A wolf among sheep

You might not know (if you don't follow this sort of thing), but Wolfram|Alpha has now gone live. What is Wolfram|Alpha, I hear you cry (Through the wonders of Flash and JavaScript)? At its most basic, it's a search engine. But it's much more than that. Take it direct from the source:

"Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries."

Still befuddled? Doing a quick search for Ireland brings up name, flag, location, bordering countries, demographics, cultural...anything related that you might like to know. To see a sample of what it can do, go watch the screencast. Seriously, go watch it.

P.S. If you don't get the first image reference, go get some class.

P.P.S. Writing "Wolfram|Alpha" on my laptop is really hard, because I have to switch to the American keyboard to get the "|" character. Way to go, HP.

Jet jet jet jet

I want to fly with a jetpack, you want to fly with a jetpack, so how do we do that?

Well, now we can buy one for the bargain price of $100,000 or go crazy and buy two, just in case one of them breaks down and you don't have your phone to call AAA. You wouldn't have to take the metro in the morning and you could do flybys past people's heads (bonus points for making them spill coffee down their shirt and then saying "Goddamn...son of a bitch...").

Also, if it works with Bluetooth or something, then maybe you could actually use it as a controller for this game.

Nice muscle!

I really can't explain this video. It's just too awesome. If anybody can find a link to a short webcartoon about Japanese bodybuilders and their search for more protein shakes, I'd be glad to know.

Nice Muscle!