Yay, 2008!

Happy New Year to you all.  We spent last night celebrating 2007 the old fashioned way, with friends, food, and football.  And we plan to bring in the new year the same way :)

It could not be windier here; the dogs are blowing around the yard, and anything not nailed down or planted has long since gone airborne.  Not a good day for a ride but I'm going to try to squeeze one in anyway.  I did a 40 miler yesterday and it felt like 80; by "Ole's Law" every wind is a headwind.

I have a Moxi attached to my HDTV; and if you had asked me yesterday I would have said I liked it.  The combination of cable box and DVR is nice.  But the UI is not nice, at least not as nice as my seven-year old Tivo's.  This morning I was trying to do a simple thing, doubtless in concert with millions all over the world; I was setting up the Moxi to tape record the games I'm interested in watching today.  It was painful.  I finally resorted to going upstairs, using the Tivo to figure out which games were on and on which channels, and then going back downstairs to program the Moxi.  So that's it.  I'm getting a Tivo HD.  I confidently expect a lot of trouble getting two cablecards from AT&T and getting them installed and working, but I don't care; I want the Tivo UI.  So be it. 

Did you see that Peter Garrett. lead singer of Midnight Oil, is Australia's new Environment Minister?  "The music of Peter Garrett has always been politically charged. Now the towering, baldheaded former singer of Midnight Oil is charged with practicing politics -- as Australia's new environment minister...  A longtime environmental campaigner and advocate for Aboriginal rights, Garrett made his first foray into politics with an unsuccessful bid for the Senate as a member of the Nuclear Disarmament Party in 1984."  Now that's cool... 

If you're not into football, or even if you are, you might consider watching The Four Horsemen.  Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for an unmoderated 2-hour discussion.  These four are known as atheists (or as I prefer, "brights"), but additionally are smart, thoughtful, and funny.  And not strident, in contrast to their detractors...   [ via Russell Beattie ] 

Rogers Cadenhead considers the Long Bet Winner: Weblogs vs. The New York Times  The bet: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.".  So, blogs won, narrowly,  but interestingly the actual winner was Wikipedia, which beat both.  That is, the wisdom of crowds beat the wisdom of individual experts and the wisdom of institutional experts.  Not surprising, in retrospect, and it has implications for many fields, including Digital Pathology...