiculous faux hawk. But today I saw not less than 3 examples of what must be the most advanced manuver in eurostyle I'veever seen. The euro-mullet + faux hawk, yes kids it's 80's party in the back with a 21st century party in the front. Not since back to the future 2 have I seen hairstyles this cool. As if that weren't enough, one of the people I saw managed to up the stakes even more by pairing it with the quebecois tuxedo ( candadian tuxedo of jeans avec denim jacket, but the jeans were super tight). I can't even imagine what's next, but I new it had been too long since I'd been to Europe. Luckily I'm only here for about a week so it's likely I won't come to see this style of dress as acceptable. Athough, I am already sporting 5 days of stubble, 3 days of which were pre-grown just so I felt comfortable when I landed.

The "Weaksauce" Generation

I joke about it, but on some level, I'm not just getting old, I'm becoming crochety. The other day I found myself in a conversation about how "kids today just aren't right." Even with a meager 25 years of existence under my belt, I definitely think there's something to the statement. The culture of self esteem and entitlement delivered in schools ( and you can see if on their myspace profiles) is producing a generation of people who expect to be rich and famous because they were told they can do anything they want,and along the way, but someone forgot to mention all the hard work and bootstrapping it'll take to get there.

This is really scary because combined with the huge dropoff in the amount of engineers, scientists, mathmaticians etc, we are going to end up with a shortage of americans who can perform certain jobs when the boomers leave the workforce, and a glut of college educated kids with no marketable skills. At least McDonalds will have an endless supply of drones competing to ask if we "want fries with that." Forty to fifty years ago, people respected vocational education for skilled trades, now it's seen as laughable to be trained to ach as a plumber, carpenter, or technician. Ah well, something had to give sometime, but at least the world still hires engineers.

The Evil of telecom mergers

This article from networkWorld:What telecom mergers really mean | NetworkWorld.com Community has a horribly unsettling essay from a telecom manager about some of the problems she's encountered trying to order services for the large publisher she works for (wolters kluwer). It's really a scary look at the current state of things, and these problems aren't limited to the US, working with telcos rolling eachother up, I've encountered them the whole world over ( Italy, Australia, Germany, Spain, etc.) This definitely isn't getting better

Thin client word

So I've talked a lot about subscription apps, and thin client software, but here's another ajax based gem called:ajaxWrite. Of course it supports all word doc formats, and will save to your local machine, but with flash storage and remote hosted applications like this , lightweight client boxes could really become the norm.

Found neologism ( or, brown power!)

This post might be a little controversial with a set of people, but here i go. In reference to urban/hip-hop influenced second generation Indians, until today I had only heard the term indigger (indian+ "the N word" ). Today I came across it as just "digger" (desi+ the N-bomb). The usage was definitely derisive, but I think it's only a matter of time till the ghetto fabulous ABCDs(think second generation indians with baggy expensive clothes, white or black lexi (is/gs) mercedes(c class) or beamers(3 series), parents in medicine/tech/law, and of course a healthy disrespect for "FOBs" ) co-opt it and use it with eachother ala "'Sup my digga?" or "Digga please!" I hope this one goes mainstream, but either way I'm on the lookout.

Slidin back from the bleeding edge

So lately I've been off the intertron (think interweb, only more derisive) for a while due to some interesting professional and social developments. Unfortunately in my protracted pilgramage to the real world ( no I was not on WOW) I have slipped on what's up. Unfortunately this means I'm behind on stuff like who's bought who, what crimes 14 yearolds on myspace are commiting, and the new auto-angst-meter on live journal (it's actually just a jpeg on "max"). But have no fear, the blog will continue to spew out useless slurry into the blogscape, it'll just be a little less up to date, and maybe with more of an analog focus.

Happy Carnival, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Fasching, Shrove Tuesday...

Yes folks it's the time of year for christians to go buck wild before lent. Las year at this time I went to a party at a bar in rome and it was all kinds of craziness. This year I find myself in dallas and am probably not going to do anything. I thought in this holiday post I'd hit on the lesser known side of fat tuesday, shrove tuesday or national pancake day. I like to focus on the pancakes, (the pennsylvania dutch have special doughnuts called fastnachts) because they're so wholesome and different from the way one normally sees mardis gras. That's right folks no drunk topless co-eds, or sleazy europeans, just good old fashioned pancakes with syrup. I hope all of you had a chance to make it out to IHOP before 2 for your free short stack to celebrate
-h

WOW

So I have done it, I have (almost) taken the plunge. I installed world of warcraft yesterday on my laptop. In a day or two I will create my account and being the slow demise of my lovelife, social life, and professional career. I started reading the manual and some boards, and it's actually a pretty freakin sweet game. It's a great microcosm of geekdom. There is a whole world that (as a wired article tells me) is beginning to rival golf for networking possibilities, and is becomming unbelievably fascinating as a community. I figure there's got to be some way to make a hell of a lot of money out of this, but maybe I'll just leave it to blizzard :)

Stik& Store (HOTT)

Yes folks it's all true, Stik&Stor gives cell phones loads of memory So this kludgy looking solution can add a whole lotta useful storage to cellphones for a small amount of dough. In short, I dig it. I love any simple cheap(er) solution to add functionality to another product.

Sweet new low power chips

I caught this wired article about Magnetic Chips, and I am super excited. The future of computing is obviously in low power high density logic gate arrays instead of transistors(like quantum and molecular computing)and this is definitly a step in the right direction :)

UCLA tabletop fusion | Science Blog

Got the link to this via slashdot:NY team confirms UCLA tabletop fusion | Science Blog. So instead of a dose of pathalogical science, it seems this is actually the real deal. Of course it's not gonna be an endless energy source, but it could lead to portable neutron guns, and everyone wants one of those

News flash

Anyone else get the buzz that cheney is stepping down for health reasons?

I have paid for my haste

So back in december I decided I needed a new phone, I was having problems with my old nokia and it was just time to move on. I wanted to get the motorola L7, but to get it unlocked was about $400 bucks, so I settled for the lesser, but similar L6. Let's just say I feel dumb now cause the L7 is out on cingular, and it's quadband and it's $50 bucks less than what I paid for my L6 :( SLVR iTunes - at Cingular Wireless Now I have to decide to take the plunge again, and just save this other phone for Europe

Really ironic tshirt

Why would you ever buy this t-shirt from thwart design when you could just make something like it yourself? I could understand if they were selling stencils, or even a kit where you could make the shirt, but to sell this is really silly. Of course I guess the funny thing is the people who buy it, not the people selling it

Milestone aproacheth

I got about a month till I hit a quarter of a century. So I've decided to do what I can to look my age. That's right folks, I'm growing a beard again (or at least trying). I'll post pictures to share my bearded glory with the world, but this time I'm gonna make a better go of it than last time. It's been about 2 weeks now and it's really coming in. I figure in a month or so it'll be as thick as it's gonna get. Unfortunately it looks a little terrorific, but it does give me a couple years.

Portals, back again

For a while the big buzz of the internet was all about portals and personalized start pages. Yahoo emerged as the portal king with myYahoo, but after the buzz is gone a lot more interesting with rss letting you create pages with content from wherever the hell you want. My personal choice is personalized google, but ItsAStart.com is another great one with a good look. With rss the portal is really reduced to just a display framework, so it'll be interesting to see if yahoo can still hold it's territory