Yaarrr

Well, since any movie involving penguins or pirates is sure to make millions at the box office, might as well get into the spirit...


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Oh, and may I recommend explosm.net while I'm at it.

On a decidedly less fun note, my student loans are coming due at the end of July, meaning that I am now officially beholden to the government of Canada for the rest of my natural life. Yar.

A random anecdote.

Yet further proof that hindsight is 20/20. The 1948 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to a Swiss chemist by the name of Paul Muller. His discovery: dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, or DDT. Although very effective in controlling mosquitoes and hence diseases borne by them, such as malaria, overuse by large scale farming operations led DDT to be banned pretty much everywhere. Bans on DDT have, however contributed to huge increases in malaria, particularly in central Africa (see July's National Geographic). But considering that Alfred Nobel's original claim to fame was a process for stabilizing nitroglycerin (used primarily in very dangerous mining operations - you've all seen the heritage moment) into a stable solid form, TNT (the first mass-produced high explosive), irony seems to have dogged the man's steps ever since.

Because the East Coast is just better.

There was a puff piece on the New Brunswick edition of the CBC evening news that was actually interesting. It was about a lady who was vacationing in PEI and took a wrong turn and wound up in Tyne Valley. Yes, I realize it is pretty simple for a tourist to take a wrong turn on the Island, given the lack of a highway system and the fact that there's at least three ways to get to any single point. The cool part about the story was that she loved the Tyne Valley so much that she packed up everything from her home in Alberta and moved there permanently. And started a magazine called Island Living to boot. Why? Because the East Coast is just better, that's why.

Here's a scary thought

Facebook now gets more traffic than eBay and is coming up in Google's rearview mirror like a bat out of hell. Yes, I do use the site and it is pretty cool. Especially when I find someone I went to high school with and actually get to find out whatever happened to them. Facebook apparently has no desire to go all evil empire on us and is putting out feelers to Google, Flixster, and other former flavour of the month websites to develop content modules that would work within Facebook, thereby making it even more deliciously addictive.

Speaking of evil empires, I was just reading CNet's review of Windows Vista and I don't think I want to upgrade. Typically, Microsoft has given its existing system a slicker skin, changed the theme colours from blue and silver to basic black, and made the whole package even more dependent on web content delivered through IE7. As a long-time Firefox user, I'm not crazy about Microsoft's continued attempts to make you use their crappy browser engine. Go Gecko! The little engine that wouldn't die. Or am I mixing up my metaphors there? Anyway... the difference between Vista and XP SP2 is about the same (or so it seems to me) as that between Office 2000 (XP) and Office 2003. Same ol' Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, slicker interface. How about changing something under the hood, fellas? You gotta catch up to OS X one of these odd days...