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There was an article on Lifehack.org this morning that I found most humorous. “How to survive as the ‘Family Tech Guy’” I have often wondered how to do tech support for my family and my extended family and my hyper-extended college family. So it was welcome advice….

Read the original article here

Jack Bauer

James Bond

Jason Bourne

What is it about the people with “JB” for initials that causes us to eventually become the problem-fighters?

Sorry for the lack of updates. Too busy saving the world.

Bibiochaise and Bibiopouf come from Italian designers nobody & co eschew the reading light, notebook storage and pencil sharpener for straight-up shelves, storing “5 metres of books”. I’m not sure how they measure books, but it’s a cool, artful way to store your books, show off your collection, and always have them within arms reach. For other cool book-stashing chairs: the Bookinist

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You can’t just go around spouting things like… “the World is full of stupid people”, without proof.

I mean, we live in a technological age, right? Surrounded by libraries, television, and Internet we are inundated by more resources and information than has ever been at our grasp in any previous generation.

But are we smarter? More Scientifically savvy? Research says otherwise.

I was reading this fascinating study in the NYTimes today. Here are some excerpts from that article:

While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are “scientifically savvy and alert.”Most of the rest “don’t have a clue.” At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people’s inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.

American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

An obscure Ohio law, enacted in 1953, states that no person shall be arrested on the Fourth of July. The law also states that no one shall be arrested on a Sunday, or on their way to or from their designated place of worship. Although the Ohio Senate introduced a bill to repeal this law in 1998, it failed to pass and the law remains in effect to this day. According to the Ohio Revised Code section 2331.13, there are some exceptions to the rule. Treason, the commission of a felony, or breach of the peace still constitute grounds for arrest on these days.

Though there is no legal definition for breach of the peace in Ohio law, some government officials have compared this directly to the definition of disorderly conduct.

Section 2917.11 of the Ohio code defines disorderly conduct as recklessly causing the inconvenience, annoyance or alarm to another person by doing any of the following: Fighting, threatening, unreasonable noises or gestures, insulting, taunting, and a variety of other things a citizen is not allowed to do while intoxicated, first of which is drive a car.

Section 2331.13 of this 1953 law further states that whoever arrests a person in violation of the Sunday, Fourth of July, or church provisions shall pay the person arrested $100, to be recovered by civil action.

Man, if only I would have found out about this loophole earlier. “In local news, a Cincinnati man was found pillaging neighboring villages today singing his rendition of ‘Can’t Touch This’. For more on this breaking story, we take you live to…”

The Best License Plate Ever, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

Arrrr Matey…

This be the most feared of all vehicles.

Wait, so you’re telling me that the WWE Pro Wrestler Chris Benoit’s Wikipedia entry was edited anonymously to include details about the death of his wife Nancy 14 hours BEFORE the police found the bodies of Chris, his wife, and his young son?

Whaaaa…..?

And that the anonymous source, which just happened to come from Stamford, Connecticut (the same location as WWE Headquarters) already knew who the replacement wrestler would be? If you knew that a pro wrestler had died 14 hours before the cops did, would you be spending your time updating the web about it or getting on the phone? Why the delay? And why did someone near the WWE headquarters know about deaths happening in Fayetteville, Georgia before the locals?

And the deaths are being ruled homicide/suicide, but why didn’t the police respond to the multiple alerts given to them by Wikipedia when the discrepancy was first reported?

And what about the death of Sherri Martel, who died exactly one week before Chris? She was a former pro wrestler and manager. Linking the deaths of the Benoits with Martel is former pro wrestler Kevin Sullivan, a man once married to Nancy Benoit and who also was Martel’s friend and booker. Police confirmed that Martel did not die of natural causes, but “no foul play is suspected”.

This is one of the strangest, most bizarre series of deaths I’ve ever heard of. This doesn’t happen in real life, folks. When a close group of people just disappear off the map for unexplainable causes…. This story just doesn’t add up. Everyone talks about how much Chris loved his family, and especially his kids. Why would he strangle his own son? And what happened just a week before with Sherri?

Dim the lights, cue the music, because even real-life deaths are somehow scripted by today’s entertainment business

Sources:

1. Wikipedia’s reaction
2. FoxNew’s take
3. Sherri’s Death

Linux fans didn’t exactly get the publicity they were hoping for at the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, when the so-called “Linux car” they had sponsored proved to be the first in the race to crash, ultimately causing it to finish dead last. The car was the result of the Tux 500 campaign, which raised enough money to put the familiar Tux mascot front and center on Chastain Motorsports’ #77 car in the hope that it’d raise the profile of the OS. Faring considerably better in the publicity department was Joost, which sponsored the car that wound up finishing a respectable seventh. Maybe next time the Linux folks should work on making the whole car open source.

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I am now using for my theme…

Redoable 1.2

This theme is based on the brilliant K2 for Wordpress, and Tyler Longren’s Unwakeable. It has support for over a dozen awesome plugins built in, and a range of sidebar modules/widget should you wish to use them. Visit the Redoable homepage for further information.

Also employing some new plugins, such as:

• Ankur Kothari’s brilliant Gregarious Plugin for Redoable.
• Christine Davis’s brilliant Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin for Redoable.
• Widgets, Live Search, Lightbox(if I can make it work right), Digg icons if story is Dugg, and more!

I’m very happy with the new theme. I wasn’t actually a fan of the river theme I used before, but used it because everyone else liked it. This theme is more my style, and has double the buttons I’m actually displaying on this site right now. So customizable.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think. By the way… for those of you not familiar with Wordpress setups… All you gotta do is ask.

On the morning of August 22, 1986, a man hopped onto his bicycle and began riding from Wum, a village in Cameroon, towards the village of Nyos. On the way he noticed an antelope lying dead next to the road. Why let it go to waste? The man tied the antelope onto his bicycle and continued on. A short distance later he noticed two dead rats, and further on, a dead dog and other dead animals. He wondered if they’d all been killed by a lightening strike – when lightening hits the ground it’s not unusual for animals nearby to be killed by the shock.

Soon the man came upon a group of huts. He decided to see if anyone there knew what had happened to the animals. But as he walked up to the huts he was stunned to see dead bodies strewn everywhere. He didn’t find a single person still alive—everyone in the huts was dead. The man threw down his bicycle and ran all the way back to Wum…

Read more here