• Of the 53% of people in America that said they visited libraries in 2007, the most frequent visitors were members of “Generation Y”, or aged 18-30. That’s my generation! I didn’t visit no library last year! Who are these peers of mine that use the library, and why on earth aren’t they going out and getting drunk and cursing their elders? Don’t they know reading is a lost cause? They should be going out and trying to change things, to reverse this horrible downward trend our country has been mired in since our parents took over. Libraries sure aren’t going to help us achieve that, they’re just available for us to use to look at porn online when our Internet connections fail. [story]
• “Two Baylor College of Medicine researchers in Houston are working on a cocaine vaccine they hope will become the first-ever medication to treat people hooked on the drug.” Gee, thanks a lot assholes! Way to spoil the party! Everything was going really well until you showed up with your vaccinations that stimulate our immune systems into attack cocaine when it is taken. Let me guess, you used to go to the kinds of parties where everyone played “pin the tail on the donkey” and drank punch and ate pretzels, and now you’re trying to infringe on the rights of us coke-party-loving cool kids. [story]
• An investment article at the Motley Fool poignantly attacks the RIAA for their actions during litigation against an Arizona man who is being sued for copyright infringement. Apparently the lobby group which represents Sony, BMG, Warner, Universal and EMI has taken exception to digital files on the man’s computer that he copied from CDs that he had legally purchased, even though ripping CDs to put on your portable music player falls within “fair use”. The author concludes by saying, “A good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value. If it starts to pursue paying customers — which doesn’t seem that outlandish at this point — then I guess we’ll all know the extent of the desperation. Investor, beware.” I like the sound of that. Although the industry isn’t dead yet, with any luck it will be soon. [story]
• Apparently practice does make perfect. Neuroscientists at Carnegie Mellon (a school for really smart losers who will contribute much more to society than us liberal arts wankers) have discovered the mechanism that resolves a paradox that has plagued them for quite some time. Although I don’t quite understand it, I guess they had conflicting data regarding the repetitive stimulation of synapses. Whereas it should lead to synaptic strength, they were finding the opposite to be true. Now it seems they’ve found a way to explain how our brains strengthen in response to new experiences. Hence, “practice makes perfect” is proven to be accurate.
• That picture at the top of today’s entry? Apparently it is photograph of a recent UFO sighting over a navy ship in Cornwall, UK. I don’t know about you, but it looks kind of like a fuzzy helicopter to me. We need more evidence before I can be convinced there are extraterrestrials out there in the great unknown regions of space waiting to be found. [story]
• In a related story, a couple living on Prince Edward Island captured what looks like either a unique cloud formation or a tornado, and have describe as a “dark spiraling plume” of unknown origin. Spooky, right? No, just further proof that Canadians are all retarded. Without exception. [story]
• All the global warming fanatics will be happy to hear that world temperatures will cool slightly this year, even though it should remain among the top ten hottest years on record. Something about El Nino and La Nina, I don’t really understand it, but I definitely understand numbers, and it says that “overall the global temperature is expected to be 0.37 degree Calsius above the long-term average of 14.0 degree, making it the coolest year since 200 when the value was 0.24 degree C above the average.” Okay, maybe I don’t understand the numbers. Whatever, it’s going to be almost unnoticeably cooler this year than it was last year. [story]
• For fans of the avant-garde, there is no greater resource for access to visual, poetic and musical expression than UbuWeb. Lose touch with your mind for long stretches of time here. The MP3 Archive is something to behold, and the papers, films & videos are awe inspiring.
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