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Odd Lots
- Most people know that the New Age Millerites believe that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012; if that's news to you, here's a nice overview of this deliciously deranged topic, courtesy Frank Glover.
- Several people online, in an almost offhand fashion, have indicated that Vista's knucklehead UAC feature is training people to click "Allow" automatically, no matter what it's asking about. That may be the single greatest design error in Vista, and could over time render Vista as insecure as anything that came before it, and certainly less secure than just working in an LUA under XP.
- A reader has asked me to post an entry on all magazines to which I have subscribed and re-upped at least once, but no longer subscribe to. That would be an interesting collection, and a long entry, but I'll try and get to it soon. One of that group that I might still read if I had enough time is First Things.
- I had a tin toy robot when I was six or seven, and it seems like most of my friends had one or two. So it was a Boomer kid-culture phenomenon, and one I don't see much about these days. Here's a photo gallery from Wired with some nice shots. Most of my early childhood nightmares were about robots and mummies, which suggests that my two subconscious fears (at least according to one amateur Jungian friend of mine from twenty-odd years ago) were of death and berserk machinery. I'm not so sure; that was what most of the cheap horror/sf flicks I saw on Channel 7 were about at that time.
- Another interesting article/discussion on the Fermi Paradox. Me? I think we really are alone. I don't know why just yet. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's because imagination as a mental mechanism is rare. But I've been thinking about this for thirty years and keep coming back to that conclusion.
- Lordy, I remember these from catalogs back in the early 60s. Why do they suggest a filk: Looking Through the Eyes of Badminton! (Thanks to Bishop Sam'l Bassett for the pointer.)
Topic E: On intelligent life in the universe: We won't admit it unless they're smarter than us by a LOT. We really will only admit some other species is smart if they start attacking us in joint formations. Wolves don't count, after all, nor do dolphins - and WE haven't managed to get off the rock; why are we expecting some other species to have already done it? We're like a guy stuck in the middle of the Sahara, wondering where the people are. All he knows is: Not here. All we know is: Not here. There's a lot of Somewhere Else that we haven't checked yet.
Mr Duntemann:
No, we're not alone - look at the vast seas of stars. On the other hand, between us and an inhabited planet 25 million light years away, we might as well BE alone.
As to your other point: Zeroids.