According to lots of environmental groups, the world's oceans are being cleaned out,

Let's say I have a big ego, a really, really, really BIG ego. I want people to know about me for thousands of years. I want to make a tomb for myself that will really stand out. What can I build? How about a duplicate of the Great Pyramids at Giza? Except, I live in Illinois, so instead I'm going to build the Great Pyramids of Mundelein.

It occurs to me every once in a while that, "Hey, it'd be great if someone invented something to solve the problem of...". The trouble is, I'm not collecting this list of ideas that we need to solve, so I'm going to do it now.

I had dreams when I was younger, of being involved in the space program. Of course, these extended to being an astronaut myself. Any kid could dream of that, it's glamourous, challenging, exciting, and has lots of 'gee whiz!' factors.

I asked a question of the IWILL people, makers of the DK8N motherboard ( see ars technica for a nice description of it in their 'god box' how-to section).

Wondering what maximum speed of processor it will handle, currently and in the future.

If I buy it today, I can plug in the Opteron 250. What about when there's a 252, 254, even 260, say 2 or 3 years down the line?

The divisiveness that characterizes the 2004 presidential race has challenged me to actually answer the question, What Makes a Good President?

I thought once of what I'd do if I had a billion dollars.

Of course, this is a lot of money, and I might be able to have some real fun with it as well as doing some good.

The idea occurred to me to find a local junior high 7th grade class and announce the following:

I read an article on the possiblity of a SARS pandemic (epidemic of very large proportion). It was short and only kind of interesting; I wanted it to be longer and cover subjects like I've been considering...

I just read the Slashdot post about the integrated window glass / PV module. The photovoltaic plus window glass is a cool idea, but it is expensive. The price per square foot is $45, which generates 3.8 watts. This is $11.85 per watt. To be fair, the price includes the window itself, but I can't imagine that windows are that pricey!

This was in reference to the eVoting software story developed in Australia.

I see the following as requirements for voting software system:

1. An easily auditable paper trail of physical paper ballots, one per voter.

2. An audit of the vote should include the ability for an unaided human eye to quickly and easily determine:
a. each selection chosen for each race (be it a person or yes/no for ballot initiatives);
b. the number of the machine that produced the ballot