] Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the
] vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided
] the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not
] involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of
] creationism for the teaching of evolution in public
] schools.

CBS News | Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution | November 23, 2004 21:02:35

] Lycos Europe has started to distribute a special
] screensaver in a controversial bid to battle spam. The
] program - titled Make Love Not Spam, and available for
] Windows and the Mac OS - sends a request to view a spam
] source site. When a large number of screensavers send
] their requests at the same time the spam web page becomes
] overloaded and slow.

"Legitimate" DDOS screen saver. I never thought I'd see this. Its the kind of thing that has "bad idea" written all over it, but its also kind of interesting.

Lycos screensaver to blitz spam servers | The Register

Someone predicts that Microsoft will invent MemeStreams in 2008 and then it will be replaced by Google/Amazon in 2010.

So, who wants to alter this future by helping us write code? I'm serious.

EPIC 2014

The parallels are unavoidable.

This op-ed by Larry Lessig was published in Wednesday's Washington Post.

Bytes and Bullets

It's a "Guns, Germs, & Steel"-informed retelling of the Thanksgiving story by the author of a forthcoming book on pre-Columbian America.

In Jennie Augusta Brownscombe's 1914 painting "The First Thanksgiving," as in other depictions of the first Thanksgiving meal, natives and newcomers share their feast on a field of bluegrass, dandelion and clover - three species that did not exist in the Americas before colonization.

Clover and bluegrass, tame as accountants at home, transformed themselves into biological Attilas in the Americas. The peach proliferated in the Southeast with such fervor that farmers feared the Carolinas would become a wilderness of peach trees.

According to the Pilgrims' own accounts, natives outnumbered newcomers at the meal by almost two to one. But soon after Europeans arrived, European diseases killed 90 percent or more of the hemisphere's original inhabitants.

The huge herds and flocks seen by Europeans were evidence not of American bounty but of Indian absence.

Unnatural Abundance

] Increasingly, though, Russia and the West seem to be
] talking past each other. "I think there could be a new
] cold war," Mr. Markov said, "not a result of competition
] of interests, but because of miscommunication."

We have a President that respects and likes a fascist dictator, and a press that has the balls to refer to the differences between foriegn policies of American and Russian "democracy" as being the result of "miscommunication." Talking past each other!?

A Tug of War Over Ukraine

] Just about everyone is worrying about the tanking dollar
] and the enormous U.S. trade deficit. So it's high time
] for Alan Greenspan, the nation's central banker, to step
] in and tell us how we might deal with the wilting
] greenback.
]
] Instead, the Fed chairman has made a speech that will go
] down as the one of most flagrant pieces of self-serving
] tripe in financial history.

Greenspan's oped not universally loved.

Dollar's Dip Shows Greenspan in Denial

] Reducing the federal budget deficit (or preferably moving
] it to surplus) appears to be the most effective action
] that could be taken to augment domestic saving.
] Significantly increasing private saving in the United
] States--more particularly, finding policies that would
] elevate the personal saving rate from its current
] extraordinarily low level--of course would also be
] helpful. Corporate saving in the United States has risen
] to its highest rate in decades and is unlikely to
] increase materially. Alternative approaches to reducing
] our current account imbalance by reducing domestic
] investment or inducing recession to suppress consumption
] obviously are not constructive long-term solutions.

Greenspan says "I can't fix this. Ask Congress."

FRB: Speech, Greenspan--Panel discussion: Euro in Wider Circles--November 19, 2004

] Morgan Stanley
]
] Steve Roach Weekly Commentary
]
] Global Economic Forum
]
] November 24, 2004

A five minute long presentation if you can get through the javascript bonanza that sheilds it from you. The key quote: "We hope for an orderly decline in the value of the dollar, but the risk of a disorderly decline cannot be taken lightly."

Morgan Stanley: Steven Roach on the Dollar

] This textbook contains material on gravity. Gravity is
] a theory, not a fact, regarding a force that cannot be
] directly seen. This material should be approached with an
] open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
]
] This book was anonymously donated to your school library to
] discreetly promote religious alternatives to the theory of
] evolution. When you are fvinished with it, please refile the
] book in the fiction section.

Wow, I never thought I'd say this, but right now I REALLY wish I was back in High School!

Textbook disclaimer stickers