Colin Powell kept a set of these rules on his desk. For the last several years, I've kept a copy in my office as well. I've been staring at it alot today, so I figured it was worth memeing.

] 1. It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the
] morning.
]
] 2. Get mad, then get over it.
]
] 3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when
] your position falls, your ego goes with it.
]
] 4. It can be done!
]
] 5. Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
]
] 6. Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good
] decision.
]
] 7. You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let
] someone else make yours.
]
] 8. Check small things.
]
] 9. Share credit.
]
] 10. Remain calm. Be kind.
]
] 11. Have a vision. Be demanding.
]
] 12. Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
]
] 13. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Powell's Rules

] Its tiny, but visible enough to send a warm fuzzy through
] the hearts of original trilogy fans. In the establishing
] shot of the expansive Senate docking bays, there's a tiny
] Millennium Falcon easing into frame.

Star Wars: Episode III | Episode III Easter Egg Hunt

] A private team of space-savvy civilians has hit a major
] milestone in plans to launch the first spacecraft
] propelled by sunlight after shipping the small probe to
] be loaded atop ballistic missile.
]
]
] The solar sail-propelled Cosmos 1 vehicle, hailed as the
] world%u2019s first solar sail spacecraft, has left its
] Moscow testing center and now bound to Severomorsk,
] Russia, where it will be loaded into a modified
] intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and readied for
] a June 21 launch, mission planners announced Monday.

Cosmos 1 Solar Sail Spacecraft Heads to Loading Site

] In the next few months, after being patiently nurtured
] for 22 years, an artificial brain called Cyc (pronounced
] "psych") will be put online for the world to interact
] with. And it's only going to get cleverer. Opening Cyc up
] to the masses is expected to accelerate the rate at which
] it learns, giving it access to the combined knowledge of
] millions of people around the globe as it hoovers up new
] facts from web pages, webcams and data entered manually
] by anyone who wants to contribute.
]
]
] Crucially, Cyc's creator says it has developed a human
] trait no other AI system has managed to imitate: common
] sense. "I believe we are heading towards a singularity
] and we will see it in less than 10 years," says Doug
] Lenat of Cycorp, the system's creator.

It's about time. Cyc has been perported to be on the verge of taking off for five years now. It would be really exciting if Lenat's decades-long effort were to be successful.

New Scientist Whatever happened to machines that think? - Features

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

Best Hubble Space Telescope Images

] Astronomers are poring over images of a distant galaxy
] for what may be evidence of the birth of a black hole.
]
]
] On Monday, the US space agency's (Nasa) Swift satellite
] detected a brief burst of gamma-rays - high energy
] radiation - originating from deep space.
]
]
] Within a minute, Swift was homing in on the burst to be
] followed by dozens of the world's most powerful
] telescopes.
]
]
] It could be due to two neutron stars merging or a
] collision between a neutron star and black hole.
]
]
] "It's incredibly exciting. It's what we've been waiting
] for for years," Professor Josh Bloom of the University of
] California told the BBC News website.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Blast hints at black hole birth

] What we are seeing, for the first time, is a fundamental
] challenge to the rule of law itself.

I keep telling myself they aren't this stupid... its all theater... They won't actually do this stuff...

Latest Assault on Judges Threatens Rule of Law

] A century after Albert Einstein published his most famous
] ideas, physicists will today commemorate the occasion by
] trying to demolish one of them.
]
]
] Astronomers will tell experts gathering at Warwick
] University to celebrate the anniversary of the great
] man's "miracle year" that the speed of light - Einstein's
] unchanging yardstick that underpins his special theory of
] relativity - might be slowing down.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Why Einstein may have got it wrong

Ensure you don't become another Terry Schiavo in case some biological tragedy besets you.

I, _________________________ (fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.

Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerwood politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.

If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cold beer, it should be presumed that I won't ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.

Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren't in a permanent coma.

Under no circumstances shall any politician butt into this case. I don't care how many fundamentalist votes they're trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else's life and leave me alone to die in peace.

I couldn't care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don't know these people, and I certainly haven't authorized them to preach and crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own business, too.

If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.


Signed: ________________________________________

Living Will

] AT THE end of Jim van Os's street in the pleasant Dutch
] city of Maastricht there is a coffee shop. As with many
] such establishments in the Netherlands, "coffee shop" is
] something of a euphemism: most of its customers go there
] not to drink coffee but to buy and smoke dope. Van Os
] isn't too keen on the place. He doesn't like the shady
] characters it attracts. He doesn't like the fact that his
] children have to walk past it. And most of all he doesn't
] like that fact that the place breaks the law and sells
] marijuana to under-18s.
]
]
] Van Os's fears are rooted in more than the usual parental
] angst. He is a psychiatrist at the University of
] Maastricht who investigates the effect of marijuana on
] people's brains - particularly adolescents' brains. And
] the findings of his research make him worry about the
] effects of all this dope smoking on the kids in his
] neighbourhood.
]
]
] Over the past couple of years van Os and several others
] have been building the case that, for some teenagers,
] smoking cannabis leads to serious mental health problems
] in later life, including schizophrenia. Van Os claims
] that marijuana is responsible for up to 13 per cent of
] schizophrenia cases in the Netherlands. And with cannabis
] use among teenagers on the rise, the age at first use
] falling (see Graphic), and the strength of cannabis on
] the up, he says the figure can only increase

As someone with long term mental health problems possibly caused by heavy cannabis use this was particularly interesting

New Scientist Cannabis: Too much, too young? - Features