In a page out of Jurassic Park, “living” cells from a wolly mammoth,

extinct for a very long time, were discovered and are being considered

in cloning experiments. discovery.com

This could be

useful. A PHP class for communicating with a jabber server. I’ve

quickly written a short script that sends me a Jabber message when some event

happens on my web site. Better than email notifications in some cases.

Sometimes change is gradual - slowly taking place right under our noses. Other times it’s sudden and jarring - waking us up to things which we couldn’t have imagined.

And sometimes, it’s both.

Finally, the “Do Not Call” law is, well, law. Looks like I’ll be able

to start answering my phone again soon. [read

the article](//www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/11/politics/main543573.shtml)

I just noticed that I didn’t have a link over there on the right to

Bryan’s beautiful (but languishing) photoblog. My mistake, and it’s

been fixed.

Thomas Kinkade sucks! Or at least that was the basic idea behind Mary’s subtle review of his work. It seems that she and a number of her friends feel the same way. I of course called her a snob and immediately returned to our conversation about laundry detergent.

She then asked why it was that certain types of people–a lot of them apparently–actually liked Kinkade’s work. I suggested that it was The McDonald’s Factor and that large groups of people are naturally drawn toward those things which are bland and generally unoffensive.

She countered that broccoli was the problem.

Huh?

Well apparently, some people are genetically superior in that they can taste a particular chemical in broccoli, brussel sprouts and the like. It’s a terrible taste that most of us don’t notice at all.

The question then, is whether certain people are somehow genetically, or physiologically more (or less) capable of “tasting” good art. Perhaps there’s a bit of the spectrum that’s simply unavailable to some. It’s these folks that buy Kinkade’s paintings. Or maybe great art has a certain “chemical” that is just too strong. If you can taste it.

It’s an interesting idea. I don’t have the remotest possibility of answering the questions, but one thing is certain, Kinkade does indeed suck.

Paul Graham’s article, A Plan for Spam is a great read for anyone interested in ridding their inbox of unwanted messages. It also sparked a flurry of tools using Bayesian Filtering statistically filter spam. I set up Bogofilter and after only about 10 hours, it’s been catching almost everything. What it misses, Spamassassin catches and then updates the “bogosity” of the message so it gets caught next time.

Information Week: “Confusion over the appropriate use of the software needed to power Web applications has led many companies to bypass low-end application servers that meet most requirements and cost 10 times less than the high-end products, Gartner says.”

Updated collection of summary and best-of posts to chi-web

Lots of great interaction design and usability information hidden in there.

A small test to see if your philosophical/religious beliefs - or lack of them - contradict each other. Take the test

For the record, I took one direct hit and bit 2 bullets.