No. Really.

h/t: Andrew Sullivan

Such is the case with a new bill introduced in the Senate and the House (and it's got bipartisan sponsership, fancy that!) which would regulate the amount of time govenerment sponsored peer-reviewed research paper (ie, your tax dollars paid for the lab mice) could spend behind the paywall of a science publication.  

Which really makes you wonder why the hell they were allowing publishers to make money off of research we already paid for in the first place, but it's still worth correcting.

So my guess is that it will never pass and some Republican will spend an hour of the House of Representatives' time railing against Marxist nature of the bill.

This also means that in about three weeks we get to read a lot of stories about how it's "Just the iPad 2 with a few improvements." and how "Steve Jobs would have done _______ if he were still running the company."  

Wankers.

I'm rebooting the Pigs & Spiders site.  All that means is that it looks different (maybe better?) and that I've told myself I'm going to actually post here again.

Why?

1.) I've been feeling guilty about not keeping up with it and apparently it takes just a little over a year of nagging guilt for me to actually take action (taking notes?).

2.)  While facebook has proven iteslf to be a very fun place to post my thoughts and share those things I find on the web that I find interesting, it's also a broadcast medium in the sense that anything I share or do there gets thrust in the nose of anyone with whom I am freinds. If you bothered to come all the way here (past the burning wastelands of MySpace and through the lake of sorrow that is Google+) you're at my mercy and I don't feel so bad about spamming away with all things that make me angry/happy/sad/geeky.

So no looking back and we'll all just pretend that I didn't completely ignore this site for a year.

Deal?

So now you have seven days to seek out the original uncut 1987 version* and watch this christmas special.  

Here's a taste to get you movin':

*because American record companies own the rights to several of the songs in the original broadcast, only the European and Canadian versions of the film still carry the complete show)

"It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out, frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff."

That's Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona (How did Arizona get SO lucky to have such FANTASTIC politicians!?) on how absolutely uncool it is for Harry Reid to schedule votes between Christmas and New Years.  Cause, you know, that's the Holy Time.  

I'd like to help the Senator out, since I'll be at my desk that week, but, frankly, I don't think my office has the authority to ratify the new START treaty.  

Oh, and here's Reason #10,457 for those keeping count.

We may live in an enlightened age of high technology and fast information, but lately it seems all our intellect was left back in the 18th century:

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789