Corporate sponsors dont want Darwin

The American Museum of Natural History is in some amount of pain- of the fiscal variety. Corpo sponsors are shying away from Darwin and Evolution coz they are scared of those Intelligent Design idiots!
Frikkin jackasses....

There's a panel in todays Denver Post that shows just how ludicrous this is getting...more poignant than funny in my opinion..... This is a strip called Rhymes with Orange.

Space out here with Hubble

The revamped Hubble site is pretty spiffy- allows you to surf to your hearts content and has a nifty game section too where you are quizzed on all things cosmology on 3 levels.....hubble.org on the other hand is a site that seems to have been bought by some dating company...
Back to Hubblesite tho'...lots of high res pics of deep space objects, articles and features make it really interesting to surf when you are overloaded with work- it's a nice, relaxing way to taake a quick break.

Pet Peeves on Microsoft

http://annoyances.org/
There's this lovely, very welcome, highly lauded, most beneficial and totally rad site ....
who'da thunk there would be more like me who seriously loathe Microsoft? Huh? huhh?
Just goes to show aye?!!!!
It's brilliant- nope, they arent paying me to sing their praises- it's the work they do...there are admittedly many many sites that help you with Microsoft related crap n bugs n all those irritations...this site tho' is soooo comprehensive it blows your mind!
Go check it out- and you are welcome to show me or yell about how many other sites I've missed- believe me, I havent!

PC World's Techlog - Arriving on Tuesday: Firefox's 1.5 Browser

Soooeeeattt- improving on perfection - how noice!

Explorer vs. Firefox

No doubts here- one is fraught with issues- this blog viewed on IE sucks- I can't see contributors, archives- hell the entire sidebar. Firefox on the other hand seems to have no such bloody formatting issues- why is Microsoft such a bleedin' pain?
Popup blockers, ease of use, no frikkin spy/mal/anyotherkind of ware...I've finally turned the IS and Desktop security in my company to switching to Firefox- those guys owe me!
The themes are sweet as are the extensions- it's a bit like Linux on steroids (I wonder if Linus was, indeed, on steriods when he cranked that one out in ... what? 6 weeks?)
I've been using this browser for more than 2 years but never had an issue- now that I'm forced to work again with IE , I realize just how spoilt I've become....Microbloodysoft is a pain in the nether regions!

The Dalai Lama on PBS

I happened to chance upon this interview last night...fuzzy as I was from sleep, I still managed to hear some of the best utterances on religion- EVER!
Upon being asked why and how he reconciles Buddhism with other differing religions and viewpoints, he quoted a scientist who once told him that while he is a believer in religion, he is not defined by it.
If only more people subscribed to it- here are some excerpts from another interview:
Q:Can we say that awareness of your emotions helps in dealing with them?
A: If you are able to recognize the moment when anger arises, you will be able to distinguish the part of your mind that is feeling anger. This will divide your mind in two parts-one part will be feeling anger while the other will be trying to observe. Therefore anger cannot dominate the entire mind. You are able to recognize that anger is harmful and maybe develop an antidote to it. View your anger objectively. Try to see the positive side of the anger-causing person or event. All these ideas are not Tibetan inventions, they are Nalanda inventions, your inventions! We Tibetans are the chelas (students) and India is the guru. But today, our guru is getting too materialistic, perhaps becoming too orthodox on one hand and too westernized on the other. I think it is time that Indians get Indianized!
Q: Do you see any common ground between Buddhism and Hinduism?
A: Historically, Buddha Sakyamuni was a Hindu. So I would like to call Hinduism and Buddhism twin brothers. Then there are common practices like samadhi and vipassana. The demarcation comes in the concept of shunyata. Whereas Hindus believe in atma, Buddhists believe in anatma. In practicing ahimsa, Jains are more thorough than either Buddhists or Hindus.
Q: You travel all over the world. Do you think that by and large, the world is moving towards being more positive?
A:I would like to quote Britain's Queen Mother on this. On her 96th birthday, I asked her the same question. She said that it was becoming better because when she was young, for instance, nobody was concerned about the environment, human rights or the right to self-determination. Today, these have become universal values. When Gandhiji implemented ahimsa, I think everyone took it as a sign of weakness. Now the entire world, except perhaps China, accepts nonviolence and practices it, like Nelson Mandela. India has not only given birth to great religious tradition like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism but has also sheltered many, like Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity. The religious tolerance we see around the world is also an Indian tradition.

Intelligent Design- Redux

WTF?
I've just been informed by my daughter that " human beings are God's robots"
Excuse bloody me? Upon further clarification I was asked why we have vestigeal organs- y'know, the appendix, the tonsils et al- 4th grade education not only teaches these kids GPS and GIS within maths- an entirely laudable concept methinks but also that humans and general earthly lifeforms are a creationist concept!Not blooody likely dudes-
AAAARRRRGGGHHH
I could kill these asses who are busy modifying my childs brain and intellectual quotient- I am definitely going to challenge this.
Hell, when the Natural History and Science Museum here allows dipshits to bring schoolgoing kids and then loudly berate ' Science" as an ongoing ' undocumented and therefore unreliable" concept , I have issues.
Colorado is a Red State with a capital that's Blue- having said that, I assure you this stupid inverted Creationism crap is permeating thru not only Middle but Mainstream America- there are tens of thousands of kids just as confused, just as wrongly led.
Watch this space- I am definitely going to come up with something that will force these ignorant idiots to revise their plans of rewriting Science and Evolution.
Morons!!!!!

Intelligent Design and the US of A

The fiercely split Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 on Tuesday to adopt new science standards that are the most far-reaching in the nation in challenging Darwin's theory of evolution in the classroom.
Are they bloody nuts? What's the matter with these morons in the Govt. as well as Boards of Ed across this country?
Personally,the very fact that idiots like this exist is proof that there is NO SUCH THING as Intelligent Design- only Evolution with its quest for success could come up with jackasses like this. If there's any design involved, it's not intelligent at all.
This is supposed to be a nation at the forefront of technology and science- not anymore tho'- can you imagine the coming generations? Fed as they will be on intelligent design, it's not too far a leap to imagine the state of Science 20 years hence. Think about it-R & D as we know it will cease- instead scientific exploration will be attempts to prove that Biblical events really did occur.
God is there- but to say that the complexity of the universe or life on this planet is proof that a Higher power exists is sheer blindness.
For a President to ratify it, an entire nation to vote on it and a political clime that insists on the integration of Church and State, one has to live in a country that's going stark raving bonkers. Check out the controversy here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/nyregion/07darwin.html
Where are the talking and thinking heads that made this country?
Do they exist or has God phased them out?

Microsoft scared of Google- or how the mighty are quaking!

http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173601151

nyahaa!
Who would have thought that Bill Gates would quake and rail at the domination of Google over Microsoft? I have many friends in the company who tell me that the 'disquiet' is indeed true- the corridors of power are quietly reverberating to rumbles of fear- maybe tis the winter of Microsoft's discontent after all.
It's fun to see- after almost 3 decades of virtual monopoly and price gouging and myriad other not so ethical stuff, a giant finds that the beanstalk has grown to mammoth proportions...yup, am mixing metaphors n literary allusions here but who cares?
Google's smart- and smart and very smart...their philosophy of keeping people, their ideas and their egos happy has resulted in some amazing tools and extensions onto what was nothing but a little search engine...hey! 'tis the (search) engine that could!!!
Sometimes I slay me with my cracklin wit..:)
MS Office products are unfortunately a necessary evil- wish it wasnt true but it is..personally , I prefer Apple products but when 3/4 of the worksphere uses Microsoft , what can ya do?
Google on the other hand never fails to amaze me with their farsightedness- have you compared the desktop search tool? Google's is far superior- MSN is not...that is the trouble with playing the catch up game- many little details fall by the wayside.
Same thing with MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger- why cant the 2 be integrated? You have XP on your pc- it comes with one form of Messenger- the moment you open it tho', you get a message asking you to upgrade- like a fool you do so- now you have 2 versions of the same thing- exclusive files on your hard drive- and then!- there's a new message from one of those pesky little MS bots- would you like MSN Messenger with its blah blah....Seriously, why do I want or need 3 versions of an IM application on my machine?
Try Google talk - the VOIP is beautiful- crystal clear- no stupid doodads cluttering it up- none of these Whiteboard, NetMeeting crap that you see on MSN Messenger- it's clean, functional and I love it- exactly like everything else touched by Google.
Go Google- and since I'm shamelessly plugging you, why oh why dontcha boost my page rank?! Think of it as a sweet thank you ....

Google Print- what a concept!

Aspiring authors, frustrated scholars, info junkies like me and kids can now rejoice- as a concept Google Print is brilliant- a step up from Google Scholar- to have Shakespeare on your desktop is a pretty cool thing...I'm looking forward to checking out the writings of Galileo, Da
Vinci, Ramanujan, and reading tomes on History/Geography/etc.
Just rereread Timothy Ferris' " Coming of Age in the Milky Way" on my desktop- sweeeetttt!!!!!
For authors it's invaluable as an advertising tool- how sweet is it to know that you have a presence, however minute on the web - from there to a jump in public perception is but a few thousand clicks per day....
To be sure there are kinks- digitization is an ongoing process, there's the Authors Guild suit against Google, bugs in the scans ...knowing Google tho' they'll get sorted out eventually.In the meanwhile lemme get back to searching for Lyall Watson- between G Print and my local library I shall die happy....
I loikes...take a bow Google...great job done.

Discovery of 2 more moons brightens Pluto supporters

So Pluto is finally getting out of the shadows....here's a question tho'...where in the name of all things galactic is Sedna?
10th planet they said...yet, me hears precious little about it.
Now that Pluto is the smallest planet to have moons larger than itself, thereby replicating certain well known terraforms and bipeds (as in certain bigwigs who are asses but surround themselves with bright minds...wink wink) maybe it's time to re-re-repair Hubble so that it can continue doing its yeoman service to cosmology.This whole business of finding new moons and planets is confusing to say the least- astrologers talk about the 13th sign of the zodiac- some fella called Ophiuchus, that is more invisible than anything the stars might dream up for us...read about it here: http://aquarianmysteries.com/ophiuchus2.html
Then there is Sedna, the 10th planet who previously had a name only an astronomer would love...the same Sedna tho' is now obscured by well, obscurity...
Looks like the universe is expanding- atleast our boundaries of the solar system are...
Here's a suggestion tho' for the 2 new moons- If Charon is the moon of Pluto, maybe the new guys could be named using the same mythological character from a different culture...how's that for making it all one?