Scientists have announced that a new rock floating through space, Gliese 581 c may be a habitable planet. If this is the case, we will need to start thinking about ways to get there. Hell, we’ve been thinking about it as a species for years but we need to put aside social and political differences and really work toward finding a way to migrate to a new habitable planet. We don’t even need to live there really. We just need to be able to grow food on the planet until we find more planets capable of sustaining life.

Once we discover a planet capable of supporting farming, we can send our robo-workers to do do all the heavy lifting and humans will make future livings as Teamsters. Only we’ll all be piloting space ships delivering foodstuffs and repair parts back and forth. Ice Pirates anyone? It may have been an entertaining farce in 1984, but if we as the human race want to go out with a bang, not a whimper, then we really need to start making real progress into deep-space exploration and migration.

We need inter-galactic spaceships capable of traversing millions of miles a la Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek.

Think of it as science fiction if you must…but things change. Sometimes, fantastic stories that were once considered fiction lead to discovery.

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So before we start talking college hoops, let’s just let it be known I know nothing at all about who is good or who is bad. I like Marquette and NC State, but I think Ducks are cool too. So I have two brackets going so far this year, one I selected the Badgers and one I selected the Ducks. I have even considered doing a third bracket just so I can have one with all four number one picks meeting in the Final Four.

But speculation is not my purpose here.

My purpose is to ask a question:

Why would someone at work say they want to be in on a March Madness Pool, for $5 bucks even, and then when the e-mail is sent out they suddenly change gears and talk about being fired for gambling?

Some women at a company in the Twin Cities decided to run a March Madness Pool this year. They spoke individually to several people (including me) who all expressed interest in making selections and paying $5 in hopes of winning the pool.

Afterward, one of the folks who was very excited about making picks walked over to the woman running the March Madness Pool and mentioned that she could be fired for running a betting pool.

Technically, this is true if it is outlined in our company policies (which I have not seen covered anywhere) but why would you SAY that you want to do it, and then suggest that the person running the Pool will be fired for organizing it?

That’s just a mean double-standard.

Oh, and if you want to do the ESPN Tournament Challenge in a group, join the group named: Bongo’s House of Pancakes. The password is: beer. There is no buy-in for this group…it’s just for fun.

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While listening to On The Media last weekend (one of the top five show on public radio) I was introduced to OpenCongress.org. My life is different now. Instead of thinking of the legislative process as sort of an amorphous conglomeration of radio stories, blog entries and speeches on c-span I can now see it for what it is. Bills being voted on by legislators. Open Congress has the current congressional schedule and all the bills being proposed and voted on. Most importantly it allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds regarding the specific bills you’re interested in (I think there could be some marvelous things done with yahoo pipes and this, but I’m not going to do them–if anyone finds anything let me know).

In addition to the bill feeds it lets you subscribe to the RSS feeds of specific legislators votes. Once I started subscribing I couldn’t stop. I’ve already made a separate tab on my google home page just for Open Congress feeds. I’ve subscribed to each senator and house member from Minnesota and Montana as well as a handful of the potential Presidential Candidates and others that I’m just interested in.

I haven’t even started adding the committee stuff yet but I’m hoping to get to it tonight. I encourage everybody to check it out and use it. It’s a power tool of democracy! Baby!

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In 2002 there was a flood in Roseau, MN. Around that time I received in e-mail some pictures that my Uncle had taken, one of which was a small whirlpool that had formed. It was probably near a storm drain or perhaps a culvert or some other drainage device.

I just sort of uploaded the photo to JonNordin.com and didn’t really flag it for any searching nor did I register it anywhere. Around April of 2004 the word “whirlpool” started appearing at the top of my server logs. There was a brief period when “gulf war” and “whirlpool” traded places as the #1 and #2 search terms, but in summer of 2004, the word “whirlpool” became the number one search term that led visitors to my website.

In February and March of 2005 the word “firetruck” briefly became the number one search term. This can likely be attributed to the myspace.com craze. My server logs revealed that people were linking to a picture of an NYC firetruck that had a post 9/11 paint-job, and people on MySpace were using it as a background for their MySpace layouts.

Instead of deleting the NYPD Firetruck picture, I uploaded a new photo with the same filename. This replacement photo was all black with the words, “Thank you for not stealing my copyrighted work.” in the middle.
I never did receive any e-mail complaints about that, but I did check out the dude’s myspace page a few weeks later and it was still pulling my black picture.

The word “whirlpool” now accounts for between 50% and 80% of all external web traffic to my personal website with the second runner-up still being the word “firetruck”.

My question for eightandfivers is, “What are people trying to find when they are searching the internet for a whirlpool?” Is it for an actual whirlpoool? Is it a whirlpool galaxy? Is it for a Whirlpool factory? Perhaps Whirlpool appliances?

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Not that anybody would be surprised by somebody in politics attacking a political leader while his or her own business is less than exemplary, but Republican Newt Gingrich was actively cheating on his wife while at the same time attacking President Clinton over the Lewinsky affair. Gingrich had this to say when asked about the Clinton situation at the Focus on the Family web event:

…as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept … perjury in your highest officials.

So if everyone is in agreement that Clinton lied about cheating on his wife, how long will it take for a Republican-led impeachment trail for George W. Bush over the culture of perjury he has fostered in his Administration?

The “Scooter” Libby decision has generated a public written record of the Bush Administration’s penchant for lying, and still, we cannot get anyone in congress brave enough to impeach the President.

It is a sad state of affairs in America when you can get publicly humiliated for lying about infidelity but you cannot get in trouble for sending American boys and girls to their deaths.

Note: Even if your demise becomes a statistic that’s classified as, “Post Combat Ops - 1 May (2003) thru Present”, you’re still dead.

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While playing Apples to Apples at the cabin up near Grand Marais, one of the categories was “Unforgettable”. Someone played the card “Giant Squid.” Everyone thought it was a pretty stupid card to be played, but the player argued, “Hey man, if you ever ran across a Giant-Effing Squid you would think it was unforgettable!”

Case in point: New Zealand fisherman have not only had an unforgettable experience, but they set a world record for the largest Giant Squid ever reeled in.

That pretty much seals it for me. From now on when someone suggests you come up with something you would always remember for the rest of your life, I will think of: a Giant Squid.

What would YOU think of as “unforgettable?”

Is it wrong for me to find that picture arousing?

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Why is it when people decide that they need to kill someone in the name of God, they almost always have an extreme beard? Daniel Petru Corogeanu conspired with four nuns to exorcise a demon from another nun.

The nun being “exorcised” died.

Will a future “Book of Daniel” document these people as killers or martyrs?

In 2005, how can people believe that chaining someone up and starving them to death will exorcise a demon?

Three-hundred years ago we had the Salem Witch Trials. It all looks barbaric now. Dunking a suspected witch to determine whether or not one has been practicing witchcraft seems ridiculous but here we are in an entirely new millennium and we have people passing judgment and killing other people in the name of God.

Thank God for freedom of religion!

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Software-Generated Workforce Optimization is a methodology wherein a company analyzes customer historical transaction datato determine when cashiers need to be present to keep customers flowing through checkout lines.

It is a great acronym, and a cool concept, but it is a complete waste of a company’s resources.

Yes, it is possible to write a program to analyze trends and determine that it is a good idea to have one cashier on from 7am to 8am with a backup cashier in case someone gets in line.

But does it really take a computer program to tell you that?

Here’s another scenario: Stores are busier around the Holidays. It didn’t take a computer program to coin the term “Black Friday”. Retailers used good ‘ol invoicing and bookkeeping practices to determine that the day after Thanksgiving was a good day to move product.

A computer program is ideal for analyzing historical data over the course of several years, but to use a program to determine that cashiers should start at 12:35pm, 12:56pm, and 1:18pm is narrowing the focus too much.

Computers performing automated store Operational tasks are becoming more and more popular and it is a tragedy. We need more humans in our retail spaces, not more machines. More human interaction is good all-around. Uneducated humans need jobs, educated humans need places to shop, and humans will spend more if they have another human telling them why to spend or not spend their money on a product.

I certainly wouldn’t let a machine convince me to buy an Nintendo Wii instead of an Xbox360. But if one of my friends tells me to I am more likely to do so. Hell, even if a stranger tells me to it would make me take a second-look before making any purchase.

Here’s how it works: Human beings known as managers write their schedule a week in advance. Other human beings called cashiers show up and adhere to the posted schedule. If necessary, a human manager tells another human to clock in earlier or later to provide the best level of customer service for the third group of human beings, the customers.

A real squared-away human manager will even call other human cashiers to come in to work if there is an unexpected influx of human beings we refer to as customers. Besides, there is little satisfaction attained from flipping off a computer and telling it to, “Take this job and SHOVE IT!”

And if I ever get fired by a computer, I am showing up the next day with an axe.

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I received the following poem (spam) a couple of days ago. Does being spam preclude it from being art? Did a human make this? If not can an algorithm be an artist? Are humans anything but complex algorithms? And if they are cannot they too send thousands of people words strung together in a pleasing manner such that they be considered poetry? What if the purpose of said poetry was to sell Viagra?

The poem that evaded the filter follows:

It was not grief, this feeling, although she was nearly overwhelmed with grief — this was a strange, thundery feeling that she couldn’t ever remember having before.
Is it all cut up in that trunk his wife won’t let out of her sight?
Yes, he supposed he had been his own Scheherazade, just as he was his own dream-woman when he grabbed hold of himself and jacked off to the feverish beat of his fantasies.

I think we are all guilty of spam if not in action then at least in thought which in turn moves our hearts. Why, oh why cannot our filters stop what our algorithms create? Perhaps our filters, like Google’s, are less than perfect. Please Google take gmail out of beta and with it improve our souls, our poetry, our hearts… and the strength and duration of our erections.

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