Life in Margaritaville could get a lot tougher. And Jimmy Buffet could be searching for more than his lost shaker of salt. A tequila shortage looms now that farmers in Mexico are burning fields of the blue agave used to make tequila. Farmers are planting corn instead to meet the growing demand for ethanol in the U.S. This could spell trouble for fans of the famed frozen concoction.

Margarita's made with ethanol just ain't the same.

NPR : Tequila Shortage Looms

“The average full-time worker doesn’t even start doing real work until 11:00 a.m.,” he writes, “and begins to wind down around 3:30 p.m.”

The Microsoft survey pointed to worthless meetings.

What appears to be wasted time is really jell time.

Time Wasted? Perhaps It’s Well Spent

Google searches - will be performed by mind control.

That's an interesting statement...

Brain-reading technology is improving rapidly. Last year, Sony (Charts) took out a patent on a game system that beams data directly into the mind without implants. It uses a pulsed ultrasonic signal that induces sensory experiences such as smells, sounds and images.

I hope it doesn't upload a rootkit...

Controlling devices with the mind is just the beginning. Next, Wolf believes, is what he calls "network-enabled telepathy" - instant thought transfer. In other words, your thoughts will flow from your brain over the network right into someone else's brain. If you think instant messaging is addictive, just wait for instant thinking.

Imagine what this will do for the world of spam.

Future Boy: This is your brain on Google - Jul. 21, 2006

Looks like all that heat generated by your laptop may finally be useful for something other than frying eggs -- a group of grad students led by professor Orest Symko at the University of Utah has unveiled an array of "thermoacoustic" engines that turn heat into sound, which can be directed at a piezoelectric mechanism to produce electricity. The US Army-funded research seems promising but is obviously still in its infancy -- one of the designs the researchers demonstrated is half the size of a penny but pumps out 120dB of noise (about the same as a siren), while another bumped out over 135dB, (which is roughly equivalent to a jackhammer). The team expects that future, smaller designs will work at ultrasonic frequencies outside the range of human hearing. Although we're not expecting hybrid-siren-powered laptops to hit anytime soon, you Utes out there may want to invest in some earplugs -- Professor Symko says they'll be testing these designs at the University's water-heating facility in the next year.

It would be funny to hide these on cars.

Tiny thermoacoustic engines pave the way for screaming gadgets - Engadget

WASHINGTON -- In a victory for TV networks but a setback for efforts to shield children from coarse language, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that broadcasters cannot be penalized for expletives that are considered impromptu.

The three-judge panel in New York repudiated the Federal Communications Commission's recent crackdown on broadcast indecency, calling its efforts "arbitrary and capricious."

Fuckin' A! Good news.

Judges toss FCC rule on cursing | Chicago Tribune

Billy relays a great story:

Optyx is in Atlanta for the week and we got some drinks with John Terrill last night. A good time was had by all talking about crypto, web apps, the homies on #vax, brushes with the law, security charlatans, and new opportunities. The night was finished with a stumbling tour of Pat and my old stomping grounds: Georgia Tech.

If you don't know Optyx, he's forgotten more hacker stories then I'll ever have. The following is, as best as the beers will let me remember, the story of the Cray-2. I've tried to tell the story as close to the way Pat did. Any errors are the fault of Guinness

So I was living in San Francisco working at a web hosting startup. A friend of mine at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory gives me a heads up, saying they were decommissioning their Cray-2 super computer. I decided to buy it but the regulations said the lab had to hold a public auction to sell it. However, it didn’t say how far in advanced the time or place of the auction had to be published. Through some help from my friends at the lab an auction got setup where I was the only bidder.

The auctioneer wasn’t in on the scheme and he opened the bidding at $2000. I looked around, saw I was the only guy, and said “$1000.” They sold me the Cray-2 for a grand and I took back to my house on Treasure Island in the back of a U-haul. A Cray-2 weights more than a ton so this was not an easy task.

The big problem I had was how to power the thing. I hacked together a power converter and ran it off the 3 phase power outlet for the clothes dryer. But I had this girl roommate who used to complain about not being able to dry her clothes when she wanted because the computer was on. So the uptime of the super computer was dependent on the laundry habits of a roommate!

After the first month, I got the power bill. It was $2200. I decided it was time to sell the Cray.

Through a mutual friend, I found some .com yuppie who wanted to buy the Cray and use it as a couch. I sold it for around $3500 to recoup the cost of the machine and the power bill. I visited his house which was on the side of a hill in SF. You’d park in a 1 car garage underneath the house and used stairs to go up into it. It was like a big loft space on the 1st floor and that is where he decided to put the Cray-2. I asked him if his floor was reinforced because the Cray-2 weighted a ton. The yuppie said the house had steel floor beams and not to worry. I broke the Cray down for shipping (which consists of breaking it into 300 pound pieces you move around with a pallet dolly) and... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

'The Most Beautifil Destruction...'

Imagine if someone, somewhere managed to find the exact formula for producing the most perfectly awful example of the uncanny valley (say, for a horror movie or something). Now, accept the fact that this organization is the Japanese Science and Technology Agency, and that they managed to produce the most disturbing machine you've ever seen, without even realizing it. The 33 kilogram CB2 is literally beyond words in its freakiness, not only in its nailing of the uncanny valley, but in its description. Apparently it emulates "the physical ability of a 1- or 2-year-old toddler, can turn over and stand up with assistance," has 51 compressed air-powered actuators, and has 200 tactile sensors in its "skin." It sends so many shivers up our spine to think of the CB2's lifeless putty coating as "skin" that it's a wonder we're even able to continue typing. Seriously, just so that we can stop and move onto something else a little more human (heck, even a motherboard feels homely next to this), go check out the video after the break of the horrifying little thing writhing about on the floor.

All of the potential uses for such a thing are all bad. I think Asimov forgot to make a law here.

CB2 Child Robot is possibly the most disturbing machine ever built - Engadget

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--During the Cold War, “Remote Viewers” were used to collect intelligence on Soviet and Chinese weapons systems and their R&D.

To avoid being left vulnerable, for 23 years, from 1972 until 1995, the American Defense and Intelligence Community sponsored research and deployed operational units of Psychic Warriors. The premise was simple, and the results staggering.

While still controversial, the dire consequences of homeland defense errors are causing renewed interest in using the science of clairvoyance to help keep U.S. citizens out of harms way. Now, for the first time in a publicly accessible forum, anyone can learn the techniques of seeing behind the lines.

InfowarCon, the world’s premier congress on cyber-terrorism, information warfare and critical infrastructure protection (www.infowarcon.com) is hosting a full day training seminar on psychic intelligence gathering.

Hosted by Paul Smith, retired U.S. Intelligence Officer and author of bestselling book, “Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate -- America's Psychic Espionage Program," (Tor/Forge 2005, ISBN: 0312875150), attendees will get first hand experience at remote identifying. Mr. Smith was a highly acclaimed Remote Viewer for heavily classified Remote Viewing projects and is credited with authoring the original Controlled Remote Viewing training manual.

According to InfowarCon founder Winn Schwartau, “today, we have to bring out all of the stops to defend ourselves against all kinds of enemies. Our best defense is to know what they know.”

In this first of a kind full day seminar, students will learn the basics of Remote Viewing and engage in actual Remote Viewing sessions themselves. Mr. Smith will give the complete history and detail the incredible successes this mind-bending Star Gate program offered the U.S. intelligence community.

The Return of the Jedi...

Psychic Intelligence Gathering Used to Defend Homeland

(ANSA) - Rome, May 30 - Italian doctors have built the world's first biotech vagina.

So far, two patients lacking vaginas because of a rare malformation have been helped to grow ones, using stem cells taken from their own bodies.

Nice... The italians should make gardens of them.

ANSA.it - News in English - Italians build biotech vagina

Construction of the U.S. embassy in Iraq, set to open in September, is projected to cost $592 million, with a staff of 1,000 people and operating costs totaling $1.2 billion a year. It will be a 104-acre complex, which is the size of approximately 80 football fields. On May 10, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) criticized the ballooning size and cost of the embassy in a hearing with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

Hmmm.... Its not quite correct. It's missing the giant bullseye.

Think Progress � PHOTOS: The $592 Million U.S. Embassy In Iraq