red letter day

grey goo
Hmmm -- perhaps the infamous 'grey goo' problems associated with nanotech are actually going to come from genetically modified bacteria

girl genius
Phil Foglio has a new series out, called Girl Genius. The art on the page looks interesting; I'll pick up the book when and if I see it. Any comics fen out there with reviews?

name one (or many) for the gipper
The latest monument to gone but not forgotten former President Reagan was recently christened by his wife. Initially, I thought that this represented a break with the policy that naval vessels were only named after the deceased, but a bit of Googling showed that I was wrong.

On a personal note, Lor flew to New Hampshire last week, and when I went to check the status of her return flight, I experienced a minor moment of disorientation -- "Great Ghu", I thought, "they've gone and renamed the whole damn town!"

want
We are the BOFHen who go "LART!"

Seriously, if you've got a sysadmin in your life, look no further for the next birthday/anniversary/major religious holiday present...

more stuff to read
And boy o boy do I need to start organizing this systematically...Lyn's future reading list may provide some inspiration in that department.

relax, s/he was after gwb
The Reg has the scoop on the recent Washington state quake:

...a Microsoft spokesgoblin said: "We are happy to announce that following a short phone call between Il Duce Bill Gates and His Highness, He [God] confirmed that the quake was meant for George W Bush and apologised for any inconvenience caused."

Glad that's cleared up.

oh my god, it's full of stars!
Beautiful photo on an edge-on galaxy -- which seems to inspire dialog along the lines of "Hey, doesn't that look like a..." "Yah, it really sorta does!"

(Hey, like the man said, I hate people who can't get out of the gutter, because they block the view from my periscope...)

hey, clip art!
Attrition.org, well known for its defaced site gallery, also has an image gallery. Man, the tee shirt opportunities abound!

(Link found while lurking the SDM)

fucking no-good bastards
...and I don't mean that in a good way. Seen first at the Reg, ICANN is awarding VeriSign control over .com and .net, in exchange for VeriSign turning .org over to a non-profit organization. That didn't strike me as too bad, until I saw this /. story on the same topic, which adds that "There are also apparently plans to reinstate the old limits on .org domains - if you aren't a non-profit corporation, you won't be permitted to register or keep a .org domain." That's just fucking peachy. I haven't had time to dig through all the crap in order to formulate a decent response for the public coment form on ICANN's site, but I am pretty displeased.

Anybody out there in blog land able to share any more info on this topic? I'm particularly concerned (for obvious reasons) about the changes to who is allowed to own a .org...