Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation With Wish

Ronaldo

He's strong, he can dribble. He has a superbly accurate and powerful shot. But the thing that makes him so brilliant is his supernatural self confidence. Someone once told me that Picasso thought his shit did not stink, and Ronaldo is the same. From every run, from every free kick, he expects to score.

Follow the Leader

The best thing I have read about Clinton vs Obama is this essay in the New Yorker. I liked that John Edwards talked about poverty, a rarity for any US politician. Pity he had that slimy unelectable feel.

Greenhouse Gases quiz

What generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases? Here's a clue, this activity generates more greenhouse gases than transportation. Another clue, this activity has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests. For the answer, read here.

Where to see the funny goal against Manchester City

See the goal and read the poem.

I am Spike

I do identify with Spike as a Brit living in the US. Plus he has been in Torchwood (sort of).

Brussels Affair again

Remember that Rolling Stones bootleg I liked a lot? Get it at Ickmusic now! This is an even better sounding copy than the one I previously had.

Reassembling the Stasi files

These are some of the bags containing the ripped up Stasi files. There are 16,000 bags. Each sack contains about 40,000 fragments, for a total of 600 million pieces of paper. At the moment they are assembled by hand. They have done 327 bags so far, which works out to one bag per worker per year. They are help by the fact that the torn pieces tend to cluster in a bag. If the Stasi could have stirred all 600 million pieces things would have been a lot harder. Some people are trying to use computers to speed this up. Note that these are only the torn up files. Some files were mangled by Papierwolfs and Reisswolfs — literally "paper-wolves" and "rip-wolves," German for shredders. No-one is attempting to assemble these, though presumably they are the most interesting. Wikipedia has a section on unshredding which says:

... there is a huge demand for document reconstruction. Several companies offer commercial document reconstruction services. For maximum security, documents should be shredded so that the words of the document go through the shredder horizontally (i.e. perpendicular to the blades). Many of the documents in the Enron accountancy scandal were fed through the shredder the wrong way, making them easier to reassemble.

All you ever needed to know about Wikipedia

Here is an example of the important work that is being done on wikipedia every day. It is an example of the wisdom of crowds, showing web 2.0 at its best.

Snip!

Michael Lewis on having a vasectomy.

Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker

Why I am not an Olympic athlete

From a day in the life of Paula Radcliffe:

10.30pm Time for bed. As I brush my teeth, I stand on one leg and then the other, to work on foot strength and proprioception [muscle awareness and balance].

The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz

I had to guess on quite a few of these

	I received 70 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz Canon S5