Wally, my cat for the last 6 years or so, died last Saturday evening, around 10:00. It was likely a heart attack, and I buried him in Schenley park. At least I was there to pet him as he faded.. It's sad thinking about it -- he occupied a part of my mind, and even now when I'm in my apartment, I keep feeling odd that the body lies about two miles away, under the ground in the woods. Intellectually, I know his body now doesn't have a lot to do with what he meant to me, and the him that I cared about was like the flame, on the candle of his living brain... but emotionally, I've confused the pattern for the blocks, and so occasionally I'm preoccupied with the body.. but not so much as yesterday, or the day before.

My laptop is having some hiccups -- there's now a line of dead pixels going down the screen, and the power supply is flakey and sometimes sparky. I've contacted Dell -- hopefully warranty will cover both, although I don't think I look forward to maybe doing without my laptop for awhile.

Trinkets... Ablaut - cool words in english do it. You can too.. Learning to read.. Of particular interest there is the note that literate native English speakers generally have no difficulty with reading new words. Another crazy patent. Some people don't like Verizon. I don't dislike them -- I'm happy with my cell service, and their DSL isn't bad, it's just not as featureful as I'd like. This isn't far from where my parents live .. ermm.. lived. It's complex. Don't ask. Textbook publishers scheme to rip people off. Someone's been flyering at CMU for a hoax.

Apparently, Kuwait is aiming to move in the direction of France, using the idea that the way to handle religious tension is to prevent people from saying things that might be inflammatory. France takes it to another level, making the overt display of affiliation hidden, at least in schools and public buildings. This is a very different approach from the American style, where, temporarily ignoring the 'hate speach' stuff, the faiths are told they must tolerate any speech that comes their way. In a sense, it's an individualism versus community thing.

Apparently, at the Snore^H^H^H^Huper Bowl, in the halftime game, Justin Timberlake had a stunt go wrong, and ripped off part of Janet Jackson's shirt, revealing a nipple. If you're like me, it's no big deal, but apparently, the FCC is making a big deal out of it because children might've seen the nipple. Of course, it's being pushed by some 'pro-family' groups who live in a magic land where children don't get spam or mess around on the back of school busses. Apparently, their girls don't ever look at their own body, and their boys are blissfully unaware of human anatomy. Prudes in our government arn't satisfied with making a stink, they're talking about thousands of dollars in fines and revoking licenses. That's one thing that really bugs me -- prudishness. Men, barring accident, have a penis, and women, barring accident, have a vagina and breasts. It's not a secret, and the sight of one won't make people go blind or get hairy palms. I'd like to think that we're living in a slightly more enlightened, liberal society than theocratic Iran. Sadly, there as well as here, prudishness starts with at least some of the common folk.

Speaking of Iran, on the 20th of this month, their elections are scheduled, and the reformists continue to resign as the conservative forces sit on their decision to disqualify most of the reformist candicates. It's absolutely amazing what's happening over there -- I wonder how stable the system as a whole is right now... Essentially, the conservatives have put their foot down against slow reliberalization of the government, and it remains to be seen if the government can survive the tension..

Speaking of tension, Sharon is in hot water for his moves to withdraw settlements in Gaza. Of course, the people in the settlements arn't taking it lying down, and are doing their best to fight the actions. Sharon seems to have a real plan that doesn't rely much on the unstable Palestinian popular and leadership support, and that he has moved the seperation wall to (possibly) better reflect Palestinian settlements and he's actually uprooting contentious settlements, it seems that he's willing to make the hardest comprimises to secure a lasting peace. If he can manage it, and peace finally reaches the area within 20 years or so, it will be an amazing achievement. I may have my own hope for a de-zionized bi-ethnic Israel, but peace, in the end, is more important. Life can only have so much terrible beauty.

Oh, yes, the warning. If you're on windows, run windows update sometime soon -- there are some important security fixes for IE. Of course, if you use a better browser, this won't be a concern for you.

A friend invited me to Orkut, Google's version of FriendsterTribe.net I joined.. why not? But it's sad -- things like these are precisely areas where economy of scale is so important. I'm on all three, but everywhere someone I know isn't is like a cloud keeping me from seeing as far as I should be able to on these things.

Apparently, Europe has actual Joke political parties. The interesting thing is, in regional elections where there's only one real candicate, and they're unpopular, the existence of joke parties has caused the larger political parties to withdraw their candicate to avoid the humiliation to losing to one of these guys.

Slightly less jokingly, Britain also has a party called the BNP that runs on a racist platform, advocating deporting foreigners and lamenting the existance of 'half-breeds'. Scary, although I guess there're people lik that everywhere.

Take a look at this URL: http://www.scott.aq/ Guess where that country code is for? Hint: It's not New Zealand.

Want to hear an astronomer rant about bad astronomy? I knew you did.

Incidentally, here's a review of my awesome, but old, Cellphone.

Darwin day's coming up, on the 3rd.