Mushrooms for landfills

Gizmodo has an interesting article about a mushroom that can exist soley on polyurethane, and live without oxygen (it's anaerobic). Might we finally be able to digest the indestructible plastic we've made?

Northern Lights in Finland

Glass igloos in Finland to watch the northern lights

More Common Sense

Thomas Paine has so many great quotes

Urban planners and developers inhabit fictional world

From Neal Stephenson's Anathem, evidence that the same crappy urban planners and designers that build suburban communities have infected the fictional world of Abre:

An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new markget devoted to selling T-shirts, and other objects with pictures of the old market.  Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

I'm guessing James Howard Kunstler, author of such great books such as Home From Nowhere and The Goegraphy of Nowhere would probably agree.

New Toy

New toy arrived last night from Adafruit:

 There will be much LED blinking over this long weekend!

Doomsday clock

Just submitted this to /.
Let's see if it gets approved


The recent front page posting "The Doomsday Clock Is Moved Closer To Midnight" got me wondering, Do we need a Doomsday Clock for the Internet?

With the US seriously considering the draconian intellectual property protection measures such as SOPA and PIPA, as well as the US pressuring Spain to pass similar legislation, threats to online freedom are serious and impending.

China has its 'Great Firewall' and Egypt (among others) has disabled cell phone service during turbulent times. Let's not forget that ACTA was negotiated in secret.

Things have gotten so bad that the German hacker space shackspace is considering launching its own satellites to combat such censorship. Even Australia has been in the news with internet blacklisting

The internet was mostly ignored in its early days by big corporations and some governments; it now seems under a microscope. So, do we need a doomsday clock? And if so, who is the time keeper?

Two sad stories on the political front

Techdirt is reporting the obvious: big media is ignoring the SOPA/PIPA controversy.  The implication is that the self interest is preventing coverage. The big media conglomerates have a strong self-interest in ensuring the government protects their intellectual property.  Individual freedoms be damned!

It's sad when outsiders point out how large segments of the population, and the candidates they are selecting to run for president, choose ignorance over science.  But that is just what the folks over at The Telegraph have done in this article about the Republican primary process.

Power Connectors

Useful post about the different power connectors you might run into in the IT (and other) world.

Sky Conditions

Great resource for forecasting sky conditions in many areas: Clear Sky aggregates charts from observatories around the world and creates charts predicting viewing conditions.

Has it come to this?

German hackerspace shack (Stutgart Hackerspace) has proposed putting its own satellites in space in order to maintain a free an open internet. 

Think it's crazy?  Spain just passed the Sinde Law, an onerous attempt to protect private IP rights holders.  Luckily, the tide seems to be turning on the US's similar effort, SOPA.

With western countries following China's lead on restricting the open internet, it's no wonder individuals will need to launch private satellites.

Fools, Fanatics, and the Wise