I know, it’s early for almost all of my usual readers, who tend to be in the United States. But I won’t be near a computer at midnight. Actually, I might be, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be sitting down to post something about it. The wife and I are running late for a party at a friend’s house. We were planning to leave ten minutes ago, and we are not walking out the door yet. But that’s okay.
Anyway, it’s been a good year. I’m not going to summarize now. Maybe tomorrow.
While I was at my father-in-law’s over Christmas, I got a chance to hang out with my new nephews (New to me – they’re the sons of my brother- and sister-in-law). The older one, not pictured here, I’d met before. Benjamin, above, I’d met before, but he’s still pretty young. This is the first time I’ve hung out with him since he could really communicate. Two days ago, he was asking to play golf. There’s a nerf golf set in the basement, and the kids like to go down and play, but Benjamin is a little small to do it himself. I happened to walk by the kitchen as people were cooking dinner and Benjamin was looking for an escort into the basement. My wife told him to ask me, since I wasn’t busy cooking. So he did, and he and I went downstairs. He carefully set up all the little plastic holes. I put the flags on the sticks for him, and he put them in the slots where they belong. Then he hit the ball around a bit (His short game needs work, but he’s got the “put the ball in the hole” part down). Then he looked at me and said, “All done.”
And then, to my amazement, he started putting everything away. He gathered the holes (I had to help him remove the flags) and put everything back in the box. I only prompted him for one or two pieces that he forgot, and only after he had started cleaning on his own. When everything was put away, he said, “Go see mommy.” And we went back upstairs.
Watching little kids like that has always fascinated me. I wonder about the thought process that goes on in his head. Sometimes I think they couldn’t possibly be comprehending what it seems like they are.
I guess it’s good practice for when I have my own kids.
Techdirt: Who’ll Pay For C3PO’s Social Security Benefits?
The paper admits we won’t be worrying about any of this for at least another twenty years, assuming robots can first hurdle the monumental task of self-sustained bipedal movement sans fatality.
This has been going around for the last few days – how will we handle things when we have artificial intelligences demanding citizenship? Frankly, I don’t think it will be that big a deal. Things are likely to be very different around here by the time robots are thinking enough to want citizenship, and this change will just be rolled into all the rest of them. Not that we don’t have to think about it – we’ll definitely have to really examine the changes and figure out a long-term solution. But it’s not like we’re suddenly going to have hundreds of thousands of thinking robots taking social security benefits all at once.
I posted this article rather than any other simply because of the “self-sustained bipedal movement sans fatality”, because I’m a dork.
I’m at work until lunchtime today, and then home to finish packing and head off to the in-laws’. It still sounds weird to talk about going to my father-in-law’s house. This is my first Christmas away from home, so it should be an experience. I’m a little sad to be away from my family, but this was inevitable at some point, and I’m excited to experience my wife’s family Christmas. It promises to be more hectic than mine.
That said, don’t expect much posting until I get back next week. I’ll have computer access there, but I don’t expect to use it very often. And without my stored passwords, I may forget how to login here to post anything. But I imagine most of you will be similarly busy with family and holiday celebrations and just not being at work.
So, happy holidays, whichever holidays it may be that you do or don’t celebrate.
Techdirt: China To Mandate Standardized Phone Chargers
Apparently South Korea did this last year and I didn’t notice (Sorry, South Korea), but now China is standardizing its phone chargers. It is absolutely ridiculous now, when each cell phone requires a different charger. True, people like Radio Shack sell chargers with interchangeable connectors for different phones, but I can’t imagine why these things aren’t standardized. Even within one manufacturer, they aren’t standard. So every time I get a new phone, I need a new charger. And probably two, so I have one in the car and one in the house. But, no more. Now all I have to do is buy Chinese phones and make sure I have USB available everywhere. I wonder how hard it would be to install USB ports in my car?
Yesterday, we finished our flag football season, finally. I had the pleasure of taking not one but two members of the team to the GW emergency room. In the first game, on the last play, they had 4th and goal, eight seconds to go. The play before, my wife had been bumped in the head, and she was a little ticked off. They snap the ball as she’s leaning over the line, ready to rip someone’s head off. She pressures the quarterback, he throws it up, we knock it down, and we have our second win of the season, 12-7, over the 4th seed in the playoffs. Our only other win was against a team playing short a player because they only had two girls, and you need three on the field at all times.
So, in our celebration, we didn’t notice at first that my wife was on the ground. Did any of you see Carson Palmer in the playoffs last year, when he got hit on the side of his leg and tore up his knee? Well, that’s what happened here. It doesn’t look like it will be that bad. She’s on the couch icing it right now, and we’ll go to an orthopedist later this week if it doesn’t get better.
She was sitting on the sideline, elevating her knee, as we played our second game (Rescheduled due to rainout), and it didn’t go so well. They went up 7-0 pretty quickly. On the ensuing kickoff, “Picnic” got run over by this gigantic meathead. You know the type of guy who comes to a game when it’s 27 degrees out in shorts, with the sleeves ripped off his shirt, with “MAXIMUS” or something written on his arms? Wearing a leather rugby helmet? Yeah, that kind of guy. The one who is way too intense for co-ed flag football. Anyway, he ran into Picnic on the kickoff, and Picnic came off the field. He had his hat pulled down to his brow, but there was a little blood on his forehead. I mentioned this to him, and he took his hat off, revealing an inch long cut about an inch above his eye.
So, I took Picnic and the wife to GW, where he got ten stitches, and they determined that my wife hadn’t broken her leg or torn anything major.
Then we went to NYC to visit some friends. We’d been planning this for months, and didn’t want to let a little injury get in the way. But we left hours later than we meant to, and hit the Holland Tunnel just as everyone going out in Manhattan on a Saturday night got there. I’ve never seen anything like it. The four lanes in the middle are EasyPass only at the toll, while the two on the right and two on the left are cash. I was in the second from the right, and the EasyPass lanes are moving much better than the cash lanes, obviously. So everyone wants to drive down the EasyPass lanes and then cut in in front of me. I played chicken with a big black Nissan Titan for about 50 yards before he finally backed off. It was extremely satisfying. I was less than six inches from him most of the time as he tried to nose his way into my lane and I wouldn’t let him. I hate people who do that. Traffic sucks, we all have to sit in it, and you’re making things worse. But I didn’t let anyone in. Ordinarily, if people are being polite, I’m happy to do it. But not when they’re sprinting to the end of the line and then trying to cut in at the front.
Anyway, it was an adventure. The weekend was fun. I got to see some of the holiday decorations in Times Square and all that. I love NYC. I didn’t think I would until I visited earlier this year. I’ve been three times now, and I’ll definitely go back, especially since we have a friend in Chelsea who happily gives up her apartment and stays with her boyfriend when we come visit.
Report: Vice president’s lesbian daughter pregnant – CNN.com
Mary Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are “ecstatic” about the baby, due in late spring . . .
I like how CNN had to make sure they mention in the headline that she’s a lesbian. That’s because everyone knows that lesbians have babies with two heads and shoot beams from their eyes that turn straight people to gay.
Ever since the dude from Preshrunk stopped updating regularly, there has been a t-shirt-shaped hole in my RSS reader. But no more. Ever since BoingBoing pointed me towards the list of blogs that I’m not cool enough to be reading already, I’ve added Tcritic to my daily reads. Awesome t-shirts, not too much commentary (You know how some of us bloggers get long-winded and rambling. I mean, not me, of course).
It’s actually quite a nice day out. It was a little cold this morning as we lost our flag football game, but it’s 47 and sunny now. Excuse me for a moment . . . Ahh, that’s better. Sorry, just had to take a quick break and drink a little Bell’s Oberon that we got from Whole Foods just half an hour ago. We were there trying to find key limes for a pie, but had to settle for regular limes. Hopefully our hosts this evening won’t notice. The wife will probably tell them.
Anyway, I took a little detour down the beer aisle, because I knew they had Bell’s, and wanted to see if they had anything new. Turns out they did, as they did not have Oberon last time. It’s out of season now, so this is maybe the dregs of the summer run, but, contrary to what Budweiser might tell you, beer doesn’t have to be bottled in the last week to taste good. And honestly, lukewarm skunked Oberon is better than freshly bottle Budweiser anyway.
So we picked up a little sushi, and a little Bell’s, and even a new flavor of Odwalla bar. It’s so new it’s not even on their website yet. It’s called Choco-Walla, and I haven’t tried one yet, but it’s sure to be delicious.
The cat is currently trying to drink my beer. I might have to lock her in a closet.
Carbon globules in meteorite may have seeded Earth life – space – 30 November 2006 – New Scientist Space via Kurzweil AI
Now, analysis of atomic isotopes shows that the globules could not have come from Earth and must have formed in very cold conditions, possibly before the Sun was born.
It’s crazy to think about little bits of carbon that have been hanging around inside a rock since before the sun was born. I mean, that’s, like, a long time ago, and stuff.
But to think that, maybe, some carbon got stuck inside this rock, where it was more or less protected, way back before the sun. Then that rock flew around space until it eventually crashed into earth, where the conditions were right for life to emerge. Eventually, that life became us, and koala bears, and fruit bats.
They aren’t sure that’s what happened, but it’s a good theory. Makes you feel really small and insignificant, doesn’t it?