Loose ends:
- According to Stephen Hawking, the universe has no single beginning. Note the very subtle dig at creationism about half-way through the article.
- David Pogue considers the riddle that is Bill Gates. As a side note, it does seem that the Times is using WordPress to power their blogs.
- A Hamburger Today and Gothamist are throwing a burger party this Saturday. I wonder if Frank Bruni will make an appearance…
- The National Academy of Sciences has just released a report stating that not only is the Earth hotter than it’s ever been over the past 400 years, but humanity is the cause of most of the recent warming. This comes as no surprise to anyone who likes their science to be fact-based. It seems to me that the Bush Administration’s head-in-the-sand approach to global warming has a lot in common with the Vatican’s condemnation of Galileo’s theories about the Earth not being the center of the universe…
- Wendy Seltzer faces off with the MPAA over the question of DRM. Related: John Gruber points out that “interoperable DRM” is a classic oxymoron, and that ultimately, DRM places control of content not in the hands of the content creator, but rather in the hands of the technology creator.
Plus DRM just expands the archive problem - it creates another layer of technology (beyond the physical) we have to remember how to decode in order for our decedants to view our creative output.
Maybe 500 years from now, they will call this period in history a "dark age" because they can't decode any of our content.