Losing our privacy, day by day.
In this CNN
article, Jerome Dawson, research professor at the University of Kansas and president of the American Geographical Society, warns about the danger of embracing GPS tracking technology. "The phrase I like to use to bring this home is to ask, 'How long would Anne Frank's diary be if she were wearing one of these nifty devices?'"
Makes you think twice about buying a GPS wristwatch, huh? My talking
Simpsons watch from Burger King is always asking, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" The little voices can be annoying at times, but now I'm happy that my watch never knows exactly where we are...
On a related note, I don't want
pants that tell people where I am either. Arrggh, I'm feeling paranoid tonight.
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Strong Bad
Today's
email is a weird one, but it still made me laugh out loud. This weekend I ordered a Trogdor T-shirt from the Homestar Runner
online store. It feels good to support a site that consistently makes me happy.
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Rubik's Cube Art
I could never even get one side the same color (give me a break -- I was 7). So I find
this impressive.
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So Many Words
Everyone keeps
telling me to read Cory Doctorow's novel
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The book is available to
download for free, but I'll probably end up
buying a printed copy. I know I'm unnecessarily killing part of a tree by doing that, but I already read way too much text on a computer screen. Anyway, the point of this -- if you don't have the time right now for an entire novel, you can read one of Doctorow's short stories,
0wnz0red, at Salon.com. I checked it out this morning and give it a thumbs up.
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Face Forward
Remember that movie
Face Off with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta? They underwent some complicated surgery that involved switching faces with each other. It seemed completely implausible to me at the time, even as fiction. But according to this
NY Times article, the technology to do it is already here.
So freakin' creepy, right? I mean, I can understand old people wanting to have plastic surgery to eliminate their wrinkles, but wouldn't it mess with you if you looked in the mirror and saw someone else's face instead of your own? I just keep imagining a future where pretty (but poverty-stricken) young women sell their faces to feed their families.
