In the realm of physical measurement, evolutionary biology is far behind the rest of the natural sciences. Certain numbers are crucial to our ordinary understanding of the universe. What is the mean diameter of the earth? It is 12,742 kilometers (7,913 miles). How many stars are there in the Milky Way, an ordinary spiral galaxy? Approximately 1011, 100 billion. How many genes are there in a small virus? There are 10 (in X174 phage). What is the mass of an electron? It is 9.1 x 10-28 grams. And how many species of organisms are there on Earth? We don't know, not even to the nearest order of magnitude. For several centuries naturalists have relentlessly explored Earth's wilds to catalog the incredible variety of species (both living and extinct). Each year their collective work takes us a few small steps closer toward the implicit goal of recording all species on Earth.

What do these statistical artifacts look like? In most cases, the files get _more_ random looking as data is hidden inside them. This is because digital cameras and scanners aren't very precise. The least significant bit is often highly correlated with the more significant bits. Think of a very bright spot on the image, perhaps caused by a glint of sunlight. These peg the pixels at the maximum value, usually 255 (11111111 in binary). There aren't that many 254s skewing the number of 1's and 0's in the least significant bit plane.

On the way there the arresting officer gave me a triumphant smile. "After 11 September, you can't travel with books like this," he said. "In that case," I replied, "perhaps you should stop publishing them in Germany, or, better still, burn them in public view."

The inaugural editorial board is terrific, if I do say so myself:

Top Left Corner

Molly Steenson, of Girlwonder. Molly's a dynamo of squeaky, smart energy. I know her form the WELL, and we tend to meet up in strange cities, like Austin and Chicago. She's just bought her first home.

Top Right Corner

Jon Lebkowski, AKA Jonlzebub, is a hell of a blogger in his own right, and was one of the original contributors to BoingBoing back when it was in its print incarnation. He's also one of the founders of Fringeware Review, and introduced me to Texas BBQ -- a favor I can never hope to repay.

Bottom Left Corner

Helen Waters, of drokk.com. Helen's an old pal, a former co-worker, a Brit-cum-Canadian living in Holland and a soon-to-be bride. Her hilarious and demented crafts projects -- like the meat helmet, the everybody in icicle lights campaign, and the stink-beetle cross stitch -- never cease to amaze me.

Bottom Right Corner

Roz Doctorow -- my mother! Newly retired and just getting used to the idea of blogging, my Mom is a highfalutin' PhD educator (both she and my dad got their doctorates within a year of each other, making them Doctor and Doctor Doctorow), a consultant on kooky high-tech education ventures, and a groovy old radical.

[Enter Hamlet and Romeo]

Hamlet:
You lying stupid fatherless big smelly half-witted coward! You are as stupid as the difference between a handsome rich brave hero and thyself! Speak your mind!

You are as brave as the sum of your fat little stuffed misused dusty old rotten codpiece and a beautiful fair warm peaceful sunny summer's day. You are as healthy as the difference between the sum of the sweetest reddest rose and my father and yourself! Speak your mind!

You are as cowardly as the sum of yourself and the difference between a big mighty proud kingdom and a horse. Speak your mind.

Speak your mind!

[Exit Romeo]

The new game will take players into a dark world, where they will meet more than 30 powerful new characters created by McFarlane. The central character in the new game, Lord Blackthorn, has been featured in previous installments of Ultima Online, but he has now been transformed into an evil half-human creature in charge of an army of other fearsome monsters. The game will include new artificial intelligence, a new interactive storyline, and a new virtue system that rewards and punishes players based on their choices and behavior during the game.

...[T]he image of Kangaroo Island could one day show that "virtually every tree was dead and lying underneath those trees were the carcasses of koalas that had starved to death".

Pizza and takeaways die

A little-known fact is that eating half of a takeaway kills it. The pizza may have arrived at your door on its own, but once you eat half of it, it's dead and it won't actually go away on its own. It doesn't matter if you hide it somewhere like some sort of demented squirrel, it will stay there. Unless someone throws it away. That means you, if the world is just, which it plainly isn't.

The sofa is not magic

Contrary to popular belief, putting items under the sofa means that they are still there. Just because nobody can see the burger carton, it doesn't mean that it's gone. Usually people master this at the age of fucking two, but it can apparently escape some.

If this is confusing, try thinking about this obvious counter example to the "under the sofa, it's not there" theory. What do you think that smell is? It's your fucking detritus under the sofa, mate. Things that aren't there don't attract flies and start to smell. Got that?

Part of it is a lot of these are just really great stories; they're horrifying, they're titillating, they're funny.

But legends that we tell are an expression of what's going on in society's heart at any given moment. They're not just random bits of lore that get dropped in here and there. It's amazing because the stories we tell, although they generate spontaneously, end up through the process of natural selection becoming a very finely honed body of lore that reflects current society's concerns, fears, apprehensions, morals.

He spun the wheel, checked out the menus on the display screen and seemed to get it immediately. "It looks like a great product," he said. And then he added, incredulous, "It's only for Macintosh?"

That's the basics of the situation. We have, as best as I can tell, TWO WEEKS to turn this around. If we don't find $6,000 by October 31 then the store may have to close. That's our time frame. If you like the store, we need you in there NOW buying something! I don't really care what you buy, but we need the funds NOW! If everyone on our email list buys just 2 paperbacks, we can cover past dues and order books for Christmas. I don't like to beg for your business but you guys are our extended family, the ones we chose rather than the one we were born into. We need your help, so we are asking for it.

HarperCollins, owned by the News Corporation, has been asked by management to modify its submission policy as a result of an anthrax scare experienced by the New York Post in the same corporate group. As before, unsolicited submissions sent to the general HarperCollins Children's Book department will not be considered, but effective October 15 they are being discarded instead of returned. Also any mail received without a return address will be discarded by the mailroom immediately. Mail, including unsolicited submissions, addressed to a specific editor will be delivered to him or her. Whether editors open it if they do not know the sender, however, will be left to their individual judgment. That policy is to be reevaluated every month or so, and any changes will be reported as soon as possible.

For those of us teaching cybercultural issues, an area of content is also blocked: the realm of problematic digital copying itself. Although the DMCA insists on several occasions that its enforcement shall not abridge freedom of speech (such as 1201(c)(4)), at other points its language prohibits not only unauthorized copying but any discussions of how such copying works. This provision exceeds analog equivalents, since one may buy, sell, read, and own texts describing in vivid detail many means of illegal activities, from illicit xeroxing to homicide. In practice, would not teaching the history and culture of software piracy not fall foul of the DMCA? Assigning the current issue of 2600, the leading hacking journal, would also include students reading how to violate eBook protocols, for example. Lecturing about the popular disregard for freeware timelimits would also fall under the ban. Webbing notes on encryption techniques, a staple of computer science, should be a DMCA violation; merely linking to Web sites that contain such information can be a DMCA infraction. Section 1201(g) makes provisions for "Encryption Research" - so long as such work is "necessary to identify and analyze flaws and vulnerabilities… [and] if these activities are conducted to advance the state of knowledge in the field of encryption technology". Given this year's legal challenge to Professor Felten, it's clear that that section has ample room for interpretation. As Siva Vaidhyanathan points out, the entire discipline of new media studies - an evolving, growing field - might lose the bulk of its subject matter.13 Could Keith Winstein's January 2001 MIT seminar, "Decrypting DVD", be prosecuted, or outlawed?14 In short, the Act might criminalize and restrict what can be researched and taught in American classrooms, a plain violation of academic freedom.

HP OMNIBOOK 4150 P-III 450MHZ; 128MB; 12GBHD W/AC & DVD & FLOPPY
IBM THINKPAD CELERON 500MHZ; 64MB; 5GBHD W/AC
BACKUP TAPE LIBRARY ARRAY
DELL POWERVAULT 705M
DELL POWEREDGE 2450 P-III 2 X 733MHZ; 512MB; 4 X 17GBHD
CISCO CATALYST 4006
APPLE IMAC
VIEWSONIC 21" MONITOR

* The bible teaches that all people are going to Hell if they don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. (Sorry- it's not my fault. I'm not making this up. It's really what it says!)

* You're not going straight to Hell because you dress up your sweet little girl as a ballerina on Halloween and have fun. You are going to Hell if you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It's a completly different reason you're going to Hell.

* Going to Hell has nothing to do with being good or bad, but only on your relationship with Jesus.

* The Bible actually has a few other verses in it beside that one that everyone seems to know about, "Love your neighbors". (Have you seen a bible lately? They're really thick.)

Q: What's the zombie's favorite kind of ice cream?

A: BRAAAAINS!

Q: Why did the zombie cross the road?

A: BRAAAAAAAAINS!

The very finest Disney attraction to be retired to the Parks after the 1964 World's Fair, gone without a trace. Disappeared off of the guidemaps and chalk-boards. Gone, gone, gone. I guess that now is no longer the best time of our lives, and there is no great, big, beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of this day.

For my money, there is no better place to while away half an hour on a muggy Orlando afternoon that seated in the revolving theatre, watching a robot pimp the benefits of GE's gizmos. Repeated viewings of this ride likely account for my gadget obsession, as GE's paeons to the wonders of technology were burned right into my brain.

A couple years ago, they renovated the Carousel at WDW to restore it to something very like the original World's Fair show, and added a pre-show with video of Walt and songwriting gods the Sherman Brothers singing the theme, "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow!" Alas, they didn't restore Progressland, the giant diorama of a prototype city of tomorrow that Walt later proposed to build in Florida (that vision was stripped down and turned into Epcot Center and the planned community Celebration).

Here's some of the choicest dialogue from the Progressland voice-over:

[Mother]
Everything you see in Progress City is possible today in any city. Even where you live. We have all the latest all electric ideas to help cities look better. And to make them better places to live and work in.

[Father]
Take our transportation. It's a coordinated electric system.

[Mother]
I just love getting around in my own little transporter.

[Father]
And we have other electric vehicles. In fact the heart of Progress City's transportation is our rapid transit system that's controlled by computers. I get to work in half the time on a high-speed electric train. Sure beats traffic jams.

[Dog]
Growwwl!

[Father]
Take it easy, Sport.

He's complaining because electric vehicles are so quiet.

[Mother]
Going shopping is simply a breeze too. And getting there is only half the fun. Today our whole downtown is completely enclosed. Whatever the weather is outside, it's always dry and comfortable inside.

[Father]
General Electric calls it a climate controlled environment. But Mother calls it...

[Mother]
A sparkling jewel. Now far off to your right, we have a welcome neighbor...

[Father]
Our GE nuclear power plant, dear. And next door, is Industrial Park which really looks more like...

[Mother]
Like an attractive city park, thanks to beautiful lighting and landscaping.

[Father]
And speaking of parks, outdoor lighting has added hours to our recreation time. We have night lighted stadiums, ball fields, golf courses, we even have our own amusement park.

[Mother]
It's not exactly Disneyland, but it is clean and bright and lots of fun.

[Father]
Mother, it's time for Grandma and Grandpa to take off.

[Mother]
That could be their jet now, dear.

[Father]
Look at it go! And imagine how convenient air travel will be in the future. Maybe then...

[Mother]
Maybe then, we'll do the traveling.

[Dog]
Growwwl!

[Father]
Now calm down, Sport. We'll always come back to Progress City. And we hope you folks will come back too. But right now, it's time to go. Remember...

[Mother]
Everything you've seen here in our all electric city is really possible today. 

• Tai Chi vs. Kung Fu
• The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose
• Slapstick nipple-twisting
• Witty dialog delivered by wooden, ass-kicking actors
• Comedic belching

First degree
You are getting behind in tasks that you would normally manage, like laundry and dishes. You are not the tidy person you once were. Little piles are starting to emerge and your disorganization is starting to affect your life and inconvenience you. Things are just starting to get out of hand and become unmanageable. A sign of first degree squalor might be that you are embarrassed for other people to see your mess...but you would still let them in the house.

Second degree
Now things are really starting to get out of hand. Signs that you have reached second degree would include losing the use of normal household items like your bed, table, television or telephone, because the piles have expanded to cover the items up. You start to develop new methods of moving around your house, as normal movement is impeded by your piles of stuff. You might start making excuses to discourage people from entering your house.

Third Degree
At this stage, you have all the above, plus you have rotting food and animal faeces and/or urine in the house, and this is the rule not the exception.You cannot cope with the growing mess. Essential household repairs may not be done, because you are too afraid to let a tradesperson see your house. Just the thought of someone seeing your mess causes you great stress.

Fourth degree
At fourth degree squalor, you have all of the above, plus you have human faeces in your house that is not in the toilet.