Watch out for the grey goo

The president of the World Transhumanist Association (what a name!) has a blog entry about the inability to manage various types of hackers in virtual reality worlds such as Second Life. Particularly strange is the saga of the "grey goo," an attack that resulted in items inside the game replicating so fast that they turn into an amorphous blob.

George Dvorsky, the blogger, makes the claim that "the digital life" will simply be so complex and specialized that human efforts to prevent hackers will be impossible:

Moreover, an uploaded society would conceivably face more problems in digital substrate than in the cozy confines of the analog world. We can't 'hack' into the code of the Universe (at least not yet). As a consequence our existence is still very much constrained by the laws of physics, access to resources, and the limits of our information systems (i.e. our accumulated body of knowledge). That said, we do a fairly decent job of soft-hacking into the Universe, which is very much the modus operandi of an intelligent species.

But the soft-hacking that we're doing is becoming more and more sophisticated — something that could lead to over-complexity. We're creating far too many dangerous variables that require constant monitoring and control.

As for the digital realm, it is already complex by default. But like the analog world it too has constraints, though slightly different. Virtual worlds have to deal with limitations imposed by computational power, algorithmic technology and access to information. Aside from that, the sky's the limit. Such computational diversity could lead to complexity an order of magnitude above analog life.

Hackers and criminals would seek to infiltrate and exploit everything under the virtual sun, including conscious minds. Conscious agents would have to compete with automatons. Bots of unimaginable ilk would run rampant. There would be problems of swarming, self-replication and distributed attacks. And even more disturbingly, nothing would be truly secure and the very authenticity of existence would constantly be put into question.

I tend to think he's being a bit too cynical here. Humanity's thousands of years of existence here on Earth (the analog world, natch) have mostly been defined by search for ways to bring order and control to our world. While here in regular life, we can't hack the laws of physics, even in our most orderly and modern societies we're a pretty anarchic and uncontrollable species. Still, we manage, in most cases, to shape a reality that's sustainable. As a tribe, we don't simply run off a cliff like the buffalo.

These virtual reality worlds will find ways of reaching equilibrium that will quickly put a stop to these kinds of attacks. Much in the way that open source software developers fix bugs when they arise and millions of amateur Wikipedia editors fix factual errors, there's no reason to think that for every virtual reality terrorist, there are 100 virtual cops willing to police places like Second Life.

Not all fans are created equal

As a resident of New England, I dread the start of each spring. It's not because of the lovely weather that's sure to arrive shortly, but because it's the start of the worst season of all: baseball season.

I know many genial, intelligent people who happen to be baseball fans. They tend to be swell people. Nevertheless, I can't imagine that there's a mass spectator sport with less ambience in the stadium. Basically, if you like stuffing your face with hot dogs and Budweiser for four hours (yes, it can take that long to play a baseball game), this is your sport.

So I couldn't help but enjoy seeing this photo taken from an Arizona Diamondbacks (baseball) game last season (from Deadspin). It's pretty much the epitome of the dorky, middle-class American sports fan (note the grown man on the right who wears his own baseball glove in the stands):

Now compare that picture with this one taken from the French soccer club OGC Nice's stadium. Which fan base looks more passionate and intense to you?


To give you a bit more context, here are some more shots of baseball fans:

Yankees fans (Are they watching the game? Are they even awake?)
Washington Nationals fans (Notice the complete lack of flags, banners, or even anyone standing)
An unidentified big league ballpark (Crowd is extremely relaxed. With convenient cup holders!)
Baseball "fans" actually knitting inside the stadium (The game is less exciting than knitting?)
Another die-hard fan playing Tetris during the game (Tetris is pretty great, though)

And here are some shots of soccer/football/futbol/calcio fans:

Bayern Munich fans (Could they be more focused on the action?)
Inter Milan fans (Is there a single fan sitting down?)
Polish football fans (This is as close to hell for visiting teams as you can get.)
Argentine fans get a little crazy (A real fan is willing to climb a 20-foot fence for his team.)
Olympique Marseille fans (The best possible use of highway flares.)

Why intelligent design isn't so intelligent

Scientific American has a highly readable article today that serves to rebut the claims of creationists, intelligent design advocates and other "skeptics" who question the primacy of evolutionary theory. I particularly like the way it's organized by the types of arguments raised by the anti-evolution set. There's also a nice little roundup of just why intelligent design is such a specious argument against the overwhelming scientific evidence of evolution:

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

The ultimate mixing bowls

Here are some great photos of massive highway interchanges.

Teacups that look better with age

I don't know whether or not this will ever be practical, but an artist has developed tea cups that form patterns as they age.

The interior surface of the cup is treated so as to stain more in predetermined places. The more the cups are used, the more the pattern is revealed. Over time they will build up an individual pattern dependent on the users personal way of drinking tea.

You know it's bad when even Southerners are opposed to the war

One of the funniest comedic bits I've heard recently is by a comic named Bill Burr (who you might recognize from his appearances on "The Chappelle Show"). He jokes about how Southerners can basically be relied upon to support pretty much any war -- they always want to fight, blow things up and shoot people.

That's why the lack of support for the Iraq war in Virginia and North Carolina is so interesting:

Sixty-four percent of respondents disapproved or strongly disapproved of Bush's handling of the Iraq war - up from 57 percent last year - while 31 percent approved or strongly approved of it, a decrease from 38.5 percent last year.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the story was regarding the opinions of military people (there are more of them in the south than any other part of the country) on the war:

Respondents who were military veterans, retirees, reservists and active duty were vastly more in favor of U.S. involvement in Iraq - but surprisingly, Bacot said, only if Bush's name was not raised.

Almost 61 percent of military respondents said the United States should be in Iraq now, but 53 percent strongly disapproved or disapproved of Bush's handling of the war, compared to 42 percent who approved or strongly approved.

They were nearly split on support for Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq, with 49 percent in favor and 45 percent opposed. Non-military respondents were 35 percent in favor and 61 percent opposed.

"This has held just about every time we asked it. When Bush is in the equation, (military respondents) don't like it. But when you take Bush out, they're very supportive of their brothers in arms," Bacot said. "The issue's with the commander in chief, not with the war itself."

I think this illustrates why the opinions of military personnel should absolutely not be allowed to steer foreign policy. Not only is it undemocratic and reminiscent of third-world dictatorships -- where the army is essentially the policy apparatus -- but I'm no so sure the remaining support for the war among the military is all that genuine. I wonder how many of those soldiers are expressing solidarity with their fellow troops rather than looking at the long term costs and benefits of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

How Sony blew it on the Playstation 3

While the Nintendo Wii has been a resounding success in the gaming console market, Sony's Playstation 3 hasn't fared so well. Here's a nice little editorial blaming the machine's lackluster sales and high cost on Sony's decision to use synergy to turn the console into a Swiss army knife for gamers. Not surprisingly, Ars Technica thinks it was unsuccessful.

A real woman is hard to find

Check out this high-res picture of an actress. It's not a photo. The image is entirely computer-generated.

Manifest Destiny is alive... and not so well

The New York Review of Books has one of the best articles on American foreign policy I've ever read. William Pfaff deconstructs America's interventionist policies and turns them into a kind of neo-Manifest Destiny. It's a brilliant essay that explains many of the country's missteps, particularly since the Cold War and including the war in Iraq.

Pfaff argues that we inherited a fondness for a kind of messianic belief in our own superiority -- a god-given mission for America to save the world. But that has resulted in us being embroiled in wars and occupations that never should have happened:

Today's major democracies are all advanced societies; in some ways, in social standards, distribution of wealth and opportunity, the provision of universal health care and free or affordable education, and certain technologies and industries, many are more advanced than the United States. They are willing to cooperate with the United States in matters of common concern, as they have for a half-century, but not to subordinate themselves to Washington. They are aware that this administration's effort to establish a system of Central Asian and Middle Eastern client states (the "Greater Middle East") has already produced two ruinous and continuing wars, and worsened situations in Lebanon, Gaza and the Palestinian territories, and Israel.

Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins recently asked why, if other nations really objected to an American effort to establish a new international hegemony, there has been no effort to build a military coalition to oppose it. He describes the United States as already dominating the world, much as the elephant (in his genial comparison) dominates the African savanna: the calm herbivorous goliath that keeps the carnivores at a respectful distance, while supporting "a wide variety of other creatures—smaller mammals, birds and insects—by generating nourishment for them as it goes about the business of feeding itself."^[6] Everyone knows the United States is not a predatory power, he says, so everyone profits from the stability the elephant provides, at American taxpayer expense.

Elephants are also known to trample people, uproot crops and gardens, topple trees and houses, and occasionally go mad (hence, "rogue nations"). Americans, moreover, are carnivores. The administration has attacked the existing international order by renouncing inconvenient treaties and conventions and reintroducing torture, and arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment, into advanced civilization. Where is the stability that Mandelbaum tells us has been provided by this American military and political deployment? The doomed and destructive war of choice in Iraq, continuing and mounting disorder in Afghanistan following another such war, war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as between Hamas and Fatah, accompanied by continuing crisis in Palestine, with rumbles of new American wars of choice with Iran or Syria, and the emergence of a nuclear North Korea —all demonstrate deep international instability.

George Bush compares himself to George Washington

Slate's Fred Kaplan has a nice little story today picking apart four recent Bush quotes. I particularly enjoyed the reaction to Bush's contention that he is a latter-day Washington and Iraq is his Revolutionary War:

"George Washington's long struggle for freedom has also inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life."

On Feb. 19, to celebrate George Washington's birthday, President Bush gave a speech at Mount Vernon comparing himself to the father of our country and the Iraqi war to the Revolutionary War.

In the past, George W. Bush has likened himself to Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.

Read more.

Not such a good career choice

It might not sound that bad, but selling magazine subscriptions is among the worst jobs in the nation for young people. Today's NY Times has a devastating expose (exposes must always be described as "devastating," btw) about mistreatment of young magazine "crews" that travel around and sell door-to-door.

Some of the stuff in the Times story is incredibly disturbing: beatings, refusing to let crew members quit, drug use, rape, keeping workers in debt to their employers. It's not unlike the situation that immigrant farm workers, especially the tomato pickers in Florida, have found themselves in. The sub-contractors that sell the subscriptions typically find kids who either dropped out or just graduated from high school. They come from poor, rural areas usually and are easily wooed by promises of paychecks that won't ever come.

I guess the lesson from this is: Don't ever buy a magazine subscription from a third party seller. In fact, experts recommend that anyone approached by a seller offer to let them in and make a phone call home or ask them if they need help because the companies that hire them won't let them leave.

The most annoying Vista-isms so far

Here's the first (that I've seen, at least) of articles listing some of the numerous gripes about Windows Vista. The bottom line, really, is that unless you're buying a medium to high-end PC today, it's not worth upgrading from XP. And be glad you're not one of the poor schlubs who bought a $500 nVidia video card and can't get the proper Vista drivers for it.

Plans leaked for Iran bombing

The BBC is reporting that the U.S.'s contingency plans for bombing Iran have been leaked. The government says they will begin bombing the country if evidence of nuclear weapons development is found or if large numbers of U.S. troops are killed by Iranians in Iraq.
One line from the story jumped out at me:

Authorities insist there is no cause for alarm but ordinary people are now becoming a little worried, she says.

It makes me wonder if this "leak" isn't more intended to foment civil unrest in Iran than scare the regime. The bottom line is that U.S. Army is so overwhelmed with the job of playing referee to a sectarian civil war in Iraq that the possibility of a ground invasion of Iran - a far bigger country - is next to impossible.

Juan Cole says the fallacy that bombing alone will work has been tried before... and failed miserably:

(T)he Pentagon is thinking big. Not just surgical strikes on the civilian nuclear energy program, but hitting virtually everything of importance in the country. The Air Force kept telling us they could bomb Vietnam into submission. They couldn't. Then it was shock and awe in Iraq. Didn't work. Just remember, it is always the Army that has to come in and clean up the mess.

The completely walled-off beer garden

A group of state attorneys general (i know it sounds funny) have sent a letter to Anheuser-Busch claiming that the brewer's new online channel Bud.tv isn't doing enough to keep the kiddies from, uh, streaming Budweiser-related content. (Notice the debate is no longer about drinking ages and the possiblity of shady adults buying cases of Miller for teen-agers hiding in the parking lot.)

My favorite line from the letter is "We fail to see how your use of age verification on the Bud.tv site is a genuine attempt to keep youth from accessing the site's content."

In Bud's defense, though, they've put up all kinds of hoops for users to jump through in order to prove their age and the company claims it has probably turned away "tens of thousands" of its legitimate customers because of its age-verification system. Do these prosecutors not realize how hard it is to play Internet cop?

Litterbug sentenced to two years in prison

The wife of a soldier serving his third tour of duty in Iraq has been given two years in prison for the egregious offense of throwing a McDonald's cup at another car during a road rage incident. Even the "victims" (as much as someone can be called a victim of such a petty thing) said they were shocked by the conviction. The pathetic public defender and prosecutor were, shockingly, not available for comment when the reporter called them for comment.

Look out for MetaFilter

I've been checking out a site called MetaFilter recently, after hearing about it on a podcast. It's a kind of "community weblog" that lets pretty much anyone make posts to it. A lot of the posts are just random junk from the world wide interwebs (or whatever we're calling it now), but it also has a way of bringing up topics that you wouldn't have found otherwise.

I particularly like the feature called Ask MeFi, where user questions get answered by the peanut gallery (a pretty intelligent and informed peanut gallery in this case). Here's a great post by a non-Mormon who's considering moving to Salt Lake City.

Finally, a tank you can trust

I love the amazing breadth of products that Amazon.com sells on its site. Just today I stumbled across the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. The list price is just under $20,000 and the tank comes with a top-quality sound system! I particularly enjoyed reading some of the customer reviews:

This tank R-O-C-K-S! Literally- the 400-watt sound-system keeps me rockin like a crazy man as I'm dishing out justice commando style. Wow. I just can't say enough. And the kids love it, too- imagine the look of terror in the eyes of the enemy as I'm dropping off my kid's team to their soccer game. Shock and awe, my friends, SHOCK AND AWE!

and

Our last two JL421s have been total lemons. Since I'm a blonde and also use a cell phone when driving, my husband said, "Hey! Safety at last!"
He was right! I have mowed down five Hondas, four Toyotas, two Neons (what a piece of [...] THAT is) and yesterday I bagged an SUV. And me? NOT A SCRATCH, baby.

And it wasn't even an iPhone

Some people like their cell phones. Other people love their cell phones a little too much. Apparently a Polish student visiting Niagara Falls nearly took a fatal swim into the rocky cascades while trying to retrieve the phone he had dropped.

Have another Triscuit

Over at a food blog called Ruhlman.com, Anthony Bourdain gives his opinion on the current state of the Food Network. (By the way, I really, really hate it when people chuckle and say "tell us what you really think" after someone gives their frank opinion. This phrase really bugs me.) Anyway, he mainly tears into the suits at the food channel for what he calls a "cynical" attempt to dumb down the programming. Bourdain is especially funny when he takes a few jabs at Rachael Ray (yes, I know, an easy target):

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”

A hybrid that isn't so, uh, girly

I've heard hybrids described as "girly" and weak way too many times, but the facts don't necessarily back that up. The Toyota Prius, for instance, is no less sporty than the cars that most of us drive! Despite the image of big trucks rumbling through the mountains, most Americans drive small sedans that are no more macho than the Prius, which is actually quite sporty looking itself.

Now check out the Toyota FT-HS hybrid sportscar. It was unveiled at the 2007 North American International Auto Show and is expected to be priced in the very reasonable mid-$30,000 range:

For a while there I was scared hybrids and "green" cars would be weak, girly little cars with slow engines. But what I'm seeing from Toyota has made me a happy man. Imagine having a car that is much faster than a Porsche, Mercedes AMG and any M series car from BMW and still cost 1/4 the price! Well Toyota plans to sell the FT-HS somewhere in the mid 30k range which, if correct, has me sold as I type this down. The goal of the rear wheel drive(thank god!) hybrid powertrain is to produce 400 horsepower and achieve 0-60 mph in around 4 seconds. This is accomplished with by combining a 3.5-liter V6 and an electric motor in a similar manner to the Lexus GS450h.

When your bookie has osteoparosis

A blog called West Side Slant brings us the latest in news from the senior citizen community:

Acting on an anonymous tip, armed agents raided the Lake Elsinore Elks Lodge and found an envelope containing $50.00, which was to be paid to the winner of an impromptu Monday Night Football pool. Margaret Hamblin, a 73 year-old great-grandmother, and 39 year-old volunteer waitress Cari Gardner both pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of operating an illegal gambling operation.

I think the rule of thumb for judges should be something like, if your big gambling kingpin is 73-YEARS-OLD she's not much of a danger to society.

Garish sportswear proves popular in rural Africa

The NY Times has a story about what the NFL does with the t-shirts and hats that commemorate Super Bowl losers. Instead of selling them as ironic collectibles, they donate them to a charity that gives them to rural villagers in Africa.

“Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water,” said Jeff Fields, a corporate relations officer for World Vision. “They wouldn’t know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t even know about football.”

The gear is flown, along with school and medical supplies, into a major city. It is then driven to one of the villages where World Vision staff members work. They distribute the shirts and caps at a community center, about two per family.

I guess it's a nice gesture donating clothes, but you have to wonder how it's good that people are being exposed to this. It's not like these people are raving football fans. It's really one of the more bizarre forms that globalization takes on, but I'm not really so sure that exposing people to America's corporate entertainment is a good thing. Isn't there some local way for them to clothe themselves? Maybe a hat really just keeps the sun off your head, but it seems vaguely artificial and crass seeing African villagers walking around in Chicago Bears t-shirts.

Floors come with dirt already tracked in

The new craze in eco-friendly home building is to install earthen floors. Apparently they're made of a type of hardened clay. They're supposedly extremely good at keeping heat in, but are susceptible to cracking. But then, if it does crack, I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to just lay another layer of dried mud down on top.

Pantyhose now come in "men opague"

Finally, the problems associated with stand-up urinals has been solved for transvestites. A french hosiery manufacturer is now marketing a line of pantyhose for men. I'm sure they make great valentine's gifts.

American exceptionalism strikes again

The past few weeks seem like they've been high season for the "we're just different... and better" segment of the American journalism and pundit class. You know the attitude: the one that makes us think every worldwide phenomenon is confined inside the U.S.'s borders, or it's cousin: the belief that every popular American phenomenon must automatically be exalted by those dirt-farming foreigners.
Recently Peter King, an NFL columnist for Sports Illustrated, explained how great the weekend's games were by pointing to them as the reason the NFL is the world's most popular sport. Yet amazingly, the Super Bowl's TV ratings are only a fraction of estimated worldwide ratings for the World Cup Final. Is it possible that America's Big Day isn't really that big a deal outside our country? Maybe.
Then today an interesting story came over the AP wires about remains of a prehistoric human found in Kenya. According to the story, the skeleton is at the center of a debate in Kenya over the theory of evolution:

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Deep in the dusty, unlit corridors of Kenya's national museum, locked away in a plain-looking cabinet, is one of mankind's oldest relics: Turkana Boy, as he is known, the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found.

But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm -- one pitting scientists against Kenya's powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism -- once largely confined to the United States -- has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind.

Does the AP really think that the debate over evolution is "largely confined to the United States"? I know we're the lone superpower, but maybe someone should tell the AP that other cultures do debate the big questions, too. After all, Darwin himself wasn't from Cleveland.

Thai woman takes 25-year-long bus ride

Here's a story of a woman from a rural area of southern Thailand who boarded a bus 25 years ago for a shopping trip. Unfortunately the bus was going to Malaysia. So she apparently survived by begging in the streets before a group of students recognized her Thai dialect and were able to return her home.

I once heard a similar story that may possibly be apocryphal, but here it is anyway: According to a friend named Laura who I happened to know while I was a student in France, her father was much older than most parents of kids our age. He was in his 60s or 70s when she was in college. According to Laura, her father had grown up in Baltimore and that one night when he was 19 or so he and his friends went out drinking and ended getting completely soused. Laura's father was the first to pass out, so in the wee hours of the night his friends decided to play a prank on him by stowing him away on a ship docked in the harbor.

Apparently the ship unwittingly sailed away with him onboard and he was taken to France (I think this was in the late 40s or early 50s). Instead of coming back to Baltimore, though, he stayed in Europe and worked odd jobs in France and Italy for the next 30 years without ever contacting his family. She said he eventually came back to the states and married her mother, but that he essentially fell off the face of the earth that night in Baltimore. Even if it's not completely true, it's such a good yarn that it's interesting when other stories like that of the Thai woman surface.

read more | digg story

Sticker Shock

Forget gold toilet seats and $500 hammers, today's Pentagon makes the Reagan-era military look like old ladies on social security. President Bush's budget basically asks for a completely insane $739 billion. Fred Kaplan in Slate does a little budget bust-out to give us an idea of where the money is going. Particularly depressing news of the day: The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have now cost the nation $661.9 billion. Kaplan puts the defense budget request in a bit of historical perpective:

Measured in real terms (that is, adjusted for inflation), that's about one-third higher than the previous record for U.S. military spending, set in 1952, when more than 30,000 American soldiers were dying in the Korean War and the Pentagon was embarking on its massive Cold War rearmament drive.

The Great Not-Necessarily-American Wiki Novel

Taking a page out of the Wikipedia playbook, Penguin Publishing has set up its very own wiki novel called, fittingly, "A Million Penguins." The idea is to allow anyone and everyone a chance to contribute to a novel. The project just started last week, but it appears to already be up to chapter 15 -- although they're short chapters thus far into it. So far, characters include Ismail the Unicorn, Linus Torvalds, Mr. Pitor Pibb, Bill Gates and someone called Mr. Bombastic. Stay tuned. This could either end up being very cool or a complete disaster... which probably makes it a worthwhile experiment.

Possbily a step down from your mom's basement

In London's Chelsea neighborhood (yes, that Chelsea), $340,000 apparently won't get you much real estate. An 11' by 7' janitor's closet has gone on sale for exactly that amount. Even the apartment's broker called it "extremely depressing." (Could you ever imagine an American realtor saying that? They'd call it a "fixer-upper" at the very least.)

"We have to go in with a torch because the lights do not work and it is full of rubble," Jason North, associate director at Lane Fox.

Nevertheless, the flat is expected to attract buyers due to its close proximity to the fashionable bars, shops and leisure facilities of Kensington and Chelsea.

Get The Kids Hooked Early

Here's the kind of innovative ideas we should be using in the U.S.: About 175,000 French high school students (in the Paris region) will be given USB sticks containing a suite of open source software. The idea is to improve computer access for students:

The sticks will give the students, aged 15 and 16, the freedom to access their e-mail, browser bookmarks and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend's house or in an Internet café -- but at a much lower cost than providing notebook computers for all, a spokesman for the Greater Paris Regional Council said Friday.

It's a way to reduce the digital divide, said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Roger.

The sticks will probably contain the Firefox 2 Web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, an office productivity suite such as OpenOffice.org 2, an audio and video player, and software for instant messaging, he said.

Gambian President Now Among World's Top Medical Researchers

As if he didn't already look crazy enough, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has cured HIV using a secret blend of herbs.

"I can treat asthma and HIV/Aids... Within three days the person should be tested again and I can tell you that he/she will be negative," he said in a statement.

I particularly enjoyed how my man Yahya answers accusations that he's a witch doctor:

"I am not a witch doctor and in fact you cannot have a witch doctor. You are either a witch or a doctor."

Take that, pesky scientists and other rational thinkers! I can't believe this guy was elected president. It's almost as if hositility to modern science and promises of easy solutions to intractable problems can be used to polarize the electorate by demonizing modern intellectual progress. Some politician somewhere should use that strategy!

The Greatest Press Conference Ever

I think this press conference from the two artists arrested for the Aqua Teen fiasco pretty much sums up the absurdity of the media sometimes. We are like a swarm of flies.

Pixelated Cartoon Character Terror Weapons

As you might already know, Boston's public safety officials collectively lost their minds yesterday after 10 LED mini-billboards promoting Aqua Teen Hunger Force were found. Unfortunately, most of the City Hall and a sizable chunk of the local media also went all batshit on us. Here are some of the better (and by better, we mean more indicative of mental instability) quotes:

“What our city experienced today is intolerable. The actions of this company for an apparent ‘marketing campaign’ not only inconvenienced our entire city but awoke painful memories of September 11th in so many hearts and minds. I look forward to the results of a full investigation.” --Boston City Council President Maureen Feeney

“OK, so when will the people of Boston see Ted Turner and his nitwit marketing gurus marched into federal court in handcuffs and leg irons? Because that’s exactly what should happen.”—Herald editorial

“Terrorism hoaxes are common. Two years ago, a drug addict and smuggler gave a fake tip about a terrorist incursion in Boston that led to another massive mobilization of law enforcement. In 2005, an angry deportee used a fake threat that forced officials to close a tunnel under Baltimore’s harbor. Turner officials say their devices were never meant to be seen as threats. Yet they find themselves in bad company.” – Globe editorial

“The show is geared toward the Doritos-munching insomniac stoner crowd.” -- New York Post

Despite how they make it sound, there really was no general panic in Boston. For a bit more level-headed approach, check out the Weekly Dig's excellent blog post on the fiasco.

Like the Rascal Junior on Steroids

Check out the pics of a new electric concept vehicle from Peugeot, called the Dauphin. Apparently it can go 90 mph and recharges by parking it over a docking station.