The telecommunications companies want to start giving priority to their traffic and charging users and service providers (like google) access to the higher speed services. Meanwhile other “services,” such as this very blog, will be given lower priority and thus be delivered at a lower speed. This is complete bullshit. The internet is supposed to be a free place that fosters the spread of ideas and innovation. It’s not supposed to be about paying extra so information you want to send actually gets to where it’s going. If they succeed at this they will essentially kill the internet as we know it.

I read a really good and detailed article about this very thing a few weeks ago. It explains that the telcos are trying to change the metaphorical image of the internet from that of a place (I’m on the net, browsing the net, meet you in that chat room etc.) to that of a plumbing system (delivering content through pipes). The latter metaphor allows for them to charge for use of their “pipes.” But the entire point of the internet is that it’s “stupid” in the middle. All the “pipes” and routers and such that deliver the data currently have no idea what it is that they’re routing, they just send it where it needs to go and give no special priority to anything. All the innovation, all the “smartness,” happens on the periphery. The internet itself is just a means of communication between any two computers connected to it. It is dumb, and that allows for fair competition and innovation. Now they want to ruin that, to regulate traffic, to charge tolls, to artificially slow down their competitors traffic. Don’t let them, the internet is the most promising and disruptive force humanity has ever invented and it must be allowed to follow its natural course.

Check out how this illustrator’s drawings of cats evolved as he went crazy. By the end they became crazy psychedelic patterns. I’m ever more convinced that tripping and schizophrenia are exactly the same.

It’s the worlds first living computer. Scientists have constructed computer out of brain material. So far they’ve taught it how to fly airplanes. Sounds like the first step in making Cylons and completing the circle of time. But seriously though it’s amazing, and has crazy implications. If we’re making computers out of brain then I think true artificial intelligence is on the way. Plus this is organic material that interfaces with silicon, kind of like the Borg. Science just keeps becoming more and more like scifi.

Thanksgiving was an ancient American custom practiced until the mid-21 century. The purpose was to celebrate the incredible abundance and good fortune Americans had when compared to much of the world. The Americans celebrated their good fortune by gorging themselves on food, most notably the caracas of a dead bird known as a “turkey,” and a cake made from the innards of a large orange gourd.

Before the feast they would enjoy a parade, viewed on a hypno-box, in which giant facsimiles of idols from their capitalist religion (including the infamous deity Garfield, legendary for destroying the beautiful city of Lasagna) would be floated through the great city of New York. The parade was held in honor of one the highest capitalist powers, a god known as Macys. Macys was quite revered in ancient America, but she was a fading star. Shortly after the turn of the 21 century American religion started to shift towards monotheism. The new all-powerful god (“the one who was and who is and who is to come”) was known as Walmart. Walmart’s influence soon spread throughout the globe leading to a new era of religious warfare in which the heathens were brutally tortured and killed, and the believers were always treated to the lowest prices.