...you stand at a urinal, doing your business with one hand while checking your email on your Blackberry with the other. I swear, there must be some kind of addictive chemical in the casing of those things, because I see people hunched over them the way cavemen must have hunched over their campfires. I've seen people use them while driving!

When is there going to be a War on Blackberrys? To heck with drugs! Can't we think of the children? Nope -- too busy checking our mail on our Blackberrys

For all you memorabilia fans out there, here's something you can't miss: A federal judge has ordered personal items seized in 1996 from Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski's Montana cabin to be sold online. Get a first-edition manifesto or maybe that set of bomb-making tools you've always wanted.

From the man's-inhumanity-toward-men-who-like-each-other department, we have this little gem from the Consumerist about a lawn care service gone amuck. I can see hating crabgrass, but this takes the cake.

I'm not in the habit of recommending people go out and deal with criminals on their own; vigilantism is a double-edged sword and if you're not a member of the police department, there can be consequences. However, occasionally, when someone takes matters into their own hands because they feel wronged and don't want the perpetrator to get away with it, things turn out all right. A Florida restaruant owner was accquited of manslaughter by a jury, after he pursued and ran over the man who robbed him. Let this serve as a cautionary tale to criminals -- not everyone is going to roll over and play dead.

I got another piece of lottery spam today:

Dear beneficiary,

We happily notify you of the draw of the Email Lottery Ballot - World Gaming Board Sweepstakes program held on the 31st of July, 2006 at our Lottery office complex in Den Haag.

...etc., etc.

What interests me in that 99% seem to come form the same place: virgilio.it.

So my question is: why don't most spam filters just block that address out of hand, especially if it contains the word "lottery" in the title or body of the email? It would seem to be an easy fix.

According to NASA, the amount of damage to thermal tiles noted on Discovery was significantly lower after the latest mission. According to the report, there was a 33% reduction in the number of dings on the belly of the orbiter and an almost 50% reduction in the number of hits greater than one inch. This would seem to indicate that the new foam is working better. "The vehicle looked very good," Thomas Ford, a member of NASA's ice-debris inspection team at Kennedy Space Center, said Wednesday. "It's definitely gratifying."

Though my days of endless hours of D&D, Marvel Superheroes, Starfleet Battles, and Paranoia are now long over, I could relate to the following story:

When Dice Go Bad

I spent years trying to assemble the perfect sets of dice for any game, and I've spent more than enough of that time hurling them at walls because they always seemed to be cursed. I never thought to dispose of them this way -- perhaps it would have helped, in a karmic sort of way.

I think many will agree that this Monday's installment of words&pictures is funny and a bit scary at the same time.

Being a parent, and having to occasionally discipline my kids, I found the following article a bit disturbing -- I think you'll agree.

Kiwi organization promotes hitting children

Now, I'm not some namby-pamby. I think there can be a time and place for a good spanking, if the behavior is egregious enough. But these folks have some serious screws loose.

For all of you who have lamented the bird droppings that seem to stick like glue to your car, you are not alone: it happens to the Space Shuttle too.

With "Superman Returns" now gracing theatres and the story involving how Superman's long absence has affected his relationship with Lois Lane, I thought it only fitting to revisit Larry Niven's dissertation, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex."

Found this on BoingBoing this morning: Jim Baen, science fiction editor, publisher, and all around ranconteur has died, apparently from complications due to the stroke he suffered two weeks ago. He was 62. Details are still sketchy, but David Drake has posted an excellent obituary on his web site.

There are a lot of people who claim to be "smart." I'd like to think I'm one, but I've always operated under the premise that there's a difference between "smart" and "intelligent." Intelligence comes from a combination of innate cerebral capacity (the ability of the brain to form neural connections and relationships between concepts it is exposed to) and the intake of information and its subsequent processing. A human being canabsorb quite a bit of knowledge, form some simple relationships (or even complicated ones), and call themselves intelligent.

Smart comes from taking this vast font of information and relationships and applying it actively moment by moment to a person's environment, the end result being to navigate the challenges presented day-to-day. Smart is not as simple, and intelligence does not guarantee you are actually "smart." And now for a case in point...

I conside rmyself intelligent; last Friday, I found out that I was really not all that smart. I took the day off from work and my wife and I were going to the Jersey Shore to enjoy an afternoon in the Sun (the weather would spoil that, but I digress). On the way doen the Interstate, my wife informs me that she has forgotten the sunscreen and her purse. Now, we're better than halfway there and it's a few miles to the next exit to turn around. My wife, innocently enough, suggests I turn around at one of those turnarounds in the median.

Here's where smart and intelligent collide: intelligence tells me that despite the fact that I have a few more miles to go to turn around at an exit, it is a safer course than using the turnaround, which is for official use only and it is illegal for non-emergency vehicles or non-emergency personnel to use them. I know this. However smart says by using the turnaround, I can save a) time and b) distance, and while it is illegal to do, the chances are low that I will be caught as there are only a finite number of State Police and a lot of highway to patrol. End result: despite my better judgement, I use the turnaround.

Now, I count myself a law-abiding citizen, and though I may speed occasionally and sometimes take chances with yellow lights, I try hard not to make obvious mistakes. I have a stellar record driving. Upshot: I got bagged.

As I pulled into the turnaround, what should be barreling down the fast lane but a NJ State Police car. I hoped he was in a hurry going somewhere else and he didn't slow down to pull into the turnaround, so I thought I was safe. Five minutes later I was pulled over on the opposite side of the road, receiving a ticket. Ugh.

It's an amazing human failing, this ability to know what the right thing to do is but totally blow it off in favor of taking a riskier course and cheating the rules. Sure, it will pay off once in a while, but the vast majority of the time, when "smarts" is lacking and "intelligence" is disregarded, problems ensue.

Does this happen to you: you get emails from recruiters looking to fill a position and you read the description, only to realize that the job description and your qualifications are, shall we say, discrepant? It happens to me all the time; mainly I get requests for Java developers, when I don't know Java. I know JavaScript, but that ain't Java.

Job sites are great -- they let you fill out these detailed questionnaires and state where you want to work, what skills you have, what you're looking for in salary, etc. You think, "Hey, this way I'll only get in touch with the right people." Wrong! The people trolling these boards are either a) technologically ignorant or b) the job search equivalent of spammers. I get so sick of it. Wat's worse, I will contact these people, tell that at length everything they could have know had they read my profile and then I get more responses in the future, and they're still not right!

Look, it's hard enough finding a job, with so many of them being shipped overseas so companies can continue to buy gilded toilets for the executive washroom. What I don't have time for is sifting through a lot of irrelevant crap -- I'd prefer to receivfe job inqueries where I at least have a ghost of a chance of getting interviewed.

I ran this one by the Slashdot editors but they took a pass, so it winds up here -- read and be afraid.

From the web site Talk to Action, a place for the open discussion of the right-wing Christian movement, comes disturbing news of the release of a video game called Left Behind: Eternal Forces, based on the successful "Left Behind" book series, about the world would be like after the Rapture.

To quote the article: This game immerses children in present-day New York City -- 500 square blocks, stretching from Wall Street to Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. The game rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian. The game also offers players the opportunity to switch sides and fight for the army of the AntiChrist, releasing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on conservative Christians and their panicked proselytes (who taste a lot like Christian).

Is this paramilitary mission simulator for children anything other than prejudice and bigotry using religion as an organizing tool to get people in a violent frame of mind? The dialogue includes people saying, "Praise the Lord," as they blow infidels away.

Scary, no? And here you thought your Evangelical brothers and sisters actually cared for your soul!

The best part of this, is that Jack Thompson, long-time foe of violent video games and fundamentalist Christian lawyer, publishes his books through Tyndale House, the people who are bringing you this game. In an LA Times interview, he says: "Because of the Christian context, somehow it's OK? It's not OK. The context is irrelevant. It's a mass-killing game." Apparently this is causing him to sever relations with the publisher.