Men tread upon the paths of life,
in forests of poverty, hate, and strife.
Among those men was one of few,
whose smile brought joy to me and you.
He offered friendship to all who'd take it,
were you in a bind he'd help you break it.
Now that he's gone he's left a hole,
where no other d-twenty could ever roll.

Check it out here!

They were really great. The concert took place in the middle of the day in one of the campus gymnasiums, and a surprising number of people showed up.

OK Go at Case Springfest | Get Over It

What surprised me the most was the "rowdy" nature of the crowd. First of all, you have to realize that when I put something in quotes, I mean it. "Rowdy" for Case means that people were clapping and jumping and singing along; all things I have never really seen at any campus concerts. That being said, the establishment (Case) did everything in its power to quash whatever fun was being had. Some people actually had the nerve to hoist each other up and crowd surf on the thin (for crowd surfing, not for Case) mass of hands and shoulders. These brave souls were immediately apprehended by security guards and other such agents of lameness.

OK GO did domething I've never seen before at a concert of any type, they took the show literally into the crowd. In the middle of the show they jumped off stage and made their way over to a small platform that had been waiting for them in the midst of the pocket-protected throng to perform several songs. I was lucky enough to be this close to them:

OK GO at Case Springfest | Crowded

Damian Kulash, the band's lead singer was in high spirits despite the lack of crowd energy. I think he actually appreciated that the bunch of nerds at his show were at least swaying and singing. He even went so far as to discuss the band's nerdiness, including how keyboardist Andy Ross was a "card carrying nerd", and encouraged all of us to raise our gadgets like the lighters of old in rock concerts of yore. Someone raised their laptop.

Typical.

Last.FM is an online web community that has helped me to find loads of cool new music in a short time. I highly recommend checking it out.

Sidenote:According to the American Cancer Society, roughly 1,720 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. So watch out dudes.

It's a straight-up slap-fest between you (some archetypal anime female), and some Japanamation female stereotype. The gameplay takes a second to get used to, but after the first few slaps, you get the hang of it. It feels great on the tablet with a stylus too!

Life is a self-perpetuating, self contained chemical phenomenon that extracts or manufactures high energy nutrients from its environment, excretes waste material of lower chemical energy, and surfs the energy difference between food and shit to go on living.
--Lonely Planets by David Grinspoon

Apparently not every surfer is from California.

So is that it? By that definition, every human action, thought, and feeling are the results of an overgrown chemical equation. I wonder if there isn't somthing significant about a larger group of beings, a network of life. For example, we are made up of a network of cellular life which is in turn made up of a network of organelles, in these nested systems all parts are alive. Does this mean that by extension a house is alive because it is made up of a network of inhabitants? What about a city or country or planet?

Assuming that we human beings are not the sole proprietors of this enormous universe, can we fairly call the whole thing alive?

42.

We caught on when people's jaws started falling off.

The shadowy spectre of the darker end of the scientific spectrum frightens me. In light of the fact that I perfer fear from knowledge over ignorance, I keep a running list of possible world ending (read: changing the face of the world as we know it) scenarios:

6: Nanobots aka Grey Goo overrun the planet, replicating itself with Earth's mass, and we all die.
5: Biotechnology weapons or accidents (aka Green Goo)infect the populace, or force us out of our massive niche, and we all die.
4: AI Overthrows mankind, likely for some kind of social problems, and we are all enslaved, or killed (we all die)
3: MAD (Mutually Assuered Destruction aka: Nuclear War) creates massive fallout, and we all die or mutate.
2: Accidental Ignition of the Atmosphere (Likely due to Fusion reactors) planet is incinerated, and we all die.

1: Antibacterial Soap causes bacteria to build up resistance to antibiotics and we all die. (ALREADY STARTING TO HAPPEN, JAPAN STOP USING SO MUCH ANTIBIOTIC HANDSOAP!)

So remember, always look both ways before you ross the street.

Let me try to put this into perspective. Everything the computer does is made up of tiny little math problems called operations. A single core is capable of doing only one operation at a time. This is very different from the way people think; humans are capable of generating thoughts that occur at the same time in a sort of constant stream. Computers fool us into thinking they are doing more than one thing at a time (like we do) by switching back and forth between tasks very very quickly. Today's high end CPU's are measured in Giggahertz. GHz are a measure of how many billion operations a chip can do in a second. The fastest single core commercially available CPU's can do about 3.5 - 4 GHz. Intel has a chip on the market called the "Core 2 Duo" that has 2 cores which is actually capable of doing 2 things at once, and another (created by linking 2 quad cores) called the "Core 2 Quad" that can do 4 things at once. If each core is capable of about 3 GHz thats 12 billion operations per second: not too shabby. In fact, "Core 2 Quad"s are pretty much the fastest thing on the market today.

Now let's address this new chip. It has 80 cores all linked together on the same silicon wafer. This means that it can actually do 80 things at once which is a remarkable feat for any computing system let alone a single computer working by itself.

Q: What does it all mean?

A1: One hell of a gaming machine. This thing makes the playstation 3 look like an NES.

A2: This new chip's ability to "think" about so many things at once makes it an ideal candidate for complex tasks such as artificial intelligence.

The best part about the whole deal is that this is only the begining. Berkeley computer scientist David A. Patterson has actually issued a challenge to chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD to produce chips that have THOUSANDS of cores on them. I get excited just thinking about that. So what's the catch? The 80 core chip is only a prototype and we won't see anything like it for about five years.

ONLY 5 YEARS!

Amazingly, the gas powered device gets 150 miles per gallon. Expect to see people powerfanbiking in buisness suits any day now.

"A thinner design. Five stylish colors. A brighter display. Up to 24 hours of battery life. Just about the only thing that hasn’t changed is the name. In 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB models starting at $149, iPod nano puts up to 2,000 songs in your pocket."

Pretty eimpressive eh? New colors, (much needed) battery life, and a size bump. Frankly, I'd expect more than garden variety upgrades from a company who claims to "Think different." Especially if they're gonna hype it like its a Deity.

Isn't it about time for somthing really different? Instead of just alternating between shiny metal and shiny plastic, how about somthing new.

Enter the Zune.

Now a device I'm personally very excited to see, the Zune, seems to have some real different ideas. The Zune is a pocket sized video music and picture jukebox with the ability to share tunes wirlessly directly to another zune as shown in the vid above. Although I think these birds will explain it better. The player has a built in wifi connection, which it can use to share music and serve as a voip phone. Shared (beamed) tunes will remain usable for three days or three plays, whichever comes first and can be marked for downloading from the a service called the "Zune marketplace".

Did I mention that that screen is a half inch larger than the iPods? It also detects the orientation of the player and adjusts from vertical to horizontal automatically.

The sharealicious player also has a built in radio, can beam photos for permanent use and comes in:

yin black, yang white

and 70's style wooden brown.

Now here's the shocker. The sweet player you see above is made by Microsoft. Yup that's right, remember that boring guy from the commercials? The guy who doesn't have any fun, because apparently mac users haven't heard of video games or movies or digital cameras working on pc's, that guy made this thing. The zune is designed to sync directly with the Xbox and Xbox 360.

It can't come Zune enough for me.