Spooky Newt pic from atop the tower.
He reminds me a little of Zardoz.
*Thank you* for the lovely book from my wish list, Lisa!
It arrived in a very timely manner, and I've been looking forward to reading it for quite a while! (Since 5/15/03, to be precise.) It came as a complete surprise, and I really do appreciate it.
(It was a copy of The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch.)
I'd love to see these technologies arrive sooner than later.
Ultra-wideband: Imagine a television that can wirelessly send three different programs to separate monitors. Low-power, low-cost, and with roughly 45 times the data transmission speed of run-of-the-mill Wi-Fi, this wireless technology is finally ready to debut in the living room.
RFID: While they've been talked about a lot, radio frequency identification tags have yet to appear in a big way in the supply chain. Wal-Mart is making it happen: All its suppliers must use the tags for pallets and cases of merchandise by 2005.
802.16: WiMax enables wireless networks to extend as far as 30 miles and transfer data, voice, and video at faster speeds than cable or DSL. It's perfect for ISPs that want to expand into sparsely populated areas, where the cost of bringing in DSL or cable wiring is too high.
Micro fuel cells: Japan's largest wireless phone carrier, NTT DoCoMo, plans to introduce cell phones powered by miniature fuel cells -- which run on hydrogen or methanol -- late next year. Look for them to also show up as expensive add-ons for high-end laptops.
Gecko tape: Lizards climb walls using the mechanical adhesive force of millions of tiny hairs on their feet. A synthetic version of those microscopic hairs allows gecko tape, developed at England's University of Manchester, to stick to almost any surface without glue. Applications include gloves that allow a person to climb a glass wall, the ability to move computer chips in a vacuum, and new bandages.
Antispam software (that works): If you've tried filters, whitelists, and blacklists, chances are you still receive plenty of junk e-mail. "Challenge/response" technology may be the answer; it requires senders to manually verify their identity before e-mail is passed along to the intended recipient.
OLEDs: Organic light-emitting diodes are brighter and use less power than normal light-emitting diodes. (They rely on carbon with nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen elements -- thus, the "organic" tag.) They're perfect for screens on cell phones, digital cameras, and camcorders, and even for a new crop of affordable flat-panel monitors.
LED lightbulbs: LEDs will outrun obsolescence by moving into the home. Philips is already pushing its Luxeon line of LED lightbulbs, which can last 10 to 50 times as long as incandescent bulbs while consuming 80 percent less energy.
MRAM: Magnetoresistive random access memory is (in theory, anyway) more than 1,000 times faster than the fastest current nonvolatile flash memory and nearly 10 times faster than DRAM. "Nonvolatile" means it retains memory when the power is off. Add in its low power consumption, and it's perfect for use in an upcoming crop of computers and cell phones.
Bioinformatics: Researchers, such as those at IBM Life Sciences, are finally getting a handle on building complex protein models to aid in drug discovery. The new, computationally accurate models mean that potential drugs can be identified more quickly and stand a better chance of working.
I had to go quick and dirty with the Florida and Georgia Newsletters, but at least they're online, and look decent.
How to cook a tarantula. Several persons shared an exotic dinner that included batter-dipped, deep-fried Chilean rose-haired tarantula. After eating the tarantula dish, many people complained of tingling in the mouth and throat.
Here's a sentence no one has ever written before: "Be sure and burn the hair off your tarantula with a blowtorch before you batter it and put it in the Fry Daddy."
[update- National Gorilla Suit Day is an important annual celebration touted years ago in Mad Magazine. More specifically, it was immortalized in a story in the second Don Martin Mad paperback, which was called Mad's Don Martin Bounces Back. The idea of this august ritual (which occurs in January) is that you dress up in your gorilla suit and go door-to-door...and most people elect to beat up a guy named Fester Bestertester. I guess I'm telling you more than you need to know since you either recall the story, which was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a comic-type book, or you don't know it and since it's long outta-print, probably never will. That is, unless we can make a little noise and drum up the enthusiasm to get some publisher to call Norma Martin, Don's widow, and make a deal to reprint the thing. And they might as well do all of Don's paperbacks while they're at it because they're all pretty funny.]
Most Impressive DVDs of 2003. I added lots of items to my Netflix queue after reading this.
Vintage Dorothy Lamour comics. They actually feature very little of Miss Sarong and lots of savages speaking in variants of Yoda-ese.
Cool Random element, I was compared to Sully, from Monsters, Inc. by Carol at PT the other day.
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