Everyday I get tons of people visiting my site looking for an image of a liger. You know, liger—as in half lion have tiger. I can only assume these people are fans of Napolean Dynamite and perhaps they will enjoy these clever ads for the Utah State Fair featuring Napolean and Pedro.

A research project at the MIT Media Lab has a plan for getting $100 laptops in the hands of millions of people around the world.

The laptops will have a 500 Mhz CPU, 1 gig of RAM, run on Linux, and will be optionally powered by a hand-crank or traditional power sources.

The goal of the project is to make the low-cost PC idea a grassroots movement that will spread in popularity. Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at MIT, said the idea is that governments will pay roughly $100 for the laptops and will distribute them for free to students.

“This is the most important thing I have ever done in my life,” Negroponte said on Wednesday during a presentation at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT. “Reception has been incredible. The idea is simple. It’s an education project, not a laptop project. If we can make education better–particularly primary and secondary schools–it will be a better world.”

(via News.com article)

I saw this last week but thinking about it again today, I just have to share it. Watch it here. Some information on the music and the creators behind the animation here at CG Society.

This is kind of strange. Apparently Roy Disney (Walt’s Nephew) has purchased 80% of the Harlem Globetrotters.

There used to be a Harlem Globetrotters animated cartoon back in the 70’s. I wonder if Roy can bring it back. j/k

Yahoo has more details.

It looks pretty cool to me: The Outfit game trailer.

This is pretty interesting: Wikipedia users edit a meta article for Esquire.

This week, an Esquire editor invited Wikipedia users to edit an article that will appear in the magazine. Wikipedia users reacted strongly, with over 500 edits to WP:ITAAW before the article was frozen.

Editor A.J. Jacobs wrote the original article, which was riddled with deliberate errors. These errors were quickly corrected by users, who rewrote many sections from scratch. Jacobs said of the massive edits made by Wikipedians,

I just wanted to thank you all so much for participating in this experiment. It was absolutely fascinating. I was riveted to my computer, pressing refresh every 45 seconds to see the next iteration. And the next and the next.

The article will presumably run in the November 2005 issue.

The Washington Post on the proof behind evolution and the Evolution / Intelligent Design (ID) case in Harriburg, Pa.

“When scientists announced they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome.”

The chimpanzee genetic information let scientists put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests and the predictions made under the theory passed.

Today a Federal judge in Harrisburg, Pa. USA, will begin to hear a case that asks whether Intelligent Design or other non-scientific explanations should be compulsory teaching material in a biology class.

But the plaintiffs, who are parents opposed to teaching ID as science, will do more than merely argue that those alternatives are weaker than the theory of evolution.

They will make the case — plain to most scientists but poorly understood by many others — that these alternatives are not scientific theories at all.

Tonight I played water polo for 2 hours. I’m beat and I’m going to bed.

After the games I had a good time chatting with Brock about my summer and about the breakup. Getting home I realize it stirred up a lot of emotions.

I never tried this myself and honestly I don’t have a lot interest in trying it out but some of you may find it deliciously wonderful: How to download high quality Quicktime .MOV versions of iTunes Music Videos.

(via waxy links)

The New York Times is running a story on the departure of Disney CEO Michael Eisner from the company. His last day will be on Saturday.

It is a low-key way to end a 21-year career that was both brilliant and controversial and during which Mr. Eisner, 63, became the face of Disney for the generation whose parents grew up with the founder, Walt Disney.

My sister and I started a really popular flickr group today that has gained over 120 users in less than 4 hours. It’s called Flickr Firsts and it is a place where flickrites can add their first image to the pool. Everyone is welcome, so if you’ve ever uploaded an image to flickr then you’ve got one perfect for this group.

If you’ve never added a photo to Flickr - now’s the time to do it. You bought that fancy digital camera / scanner, so show that collection of beautiful images off! Also feel free to invite your friends and family to join as well.

I find that as I join more groups my photos get more exposure and I get more comments. That’s really why anyone uses flickr anyway right?

Oh, and about this image, I whipped it up in Photoshop using the flickr logo and some Verdana size 36 font - it’s for the group icon.

Update: It’s been a day and a half and our group now boasts over 700 members. It’s been fun to watch as the growth is beginning to increase exponentially. Reminds me a lot of what I read in Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point”.

wikiHow is the how-to manual that anyone can write or edit. If you feel so inclined, they have a page of requested “how-to”s.

Wiki’s are a great step toward a society where all information is free. I love it.

Google’s Gmail has increased the number of invitations I can give away to 100. It’s not very often that I even gave away any of the 50 I had available before. Do you want a Gmail account? Comment here.

Less than two weeks have passed since Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza strip and the Islamic terrorist faction known as Hamas has launched rocket attacks against Israel. Although I can’t say I never expected there would be attacks from the Palestinian controlled Gaza—there always have been, it just surprises me how quickly the terrorists are back at it again.

In a retaliatory response Israel launched air strikes early Sunday morning and gathered troops outside of Gaza.

I have a strong suspicion that this is exactly why the Sharon Government wanted to leave Gaza. Now that Gaza is somewhat autonomous Israel can make good on its promise to take a more serious stance.

(From the New York Times):

“Hamas and other Palestinian factions have fired hundreds of rockets from northern Gaza in recent years, prompting periodic Israeli military incursions. The Israeli troops usually pulled back after a few days, and the rocket fire would subsequently resume.

But Israel has warned for months that if the rocket fire continued after its withdrawal from Gaza, it was prepared to hit back much harder than it had in the past.”

Hamas’s claim for launching its attack came after a truck carrying rockets exploded killing 15 Palestinians and wounding more than 80. The say the blast was caused by an Israeli attack.

[Both t]he Palestinian Authority and Israel said the blast was caused by Hamas explosives that went off accidentally, and they dismissed Hamas’s allegation that an Israeli airstrike caused the explosion.

The Palestinian Interior Ministry said Hamas should take responsibility for the blast “instead of making accusations against others.”

I think it’s important to note that it’s the terrorist causing the trouble, not the Palestinian Authority.

I also wanted to note that the Times article makes me even more hopeful for the Palestinian people because of the comment by Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian leader, who said, “We must stop parading our weapons and stop using guns among the people.”

Clearly he see what is wrong with parading Ak-47’s in the street and wants to try and make them a more civilized people.

I hope this so called “war on terror” sorts itself out. I wish people could just get along.

I just finished up another vector illustration this morning. I tried something new by adding more blur on the background layers of the image as they go further away from the viewer. I like the effect, but I wonder if it’s too distracting?