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So, what do you suppose it says about me that I happily read and enjoyed the parody, but I was never even tempted to click through to the original?

Sherpa has a cute little Torture a Spammer Game. The game play won’t hold up to more than 2 or 3 plays, but it’s OK the first time round. I particularly like that they are trying to use it to boost the reputation of opt-in mailers (or at least disassociate them from the more nefarious spammers). Oh, and it’s funny in a semi-ironic sort of way that they try to get you to sign up for their mail list.

Good Stuff - It’s almost psychic how these things come into my inbox right when I need to see them.

I think all of the buzz about the Danger Hiptop finally got me. I’ve been thinking about getting a James Bond type phone/PDA/toy for a while now. When I first saw all the tech pundits drooling over the Hiptop I didn’t get what the big deal was.

Now, I think I see and I think I want one. Looks like Oct. 1 is the big release date. I need to see what surfing the web on one is really like to be sure though. I hope CompUSA has one set up for demo purposes - it seems like all of their PDA/Phone display models aren’t functional which makes buying sorta tough.

I’d do anything to live forever. Well, almost anything:

Goat testicle transplants. Elixirs of jade. Inhaling the breath of virgins. Injecting crushed dog gonads. Drinking radioactive waters. These are just a few of the ways people have sought to lengthen their lives and renew their vitality.

I never really bought into the idea that immortality was waiting in children, or art, or good deeds, or dragging camels through the eyes of needles. For me, immortality was going to be found in a lab coat and a test tube.

I know I put an unreasonable amount of faith in the power of science to solve my problems. But, I don’t have much faith in anything else, and everybody has to believe in something.

So, while it may be little more than science fiction-based optimism, I always figured that if i could just make it to 50, then I could live forever. This century is going to do for bio-science what the last did for physics. There are magics untold waiting for us. I only hope I don’t die too soon to take advantage of them.

I have to admit to never having read or seen anything by Samuel Beckett. That is, I hadn’t seen anything until tonight. I’ve been watching Beckett on Film . I’m unsure of what to make of it.

Many of the characters seem to be traits or aspects of a person more than fully formed individuals, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of plot or drama. Everything is fractured and ambiguous. It’s interesting in a way, I suppose. Normally, I like ambiguity in my art. Normally, I would expect that I would like this type of thing a lot. I do in a way, but it’s more because I feel like I should than because I feel like I’ve really come away with anything. I find I just don’t have the attention span for it tonight. It reminds me of Kafka. I like Kafka a bunch. I’ve read everything we still have from him — some pieces several times (except his journal. I tried, but let’s be real here). But, I’m always a little uneasy about it. It’s like looking into somebody’s working notes and finding half-formed experiments. It’s like they aren’t really meant to be seen. I find it hard to believe Beckett’s shorter plays actually get staged, but clearly they must.

The Oracle of Google does a very good job answering multiple choice questions.

For instance I asked it who wrote Great Expectations. I tried to trip it up by including David Copperfield as one of the choices on the assumption that there would be nearly as many “Great Expectations” AND “David Copperfield” page matches as there are matches for “Great Expectations” AND “Charles Dickens”. But, it got it right.

I was distractedly clicking on my Amazon Gold Box offers, and I realized it wasn’t closing like it should have. Turns out my box now holds 15 items. I guess they’re trying to make up for all those days where I didn’t get a gold box at all.

I have just one question: What the heck are you supposed to do with This

It looks like some kind of bizarre S&M device to me.

I think I know some programmers Like This. Actually, I’m sure that I do. Funny, funny stuff. Link courtesy of Dan Hersam.

This is pretty cool. A 3D map of satellites orbiting the earth. You can zoom in or out, fly around the planet. It’s completely cool. It requires Java.

[more space conversation here]