Via timbray

“This campaign is an extraordinary rendition of a public-private partnership,” observed BLF spokesperson Blank DeCoverly. “These two titans of telecom have a long and intimate relationship, dating back to the age of the telegraph. In these dark days of Terrorism, that should be a comfort to every law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide.”

Via 27B Stroke 6.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

Via Daring Fireball.

A blog dedicated to signs with letters in all-caps, except for the letter L.

Via Daring Fireball, Via Jonathan Rentzsch.

Alexander Campbell at Risk:

In a radical overturning of conventional wisdom, scientists in Georgia and California have found significant differences between commodity traders and chimpanzees. Chimps are, in fact, not very good at commodity trading.

Read on for the hilarious analysis.

Via Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed.

Bruce does his annual "state of the world" conversation with Jon Lebkowsky and others on The WELL.

Forget "Think of the Children!", try "Think of the Environment!"

Divorce is not just a family matter. It exacts a serious toll on the environment by boosting the energy and water consumption of those who used to live together, according to a study by two Michigan State University researchers.

The analysis found that cohabiting couples and families around the globe use resources more efficiently than households that have split up. The researchers calculated that in 2005, divorced American households used between 42 and 61 percent more resources per person than before they separated, spending 46 percent more per person on electricity and 56 percent more on water.

But be careful, as your partner may just reply "I've found someone new":

"There's strong evidence, which emerges clearly in this paper, that merging what otherwise would be separate households will reduce energy and other resource needs," Cavanagh wrote in an e-mail. "The best advice to those who are miserable together is not, however, to avoid divorce for the sake of the environment, but to find someone else as quickly as possible."

Via Jonathan Adler at Volokh.

Posted by Game|Life to Wired News.

With PlayStation dad Ken Kutaragi taking home the Lifetime Achievement Award at DICE this year, there’s one achievement of his that isn’t in the list of honors: His ability to come up with amazingly insane sound bites. Just a few:

(On PS3’s price) “It’s probably too cheap.”

(On PS3’s price) “We want consumers to think to themselves ‘I will work more hours to buy one.’”

(On PS2’s tech) “Same interface. Same concept. Starting from next year, you can jack into The Matrix!”

Authors sign bad contract for 10% of net rather than usual 15% of gross, get screwed by publisher selling at cost, and then pull out this wonder:

“It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

And might this have something to do with it?

“These guys created the conservative book market,” Mr. Mowbray said. “Before them, conservatives were having to fight, generally unsuccessfully, to get books published.”

Via Gruber.

Via Monoscope, best commentary at BoingBoing, via Vintage Ads’ stolen from FlamingText.

Via Bacon and Monty Phan at Wired News. See the news story for context if you don't get it.

Posted by Station Manager Ken to WFMU’s Beware of the Blog.

Not that William Shatner needs any help re-inventing himself musically or otherwise, but here’s a remix of him cruising along in his racecar at 160 MPH, and discussing it with Conan O’Brien

Why Do You Think You Are Nuts?

How To Properly Mic An Esophagus

That’s Reiser of ReiserFS. I could care less, except it prompted Auslander to point out that if the brains of ReiserFS is behind bars, you might get a situation where

a bunch of kernel committers [are] trying to get information about FS design out of hans while he serves his prison term. Something like a dorktabulous “Silence of The Lambs” comes to mind.

The Nietzsche Family Circus

Via Wired News.

Posted by Bruce Sterling to Beyond the Beyond.

Overheard at the "INTELLIGENT PRINTING" conference, Oct 2006

"We're in the business of putting goo on a substrate."

"We need a taxonomy for 'printing-that-is-no-longer-printing.'"

"Your mega-customer, the anchor tenant in the mall of your dreams"

"It's the business of killing trees and putting chemicals on them."

"Baseball cards that suck in energy and run e-ink animated displays"

"They're not hiding, they're just selective."

"We help companies put together arguments and stories to win that venture money."

"Those Austrian farm-boys didn't know that ink-plants were supposed to be messy, so that was one of the cleanest plants they ever had."

"Electronic cardboard blurs the line between printed objects and the virtual world."

"The supply chain is a network of atoms."

"Six trillion RFID tag is four orders of magnitude bigger than any electronic item ever made."

"You can't take on the Silicon Gorilla face to face."

"Fluidic Self-Assembly Machines aren't 'printing' -- they're the competition."

Read more at Beyond the Beyond.

Posted by Bill to Gibson Blog.

Treadmills!

Via Gibson Blog.