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I’d rather have a group of school cooks and custodians win Powerball then most people. I’d rather have myself win then anyone else, but that’s another story.

I’m not a big fan of the restrictions the FAA has placed on the things people can take on a plane, in light of 9/11. I feel that the only real security on a plane is the passenger’s willingness to fight hijackers. Preventing people from bringing on relatively benign potential weapons (nail files, medals) only annoys people.

That said, I respect the rules that are in place because the paranoia surrounding terrorists attacks can have a serious effect on our society, both mentally and economically. Case in point, their activities of someone who put box cutters and clay in airplane lavatories. It’s a bad idea attempting to show that the screening process is flawed. This attempt caused delays in planes all across the US, which inconvenienced thousands of people. All this did was show that things can still get across without really accomplishing anything of significance. Idiots.

One of the most amazing things about technological advances is the ethical quandary it puts on people. Take, for example, the concept of the 3-Parent Child. Technology has advanced to the point that a nucleus of the egg from a woman can be placed inside the egg of another woman (after that nucleus has been removed). The hybrid egg, which now has two genetic mothers, can be fertilized with sperm, giving that child the genes of a third person, the father. The child now has three parents. The entire concept seems amazing, especially to women who can’t maintain a normal pregnancy due to “bad eggs”, giving them a chance to give birth to a child with their own genes.

This causes all sorts of uproar among opponents of this technology, saying that such a child would have be subject to physical and emotional trauma as they grow up. Of course, the trauma would be inflicted upon the child by the opponents, but that point is never really brought up. Beyond ethical, it also brings up legal issues which I don’t think people are ready to address. Ultimately, I have to say that this is good technology.

I was happy. My girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married. My parents helped us in every way, my friends encouraged me, and my girlfriend? She was a dream!

There was only one thing bothering me, very much indeed, and that one thing was her younger sister. My prospective sister-in-law was twenty years of age, wore tight mini skirts and low cut blouses. She would regularly bend down when quite near me and I got many a pleasant view of her underwear. It had to be deliberate. She never did it when she was near anyone else.

One day little sister called and asked me to come over to check the wedding invitations. She was alone when I arrived. She whispered to me that soon I was to be married, and she had feelings and desires for me that she couldn’t overcome and didn’t really want to overcome. She told me that she wanted to make love to me just once before I got married and committed my life to her sister.

I was in total shock and couldn’t say a word. She said, “I’m going upstairs to my bedroom, and if you want to go ahead with it just come up and get me.”

I was stunned. I was frozen in shock as I watched her go up the stairs. When she reached the top she pulled down her panties and threw them down the stairs at me. I stood there for a moment, then turned and went straight to the front door. I opened the door and stepped out of the house.

I walked straight towards my car. My future father-in-law was standing outside. With tears in his eyes he hugged me and said, “We are very happy that you have passed our little test. We couldn’t ask for better man for our daughter. Welcome to the family.”

The moral of this story is: always keep your condoms in your car.

I believe the DMCA is a bad law, not because it attempts to protect the copyright holders, but because it’s written in such a way that publishing a report on copy-protect can get a researcher sued. Case in point, the recent report on flaws in the copy protection methods of SunnComm’s MediaMax CD3. SunnComm has decided to persue legal action against the researcher under the DMCA. As Slashdot has pointed out, holding down the shift key is now a felony.

Looking over the SunnComm website, I can’t help but draw a couple of conclusions. 1. The company seems to be run by marketing people, giving more credence to flash and bang then any real technological innovation. They use slogans like “Lightyears Beyond Encryption” and “Can you Hear the Future…We Can”, along with a large amount of Flash animation. 2. Their “Ask the Prez” section smacks of lead questions. In other words, the questions seem more like they came from the marketing department to emphasize the value of the company and its technology.

In the end, I’ve decided that this is a company that is run by people more concerned with making money through flash and bang then technological innovation. As a result when someone, like the researcher above, puts a damper on them, they sue to keep their money flow.

Gotta love companies some times.

I often wonder what the edge of the universe is like, assuming there is one. If I were to travel in a straight line, would I eventually reach the edge of everything. What would be beyond the universe? Would there be anything beyond it? One researcher suggests that the universe is shaped like a soccer ball. It doesn’t answer what is beyond the edge, but it does make for an interesting theory. Assuming that the universe is actually round shaped, if I were to travel in a particular direction, would I eventually bend with the universe, so that I would constantly be on the edge. A better image may be to think of a hamster in a hamster wheel. He constantly travels in one direction, but the wheel moves under him. Of course, I still like the Danger Mouse idea that when you find yourself outside of the universe, you merely draw a new square on the map and poof you’re back in the universe.

For the most part, I don’t believe that people are every truley evil. Then I read something like this and I think maybe there are.