Al Gore got a bad wrap, and I’ll tell you why. Not only was he deliberately mis-quoted about his role in the development of the Internet, but the importance of his role was totally downplayed.

Gore sponsored the legislation that funded the extension of Internet access to almost every undergraduate in a 4 year college or university in the early 1990s. The result was that english majors, artists, psych majors, etc, people who had never had access to the net before, had a chance to use it. Combined with HTML, HTTP & Mosaic, this made the experience richer for all participants, and demostrated that the medium had relevance beyond its traditional constituency of computer scientists, physicists and mathemeticians.

If he runs again, I am sure his opponents will try and blame the whole dot.com hangover on him.

BBC NEWS | England | Battery powered by leftover food

Scientists in Bristol have developed a battery which generates electricity from organic waste.
The battery, or microbial fuel cell (MFC), costs just £10 to make and in the future, could allow leftovers from Sunday lunch to top up the power supply of a household.

Salon.com Sex | When Playboy was hot

The overwhelming message these magazines give their readers is that they don’t believe the readers have either the interest or the mental ability to read articles. Ed Needham, the new editor of Rolling Stone and a former editor at FHM, put it a little more diplomatically in the New York Times recently, saying that he didn’t think that people had time to read anymore. The logical response to that statement would be that magazines shouldn’t be catering to the audience that doesn’t have time to read.

Why is florida still a memeber of the United States in good standing. Can’t we put them on probation and strip their national representation and their votes in the electoral college? They need some incentive to clean up their act.

Not that the gerrymandered districts in most of the other states are any better, but you have to start somewhere.

The Democratic Dividend – The stock market prefers Democratic presidents to Republicans. Why? By Carol Vinzant Republicans are no doubt muttering that that’s just the stock market, not the whole economy. But real GDP growth follows the same pattern. Since 1930 (the first year decent data is available), GDP growth was 5.4 percent for Democratic presidents and 1.6 percent for Republicans.

Same pattern, perhaps, but the difference in GDP growth (More than a 3 fold difference) is even more striking that the difference in the growth of the Dow (12.3% for Democratic Presidents and 8% for replublican, only a 50% difference).

Salon.com Life | World’s funniest joke is named

Not all animal jokes, for example, are created equal — jokes mentioning ducks were rated as funnier than other jokes.

I knew it, and now I have scientific proof!