As the plane crashed down, he thought, "Well, isn't this nice"

Wired News reports on the world's largest general science conference in Boston this week:

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science is a mix of scientific workshops, lectures and public sessions that provide cutting-edge science, while also trying to tackle hot-button political issues like adapting to global climate change and embryonic stem cell research.

Of course, the Bush administration has sent its own representative to talk about all the sciency stuff:

Nina Fedoroff, science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, will be giving a keynote talk called "Making the World Flat"

I wish I were making that up. At least the title implies that they know the world isn't flat already.

Is your mouth a little weak?

In search of the perfect geek love website or shortcut to a sexual harassment lawsuit? Head on over to Despair, Inc. and create a customized message on virtual candy hearts and send it to your one-and-only (or stalkee).

Its funny how impossible dreams manifest

I haven't posted in over a month. Most likely that's due to the pre-xmas hustle and bustle, and the post-xmas PlayStation 3 Rock Band drumming. Thanks A!

Yeah, I tried the singing (Simon wouldn't tell me I'm horrible, but I wouldn't make it to Hollywood) and the guitar, but the drums have me hooked. I'm trying to get past the medium level tour to unlock the rumored "Tom Sawyer" track. Yeah, I know, its a cover band, not Rush, but its still a Rush song, even if the vocals and drumming suck. the point is, I can finally play Neil's fills without having to really learn the drums and join a band, or look like a complete douche and air-drum (which every Rush fan does anyway, douchebaggery be damned).

Anyway, here's a sweet Windows app that lets you plug your Rock Band drums into the USB port of your computer and use them as a real drum machine!

Thanks to TechRepublic for finding this one (Rush reference included).

Oh, and the boys have extended the Snakes and Arrows tour, and are reportedly reworking the set list. See you in Ft. Lauderdale!

UPDATE: A got skybox tix to the Ft. Lauderdale show through her job (for free!) and we unlocked the Tom Sawyer cover Friday night. Yeah, its not a good remake.

Maybe next year they'll learn to hold their booze

Happy Festivus everyone!

Its a Festivus miracle!

I've got a secret I've been hiding under my skin

We have this bizarre dichotomy in the US of wanting everything to be infinitely convenient, yet infinitely inexpensive. When cell phone companies…sorry-wireless providers…started charging outrageous prices for directory assistance calls (I think Sprint is up to $2.50/number, but I could be wrong), it was only a matter of time before companies like 1-800-FREE-411 and Google started to offer free, advertising-based directory assistance.

Except Google, once again, has ulterior motives. From InfoWorld:

You may have heard about our [directory assistance] 1-800-GOOG-411 service. Whether or not free-411 is a profitable business unto itself is yet to be seen. I myself am somewhat skeptical. The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model ... that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search.

The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. ... So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we're trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high accuracy.

So they are recording your voice requests and processing them to teach their ginormous computer system how to understand human speech. Just one more step toward the robots taking over the world.

Previous Stories:
Google = Skynet, Part 4
Jake's JK: This is not a good sign
Uh oh, Google is at it again
Google's Plan for Worldwide Domination

Between the two of you, I'd take the seasick crocodile

This is seriously how I have felt all week. Just so you all know.

Usually a case of malignant narcissism brought on during childhood

Grammy nominations are out today. I was looking through the list of nominees and guess what I found:

Category 19 Best Rock Instrumental Performance
(For solo, duo, group or collaborative performances, without vocals. Includes Rock, Hard Rock and Metal. Singles or Tracks only.)

* The Ecstasy Of Gold
Metallica
Track from: We All Love Ennio Morricone
[Sony Classical]

* Malignant Narcissism
Rush
Track from: Snakes & Arrows
[Anthem/Atlantic]

* Always With Me, Always With You
Joe Satriani
Track from: Satriani Live!
[Epic/Red Ink]

* Once Upon A Time In The West
Bruce Springsteen
Track from: We All Love Ennio Morricone
[Sony Classical]

* The Attitude Song
Steve Vai
Track from: Sound Theories Vol. I & II
[Epic/Red Ink]

Congrats boys! Hope you win, but looking at your fellow nominees, I'm sure its an honor to be nominated.

Hey, I just noticed that the Metallica and Springsteen songs are from the same compilation album, they should cancel each other's votes out. And aren't Vai and Satriani the same guy? At the very least, their styles are so similar, they will most likely not stand out to the voters. Looks like you might have a good chance this year!

I'm not like them but I can pretend

It must be the lack of actual words I have been writing lately. I will try to do more than just post YouTube videos from now on.

And now we meet in an abandoned studio

Line from obscure song loosely related to post subject matter