Harold's Home

Scary stuff: Geologists: 'We May Be Slowly Running Out Of Rocks'

"A rock can take millions of years to form, but it only takes a second for someone to skip a smooth pebble into a lake, and then it is gone." Dr. Kaiser said. "Perhaps these thoughtless rock-skippers don't care if they leave our planet completely devoid of rocks, but what about our children? Don't they deserve the chance to hold a rock and toss it up and down a few times?"

Continued Kaiser, "We are on a collision course to a world without rocks."

A bit later: "Just look at the pet rock craze: In 10 years, millions upon millions of rocks were painted, played with, and discarded like trash," Merrill said. "Looking back, mankind's arrogance and hubris is startling."

Indeed, which is why Virtual Pet Rock rocks are all 100% electronic and non-material. Get one today!

Heh, apparently today is Draw Mohammed day. I didn't know about this until I saw a post on Slashdot reporting Facebook was banned in Pakistan because of this.

Way to go extremist idiots, if you hadn't overreacted I and millions of others probably wouldn't have known about it.

I couldn't draw a simple snake to save my life but I gave it a go anyway.


Happy freedom of speech everyone.

I went to church today for a service for the death of a co-worker's mother. It was a catholic service with the usual amount of fluff, so I felt I could use some reason and intelligence. I also realised I hadn't linked to the following video yet, which I highly recommend you take the time to watch if you have a 36 minutes. Make the time!



A.C. Grayling is amazingly eloquent.

Spitting orang-utans solve nutty problem.

Via The Thoughtful Animal, see also: How Do You Figure Out How Chimps Learn? Peanuts.

Of all the things you'd expect to see on the Amazon wishlist of a correctional facility surely Eclipse (The Twilight Saga) by Stephenie Meyer isn't one of them.

The NYPL's Amazon wishlist for their incarcerated readers.

It's rather sad that people behind bars have to rely on charity to be able to better themselves (not all books are by Stephenie Meyer and even if they were surely reading that would be better than learning new "skills" from the other inmates).
Still, the service seems to be popular.

I had a quick look and it appears that Dutch correctional facilities are all part of the overall public library system so no need for private charity, the state provides and in fact offers a wide variety of materials in a lot of different languages (link in dutch).
Which is as it should be of course, every book its reader, every reader his or her book.

Pope 'could cancel UK visit' over 'offensive' Foreign Office memo.

I hope all concerned are ashamed of themselves and it leaves a very unpleasant taste.

Indeed, how dare some godless non-catholics presume to teach the catholic church about morality! How dare they just say things which are true, how dare they call out the pope on his ass-backwards dark-age era sentiments!

The following list actually doesn't sound like that big a deal to me, most of the items on here I'd do in a heartbeat. But then I am probably a lot more sane and a lot more humane than an organisation which holds the lives of millions in it's hand, is abusing it's power and has done so for hundreds of years. I have also never raped someone, not even a child. Which probably makes me unfit to judge, unlike pope Rat who did all he could to cover up scandals and protect the guilty.

• Launch of 'Benedict' condoms
• Review of Vatican attitude on condom use
• Bless a civil partnership
• Reversal of policy on women bishops/ordain woman
• Open an abortion ward
• Speech on equality
• Statemen on views over adoption (change of stance)
• Training course for all bishops on child abuse allegations
• Harder line on child abuse—announce sacking of dodgy bishops
• Vatican sponsorship for network of AIDS clinics
• Meet young unemployed people
• Apologize for… …
• Canonise/pseudo canonise a group
• Announce whistle blowing system for child abuse cases
• Go to job centre
• Debate on abortion
• All catholic schools should be free entry to all
• Speech on democracy
• Vatican and C of E funded committee on dialogue
• Launch helpline for abused children

That unpleasant taste you have? It's called "a dawning realisation that your entire life is a lie".


Update: The Guardian has an interesting article that shows just how much British officials are falling over backwards to make sure dear old pope Rat doesn't have to face reality or consequences for the catholic church's (in)actions.

Sieben - Star Wood Brick Firmament.

Apparently the entire Tech world is amazed that Apple gave the OK to Opera's iPhone app.

Why they are so surprised is a mystery to me as Apple had, months ago, already approved several different browsers, for example iCab Mobile.
The assumption seemed to be that Opera would be a real contender to the throne of Safari and that Apple would never allow apps that competed directly with their own categories of built-in apps. This is silly as Apple frequently has done this in all sorts of categories like stocks, music and mail. Oh, and webbrowsing.

Sure, the app store has loads of problems but Apple's rules are nowhere near as vindictive as many tech writers, for example in The Register, assume.

Silly tech pundits.

Having said all that Walt Mossberg's review is amazing. But then Walt is the Kingmaker™.