Okay, I'm a great big nerd

I just checked the startup dates for the Large Hadron Collider over at CERN, and the first actual collision is scheduled for a week before my birthday! How effing cool would it be if the found a Higgs Bosun Boson on my birthday? Of course, there's the sight chance that the world will end before I turn thirty one, but SCIENCE! SCIENCE!!!eleventy one!

I honestly think I may throw up

I just finished Cory Doctrow's excellent book Little Brother, which is available under the Creative Commons License, and it is the scariest book I've read in years.

Imagine you're a 17-year old kid, a 1337 hacker in the near future. Imagine you're playing an Alternate Reality Game, hunting a jammed wifi hotspot when a terrorist attack occurs. Then imagine being grabbed by Homeland Security and being held as a suspect, subject to "intense questioning." What would you do? How would the experience change you?

Think 1984, only with wifi and RFID (arphid) chips. Think about it, read the book, and find a way to do something, because it's only going to get worse unless we make it better.

Interesting development on autism

Surrounded as I am with autistic spectrum disorders (Hubby is Aspergers, nephew is severe autistic, godson is mild/moderate autistic), any developments in the field catches my attention. This study indicates that every case of autism has a highly individual genetic cause, making a universal genetic test hard, to say the least.

This actually jives with what I've observed - that autism is a catch all diagnosis for a bunch of disparate disorders with common symptoms. Why else would one kid respond to therapy but another doesn't, when both have similar symptoms?

Interesting thoughts, to say the least.