Adware and Spyware might be the two most frightening developments in technology yet.  Worse than viruses, which are obvious and easy to spot.  Adware infects your machine and subtly releases pop up ads designed to look like they are coming from the Website you happen to be surfing.

So they're influencing your behavior against your will, without you knowing it.  Manchurianized. 

Here's a link to remove adware and spyware off your Windows machine:  Away, ye demons of pop up ads!

Careful, this software is still in beta with Microsoft.

Futurist Joel Kotkin, a fellow of the New America Foundation, wrote a column for the Washington Post titled "Rule Suburbia," declaring that the land-use debate is now over and suburban sprawl is the undisputed winner.

"Once we acknowledge this reality, we can turn to the task of making the best of it." Kotkin wrote.

He makes a good point.  Americans have spoken with their feet, and their feet are not being used for walking, they are being used for driving to the suburbs.  The suburbs provide an undeniable allure of safety, natural beauty, and open space.  Add in the low cost of suburban land and you've got yourself a cultural revolution.

He says that the main challenge of the 21st century is to "transform suburbia into something more efficient, interesting, and humane".  And then he points toward the future of suburbia, which is an evolution toward village building.  Suburban areas are quickly becoming grid locked by traffic jams.  Services and products that are made available nearby to these suburban meccas are very profitable.  Suburban villages that are capable of delivering goods and services locally are already popping up in fast-growing regions all over the US.

If we are in fact headed for a global peak in oil production which drives fuel prices sky high, the "suburb as village" model may well be our saving grace.  Centralizing our goods and services within clusters of suburban villages could help us transition to a more sustainable delivery model. 

For instance, right now you can save money by driving to Walmart even if it's a 30 mile journey.  But eventually that 30 mile journey will cost far more than the savings you realize on your Walmart purchases.

Similarly, it currently makes sense to create one huge high school and bus thousands of kids to a centralized location.  But the cost of fuel could force busing prices through the roof.  Consequently it would save money to build small schools in the village and keep the kids close to home.

And the list goes on:  Health care, day care, entertainment, restaurants, and civic venues will all be rebuilt with the suburban village in mind.  Eventually the suburban wasteland of strip malls and McMansions will have to evolve or die.

The Kyoto Protocol took effect today.  One small step toward the reforms that are needed to avoid disaster in the coming decades.

From the Associated Press:

"We have been calling on the United States to join. But the country that is the world's biggest emitter has not joined yet, and that is regrettable," Japan's top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, told reporters.

In case you are interested, the global temperature for 2004 averaged 0.97° Fahrenheit (O.54°C) above the 1880-2003 average.  2004 was the 4th warmest year on record.  Here is more information.

As engineers scramble to utilize the new found efficiency in car power known as hybrid technology, it's interesting to watch "the big 3" as they attempt to portray Fuel Cell technology as the next big thing.

Hybrids like this one are already making a big difference and research has barely been fully funded.  Hybrid efficiency is not hype or fantasy, it is real.

Fuel cells, on the other hand, are not a real source of saved energy.  Their net result, when introduced into an energy system (such as car energy), is a NET LOSS of energy.  

But then it gets worse.  The cheap way to keep that hydrogen flowing to fuel cells involves burning more coal or natural gas.  That's right, we'd have to burn more to get less energy, polluting more in the process. 

So why on earth are fuel cell solutions being portrayed as environmentally friendly?  I suppose it's because they would actually increase consumption of energy, and therefore cause a boost to the economy.  Anything that'll get us some short term bling is automatically on the fast track.  Corporate America is shaping our perceptions, instead of science and technology.  Imagine that.

Update:  You can read more about hybrid drivers here at The Onion. 

Climateprediction.net is a huge computer program designed to produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century.  You can donate your computer's processing power if you have broadband access.  The system will utilize your resources (while they are not in use by you) to help compute the climate forecast.

http://www.climateprediction.net/

This system makes use of shared processing time by coordinating the computation of seperate code blocks across the Internet.  You might recall that SETI uses a similar architecture to compute their radio signals.

Their first set of results have just been released:

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050124/full/050124-10.html

Back by popular demand, is the now famous physically challenged turkey known as "Y".  No, this is not a form of torture applied to turkeys who refuse to fatten up for Thanksgiving.  This turkey was born without the ability to walk.  My kind hearted sister provided him with wheels, much like a wheelchair.  This is actually more like a wheelbed.  True, most wheelchair users are not strapped involuntarily to their chairs like this poor bird.  But I can absolutely confirm that the little guy was better off in this contraption because it was his only chance to get around independently.

Software developers are required to develop a certain expertise in user interface design.  Applications are held to a fairly high standard of usability, and there's good reason for that.  Irate customers are generally a bad thing.

So I am more than a little surprised at the audacity of the chumps that design these some of the interfaces that are used to access DVD movies.  First of all they make you sit through six previews before they'll even let you fast forward, much less access the main menu.  I paid good money for this movie and now you're going to make me watch commercials?

It's all to apparent that their lack of decency is complimented by a complete lack of consistency.  Seemingly, no two DVD user interfaces are alike.  Navigating through these menus is like stumbling on to a Website that was designed and architected by a computer assisted monkey.

Welcome to my new blog.  The old one was just not cutting the cheese.  What the hell does that mean?

Anyway, this new code base will provide a much richer experience, for you, the user.  I will be attempting to import all my old entries from days gone by.  And I will also be linking to those boring pictures of my family again.  Please be patient and leave a lot of kooky comments.

"Recently awarded a Dream Time Fellowship by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Grand is working on giving Lucy better eyesight, hearing, stronger muscles and a more powerful brain. Steve hopes Lucy will be able to learn to crawl before taking those first steps and repeating simple sounds, just like other toddlers do. Lucy's brain was built to explore ways in which machines could be given the capacity for imagination. The design of the bot's brain was guided by a key set of hunches about how such a mechanism could be artificially engineered using simulated neurons and biochemicals."

Nice hair, too. This style is apparently all the rage among baby/monkey robots.

I've always presumed that the first remarkable results from AI would come from a machine that mimics the developmental process of young humans.

Link to Wired

It's amazing how animals and humans adapt to changing environmental conditions. Evolution has apparently built in the propensity for animals and humans to spawn more females during food shortages:

Overall, the ratio of boys to girls born dropped to 0.88. Sons require more reproductive effort than daughters. "They grow a bit faster, they're bigger when they're born," Mace says. Males are also less likely to survive if malnourished as children, and stunted males are less attractive as potential mates.

So the girls are easier to raise during troubled times. I'll vouch for that :)

Link

"An exhaustive study of 643 children from before birth to 9 years of age shows no detectable risk from the low levels of mercury their mothers were exposed to from eating ocean seafood..."

These people were eating an average of 12 meals of fish per week! Looks like another myth has been exposed...

Link

For those of us who believe in the importance of fish oil as a source of Omega 3, news like this is particularly distressing.

90% and counting...

Link

Microsoft is developing a virtual brain -- a database that holds human memories. As one analyst put it -- this is Web logging run amok.

"By 2047, almost all information will be in cyberspace -- including all knowledge and creative works," said one of the project's leaders, Gordon Bell. "The most significant benefit will be a breakthrough in our ability to remotely communicate with one another using all our senses."

Gordon is actually the guinea pig and lead researcher on this project.

Link

For those of you that missed it, here is a link to the infamous Gene Simmons interview from Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Don't miss this fascinating discussion between the outspoken, womanizing rocker and his antithesis.

Link

Sometimes as a parent it helps to try and step back, look at the big picture, and evaluate your parenting style in hopes of making changes for the better. Inevitably your kid(s) will do something out of the ordinary that makes you wonder, "Am I doing this right?"

In the past few years, Holly and I have embraced a somewhat controversial parenting style, called "Attachment Parenting". Truth be told, we sort of fell in to this style naturally, and later learned it's name. We both embrace the idea that youngsters are better off with the constant reassurance of parental closeness. This closeness manifests itself in several ways, including breast feeding, the family bed, rocking the kids to sleep, and attending to their needs very closely. We rarely will allow one of our kids to cry for very long without intervention.

It's all about confidence. Babies and toddlers are too young to learn the truth about the harshness of life. They just need love, and when they are seperated from the warmth of their mothers body, the result can be devastating to their physical and mental health. If you don't believe it, try reading some of the research that's available regarding the family bed and breast feeding.

Overall, Holly and I are extremely happy with attachment parenting. Our only regret, so far, is that we didn't identify and learn about our parenting style earlier.