Despite input from my sister and Emily, my Yahoo Personal has been pitiful in terms of responses (2 to date). With all due respect to the ladies, maybe I should have brought in a professional

Primate Programming Inc. will contract out apes for software projects at far lower rates than humans. It’s a great solution, but not perfect.

It suggests companies provide “a leafy, comfortable workspace” and warns that “hominids (great apes) will not share source code and become very territorial when programming.”

PPI baboons can get rowdy after software testing, the Web site suggests, while its chimps are experts at debugging techniques and bill at a higher rate.

Maybe I could get one to do my job, stay at home, and pocket the difference.

via Salon

Having gone to all that trouble to get Iraq’s oil, American politicians now want to see that it gets used. To that end, they plan to slash the federal funding for projects that encourage cycling, pedestrianisation and public transport. The $600million couldn’t be afforded because, as the press secretary for an Oklahoma representative claimed, “It’s more important to provide the basic funding for roads, before you provide money for enhancements whenever you’re facing a shortfall,”. Basic funding, in this case is $4.8billion more than was in Bush’s budget and a $518million boon for Oklahoma.

I know this doesn’t affect me directly, but it’s a stupid decision that’s so short sighted I want to slap a few senators.

Salon article, use the day pass option.

Having missed the Ani DiFranco concert last week because John forgot what day of the week it was, we’ll just have to settle for this interview on Salon (You’ll have to go through an ad to get a one day pass.)

That’s the number of heterosexual females between 23 and 38 I would have to date to meet my soulmate, according to the Soulmate Calculator. They’d all have to be American as well, because the probability is based upon matching my preferences against the US census. The calculator is on the Solvedating site, where they are trying to create a new form of online matchmaking. Salon aren’t so sure about the figures, but then they were all so picky they’d have to meet ten times more people than me.

Simply as bizarre as it sounds.

I just found this on salon.com. Apparently he “allegedly sneaked up behind a woman last year at a Bellingham supermarket and licked her feet and toes” How do you do that? How do you go from standing around looking inconspicuous to having your face at a level to lick someone feet, without the person noticing and without them simply walking away?

The world gets stranger every day.

Life in America under the Patriot Act. Read and get angry, or scared.

Just sort of gels with my recent mood.

Sinfest is one of my daily reads, along with Sluggy Freelance, Dilbert (Scott Adams is secretly spying on Brian’s workplace) and Doonesbury, with The K Chronicles every Wednesday.

Almost everything I found in weblogs.com’s recently updated list was a rightwinger gloating about killing Iraqis or complaining about people exercising their rights to free speech, so it was good to find a long and thoughtful piece on Mike Plaisted’s Anti-War blog about the invasion as a threat to other countries and Democrats’ cowardice in speaking up.

It would seem that, contrary to some reports, Salon is coming up for air and not drowning after all. Anything that pisses off rightwingers and gives us articles about Captain Kirk’s package and the general ‘pointy’-ness of original Trek deserves to live on as far as I’m concerned.

Two different tales of cool technologies having problems in teh wider world. The Segway scooter is going to have trouble being adopted because many cities won’t allow it on the pavement. There are also worries that Americans are quite fat enough without another excuse to stop walking. Meanwhile Java, currently the world’s most popular programming language, got a boost when a judge ruled that the Java Virtual Machine should be included in all Microsoft’s .Net enabled products. But have Microsoft’s efforts to scupper the rival language (including, ingeniously, the creation of their own value added piece of Java code which only worked under Windows) scuppered the upstart’s chances in the long run?

Salon- The decline and fall of the American empire An interview with the author of this book, which suggests that a vitalised European Union, (once British politicians get a clue and admit that we’re fully a part of Europe) would pose a greater threat to US dominance than any terrorism short of a nuclear attack.

You can’t go wrong with the Abbott & Costello Who’s on First routine, rejigged here for the new General Secretary of China.