It looks like there's actually going to be a recall vote on California Governor Gray Davis.  That is amazing.  If the Republicans had only fielded Richard Riordan, the popular and centerist ex-mayor of Los Angeles, instead of Bill Simon, the unknown and conservative magazine publisher's son, this would not be necessary.  But since they didn't, it is.  If you want to know why, check out California's $38.2B deficit.  Amid stories everywhere about state budget shortfalls, California wins the prize for biggest deficit and worst management.  Our kids are the ones who suffer, among others...

CNet reports Microsoft is halting development of Mac IE.  This follows the recent reports they are halting development of Windows IE, too (at least as a stand-alone component).  Interesting.  I'm sure Apple's Safari had something to do with this, but perhaps not everything, it has the feel of a strategic decision, not a tactical one.  As in: ".NET doesn't run on MacOS, so neither will IE".

NASA's picture of the day: Aurora Australis, as seen from space .  Includes a 1MB animated GIF movie.  Beautiful, and impressive; looks like something from Hollywood.

What does it take to bring Lord of the Rings to the screen?  About $5M worth of computer equipment, as in 588 IBM blade servers.  Cool.  Reminds me of that great quote from the other day: " it would cost less to send a man to Mars than it would for Hollywood to make a movie about it."

The color of money dept.: The U.S. Treasury is introducing a new colorful $20 bill.  Please click on pic at right to see the planned evolution (was, is, will be).  I've always felt U.S. currency to be the ugliest anywhere, this is a step in the right direction.  The change is being made to foil counterfeiters, not for aesthetic purposes, but still...

This is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hype week.  The new H.P. is being released this Saturday.  The initial printing run was 6.8M copies.  Whew.  Well, I guess we're going to get our copy just like everyone else :)

Steve Gillmor: The Jim Allchin Tax.  "So after the Allchin Tax was applied, IE is now finally sucked into the OS where it belonged all along.  Yukon will merge Exchange, SQL Server, and eventually the Windows FIle System, and .Net turns out to have been Windows all along."

Continuing our project to drink our wine, last night we had an '87 Jordan Cabernet.  It was not bad, but definitely over its hill; too bad, we must begin drinking all the stuff from the '80s while we can.  I'd give it an 84.