How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer

Ben Stein, author, actor, economist, speech writer, and pundt, column about how out of wack some of our perceptions are.

Ben Stein's final column

] The measure approved Thursday would require store owners
] to determine which games are too violent or sexually
] explicit for anyone under 18. Anyone selling them to a
] minor could be fined.

Brilliant!

This is just golden:

] The sponsor, Sen. Deanna Demuzio, denied the measure
] would interfere with free speech rights.
]
] "Video games are not art or media," she said. "They are
] simulations, not all that different from the simulations
] used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."

But the saddest thing in this entire article is:

] "I'm going to vote for this bill, but I'm voting for it
] for one reason: because this is a political bill,"
] said Sen. Mike Jacobs. "If I vote against it, it will
] show up in a campaign mail piece

Senate OKs Video Game Restrictions

] The Atlanta Time Machine website is dedicated to
] examining the history of Atlanta, Georgia by comparing
] vintage photographs of Atlanta with much more
] contemporary images shot, more or less, from the same
] perspective of the original photographer.

Atlanta Time Machine

Slides of Virgil's Datamining Talk... I enjoyed this. One of the more interesting talks at Interz0ne.

Virgil's Datamining Talk @ IV4/OZ1/EZ1

Awesome. The cloud data in these maps is updated every three hours. This is the earth from space in nearest to realtime that anyone has come.

World Sunlight Map

] If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next
] to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn
] something important about business school. You don't even
] hit an MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike.
] There are only four MBAs in the top 50. What you notice
] in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical
] backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison,
] Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the
] technology business tend to come from technology, not
] business. So if you want to invest two years in something
] that will help you succeed in business, the evidence
] suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an
] MBA. [3]

Looks like a good article. I haven't read this yet but I intend to find time for it soon.

How to Start a Startup

] This step that we have taken has implications for all
] search engines. These engines crawl the public web
] without asking permission, and cache and reproduce the
] content without asking permission, and then use this
] information as a carrier for ads that generate private
] profit. We are convinced that if citizens scrape Google
] and strip the ads, and make the scraped results available
] as a nonprofit public service, that this is legal. This
] is especially the case if there are public policy
] concerns behind the scraping.
]
] Google Watch has been the most prominent critic of
] Google's outrageous privacy policies for more than two
] years. This is why we started the proxy, and it's why we
] continue the proxy. We invite Google to serve us with a
] cease and desist letter as a first step toward resolving
] this issue. So far, we have yet to hear from Google's
] lawyers. By releasing the source code for our proxy,
] we're trying to escalate the issue.

Google should not save all 4 octets of your IP address. There is no "good" use of that data. Of course, MemeStreams does this too, so yes I'm being hyprocritical, but I didn't just make a fortune in a public offering either. They should store a SHA1 hash of the last 2 octets so they can identify unique visitors without storing identifying data. And the cookie could use some end user control.

Scraping and ad-stripping Google's results

] This photo is of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
] taken every 15 minutes (if a relay satellite is available
] for transmission) from the roof of the Atmospheric
] Research Observatory which houses NOAA/CMDL's Clean Air
] Facility. In order to preserve the life of the camera, it
] is tilted down onto the snow when the sun is in the field
] of view, which occurs for several weeks around sunset
] (March) and sunrise (September) when the sun marches in a
] circle above the horizon. From mid-April until mid-August
] the moon and the aurora australis provide the only
] natural lighting.
]
] The new station, presently under construction, can be
] seen to the right in the photo; the old (circa 1973)
] domed station is to the left. The new station is elevated
] above the snow to prevent it being buried by the drifting
] snow (the present fate of the old domed station). When
] the new station is finished in about 2006, the old dome
] and buildings inside will be removed. The new galley
] (with windows!) is now being used for meals. The
] cylindrical object at the end of the station, fondly
] called the "beer can," is the entrance to the station.

Telecommunications is so damn cool.

South Pole Live Camera

] NSA initiatives in enhancing software security cover both
] proprietary and open source software, and we have
] successfully used both proprietary and open source models
] in our research activities. NSA's work to enhance the
] security of software is motivated by one simple
] consideration: use our resources as efficiently as
] possible to give NSA's customers the best possible
] security options in the most widely employed products.
] The objective of the NSA research program is to develop
] technologic advances that can be shared with the software
] development community through a variety of transfer
] mechanisms. NSA does not favor or promote any specific
] software product or business model. Rather, NSA is
] promoting enhanced security.

NSA's guides to securing machines

NSA - Security Configuration Guides

] BALLOT MEASURES / GEORGIA AMENDMENT 1 / EXIT POLL

I'm surprised by the way different age groups voted. The Religious attendance breakdown is amusing. So is the breakdown by income.

Breakdown of GA Gay Marriage Ban