Friday, March 28, 2008

What could possibly go wrong?

One of my favorite ways to burn a few minutes is to find an interesting tag on Slashdot and look at all of the posts thus tagged.

A funny one today: http://slashdot.org/tags/whatcouldpossiblygowrong

Sample:

China to Use Silver Iodide & Dry Ice to Control the Weather
'Friendly' Worms Could Spread Software Fixes
Laser Light Re-creates 'Black Holes' in the Lab
Large Hadron Collider Sparks 'Doomsday' Lawsuit
Artificial Intelligence at Human Level by 2029?
Doctors To Control Robot Surgeon With Their Eyes
One Computer to Rule Them All
US Plans "Disposable" Nuclear Batteries
Artificial Bases Added to DNA
A Virus that Attacks Brain Cancer
Customer Loses Xbox 360 Artwork During Repair
Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets
Dutch Unveil Robot Gas Station Attendant
Vista Service Pack 1 Is Out
Researchers Develop Self-Cleaning Clothes
NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon
US To Shoot Down Dying Satellite
A Robotic Taxi Named robuCAB
New Lock Aims To End Chip Piracy
GM Says Driverless Cars Will Be Ready By 2018
Manmade Flood to Nourish Grand Canyon Ecosystem

My New Hobby: Chatting with Journalists

I've started reading the Corner, a conservative blog run by National Review online. A lot of what gets posted there is obnoxious, but usually two or three times a day I'll read a thoughtful post where I have a strong argument for a different opinion.

I'll shoot them an email, and once in a while they will write back.

The point is to engage the competition, not rant against them - and it has been both fun and informative to correspond with these folks. They are very smart - they just see the world differently from the way I do. But we do have some common ground.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Context

So I was watching American Idol tonight, and one of the performers had a story about how he was a tennis coach before he got on Idol. Their was a 2 second clip of him watching this guy bounce a tennis ball and bat it away, after which the singer hands him another ball and utters "that's the swing of a champion".

It occurred to me that I barely noticed the guy with the racket, but he probably called and emailed like 200 of his friends and family to tell them he would be on American Idol tonight. Context is hilarious.