Interesting research being done on developing batteries that run on tiny amounts of radio-active substances for us in MEMs and other micro technology. It is a very cool direction, as the current state of electronics is limited greatly by the battery technology.

Very cool photo of the Martian surface taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. It is so great that we are tearing up the Martian surface with our bot. I like it. I like it a lot. Man, I want to work in the space industry.

Jason will be glad to hear about this. He's been looking for some one to to just some such thing on his bus.

So this is crazy. In Sims 2 your Sim can play The Sims. Ah! Recursion!

A very good article in Discover comparing Bush and Kerry's views on scientific topics. I like the fact that Kerry

has proposed major cash prizes to stimulate scientific discoveries.

I really like that. Such a strategy was very successful for scientific development in the 16th through 19th centuries. Nothing motivates like cold, hard cash.

When I saw this headline:

Newly-Wed Spears Reveals Baby Plans

and that it was on the website Scotsman.com I figured it was about some wedding rite in the Scottish culture where the bride and groom hold spears that show how many children they plan on having or some such thing.

Boy, was I disappointed.

Awesome story about a failed Hasbro product. It is a good thing we didn't have to bury the Monster Rockets. They take up a lot more space than Flubber.

Also, though I have been to the warehouse they speak of, I have never seen "Flubber ooz[ing] up through the cracks in the parking lot pavement." Maybe I'm just not looking close enough.

Below is the top ten list Kerry read last night on Letterman:

10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.
9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.
8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.
7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.
6. Attorney General (John) Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.
5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.
4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.
3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.
2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it 'nuclear' instead of 'nucular.'
1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

I am curious about Kerry's delivery on these and if they actually sounded funny when he said them. He is definately Mr. Dry-Sense of Humor, so I wonder how he came across.

"Cocaine's a hell of a drug." So isn't a cocktail of cocaine and 8 others. My--that is a lot of drugs.

Kerry is pretty cool. Check this story out. A woman got fired for having a Kerry/Edwards sticker on her car. She got a call from Kerry:

"He was telling me how proud he was that I stood up," Gobbell told [the reporter]. "He'd read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, 'you let him know you're working for me as of today.' I was just so shocked."

I am glad to hear that loyality to one's own beliefs is still worth something these days.

A very good article in the New Yorker about Al Gore. The author spent some time with him, and got his opinion on a variety of subjects. Gore questions Bush's fitness to be president--not because Bush is stupid, but because his is not nuanced and is incurious and a bully:

“I’m not of the school that questions his intelligence,” Gore went on. “There are different kinds of intelligence, and it’s arrogant for a person with one kind of intelligence to question someone with another kind. He certainly is a master at some things, and he has a following. He seeks strength in simplicity. But, in today’s world, that’s often a problem. I don’t think that he’s weak intellectually. I think that he is incurious. It’s astonishing to me that he’d spend an hour with his incoming Secretary of the Treasury and not ask him a single question. But I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and, like all bullies, he’s a coward when confronted with a force that he’s fearful of. His reaction to the extravagant and unbelievably selfish wish list of the wealthy interest groups that put him in the White House is obsequious. The degree of obsequiousness that is involved in saying ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’ to whatever these people want, no matter the damage and harm done to the nation as a whole—that can come only from genuine moral cowardice. I don’t see any other explanation for it, because it’s not a question of principle. The only common denominator is each of the groups has a lot of money that they’re willing to put in service to his political fortunes and their ferocious and unyielding pursuit of public policies that benefit them at the expense of the nation.”

Gore also questions Bush's vision for foriegn policy, positing the Iraq war as a dumb war:

“I think Bush put forward a counterfeit large vision,” Gore said. “The war in Iraq was postured as a big idea. Well, it was a big dumb idea. And, again, I don’t think he’s dumb, but I think that idea is dumb.”

I agree completely with Gore's assesment of Bush's intelligence, but I would also add that to those who are used to a different type of intelligence, the President's unnuanced view of the world is particularly grating. I agree that engaging Iraq while we were busy in Afganistan was a dumb idea. We only have so many troops and there have to be a certain number in each kplace for them to be effective at what they do.

I think that is something that really gets on my nerves about Bush. Here he is at the RNC, honoring those in the armed forces, thanking them for their help in the "war" against terror, but he doesn't have enough men on the feild to win. It is like playing 4 on 5 in basketball. Yes, you can win with 4 players, but your opponent has to be particularly inept and unorganized. That may have been true initially in Iraq, but it seems that the insurgents have quite a few players on the bench, and our subs are few and far between. They are finding our weeknesses and planting themselves in the key and keep bothering us with their layups. Meanwhile, we're shooting 3s with tough defence waving their arms in our face. It is going to be a long game.

A Slate article about how many of President Bush's close friends and supporters feel that God put W in the White House. But, as the author mentions:

...it's always possible God did put George W. Bush in the White House. But if He did, it doesn't theologically follow that He wants him to have a second term. Even those who believe that God controls world events usually concede it is hard for humans to divine the intent of the Divine.

It bothers me that people are so concerned with what God does. It makes life very soap opera-ish to be spending it desiring to know what is on another being's mind. I, personally, feel that there is not a god active in mankind's lives today. If one ever existed, it was only to push the universe into motion. He/she/it is long gone. It is imposible, even in those who believe in an active god, to know the mind of god. That is the dogma of many a religion. Since no one can know if there was devine force behind his election, the only thing that Bush has to thank for his presidency is a number of voters (confused or otherwise) in Florida and every other state that voted for him. Maybe Bush and his supporters should spend more time thanking those voters who him put there, rather than a being whose purpose, desires and existance is unknown.

A dramatic reading of one of the e-mail scams out of Africa. It is quite well done.

As you may have noticed, I added some google ads to my blog. I figure it is worth a try to make a little extra cash. Let me know if it gets too annoying.

We made the front page of CNN. Too bad--it is such a cool toy.

I'm starting grad school part-time this fall at URI. Yesterday I went to the graduate school orientation. Now, I graduated from MIT about 2.5 years ago, and after my 4 years there, I got pretty used to the MIT way of doing things. At MIT the buildings are numbered. They have names, but they are only used for a few buildings (the Green Building and Student Center come to mind). The majority of the buildings are referred to by number--26, 2, 4, etc. The building numbers have a general, though not very specific, order to their layout (the single digits are generally around Killian, with the evens on one side, odds on another, and Ws are west of Mass Ave, Ns are north of the railroad tracks and Es are east of Ames Street--with NW north of the tracks and west of Mass Ave--you get the idea).

My whole point in describing this, is to bitch about the campus map I was provided by URI. When I first looked at the map, I saw numbers. I smiled to myself, thinking that it would be similar to MIT. Then I looked at the key at the bottom and noticed the list of building names. Cool. I can deal with that, I thought. Then I tried to use the map to figure out what a building's name. It turns out that it is almost impossible, due to the fact that the building names are in alphabetical order, and the only reference given on the map is numerical. So, to figure out what the name of a building is, you have to look through the list of names until you come across the number of building shown on the map.

To complicate matters further, URI has provided a grid (numbers across the top, letters down the side) to "help" you locate the buildings, as there is no method to the numbering scheme--the numbers must have been given as the buildings were constructed. Unlike MIT, there aren't different areas to campus, so there is no subsectioning of east, west, or north of main campus. Also, few like numbers are grouped together. One would think that building 3 would be somewhat near to building 2, but one would be quite wrong.

I have little experience with other schools' campus layouts, so by bitching about URI's layout, I may be including many other schools. But, damn, it was hard as hell to figure out what the building next to the one I was in was called. In that respect, the map is pretty much useless.

A decent rebuttle to Miller's and Cheney's speaches last night.

Does anyone else think that Zell Miller sounds like Mr. Haney from Green Acres?

An article in Slate about Schwarzenegger's speach last night at the RNC. I watched part of it. I can't sit very long and watch the RNC before I get mad at the spin they are putting on Bush's presidency.

I have trouble listening to people talk about the GOP as the "party of Lincoln." I know it is true in name, but I can't believe Lincoln would agree with the policies of President Bush. As stated in the article I linked above:

The GOP under Bush is nothing like what it was under Lincoln or even Roosevelt. The notion of wartime deficit tax cuts would have made Lincoln ill.

This reminds me of another Slate article that focused on how often Bush's supporters compare the time we are in to WWII. I hate these sort of comparisons. Jason and I have discussed this issue. Comparing some one to Hitler does little more than reduce the strength of the evil that Hitler truly represents. Comparing today's uncertain times to one of the most violent times in history does little to honor history. I am surprised the American Legion hasn't made a comment about this--or the Lincoln estate.