We ourselves are a labor of love. Even our material bodies, the least part of us, are fashioned from living stardust. The same energy that pulses in the hearts of stars pulsates quietly in our own wrists. The same unimaginably creative dynamo spinning out galaxies, spins out in our own thoughts. The Milky Way itself flows through our veins, eddies in our muscles, and spills over in our conscious acts. And not a single particle of this vastness has been found in isolation, somehow separated from the whole. It is all working together, unceasingly in a single multidimensional connectedness. Each human being then is an investment in the future, backed by the entire cosmos.

We bright specks, self-aware god-sparkles, here on our exquisite floating mote in the dazzling sea: can we do less than honor this with our life s work? By means of our labors, we can consciously participate in this vast ongoing act of creation and perfection. The work of creation is still unfinished, because we are born. That we are here at all implies a work to be accomplished, and a love meant to be let loose in a new way. What then shall we turn our hands to?

Read the rest here and read more by Diane Harvey.

Deborah Marquit's online shop sells couture lingerie with a funky, techno twist:

[Her] vintage-inspired lingerie (demi-cup bras, boy briefs, bikinis, and G-strings) are delicate, handmade, and hand-dyed in a variety of fluorescent shades (they glow under black light!). Fans include Madonna, Britney, Sarah Jessica, blah blah blah. We can't guarantee the underthings will make you high-wattage, but hey, it's a start. And just think: No need for the night light; just take off your clothes.

[Boing Boing]

Who's going to buy me some fluorescent boy briefs for christmas?

Take a look at some weird/interesting flash stuff here. And then some more artistic flash here.

Take a look at this cool web clock.

[update] Found another cool one here.

Lookie lookie.

Steven Johnson wrote an article on the death of the desktop metaphor.

Take a look at Nodwick or start at the beginning. There is also some more strips here and here.

Here is a cool Advent Calendar for Perl.

So far we've opened three days and have received:

1. URI::Find
2. IO::AtomicFile
3. DBD::SQLite

The Free Land of Hypocratia is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its absence of drug laws. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 5 million are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whoever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt, liberal, socially-minded government stops and the rest of society begins, but it devotes most of its attentions to Social Welfare, with areas such as Defence and Law & Order receiving almost no funds by comparison. The average income tax rate is 51%, and even higher for the wealthy. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising fourteen-year-old boys selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.

Crime is relatively low. Hypocratia's national animal is the penguin, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the wang.

Check out Nowhere Girl.

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has been MIT's introductory pre-professional computer science subject since 1981. It emphasizes the role of computer languages as vehicles for expressing knowledge and it presents basic principles of abstraction and modularity, together with essential techniques for designing and implementing computer languages. This course has had a worldwide impact on computer science curricula over the past two decades.
• Linear Algebra: Basic subject on matrix theory and linear algebra, emphasizing topics useful in other disciplines, including systems of equations, vector spaces, determinants, eigenvalues, similarity, and positive definite matrices. Applications to least-squares approximations, stability of differential equations, networks, Fourier transforms, and Markov processes.
• Video Lecture Showcase: a site with a whole bunch of links to other online video lectures in lots of different subjects

Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Bill:

Linus is my shepard; I shall not want.

He free-eth me from Microsoft; he leadeth me towards an open land.

He restoreth my self respect; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of open-ness.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of bill, I will fear no evil: for thou art with; thy source and thy cvs they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the house of bill: thou annointest my head with Samba; my source floweth over.

Surely openness and source shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Source forever

A survey commissioned and published by National Geographic shows that a large majority of young Americans between the age of 18-24 are geographically illiterate.

Less than 15% of the subjects could locate Iraq or Israel on a map. Only 17% could locate Afghanistan, even though the survey was carried out after the war. 11% could not locate the U.S. on a map.

Internal Corporate Correspondence for Project Genesis

To: General Director Jehovah
From: Lucifer, Head of System Technology Department

In the course of our work on project Genesis, we have run into some difficulties (specifically in the "Let there be Light" phase of the project):

We do not currently have access to a source of uninterrupted light that can be channeled into two separate luminary bodies. I propose we utilize a standard "Red Dwarf" type light source for daytime illumination, and use a mirror for nighttime light.

Comments:
Upgrade to "Yellow Dwarf". The cost differential is minimal, but aesthetically, the look is far more impressive.-- Gabriel (Marketing dept.)

But that's a multi-client light source! Why would the user need it for a single-planet system?-- Lucifer

The marketing department will tell to the user what he needs or doesn't need.-- Gabriel

Lucifer, please restrict your comments to questions within the field of your competence. I'm approving the "Yellow Dwarf".-- Jehovah

By the way, with the level of light output generated by a Yellow Dwarf, we can use a regular planetoid instead of a mirror.-- Michael

Agreed.-- Jehovah

Last week it was tent cities on freeways and barter economies. This week 1,715 miles of phone cables have been stolen.

A report from the National Statistics and Census Institute indicates that copper exports grew 16.5 percent in the first six months of 2002 compared with same period last year. The increase occurred despite the fact that Argentina has almost no copper production of its own -- it imports most of the metal to produce the cables.

So where does the copper come from? Eduardo Mirabelli, chief of external communications at Telefónica, another regional telephone company, said the answer has to be the stolen cables. "That's almost 700 tons of metal, and 500,000 people without phone service," he said.

Cable theft has always existed in Argentina, telephone company officials say, but in the past it was generally done as a prank. With the economic crisis now gripping the country, stealing cables has become a serious business, particularly in poor neighborhoods outside Buenos Aires, where the telephone companies have not invested in underground cabling.

I really need to hone the fine art of structured procrastination.

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

Now you can pre order a Segway at Amazon.

I've been spending a lot of time over at PopCap Games playing all the fun java games especially Big Money

In 1987, Alan Moore wrote a proposal for an epic comic crossover in the DC Comics universe. Sadly it was never published. [via Boing Boing]

Whenever I come across a cool web comic I haven't read before I like to read it from the beginning. Well, my latest find: Sluggy Freelance is going to take a while to read from the beginning because its been around since 97!

"Sniper kills dozens around Wash. DC. Kid shoots neighbors and then anyone standing on the street as he drives away. Man kills college instructors and then himself. Newspapers and TV news love stories about murder and death because we watch and are fascinated (therefore enabling them to sell advertising). The world is a dangerous place - we could get shot, run over or might buy something we don't need after watching a story about a murderer. Is there something about this that doesn't seem to make sense?

The problem with News is that while a story may be fascinating (especially to our naturally morbid curiosity), News is seldom the truth. The problem has to do with the way certain facts of life are abstracted from their context, as if outside that context their true meaning will survive. [Read More at Hermit's Weblog]

mmmm blood

i be big pimpin

Kuro5hin has an story with lots of links to articles about the increase in autism.

I talked to my sister a few minutes ago, she teaches special education and is a very knowledgable in these things and she said that most autism is highly preventable but parents arn't willing to do something as simple as changing their childs diet because they think that couldn't possible help.