Get Cynical

Heh.

Here is a very cool site with license plates from around the world. Pictured above are some from Japan.
(via MetaFilter)

The video game industry now spends millions of dollars developing complex, eye dazzling, 3D almost lifelike games. Video games are produced like movies are. So why does a simple flash game where all you do is swing a bat at a penguin become so addictive? I don’t know but my top score after about 300 tries is a Sammy Sosa like 322.8. Beat that!!

SavetheHubble.com:

I had been following the news about Hubble for awhile when I read in the NY Times (01/17/04) that service mission 4 (SM4) had been cancelled and the telescope would be (literally) left to its own (failing) devices. That sounded so astonishingly absurd that I felt compelled to do something and decided put up a website to congregate whatever efforts could be harvested to help support HST. I hope it will slowly grow up in importance and be a place for people to voice their concern and ideas to preserve this wonderful tool of knowledge. Thank you for your support!

Here is a great Hubble site filled with pictures and information. The Hubble has been and is still one of the greatest tools an astronomer has ever had. The next generation of orbiting scopes are years from being launched. To let the Hubble go without maintenance just seems stupid given how much data it has collected and continues to collect. It would be a shame to see it become a casualty to a bureaucracy.

UPDATE:
Looks like that NASA might be rethinking their decision.:

NASA’s chief agreed Thursday to review his decision to cancel the Hubble Space Telescope’s final servicing mission and let it deteriorate and go out of operation. The decision comes after the space agency was bombarded by pleas to save the craft.

From CNN:

The state’s school superintendent has proposed striking the word evolution from Georgia’s science curriculum and replacing it with the phrase “biological changes over time.

Cox repeatedly referred to evolution as a “buzzword” Thursday and said the ban was proposed, in part, to alleviate pressure on teachers in socially conservative areas where parents object to its teaching.

How do ignorant officials like Ms. Kathy Cox get elected anyway? Wait, I found her webpage:

As Superintendent of Schools, I will work with the Department of Education, the Board of Education, the Governor, the Legislature, and Georgia’s teachers, administrators, parents, and students to significantly improve our state’s educational system.

She might have to expound on the “improve” part.

You know those annoying discount cards that supermarkets and other stores now give out. They collect marketing information and in return you get a few cents off a product. This guy is trying something pretty interesting with it.
(via Bifurcated Rivets)

Once upon a time I was a fairly decent chess player. I haven’t really played recently which is a good thing. I mean I can’t even win a simple game of this stupid Connect 4 game. UGH!

Here is one of my favorites. Greedy Bastards:

As American Airlines teeters on the brink of bankruptcy in April, CEO Donald Carty goes to the unions, hat in hand, begging $1.8 billion in wage concessions from its 110,000 workers. Yet even as he’s preaching his stirring, we’re-all-in-this-together line, the company quietly files an SEC report outlining a luscious, salary-tripling bonus scheme and a bankruptcy-proof, $41 million pension plan for its top 45 executives. “It’s the equivalent of an obscene gesture from management,” says union leader John Ward. Salvaging the labor deal and likely staving off Chapter 11 in the process, AA’s board kills the bonuses, and Carty resigns in disgrace.
(via Boing Boing)

And I thought my desk was bad.

UPDATE:
A certain Serbian/Canadian friend who will remain nameless has brought it to my attention that the link is misleading and it should go to a picture of my messy desk. Ok fair enough. So here is my desk/work area.

(via The G Spot)

Snopes has some urban legends about the superbowl such as:

Claim:
Sewage
systems of major cities have broken due to the tremendous number of toilets being flushed simultaneously at halftime.