With an in-body network of in-body sensors, we're on the road to the Instrument of Obedience:

"The technology, which is being tested now in Portsmouth, could also be used if a patient failed to take his or her medicines. A pill dispenser would send an automatic reminder and, if the pills were not taken within a certain time, an alarm would sound and a message would be sent to the patient’s family or carers."

Hey look at me, I'm in a video on the web: Motto Mash-up, By Jennifer Fuchel and Matthew Greif, 2007... starring some of my favorite aphorisms!

Black holes may harbour their own universes:

"but those universes would likely contain their own black holes, which could contain their own universes … in an infinite loop."

I read this 2 weeks ago and now I can't remember what it said: Toxic Effects of Depression on Brain Function: Impairment of Delayed Recall and the Cumulative Length of Depressive Disorder

Life imitates art: Nerve-tapping neckband used in 'telepathic' chat -- sure sounds like an uvvy to me.

Electron Caught On Film For The First Time:

“It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10^-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe.”

Video: Camp Nirvana for String Quartets 2007. More info at ChamberMusicMadness.org

An Atlas of the Universe illustrates scales from 12.5 light years to 14 billion light years -- 9 orders of magnitude!

Listen to Studio 360: Nikola Tesla: Strange Genius, which describes Tesla's relationships with Edison, Marconi, Mark Twain, Dr. Strangelove and Death Rays. Thanks to Mike Daisey for the link.

Tired: software methodologies. Wired: Crystal Methodology.

Beethoven's "Fur Elise" and "Ode to Joy", transcribed for scanner.

Looking to pick up some extra cash via professional guinea-pigging? Well, here ya go.

Big Pharma Spends [Twice As Much] On Advertising Than Research And Development. Gee, do you think this could be a reason why the FDA approved just 19 novel drugs last year — the lowest number since 1983?

Have you seen the new Bush coins? In gallon denominations!

The Geek Guide To Low-Carbs. Words to (try to) live by.

Looks to me like a Death Star (lower left) that can take out a whole galaxy (to the Death Star's upper right), not just one piddling little planet:
Don't let Darth Cheney see this.

The Catholic League doesn't want you to see the self-censored (or is it crypto-secularist?) movie version of Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" (aka "Northern Lights") because it might tempt you to read the books. How very like the Magisterium.

But after all that, I found the movie disappointing. It ain't no Narnia, nor Harry Potter, nor LotR. The plot drifts unconvincingly, and the characters ramble about without being very involving. It's the same feeling I got when watching James and the Giant Peach. And I find the following, um, "eerie parallels" between TGC and Star Wars:
Lyra <-> Luke Skywalker
Marisa Coulter <-> Darth Vader
Dust <-> midichlorians
Iorek Byrnison <-> Chewbacca
Lee Scoresby <-> Han Solo

Thank heaven! Jerry Springer: the Opera ruled not blasphemous:

Christian Voice director Stephen Green had hoped to overturn a previous ruling by a judge which forbade him from prosecuting [BBC Director General] Mark Thompson. […] Mr. Green had said the show "clearly crossed the blasphemy threshold".

No climbdown seen from Mr. Greene, who unloads at length:

The 400-500 of us at White City alone prayed for God to have mercy and stop the [BBC TV] transmission. By letting it go ahead, it was clear God's heart was for judgment instead. [...] God was telling us to start polishing and aiming up a few round spiritual stones! [...] To allow insults against our Redeemer is cowardice. Rev 3:16 and 21:8 make clear that the apathetic and the fearful have no part in the Lord's purpose. [...] And by the way, to all of those liberal wiseacres who have said there is a deeply 'moral message' in 'Springer', get real. [...] Lord Scarman, speaking in the House of Lords judgment in the 'Gay News case', endorsed the definition of blasphemy found in Stephen's Digest of the Criminal Law, which defines blasphemy as "any contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous matter relating to God, Jesus Christ or the Bible, or the formularies of the Church of England as by law established."

Sigh. I'm more and more convinced that religions (all of 'em!) are psychotic disorders.

Remember Voyager 2? It will be crossing the termination shock Real Soon Now:

University of California-Riverside physicist Haruichi Washimi, using a computer model simulation, has predicted the Voyager 2 spacecraft will cross the termination shock "within the next several weeks."

Is anything still working on the Voyagers, or are they just hunks of metal at this point? (Pending their transfiguration into V'GER, of course).

What I really want to know is when/if they'll cross the Milky Way's galactic bow shock, which runs before us on our collision course with Andromeda.

And speaking of shock waves, there's a really big one playing over in Stephan's Quintet... not to be confused with the cosmic jam session going on in the Perseus cluster:

Sound has been detected from another black hole in the Perseus cluster, which was calculated to have a note some 57 octaves below middle C. However, the sound in M87 appears to be more discordant and complex. A series of unevenly spaced loops in the hot gas gives evidence for small outbursts from the black hole about every 6 million years. These loops imply the presence of sound waves, not visible in the Chandra image, which are about 56 octaves below middle C. The presence of the large cavity and the sonic boom gives evidence for even deeper notes -- 58 or 59 octaves below middle C -- powered by large outbursts.

Soon I must embark upon a Quest… for the Holy Grail… of beer:

Two American Web sites, Rate Beer and Beer Advocate, rank the strongest of Westvleteren's three products, a dark creamy beer known as "the 12," best in the world, ahead of beers including Sweden's Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter and Minnesota's Surly Darkness. "No question, it is the holy grail of beers," says Remi Johnson, manager of the Publick House, a Boston bar that has Westvleteren on its menu but rarely in stock.

Witness the power of a free press: Whose phone rang? Judge jails 46:

Later in the afternoon, after being told reporters were calling, the judge ordered the defendants released.

Yeah, I got your cell phone, yer honor, I got your cell phone *right here*...

So *that's* what Alban Berg was up to during all those late nights at the conservatory: The Secret Love Affair Behind the 'Lyric Suite'. I always wondered about those tempo markings: "Adagio appassionato" followed by "Presto delirando" -- I get ya now, Alban.

Have we sealed the universe's fate by looking at it?

We may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, which is thought to be speeding up cosmic expansion.
[...]
At the quantum level, whenever we observe or measure something, we reset its clock and stop it decaying - something known as the quantum Zeno effect. Our measurement of the light from supernovae in 1998, which provided evidence of dark energy, may have reset the false vacuum’s decay clock to zero - back to a point when the likelihood of its surviving [instead of collapsing to a lower-energy vacuum state] was falling exponentially over time. “In short, we may have snatched away the possibility of long-term survival for our universe and made it more likely it will decay,” says [Lawrence] Krauss [of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio].

Oops! Damn that quantum Zeno effect! Now we're gonna have to hire somebody (or something) to keep measuring it continuously!

Given a system in a state A, which is the eigenstate of some measurement operator. Say the system under free time evolution will decay with a certain probability into state B. If measurements are made periodically, with some finite interval between each one, at each measurement, the wave function collapses to an eigenstate of the measurement operator. Between the measurements, the system evolves away from this eigenstate into a superposition state of the states A and B. When the superposition state is measured, it will again collapse, either back into state A as in the first measurement, or away into state B. However, its probability of collapsing into state B, after a very short amount of time t, is proportional to t^2, since probabilities are proportional to squared amplitudes, and amplitudes behave linearly. Thus, in the limit of a large number of short intervals, with a measurement at the end of every interval, the probability of making the transition to B goes to zero.

Let the games begin: Senator Chris Dodd Calls on Mukasey to Investigate McClellan Charges of White House Cover Up. Paging special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald...

Listen to Electronic Music from HYMNEN ("Anthems") by the late Karlheinz Stockhausen. I especially like what he does with (and to) "Deutschland Uber Alles" in the track titled "With Soloists, Region 2: 1st Centre: DEUTSCHLAND - Lied".

From One Laptop Per Child: Give 1 Get 1:

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home.

Web Address: http://www.xogiving.org/

A truly subversive (and great) idea, IMHO.

Buy Nothing Day is Nov 23rd. Can you do it?

Health Blog : Bristol's Abilify Gets FDA OK for Teens:

"Bristol got in hot water for promoting the drug in kids without approval just a few months ago. In [a] six-week study of kids that Bristol and its partner Otsuka did to gain approval, weight gain of more than 7% was seen in some 5% of patients on Abilify compared with 1% on a sugar pill. "

I guess the check must have just cleared.

From The 2008 IT Salary Guide:

"Job Title: Senior Web Developer 2008 average salary range: $76,250 – $108,250.
• The 2008 salary range is an increase of 6.6% over this job’s 2007 salary range, which was $71,000 – $102,000.
• The 2006 salary range was an increase of 1.1% over this job’s 2005 salary range, which was $68,000 – $96,750.
Add 10% for Java development skills,
10% for Java Enterprise Edition development skills,
5% for LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/PERL) development skills,
5% for AJAX development skills,
5% for Microsoft Sharepoint skills,
5% for Cold Fusion development skills,
7% for Web services development skills,
5% for Active Server Page development skills,
10% for DCOM/COM/ActiveX development skills,
12% for C# development skills,
10% for Visual Basic .NET development skills, and
5% for WebLogic clustering administration skills. "

Tech Salaries: From High to Low:

NATICK DEMOCRATIC TOWN COMMITTEE

MEDIA ADVISORY
October 31, 2007
Contact: Karen Schlosberg
508-650-4215
karen@natickdems.org

NATICK DEMOCRATIC TOWN COMMITTEE HOSTS A VOLUNTEER FAIR

NATICK: The Natick Democratic Town Committee is hosting a Volunteer Fair information forum with Democratic presidential candidates' campaigns on Monday, November 5, at 6:30 p.m. at the Morse Institute Library in Natick.

Representatives from the Democratic presidential candidates' campaigns will give short presentations about their candidates, then the audience will have the chance to go to each candidate's table and ask questions, receive materials, and sign up to volunteer.

As of the time of this writing, all of the Democratic presidential candidates had agreed to send a representative with the exception of Joe Biden's campaign, which has not yet confirmed.

The event, hosted by the Natick Democratic Town Committee, is free and open to the public.

EVENT: Volunteer Fair

LOCATION: Morse Institute Library, 14 E. Central St., Natick,
Massachusetts, Lebowitz Meeting Hall

DATE: Monday, November 5, 2007
TIME: 6:30 p.m.

Schedule:
6:30 p.m. Doors open and visit tables
7:00 p.m. Presentations start
7:45 p.m. Visit tables

The Natick Democratic Town Committee is hosting this Volunteer Fair to encourage the community to participate fully in the political process.

Christmas Revels on the Space Shuttle: John Langstaff singing "Lord of the Dance" from the original Christmas Revels wakes up the crew of STS-120.

From Wisconsin State Journal: Flu lab nears completion :

Ten-inch walls made with crack-resistant concrete. Outlets sealed with silicone.Sensors for broken windows. Infrared surveillance beams. Redundant air handling systems. A back-up generator.

Yeah, but has anybody taken a look at the drains lately?

[Virologist Yoshihiro] Kawaoka plans to study several kinds of flu viruses in the institute — including H5N1, the bird flu virus circulating in Asia, and a reconstructed version of the 1918 flu virus, which killed some 50 million people when it spread worldwide. [...] Only a few BSL4 labs, in which workers don special suits with self-contained breathing devices, exist nationwide.

Geez -- if that's what they're studying in a BSL3 lab, what are they working on in the BSL4 labs, and where are they, anyway?

And what was the biosafety level at Pirbright when the foot-and-mouth virus escaped?

"Imagine shooting a gun that uses heat — instead of bullets." Now imagine shooting it at a detainee strapped into a lie-detecting fMRI machine. Waterboarding is such a crude and inexact tool.

From Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest:

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of “ordering and authorizing” torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military’s detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

From Travel Advisory: War Criminals Beware, Justice Ahead:

"In Paris last week, Rumsfeld left a prestigious speaking event in haste, slipping out a side door to avoid the human rights lawyers and journalists waiting to confront him with criminal charges of torture. He reportedly avoided the confrontation by sneaking out a door that attached the conference venue to, of all places, the United States Embassy. "

Get ready for a return to "Freedom Fries" and MSM condemnation of "quiche-eating surrender monkeys".

Where do you belong?

From A Computer Display In Your Glasses:

"consumers will be able to purchase Bluetooth- enabled eyewear with MicroOptical's embedded technology from stores such as LensCrafters as part of a complete prescription eyeglass package, which will cost $400 to $600."

Yeah, baby! Put that together with Bluetooth stereo headphones and Augmented Reality, here I come!