Since I have actually kept this blog up for much longer than previous attempts I thought it fitting that I would blog about blogs. Here is the blog year end review from blogpulse.

Besides the obvious fact that many of the top blogs were tech followed by talking heads I thought the news source top 5 was interesting. I would have not expected that yahoo news would be number one. BBC as number two does not surprise me at all, nor do any of the other remaining top 5, but yahoo, geez. Also checking in at number 1 is Sin City for the most blogged movie. I think that must have been a viral marketing campaign, but kudos to them anyway. You can check out the rest and decide for yourself what the list means in any broader sense, but I just found it fun to look at.

Beaten by the corn

So I’m trying to figure out what is the best photo site to use. Since I recently went to Red Wing I thought I would post the same set on a few different places. I have the site I use here, a new one called bubble share, and flickr. Let me know what you think.

Yay! Science class only gets to teach science.

Jones — an appointee of President Bush, who backs the teaching of Intelligent Design — defended his decision in personal terms.

“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist court,” Jones writes.

“Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy,” he said.

Best Ever Christmas Cookies:

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
Lemon juice
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it’s best to make sure the Cuervo is still OK, try another cup just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit, Pick the frigging fruit off floor. Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just! Pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsixisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Check the bottle of Jose Cuervo.

Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don’t forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

CHERRY EFFIN’ MISTMAS!!!

I saw this article on digg and thought I’d share because it involved Michigan. The topic is probably over most people’s heads, but pretty exciting stuff if you understand it.

First Mass Producible Quantum Computer Chip

Researchers at the University of Michigan have produced what is believed to be the first scalable quantum computer chip, which could mean big gains in the worldwide race to develop a quantum computer.

Quantum computers are promising because they can solve certain problems much faster than any possible conventional computer, owing to the bizarre features of quantum mechanics. For instance, quantum computers can process multiple inputs at the same time in the same device, and quantum circuitry can be wired via the quantum feature of entanglement, dubbed by Einstein as “spooky action-at-a-distance.”

Once upon a time there were these things called civil liberties and it was good. Then came an attack on US soil and a remarkable thing happened. We signed them away, to protect them. Hmmmm. So now it is over 4 years later and two bits of news come up. One, the senate has rightly rejected the extension of the 16 intrusive Patriot Act provisions. Score one for sanity in the Senate. Coincendentally, the NY Times has also published an article that shows President Bush, you know the one who is protecting us, allowed the US to spy on its own citizens without warrants.

Now, let me get this straight. We went into Iraq because they were going to bomb us with their WMDs. Then when they did not have any and it turned out Saddam was a better liar then our own president, the justification became well he was a bad man and lets start democracy in the Middle East (Of course during the 2000 election Bush wanted nothing to do with nation building). And why was this man so bad over there? Leaving aside the obvious atrocious murders, he ran a police state. For instance, who spy on his own citizens without their knowledge and the only authorization being his say so. Hmmm, now I am not comparing these two men like some other people do. I am pointing out the hypocrisy in going after a man while doing the same thing here. Two quotes to finalize this overly cynical rant.

This is from a Wired article covering the spying charges:

High-level administration figures, reacting to a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States, asserted Friday that President Bush has respected the Constitution while striving to protect the American people.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said Bush has “acted lawfully in every step that he has taken.” His top spokesman, Scott McClellan, said that Bush “is going to remain fully committed to upholding our Constitution and protect the civil liberties of the American people. And he has done both.”

But neither Rice nor McClellan would confirm or deny a New York Times report saying the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people inside the United States at any given time since 2002.

And a corresponding comment made by Senator Feingold on the Patriot Act in the CNN article:

“I don’t want to hear again from the attorney general or anyone on this floor that this government has shown it can be trusted to use the power we give it with restraint and care,” said Feingold, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001.

I just ran across the best music site on the internet while procrastinating instead of writing my property final. I had read about it a few months ago but it was getting so hammered with traffic it never would load. Well it works now. It is called Pandora. Think of it as your own personal DJ. You give it an artist or song title and it will create a streaming internet radio station based on your choice. It is based around the music genome project.

Over the past 5 years, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists – ranging from popular to obscure – and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

You can also share your playlists with others or listen to anyone else’s lists. This site rounds out my collection of social internet sites. I use digg for news (mainly tech, but it’s all there), del.icio.us for my bookmarks, flickr for looking at photos, gmail for mail, and now Pandora for music. It is certainly nice being able to access anything I’ve done on the web anywhere in the world. Finally, Web 2.0 is here.

Click here for a station based around Moby I have been messing around with.

In an aptly name editorial Hubris of the Humanities Kristof discusses the continued erosion of scientific knowledge in our country from kindergarten to Congress. It is unfortunate that this information is no longer free, so if you can get your hands on a copy of the paper or find it on google somewhere I suggest you read it. Here are the first and last paragraphs.

The best argument against “intelligent design” has always been humanity itself. At a time when only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and only 13 percent know what a molecule is, we’re an argument at best for “mediocre design.”

But there’s an even larger challenge than anti-intellectualism. And that’s the skewed intellectualism of those who believe that a person can become sophisticated on a diet of poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes. That’s the hubris of the humanities.

* Update * I found a link on the Princeton website that has the full text, doubtful the nyimes will ask them to take it down.