It’s Trang’s birthday today! Happy 24th Birthday to the prettiest lady I know. I love her very much.

War links roundup: (Warning: contents can be depressing)

After reading this article about what’s actually on Osama bin Laden’s tapes, I had a bit of a look myself. Unfortunately, the only unedited transcript of any of the tapes I can find is on indymedia, which, while a fine source of news, is not exactly unbiased on this issue. However, if this transcript is the same as the ones the establishment media and government have, it does put forward a much more moderate view than many would have you believe.

I am of the firm belief that the US’s current attempts to dictate to the rest of the world strike to the heart of what the US and other democracies are supposed to be about: the right of the people to self-determination. It’s true that, given the choice, many people will choose slavery and oppression over freedom, because freedom is about having the right to make your own choices, and the equal right and responsibility to live with the consequences.

Freedom will never work if you try to force people into it – indeed it’s a contradiction in terms. Freedom is only possible when it’s freely chosen. The only way that people will learn to value their freedom is if they are allowed to see the consequences of their choices not to be free.

Personally, I choose what laws I will obey. I fundamentally disagree with the idea of intellectual property and so treat laws designed to safeguard it with contempt. However, I will voluntarily support artists that I feel deserve my support by buying their books, games, and so on rather than copying them.

It’s the freedom in the heart that disappears first – the freedom that everyone has to say ‘No!’, whatever the consequences. Keep this, and you will be free no matter what happens in the world around you.

Here’s a slightly sad if edifying tale of the small distance between genius and madness – apparently Bobby Fischer/Fisher has been doing radio shows for some time now, broadcasting a series rather disturbed anti-Semitic and anti-American diatribes from the Phillipines. Personally, I didn’t know much about the man, having never really got into chess (and here I know Shay is gasping in horror), but it seems that here is someone whose talent in chess is without peer, but whose serious deficits in other areas have stopped him being able to use his talents.

For those of you who don’t read /.:

Apparently the petals of the lotus flower have a nanoscale peculiarity, namely that it has crystals of wax in pyramid-like shapes that reduce the surface area for water droplets. This means that, when the flower gets wet, the water rolls off rather than sliding off, which means that the flower itself stays bone dry, even in the middle of a rainstorm. It also means that the water collects dirt as it rolls off, cleaning the flower.

Best of all, some scientists have figured out how to make an aerosol that gives any surface the same property. Thus, any surface can be made hydrophilic and self cleaning. The hydrophilic part has immediate applications – accurate measurement of water for one, defrictioning of the surfaces of boats, and so on. The self-cleaning part, well, that doesn’t really need any explanation. How cool would self-cleaning shoes be?

I’m giving up pizza. It’s my food Achilles heel, and given that I’m trying to get more fit, eat better, and so on, I’ll be better off without it, I think.

So long, pizza. It’s been great.

This is possibly the coolest themed restaurant idea ever. Who wouldn’t be excited by the possibility of watching robots battle for your amusement while you eat. And they do children’s parties.

Cool.

link from Memepool

I’ve been playing Natural Selection, a mod for Half-Life, tonight. It’s a marines-vs-aliens scenario, but with RTS elements, in that the teams need to collect resources and research technologies. All the games I’ve played so far have had astounding levels of teamwork – the most I’ve seen in an online game that wasn’t just at a LAN. Awesome.

ADV confirms Cable Anime Channel

Twenty-four.
Hours.
A day.
Anime.

Sure it’s only in the states now, but maybe someday…

If you’re seeing this post, you’ve got the updated DNS info that points to Shay‘s new web hosting for inocuo.org. Yay Shay!

Well, it seems that the permalinks to each post in my blog were broken, as was the archive publishing. I’ve fixed it now, but I guess no one uses my I-worked-hard-to-create-them permalinks. *sniff*

Update: I wasn’t really serious about this.