Yesterday or the day before that, as we all know Wikileaks dumped 76,000 secret documents onto their site, and are editing another 15,000 or something like that to dump soon, for all the world to see. And to tell you the truth, I have little to say about Julian Assange, except, who in the hell told him that hairstyle was flattering. He looks like a broke down, Diane Sawyer.

When Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon in 1969, I did not care. I was two, mind you. But 41 years ago, it was a really, really big deal. Bigger than iPad or Lady Gaga even, if you can imagine that.

From a South Africa newspaper, which is apparently overcome with schadenfreude.

The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf Coast boggles the mind. And looking at one offshore well destroying such a huge swath of fragile ecologies, it's easy to think, "Man, there's more oil down there than I thought. I see what those 'drill, baby, drill types' were talking about."

But here's my question: how much oil is that compared to America's energy needs? If all of that oil had gone into refineries instead of into the Gulf and our wetlands, how long would it keep our cars and lights and internet servers going?

An accidental security glitch sent the information of all Facebook users to Al Qaeda operatives overseas, a company spokesman admitted today.

“Oops,” said Elliot Schrage, the company’s vice president for public policy. “Are we perfect? Of course not.”

If there’s one thing we can say for sure, it’s this: Those Gizmodo guys will get a much worse punishment for having that iPhone than anyone at Goldman Sachs will get for bilking their investors.

–WKW

Crossposted at William K. Wolfrum Chronicles

On a new Discovery Channel documentary called Stephen Hawking’s Universe, the legendary theoretical physicist advised that if we countered intelligent life, it might just be best to ignore them.

I know, I know. Daglog is not Twitter. And as Joe Biden would say, big F-ing deal. It's just that I'm over 60 years old (there, I said it) and to the best of my recollection I have never before bought a toaster.

This morning, I emailed everyone I know to try to sell them Viagra. Ex-bosses, ex-friends, ex-random-people-that-I-met-once-in-a-cafe, and ex-girlfriends (who really don't want to hear from me, let alone buy Viagra from me).

Sorry.

I didn't mean to. In fact, I don't remember doing it. But the incriminating evidence is sitting in my Yahoo "Sent Mail" folder. Six emails sent collectively to everyone in my contacts list between 10:09 and 10:10 am. All hocking Viagra.

When Google Buzz came out, I wanted to be on the cutting edge of this fabulous new technology. I allowed them to opt me in immediately, even though I had no clue what Google Buzz is I opt-in’d too or why.

Personally, I liked the idea that the six people who read my blog would now have six different ways to find my new posts: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Digg & Buzz. I would now be able to much more effectively carpet-bomb them with myself.

While society has many ills, few threaten it as much as Apple’s release of the iPad*. This computer-esque piece of modern technology not only threatens society, but the entire planet, as well. In a world where swift communication is king, the iPad promises to take it to an new, exciting, and deadly plateau.

Just read that Amazon has decided to give in to publisher Macmillan's demand that the online bookseller sell its books under an agency model for the price the publisher sets (which for the new books that make up most of the market will be 30-50 percent higher than the $10 Amazon currently charges).

In yesterday's NYT, NASA-affiliated scientist William S. Marshall, wondered why no one seems to care about NASA's discovery of water on the moon.

Almost as surprising as NASA’s announcement is the lack of attention it has received. Thirty years ago, a development like this would have been heralded as one of humanity’s greatest discoveries.

When President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, many noted that it came with a $1.4 million prize. What would Obama do with it? Well, while a variety of charities will likely get the money, it’s apparent that the GOP could use some of the money so that they and Michael Steele can have a $1.4-million Web presence:

WASHINGTON — In a press conference by the nation’s business leaders and a smattering of government officials, it was announced that everything bought over the past seven years has been immediately recalled, and that all personal information held by all businesses had been lost.

I'm hoping to start a fairly regular set of postings on Quantum Mechanics and/or other weird science that fascinates me. However, if there's no interest (after all, it's outside the normal scope of all things dagblog), I'll drop it. With that in mind, I thought I'd start with an overview of Quantum Mechanics, talk about how it's really weird, and give my interpretation of it, all without delving into math or jargon. Well, I'll try to at least save any such delving for the comments section.

For those who find QM confusing, I offer up these quotes:

So apparently, the U.S. Postal Service is in a peck of trouble. Despite raising postage fees numerous times during the past couple of years, the USPS announced earlier this week that it had lost $2.4 billion between April and June and would be $7 billion in debt by the end of September.

Are you kidding me? $2.4 billion in losses in 3 months?? Are you sure the USPS isn't making cars or selling subprime mortgages?

Call me a loyal customer. Yahoo has been my home page for a decade, which is about two thirds of the life of the web itself. Whenever I bought a new computer or installed a new browser, I dutifully found my way through the preferences to set my default page to good old Yahoo. In the old days, back when people still prepended "World Wide" to "Web," I preferred Yahoo because the home page loaded quickly and offered a great directory that neatly sliced the contents of the entire web into a handy taxonomy.