Mister Pants finds the best stuff ever. After the revolution comes, he’ll be the only one weblogging, and the rest of us will be bowing before the master. Case in point: Rabbi Phunkiewsky’s school of new communication. Requires flash, and is wickedly funny. Oh, and if you aren’t subscribing to Mister Pant’s pantsmail, you’ve really missed the boat. It’s too late to learn about his experience eating a soggy sandwich really fast over the sink, but it’s not too late to become a subscriber.

The User Meeting’s over. I’m resting now. It has been a very long week.

This week, the company I work for is hosting our annual users’ meeting. This is a tradition in our industry – software development, or, specifically, software development for electric utilities. Our customers from around the country are in Athens for the next four days. As Customer Support manager, I’m giving the “keynote address” Wednesday afternoon. This means that this weblog likely won’t see much in the way of updates until later in the week. I’ll leave you with this (and expand upon it later): TiVO rocks.

Everything I ever learned about quantum physics may be wrong. On second though, considering the grades I earned in my quantum physocs classes, that’s not saying much. Better to say “Everything anyone ever learned about quantum physics may be wrong.”

You’ve heard a lot that man hunted big game, such as the mammoth, to extinction. Or that a sudden catastrophic event killed them off. Maybe it was niether. Perhaps man or the scavengers that followed introduced viruses that did the job.

Walter Yongquist, Chair Emeritus of the Department of Geology at the University of Oregon, wrote a nice piece titled Myths and Realities of Mineral Resources. By and large an even-handed view, he shows that we have a real problem with energy reserves, but both “big oil” and “the greens” are using half-truths and fallacies to push their views.

I did watch the debates last night. I thought it rather nice of the Cardinals and Mets to hold their scoring to the inning before and the inning after the debate, though I’d have preferred the opposite result. In the debate itself, I found this one much more enjoyable to watch over the third. The thing that struck me most was both candidates rush to endorse hate crime laws. I think their proponents have good intentions, but I am very much against the idea of hate crime laws, and lobby against them when I can. The concept of all the hate crime legislation I’ve seen is if you commit a crime against a person because of the feelings you have about a group that that person belongs to (race, gender, sexual preference, religion, political affiliation, etc.), then you can be punished more harshly. For example (just to be absolutely clear), if you kill a man, you get one sentence. If you kill a man because he’s Catholic and you despise Catholics, you get a harsher sentence. I strongly oppose this concept because it punishes thought. It punishes what you were thinking alongside what you did. Even if the mere idea of legislating thought wasn’t repugnant enough, there is no possible way to fairly apply it to everyone, short of a device that invades your “brain wave matrix” or somesuch and retrieves your thoughts. And who wants that?

The other night, I was walking through downtown Athens. Despite what Austin, Texas, might claim, Athens really has more music per capita than anywhere else. On any given night, you can find several dozen bands playing throughout downtown. They’re not all REM wannabes, either. There’s a wonderful mix. The other night, I saw on the street corner a grizzled old bluesman, his electric guitar plugged into a tiny amp on the sidewalk. He looked and sounded like a true delta bluesman. His song had a familiar melody, though I couldn’t quite place it. The lyrics were an epic retelling of the Georgia-Tennessee football game from the weekend prior. I smiled, thinking of days gone by when folk songs were written to commemorate an important event. As I walked closer, the verse ended and he began the chorus, still singing and playing in classic blues style . . . “Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who? Who let the dogs out . . .”

The Libertarians have gotten my vote in every presidential election I’ve been eligible for. They’re not this year, as my views on social responsibility have shifted to the left over the last three years, but Harry Browne, Libertarian for President, expertly points out the fallacies in the Gore-Bush debate arguments. Who am I voting for? Even though I don’t agree with everything on his platform, it looks like it’s going to be Ralph Nader.

TiVO’s here! And, instead of the 14 hour old model I was supposed to win, they sent me the new 30 hour model. Sayeth the TiVO people: “You just got lucky.” I’ll say!