Blogging on a drizzly Saturday, and happy to be *home*.  Later tonight I am attending the annual Oaks Christian Father Daughter dance with Alexis  - really looking forward to that! - but for now, I am catching up and hanging out.  One of those [rare] days on which you have time, and you feel some pressure to use it wisely, and yet laziness sets in.  One of those days on which you choose to blog! ...

Global warming fraud: the big picture.  I'm afraid I am starting to disbelieve *all* global warming information.  My mind is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and I can't make it stop.  Science, please! 

Prompted by Al Gore in the NYTimes: We can't wish away climate change.  Yeah we can't wish it away but we can't wish it in, either, and Mr. Gore and his supporters seems to be doing exactly that.

Wow, this is cool: Financial Engines revs up for IPO.  I interviewed with them twelve years ago, amazingly enough...  and they are still going strong with roughly the same cast of characters, and have finally made it to going public.  Congratulations to Jeff Maggioncalda and Bill Sharpe and all of their investors...  and good luck! 

Analysts Gerry Purdy on the iPad: migrating to a three-device world.  "One of the fundamental changes going on in mobile computing & communications is the migration...  to a ‘three mobile device environment’ with most people having a notebook to create and manage content, a tablet for eBook reading and rich media playing, and a cell phone for calling and messaging."  Huh, not sure I agree.  A tablet definitely won't replace a cellphone, but it might replace a laptop for many people. 

As I think about it, while I want an iPad as a toy, I don't think there's really a use case for me to have an iPad.  I have a laptop already, and a cellphone.  But I could see a use for my Mom to have an iPad instead of a computer.

Definitely a taste of things to come: Recognizr: An Augmented Reality App.  "This app, Recognizr, can learn to recognize people's faces and link them to their social networking identities."  A dancing bear right now, but the possibilities for augmented reality are limitless... 

TechCrunch on the iPhone's peephole.  Essentially making the point that why restrict content in apps when the entire Internet is available in a browser, including porn and every other thing.  When you look at it this way, it is obvious that Apple's moves to restrict porn are a branding excercize.  It will always be true that any content whatsoever will be available on all iDevices via their web browsers... 

Macalope: The Jerk Store.  Hilarious.  The usual disclaimers about putting down sharp objects and hot liquids before reading apply. 

Now here's a useful list: The 10 coolest roads to ride.  For the purposes of this list, cool = serious climbing.  Check out the Stelvio Pass at left, whew! 

Here we have A celebration of duct tape.  Yippee. 

Philip Greenspun finally sees Avatar, and wonders why are there no fish in the movie?  The answer to that is simple: the story didn't involve fish.  Every single element of Pandora and its fauna and flora was designed in support of the story, all else would have been irrelevant.  Moviemakers like James Cameron don't set out to create a world, they set out to tell a story :) 

Apropos: Alien Invasion.  Plain talk about actual aliens we might encounter.  "As far as I can tell, nobody talking about interstellar contact has a model even vaguely close to a reasonable analysis of the situation. Short form: these discussions are the equivalent of the natives of a Polynesian island deciding who shall be allowed to wave as the galleons heave into view. The discussions are entirely about political dominance among scientists, and nothing to do with reality."  It's a great article, and I love this observation: "We simply aren’t going to see less sophisticated visitors due to the starship paradox: send a starship out now with all Earth’s current technological resources behind it, and then wait and send one in 50 years with full nanotech.  The second one gets there first." 

Boing Boing has an awesome feature on the Cassini Mission.  "In 1997, we aimed a rocket towards Saturn and sent a 13-foot-wide satellite off on a mission to explore the strange worlds in our own (relative) backyard.  This month, NASA announced plans to extend the Cassini space probe's Saturn sojourn until 2017—nine years longer than its original end date of 2008."  Check it out! 

While blogging away this morning my Palm Pre updated itself to WebOS 1.4, how nice.  Among other things we now have video capture and editing and more cross-linking between apps.  Oh, and the LED blinks when you have messages :) 

So be it, onward, a quick ride and then dancing with my daughter...