Geek vs Life

11 die in Pakistan kite festival 
        
The spring festival is traditionally celebrated with the flying of thousands of colourful kites [AP]

At least 11 people have died and more than 100 injured at an annual kite flying festival in eastern Pakistan.
 
The spring festival is traditionally celebrated with the flying of thousands of colorful kites.
    
The deaths and injuries were caused by stray bullets, sharpened kite-strings, electrocution and people falling off rooftops at the conclusion of the two-day Basant festival on Sunday, Ruqia Bano, spokeswoman for the emergency services in the city of Lahore, said on Monday.
   
The festival is regularly marred by casualties caused by sharp kite strings or celebratory gunshots fired into the air.

Kite flyers often use strings made of wire or coated with ground glass to try to cross and cut a rival’s string or damage the other kite, often after betting on the outcome.

Ever want to stick a tiny yoda on your credit card bill? Well now you can! Vote for a Star Wars stamp at www.uspsjedimaster.com

So I was watching Return of The Jedi as we at GvL are prone to doing, and I came across an interesting philosophical question. One day, I will have children of the age of watching The Saga. At that time, in what order shall I show them? 4,5,6,1,2,3 or 1,2,3,4,5,6? Don’t misunderstand, 4,5, and 6 are clearly the BETTER but that doesn’t mean they should go first for optimal viewing. there are a great many points in 4,5 and 6 that have added importance due to the prequal trilogy. (which, it could be argued, is the only reason for it’s existence.) On the other hand, the legendary revelation at the end of 5 is ONLY a revelation if the films are viewed in the order that they were created. Please, good sirs, aid me in this, the great question of our time.

So I started reading this book by Joe Hill, called Heart Shaped Box. In it the main character buys a ghost on an eBay like site, which comes in the form of a suit. Well, so I’m doing my normal perusal of eBay, and I find this. A doll. It’s haunted. It cries at night and causes pregnancies. Ok, so, one of you guys should buy it. It’s all creepy like. I’d do it, but I’ve got other things that money needs to go for right now. (Sorry. I’m working on it.)

The Seattle Symphony is having a deal where you can get $20 tickets for 20 of the remaining shows for the 2006-07 season. So if you feel like getting yourself some culture on the cheap end, check it out. The tickets are only up for a week, so if you’re gonna do it, do it fast.

Seattle Symphony

Information on information. Or rather, what the street sign means in an informative, yet completely unnecessary website.

Boston Public Health Commission

Did you know?
In Boston, over 3 pedestrians are injured per day.

Over 3?!? That’s like…4!

Go ahead, guess.

Would you believe the US Department of Transportation?

The National Institute of Science and Technology has an extremely interesting FAQ that deals exclusively with time and the phenomena of Daylight Savings Time. For instance, we all know that Arizona doesn’t follow DST. But did you know that there is an indian reservation inside Arizona that does?

So anyway, the rules regarding DST change this year. This year DST will be 238 days long, as compared to the 210 days of DST last year.

The changes are drastic enough that even Apple had to release an update to deal with the change.

Bill Harris, author of Dubious Quality. A blog I read on a regular basis. Amongst gaming news, sports news, thoughts in general, and a particularly quarky view of life (and his family), he gives a wonderful insight into what’s going on.

And he’s really good at math. Check out his most recent tabulation of Sony’s numbers.

Sony has been crowing about the rush to adopt the Blu-Ray format since the PS3 was introduced. If you listened to them, you’d think it as wan absolute landslide (never mind that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD combined represent less than .1% of the market right now).

That’s not 1%–that’s .1%.

Beyond that, though, Sony’s numbers never seem to add up. Ever. They throw out a bunch of numbers at one time, declare victory, and hope that we can’t count.

We can.

Check this out. People are proposing a “craigslist” style 911 system for people to post emergencies to. Post your video, post your pics from your camera phone, post your name and number for contact, yada yada, firemen and SWAT are on their way.

I sincerely hope that we don’t have to rely on the internet for all of our emergency stuff. What if some terrorists decide to wipe out a few key central servers? We’d be screwed.

He’s at it again, trying a grassroots campain in Second Life. He’s the first candidate to put anything in this virtual world.

Ok. So it’s scary, this adds just a bit more to that post I put up about AI of Pits. Another point for the Metaverse.

Anyway, ZDNet for more…lots more.

I, in no way, endorse any candidate, nor does the site (though I have no control over what other people I work with think). I just think this is an interesting way things are going.

Tsk tsk tsk, Canada. You’re not keeping up with the IIPA’s (International Intellectual Property Alliance) policy on copyright protection.

IPAA says “Canada remains far behind virtually all of its peers in the industrialized world with respect to its efforts to bring its copyright laws up to date with the realities of the global digital networked environment.”

Canada says that they are“working actively on the copyright file and will take the time necessary to ensure that revisions to this important framework legislation have been fully thought through.”

The Globe and Mail for more…

And here I was, thinking Canada was cool.

So maybe it was a little more graphic than I intended…. or maybe it wasn’t.
Either way Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate the holiday or don’t.
: )

This is about as sappy as I’ll get in reference to a story.

Scientists have discovered a 5,000 year old pair of human remains, trapped in stone in an eternal embrace. At least, if they can keep them together.

Reuters for the full article.

According to a recent survey done by Gametart, a UK based internet gaming retailer, female gamers have sex more often.

Check out this release:

Gamers Have Sex More Often!

It’s official – women who play video games have sex more often! Gametart, the UK’s largest online games rental company, carried out the survey throughout January to see how the recent influx of the likes of Pink PSPs and DS Lites would affect gamers’ sex lives across the country.

The results were surprising.

Of our sample of 200 women, those who played video games on average had sex 4.3 times a week while those who didn’t play games only had sex just 3.2 times a week.

Perhaps even more promising for gamers is the fact that many of the women that we interviewed who have only recently started playing games said that they now have sex more often than before.