Internal Monologue

Bloomberg news : Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in an election-rally attack in Rawalpindi, threatening the stability of a nuclear-armed nation that is a focal point of the West's war on terror. At least 16 people died and more than 60 were injured in the gunfire-and-bomb attack on Bhutto's rally, police said. The opposition leader, 54, had survived a previous attempt on her life when she returned from exile two months ago. Rioting broke out as her supporters gathered outside the hospital where her death was confirmed and in cities across Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf, who had allowed her return to participate in parliamentary elections planned for Jan. 8, appealed for calm in a message broadcast on state television. Not good. This country seems like its getting more and more out of control. And they have nukes. All of our nation's paranoia about Iraq an

Thanks to all who sent birthday well-wishes! For my birthday, one of the places Sarah took me was the Musée Mécanique at Pier 45 in San Francisco. They have a number of well-maintained classic video games, including Moon Patrol , Deathrace , Star Wars , and a Robotron 2084 on which both joysticks were fully functional. The latter occupied most of my attention. I managed to get the top 5 daily scores, and 5 entries on the all-time best table. On my best game I got over 220,000 points, though I must point out that the machine was not on a hard difficulty setting. I think in my heyday during my Microsoft years I could do better, but I'm glad I have retained some of my skills. It has occurred to me that I am now definitely in my mid-thirties. There's no way to construe 34 as early thirties. If a decade of life is divided into three roughly equal parts (early, mid, and late), there is one extra year that has to be assigned to one of the categories. But even if you assign the extr

If there's a war on Christmas, then I think this display should win it on behalf of consumerism's most sacred day. (This YouTube has been around a while, but I just saw it again on Sullivan's site ).

I don't normally blog about tattoos, but this is a pretty good one :

Tan Le , the president and co-founder of Emotiv Systems Big announcement: the author of Internal Monologue (i.e. me) has accepted an offer of full-time employment at Emotiv Systems . I will be starting Jan 7th as a game producer and technology evangelist. Emotiv Systems is developing a headset that uses EEG and other sensing techniques to allow you to control video games with your thoughts, and allows games to respond to your facial expressions and emotional states. But video games are just the first step. Ultimately, Emotiv has broader goals : Communication between man and machine has always been limited to conscious interaction, with non-conscious communication -- expression, intuition, perception -- reserved solely for the human realm. At Emotiv, we believe that future communication between man and machine will not only be limited to the conscious communication that exists today, but non-conscious communication will play a significant part. Our mission is to create the ulti

This is just sick... ...but undeniably fascinating (via Sullivan ): After getting a tattoo of a gynormous breasted woman, Lane Jensen wanted more so he asked his tattoo artist/body modifier to add some silicone bobos beneath his skin -- with nipples! I'm sure this is exactly what J. Franklin Hyde, the father of silicone , envisioned when created fumed silica .