from the desk of stinkpot

it’s funny how unimportant things suddenly become pressing when you’re having trouble doing homework. for example, rather than triumph over my be.482 programming assignment, i thought it’d be much more prudent to perpetuate this blog chain letter i received some time back. so here’re my pieces of four: four jobs i’ve had: 1. tennis pro. […]

google can peer into so many nooks and crannies of the internet. for instance, here’re a bunch of fun searches to try [via digg]. that article reminded me of this infamous boing boing post, which showed a lot of people how to find unsecured webcams using google.

it’s hard not to read this story with a bit of glee. it seems that once again, president bush took an unqualified, but loyal supporter and installed him in a public office – and the guy’s now getting hung out to dry: George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs […]

Rakhmat is Uygur for thank you! I came across this site the other day; it spells out how to say “thank you” in over 465 languages. It’s interesting to see how many different ways there are to show one’s appreciation, even within one language. For instance, this site lists 5 ways to say thank you […]

i saw an article today on slashdot about one wasp’s amazing evolutionary adaptation. apparently, a particular species of moth has evolved a mechanism for turning roaches into zombies. the wasp then “drives” the roach-zombie back home, where wasp larvae ultimately burrow into the roach and consume it from the inside out. yummy. since the link […]

i got to meet lee lynd today and see him talk at the mit energy initiative colloquium. he’s one of the big dudes, it seems, in bioenergy. he co-leads a small consortia of government and academic labs aimed at producing energy from biomass (if i recall correctly). he gave a pretty broad, policy-level talk on […]

i hope our prez has thought this energy thing through. then again, i really shouldn’t worry, since everything his administration has done so far has been meticulously planned out. Diplomatically, Mr. Bush’s ambitious call for the replacement of 75 percent of the United States’ Mideast oil imports with ethanol and other energy sources by 2025 […]

over the past couple of days, i’ve been trying to follow the fracas surrounding the publication of an inflammatory cartoon over in denmark. it seems that a danish newspaper has managed to offend several hundred million muslims by publishing a caricature of mohammed. this was upsetting for two reasons: 1) muslims consider it blasphemous to […]

as usual, watching a bush state of the union address was an exercise in disbelief and frustration. nevertheless, i really can’t be displeased with the prez’s remarks that science + innovation will sustain american economic dominance … and that he’s upping research funding (hopefully this year, they’ll increase funding faster than the inflation rate). and, […]

talk about david vs. goliath – the enemy is among the most powerful companies, ever. the insanity! exxon made $36 billion in profit in 2005 – the largest annual net income in history for an american company. last quarter alone, they brought in $99 billion in revenue. the scale of these numbers is mind-boggling. it […]