Dirk Gently and the new Internet Radio

Is it just me or are internet radio stations like Pandora and last.fm based on an idea that resembles Dirk Gently's method of holistic navigation: i.e.
When trying to get somewhere, follow a random car.
You may not end up where you were going.
But you'll certainly find yourself somewhere you needed to be.

The only difference being on these stations, you don't follow one car, you follow the traffic.

Owning an Idea

Ideas cannot be owned. They belong to whomever understands them. - Sol Lewitt

(thanks to dataisnature for the quote)

Maybe ownership of ideas should take into account the way they are acquired - i.e. by understanding them.

Mars Bar bombs

Ok. Here's a bit of trivia that puts the energy needs of the human body into perspective.

1 Mars bar contains about 1 megajoule (239,000 calories) of energy, which is about a 1/4 of the energy released by explosion of one kilogram of TNT, and about 10 times the kinetic energy of a car travelling at highway speeds.

The mars bar isn't that special, by the way. There's an equivalent nutritional energy to be had in 150g of rice!

(Source: Wikipedia "Orders of Magnitude (Energy)")

Kung Fu Monkey on 300

Larvatus Prodeo put me on to this post by Kung Fu Monkey John Rogers,
which is spot-on.
Rogers exposes the way this film actually opposes core American values.
The independent hero is not everyman, he's a professional soldier -
which the minutemen and the Band of Brothers were not! And the freedom
he's fighting for isn't for everyone, since in Sparta everyone is not
created equal - in fact, you're lucky to survive a few days if you have
any kind of deformity.
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/03/writing-300-and-viewpoints.html