My friends with a science bent might appreciate this link and the comments that follow it:
http://hujhax.livejournal.com/522794.html

A friend of ours from Sarah's moms group was featured in this article about VBAC:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090329/NEWS01/903290311

I'd be interested to hear what you all think, especially redmed... :)

This question is squarely aimed at my compsci-enabled friends, hujhax, jrtom and fdmts. That is, why the software bloat? This is old, but if you haven't seen it already, take a look:

http://hubpages.com/hub/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualCore_You_Wont_Believe_Who_Wins

Honestly this totally jives with my experience - other than games pretty much everything ran as fast on my Win3.1 POS in college as it does now on my shiny opteron 850. Why hasn't anyone written a blazingly fast, optimized, stripped down OS to take M$ head-on? More than that, why don't most pieces of software run lean, only adding on "features" when you demand them? I never touch >90% of the word menu items, why do they all need to be loaded into RAM? I suspect the answer is economics - that optimization is expensive, doesn't convince anyone to actually buy the software, and just delays it from getting out the door. Or if I wanted to be more cynical, it's being kept in reserve. That is, once computers stop getting faster year after year, the software companies will still be able to claim you need to upgrade to the "faster" version with the bloat cut out. Hopefully google is already working on this in the back rooms, although chrome seems to hog just as much memory as the other browsers...

So this is similar to a thread posted by ladirectora a while ago. That is, what web sites do you find yourself visiting most often? Which ones have really become part of your daily routine? To give you an example, my current rotation is below:

News: http://www.nytimes.com

Sports: http://sports.yahoo.com

Blogs: http://slashdot.org, the gawker groups (mostly http://jalopnik.com), and http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

WebComics: http://www.qwantz.com and http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/

Work-related: http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/

But I'd love to add some new ones - what are your personal favorites?

Finally, a clear answer to the age old question - what is the best way to merge? :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03traffic-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=automobiles

Diebold CEO personally installing software patches in two counties, both democratic strongholds...
http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Cybersecurity_expert_raises_allegations_of_2004_0717.html
(from /.)

For those of you who are into this sort of thing, I've posted my profile on Linkedin.

For those of you who aren't linked to him, hujhax has some interesting thoughts on the latest BSG episodes.

It was amusing counting how many I was familiar with... most of them. :)

I've been following the freakonomics blog that's now on the nytimes website. Recently they had a run-off for a six word motto for our country. The winner was:

"Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay"

(http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/and-the-new-six-word-motto-for-the-us-is/)


Next, with hujhax in mind I've been following a recurring special where an econ prof at columbia watches The Wire with a bunch of (mostly) ex gang members. I don't watch the show, but these are fascinating. Beware - spoilers galore:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/the-wire/

From the latest entry: "A gang leader named J.T. would always tell me that 'success' in the game was simple: if you woke up and you weren’t in jail and you were breathing, that was reason enough to celebrate."

I can get on board with that...

This isn't one of my major political issues, but I got a good laugh out of it:

http://gizmodo.com/356837/snuggly-the-security-bear-explains-warrantless-wiretapping-is-all-about-love-and-freedom

(From Mark Fiore to boingboing to gizmodo to me to you)

A very interesting read, from the NY times...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

"When America dominated NATO and led a rigid Pacific alliance system with Japan, South Korea, Australia and Thailand, it successfully managed the Herculean task of running the world from one side of it. Now its very presence in Eurasia is tenuous; it has been shunned by the E.U. and Turkey, is unwelcome in much of the Middle East and has lost much of East Asia’s confidence. “Accidental empire” or not, America must quickly accept and adjust to this reality. Maintaining America’s empire can only get costlier in both blood and treasure. It isn’t worth it, and history promises the effort will fail. It already has."

This is for panthera_onca in hopes it might be useful...
http://consumerist.com/consumer/how-to/13-step-method-for-buying-a-car-while-controlling-the-sale-and-the-price-296553.php

This one's for panthera_onca:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3662826019015263773

For anyone who might be interested, the fam and I are in DC until after xmas. If you want to call, my cell phone is (845) 430-6796.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hybrid/twike-ev-is-the-flintstones-wagon-painted-red-334370.php

This is why I think those end of oil survivalist nutjobs are a little off base. The point is, there's a lot that can be done to reduce our consumption, it's just a question as to when the economics force a culture shift. Right now I would never want to drive one of those things on the street because the safety and lack of schlepp-ability. However, put gas at $20 per gallon, get rid of the Hummers and Escalades, and I'd be right there.

Today saratchka and I had brunch with amnesiadust, fdmts and a couple other non-lj friends from high school. We had a great time, it was really good to catch up with everyone and just hang out for a while. Pictures were taken, toddlers were bounced, and schemes were hatched. Just the sort of thing we need to get us out of the house and keep the old connections going. :-)

From jrtom:
http://www.freerice.com/index.php

I know a bunch of people out there who should bookmark this. That's right, I'm looking at you, hujhax, amnesiadust, fdmts and pantera_onca. :)

Posted for panthera_onca:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wffwg7pA0t8

Also this is one of the other things I mentioned - looks a lot less convincing when I re-read it:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7915

I was talking to a co-worker today, and he had an interesting comment about my work style. Says he, "Judson - you're the kind of guy that if we ask you in a meeting how do we fix a problem, you'll know *exactly* how to solve all six of them." Made me think of panthera_onca's research.... :)