Technology is great. The user interface still needs a lot of improvement, but this is exactly the kind of tool that can help promote democratic discussion! Individuals now have the power to experiment with government budgeting.

This website offers a tool to help people see just how difficult (or easy) it is to balance the Minnesota state budget.  ( Read more... )

I have a few female readers at this blog, and I wanted to make sure they all knew about this opportunity to display the supernatural power of their cleavage.  No, seriously.

We already know that the homosexuals are responsible for God allowing Americans to die at the hands of terrorists.  As it turns out, low necklines (and short shorts) are ( Read more... )

There has been some evidence in recent years that our language affects our thoughts.  I want to be pro-active in this matter, so I've decided to make a stronger push in my life to include 3 specific changes.


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I like a good conspiracy theory.  The more bizarre, the better, right?  Well, here's a doozy for you.

Back on December 9th, strange lights appeared in the sky over Norway.  Popular Science has a good photo spread of the images taken of the weird phenomenon.  Most of them show a white spiral appearing in the sky, with a spiral blue beam jutting from ( Read more... )

I dreamed again last night.  More accurately, I awoke and still remembered the dream.

I was attending another university.  The dream involved my trip there and the days of my first week in classes.  The university was odd for three reasons.  First, it was founded by one man who had earned his fortune in business.  I think it was the movie business, ( Read more... )

There was a time when Newton's and Kepler's laws of motion reigned supreme. The universe was a perfectly explainable place, with every body following particular rules of motion that could be calculated and predicted. The only problem? They were wrong.
As the 19th century dawned, it seemed that Newton’s Theory of Gravitation had won the day. All ( Read more... )

I coined a phrase back on the afternoon of 2006 October 04 when I tried to imagine a computer technology that would assist humans in collaboration on large, complex projects.  Suppose a democracy allowed its citizenry to craft legislation directly.  That's the kind of massive scale that I had in mind, the involvement of millions of people to ( Read more... )

Just in time for folk going to CONvergence to have trivia for dazzling the natives! And how appropriate that their webpage shows the MST:3K profile. *laugh* Suppose there was a government experiment in which a person born right now was forced to watch television every single day for the rest of their lives. Is there already enough Hollywood ( Read more... )

I think I've found a way of modifying existing LiveJournal features (plus adding 1 new feature) to encourage more public participation in journals while still allowing extensive (better, I'd say) control over access and the blocking of griefers.  This idea is specific only to LiveJournal and does not really apply to other journal sites.

1) expand ( Read more... )

Suppose a function reaches a point where the input can continue to grow, but the output ceases to actually exist. In my thoughts, that's the entire concept of "asymptote".  The function simply "can't go there". Mathematically, though, it has a different and more precise definition. Thanks to ( Read more... )