Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central fame is running for president, as reported on the #1 and #2 Colbert Report Fan Site as well as on Indecision2008.com. About time we get a president who can make you think about stuff merely by raising one eyebrow while glaring into the camera.

Dem. Nebraska State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha filed a lawsuit against "God", saying "He" is responsible for "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants.". "God", in a response, says that the court has no jurisdiction, and that "He" cannot be held responsible for the action of man, since "He" "...created man and woman with free will and next to the promise of immortal life, free will is ["His"] greatest gift [...]". The response filing had St. Michael the Archangel listed as a witness.

The Voyager 2 spacecraft (part of the ongoing Voyager Mission) today celebrates 30 years of faithful service, by far surpassing the 4 years that was its inteded lifespan. Voyager 2 is today 7.8 billion miles from the sun, placing it almost as far out as the heliopause. At the speed of light that's about 12 hours away, and it's clocking about 1 million miles per day. Voyager 1, launched a couple of weeks after Voyager 2, is at 9.7 billion miles from the sun the farthest man-made object. So when are we going to get around to sending up Voyager 6?

As of yet unverified rumors say that the Swedish Police Ministry is working with several Swedish ISP's to block the popular torrent search engine The Pirate Bay, claiming that the reson for blocking TPB is that they contribute to the proliferation of child pornography. You may remember that the site was shut down by the Police once before. Even if this is a false alarm, how long before other similar sites are shut down for similar alleged reasons? And, if it is true - how long before TPB is back online?

Canopus Research Inc. director William F. Zachmann seems to have a bone to pick with what he calls 'GWHHMS' (pronounced Gwhyms), or Geeks WHo Hate MicroSoft. He seems to categorize all those who do not bow before the Altar of Microsoft as various degrees of Gwhyms, ranging from the Strict Gwhym fundamentalist to the "When Convenient" Gwhym. Says Zachmann:

[...] let there be no doubt: Adoption of the Gwhym faith by an organization is virtually certain to make software more costly, to lower productivity and to delay development.

However, he also states:

Do not put any more money in Microsoft's coffers than you need to and make sure you get real value for however much you do give.

The second test launch of the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket took place today at 6:10 pm PST. After successfully having completed launch, first stage separation (2m 51s), second stage ignition (2m 55s), fairing separation (3m 16s), and reaching an altitude of 300 km, the vehicle was seen entering what is referred to as roll oscillations (4m 30s). Shortly thereafter, telemetry was lost. The second stage is assumed to have re-entered the atmosphere after about half an orbit or so. Says SpaceX founder, Elon Musk:

I think I'll characterize this as a very good day for SpaceX. We successfully reached space and really retired almost all the risk associated with the rocket. So I feel very good about where things are.

Videos of the launch are available for download.

For nearly four decades, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong has been living under the accusation of mis-stating one of of the most famous phrases in history: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Now, programmer Peter Shann Ford claims to have evidence (derived using the GoldWave software) that Armstrong did not botch the speech, but correctly included the alleged missing syllable. Armstrong, who found the evidence "persuasive", supports the findings.

I was watching Alien Resurrection the other night, and alas! I also remembered one of my big beefs with that movie. There's one scene where Wren, Gediman and Perez have just visited the queen, and we watch them through the glass from the queens' perspective. They keep on talking, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what they're saying.

C|Net news reports that "A month after accusing the Motion Picture Association of America of conspiring to commit data theft, the operators of a file search engine presented more details regarding the alleged relationship between the MPAA and a man who admits hacking the small company's network."

How much attention do you pay to how your spelling and grammar comes across while typing posts, blogs, emails and such? On a daily basis I see more and more bulletin board posts containing things like "u" instead of "you", misues of "their", "they're" and "there", as well as an occasional "OMG!!1 lolz!!1eleven". Granted, there are some pretty benign misspellings like "teh" instead of "the", while others are a bit more severe. Some (like double-capitalization) are caused by speed, while others (like "for all intensive purposes") are caused by sheer ignorance of the original phrase. A more disturbing trend may be the fact that corporate America seems to be heading the same direction - email from executives containing no capitalizations, or ending with "thx". The question I pose is - is this just regular language development and evolution, or is it a plague and a curse that should be eradicated at all cost? And no, I don't claim to be perfect. In fact, English isn't even my first language.