This is really great if you have not seen it before.

If Slashdotters made The Matrix

"When Apple unveiled its Mac OS X operating system a couple of years ago, the company's chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, explained that it offered two important benefits. First, Mac OS X (pronounced "ten") rests on a superstable, industrial-strength foundation called Unix. Second, Mac OS X is so beautiful, "you just want to lick it.""

/me licks Mac OS X.
mmmmmm......UNIX

Mac OS 10.2 Reviewed

Well, this is my cafepress store.

DO NOT BUY ANYTHING YET. I need to order a shirt and verify that the image looks alright.

However, please send any comments you have about design/text... The full line of cafe press products is at:
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/products/

Terrence thinks I should make a license plate cover for when you're bling'n, but I need to check and see if one will fit on my car...

MemeStreams | Powered by CafePress.com

"The diamond invention -- the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem -- is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade..."

There is a member of my circle of friends who is seriously obsessed with the idea of getting a diamond engagement ring from her boyfriend, which has lead to some discussion about what diamonds are worth and where they come from. Of course, the meaning is in the eye of the beholder, but we're a bunch of snobby intellectuals so articles like this tend to get forwarded around anyway.

This is a fascinating discussion of the relatively recent invention of the "tradition" of giving diamond engagement rings and the economic and marketing machines operating in the background. Of course, this article was published in 1982, so obviously we know that any threats to the De Beers empire in the early eighties were handled, and while our generation is very marketing savvy, the girls still want those rings. Most of them anyway...

How many other cultural traditions that you and I grew up with are simply products of Madison Ave?

Have You Ever Tried To Sell A Diamond? - 82.02

ONCE a week, on Sundays, Hong Kong becomes a different city. Thousands of Filipina women throng into the central business district, around Statue Square, to picnic, dance, sing, gossip and laugh. They snuggle in the shade under the HSBC building, a Hong Kong landmark, and spill out into the parks and streets. They hug. They chatter. They smile. Humanity could stage no greater display of happiness."

Filipinas in Hong Kong

Stop. Spam. Dead.

One great advantage of the statistical approach is that you don't have to read so many spams. Over the past six months, I've read literally thousands of spams, and it is really kind of demoralizing. Norbert Wiener said if you compete with slaves you become a slave, and there is something similarly degrading about competing with spammers. To recognize individual spam features you have to try to get into the mind of the spammer, and frankly I want to spend as little time inside the minds of spammers as possible.

A Plan for Spam

FOXP2 is the first gene relevant to the human ability to develop language.

Subscription required for full text.

Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language

"Around the world, from Western Europe to the Far East, many see the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent and contemptuous of others," Peterson says. "This is not a Muslim country issue. It has metastasized to the rest of the world and includes some of our closest European allies."

Yesterday's USA-Today cover story catalogs anti-US angst.

Global warmth for U.S. after 9/11 turns to frost Military plans repulse even European allies

Found this via Matt Ranney's website originally. Kind of inside hacker humor, but if you "get it", it's really quite funny.

Humour: Somebody set up us the BIND

Lawrence Lessig presentation at OSCON.

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