A Short History of Ringtones

- Neat
- Cute
- Distracting
- Bothersome
- Highly Annoying
- Obnoxious
- Grating
- "Hello, is the proctologist available? I need something removed from somewhere."

by ackthpt(218170) on /.

Consciousness and the Mirror Test

"The Mirror test is a measure of self awareness developed by Gordon G. Gallup. Animals which have passed the mirror test are chimpanzees, orangutans, dolphins and humans. Surprisingly, gorillas have not passed the test. Human children tend to fail this test until they are at least 3-4 years old."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

I don't find it very scientific, but it's interesting.

Isn't a $25 mil bounty a little low for Bin Laden?

"A 30-second television commercial shows pictures of bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who both have $25 million rewards on their heads, and 12 other terrorist suspects, including Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s vanquished Taliban militia."

I'm not suggesting that the war would be over if we capture Bin Laden, but it just seems a bit low for today's economy. And how much do we spend *per day* in Iraq? $177 million, according to projectbillboard.org.

A glance at a program I'm working on

Here's a snapshot of a program I'm working on called "Zen Playground". It will let you interact with things in a virtual world, such as musical instruments, a fishtank, a zen rock garden, a painting canvas, bonsai trees, etc.. You'll be able to feed the fish, clip bonsai trees, move flickering candles around, paint, etc. It will be 'alive', so trees and fish will grow for example.

It's very crude at present since it's in the early stages, any suggestions are welcome.

A clear PC briefcase called "Secret Agent"

A clear PC briefcase... called... "Secret Agent". ??

http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2107&p=5

X-Files not so far fetched

This is weird. Today, just saw an episode of the X-Files where soldiers had part of their brain removed so that they would not require sleep. And tonight, I was finishing the book, "The Mind at Night", which states that there was actually a DARPA project to reduce the need for sleep in soldiers:

'The $20 million Continuous Assisted Performance program "is investigating ways to prevent fatigue and enable soldiers to stay awake, alert, and effective for up to seven consecutive days without suffering any deleterious mental or physical effects and without using any of the current generation of stimulants," said DARPA Director Tony Tether last spring in a written statement to the House Government Reform Committee.'

-- http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1019037/posts

Dreaming of reality, reality of dreaming

"Once I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, a butterfly flying about, feeling that it was enjoying itself. It did not know that it was Chuang. Suddenly I awoke and was myself again, the veritable Chuang. I do not know whether it was Chuang dreaming that he was a butterfly or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that it is Chuang." -- Chuang Tzu, Taoist philosopher

Cat Haiku

The rule for today:
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.

From http://castlescribe.hispeed.com/fam/relax/cathaiku.html

Does this imply that graffiti is allowed elsewhere?