PlasticBoy

Canada considers decriminalizing pot.

“Why clog the criminal courts with kids 14 or 15 who might have been experimenting with a single stick of marijuana and who could face a lifelong disadvantage with a criminal record? Isn’t there a better way?” Seventy percent of Canadians, according to the polls, think there should be.

Mild Aerobic Exercise No Protection From Osteoporosis.

Flag of inconvenience

Once again, the political rivalry between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan has reared its ugly head in the world of computing. China considers Taiwan a rebel province, and frowns upon any symbolic representation of Taiwanese independence. So Red Hat, mindful of the size of the Chinese software market, removed the flag on the advice of its “internationalization group” because, according to Red Hat legal counsel Mark Webbink, “China does not approve of the use of any reference to Taiwan and could have blocked the product from being imported into China if the flag remained.”

Some Say ICANN Loses Legitimacy

According to one Web blog following the meeting, Thrush said ccTLDs may prefer “to attend ITU (International Telecommunications Union) meetings instead of ICANN meetings.” The ITU is a United Nations agency that adopts telecom regulations and standards.

“According to one Web blog”? How come this “Web blog” doesn’t get attribution? Isn’t that kind of like saying “according to one newspaper”?

I managed to hose my incoming mail for the last two weeks, so if you sent me anything, please send again.

New 2-disc Best of They Might Be Giants.

RealNetworks releases code.

Salon interviews Christopher Hitchens.

Forever Young (washingtonpost.com)

Does he think this will make him immortal?

“Depends on what you mean by immortal,” he says, sitting at Silicon Valley’s Original House of Pancakes in Los Altos, Calif., letting his ham and eggs get cold. “There is such a thing as proton decay.”

Pause.

He’s talking about the eventual collapse of subatomic particles in untold eons.

Okay, what about merely geological time? Hundreds of thousands of years?

“Oh yeah.” He smiles. “That. For sure.”

I’m checking out CyberCon 3 this weekend. It’s an online RPG convention with chat rooms for seminars and various online gaming systems (including NWN) for RPGs. I haven’t played in any of the games yet but the two seminars I’ve sat in on were pretty good.

Go Jorn!
“The widespread campaign to dismiss webloggers as narcissists is a clearcut demonstration of how the self-knowledge taboo is currently being enforced.”

Joyce Millman, who usually raves about Buffy in Salon, raves about it in the Boston Phoenix this week. She also utterly pans Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s new show, Firefly. I agree with her assesment of Firefly but I think it may be salvageable if it doesn’t get canceled soon.

I was going to read this book about how to not procrastinate, but I decided to do it later.

Experts ping-pong on protein advice.
“No longer are there hard and fast numbers for the percentages of major food groups. Now protein can range from 10 percent to 35 percent of daily intake. At the annual meeting of the American Dietetic Association this week, nutritionists basically admitted that they really don’t know how much protein Americans need.”

Weight Training May Help Heart
“In the Harvard School of Public Health study, men who engaged in weight training for 30 minutes or more weekly had a 23 percent lower risk of heart disease than men who did not pump iron. The researchers said the benefits may result in part from reductions in blood pressure and body fat achieved through weight training.”