The Day the Nike Sneaker Talked to the iPod . . .

The Nike-iPod project is just more evidence of the advance of ubicomp.

Two Things

First Thing: Welcome to my first visitor from Denmark.
Second Thing: I will not be posting for a while due to being out of town for 4 weeks. bbl, as they say :-)

What could be better than beans on toast?

Beans on Toast pop tarts, of course! Brought to you by your friends at Heinz - because they were never satisfied with just 57 varieties.

It's All About Moderation

Wine, Coffee, Exercise - it's all good :-)

The Flush of the Future

It's bad enough when one's doctor informs one that one is overweight or in some way diseased. The British have decided to add insult to injury by passing that job off to one's toilet. The toilet can then take the liberty of informing your supermarket what foods they should sell to you to correct the problem(s). You think I'm joking, don't you? I'm not. I'm totally serious. The Twyford VIP not only analyzes waste to determine a person's health, but it can be adjusted (much like a car seat) using either push buttons or voice recognition. Again, you think I'm joking, don't you? I'm not.

As one commentator put it: "Physical output becomes digital input in this transformation of waste into metadata. Sensors are coming to a loo near you. And this strange business of sensory cyberspace imports has just begun. We can hardly imagine all the weird and wonderful possibilities." Morville, Peter. Ambient Functionality (Sebastopol, CA: O'Rielly, 2005), 90.

Corn Too I'm Afraid

Not only may we lose bananas, corn is in trouble also.

US DARPA Patents Human Cannonball Machine

Again: No, really.

Bananas Are An Endagered Species

No, really.

8000 MPG

Using about $4,000, man invents car capable of getting 8,000 miles to the gallon, thereby breaking his earlier, measly record of 6,603 miles per gallon.

Planetary Rash

What worse than having one big red spot? Having two, of course.

PETA

"People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?" . . . No
"People who like Eating Tasty Animals"? . . . No
"Prince who likes Eating Tasty Animals?" . . . YES!

In an interview with the Danish magazine Ud&Se, the 72-year-old Prince Consort of Denmark, Prince Henrik, a Frenchman by birth, who happens also to be the Honorary President of the Danish Dachshund Club, has stated that he has enjoyed eating dog meat since the time he spent growing up and studying in Vietnam. He invited Danes to try eating dog meat themselves. "I do not mind eating dog meat at all," he said.

"The dogs I eat have been bred to be eaten anyway, just like chickens. . . Dog meat tastes like rabbit. Like dried baby goat. Or perhaps - I know! - like veal. Like the veal of a baby suckling calf, only drier. He said the meat tasted best when it was sauteed or grilled and cut into thin slices.

As if this weren't enough, the Prince owns several dachshunds and, despite publishing a cookery book called Ikke Altid Gaselever (Not Always Goose Liver), has even published eulogies to them.

A book of Prince Henrik's poems, in which he praised his dogs, was published last year. A poem to his dachshund Evita compares her paws to 'wings.' "I love to stroke your coat and to see how it shines/ You dear, you special dog..../ You receive me with papal pride."

Since the prince's admission in the magazine Ud&Se, Danish newspapers have reopened their files on a royal dachshund that disappeared from Amalienborg palace, Copenhagen, in the early 1990s. Despite a countrywide search, it never reappeared.

By the way, the Prince also recommends that parents raise their children using techniques of dog training.

Paper

One ton of recycled paper saves:

• 4,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity
• 7,000 gallons of water
• 100 gallons of gasoline
• 60 pounds of air pollution

I've heard that recycling paper is actually counter-productive because of the amount of gasoline it takes to transport it to a recycling center and then the energy required to actually recycle it. Of course, the benefit of not using more trees would not be negated. Does anyone know if this is true? I don't exactly have the time to poke around looking for hard numbers on this one.