Go read Dave Barry’s hilariously sad (and long!) recap of 2005 (via Kevin

Joss Whedon explains the future of TV, including what sorts of shows we can expect and how we will watch them. I’m particularily excited about his final prediction.

Even the _New York Times_ ombudsman is being stonewalled in his attempts to determine why the _Times_ held off on publishing the NSA spy story for a year.

Five simple steps to designing grid systems – for the designers out there.

Learn how to code “AJAX” in 30 seconds with this tutorial/code snippet. Easy, huh?

Dave Pell says much of the reason the Bush administration did so much worse this year than the last four is because they lost Colin Powell. Interesting point, and certainly one contributing factor, although how central a factor is debatable.

Clay Shirkey strongly contests the statement, most recently made by Kofi Anann, that half the world has never used a telephone. A very good analysis.

The search for root causes of the epidemic of controlled substance abuse has to include doctors as active participants, says a pediatric physician in the _NY Times_. More doctors are prescribing more potent drugs without taking a moment to think about whether their patients actually need them, especially patients with histories of substance abuse.

Physicians have filed a brief with the Israeli Supreme Court asking that the Israeli army be stopped from breaking the sound barrier over the Gaza Strip. They charge that the “sonic bombs” cause anxiety and other symptoms among children and in some cases even induce miscarrages. Here is a firsthand account of the psychological terror caused by the “bombings” and a follow-up entry (via Global Voices).

In October the _New Yorker_ profiled comedian Sarah Silverman (no relation, that I’m aware of). It is a fascinating read because it captures the strange tension between the character she plays and the person she is. Reading it might leave one with the impression that Silverman doesn’t even understand herself, however it combined with an interview she gave on _Fresh Air_ convinces me that there is a very clear divide between who she is as a person and who she is on stage. The most telling graph from the _New Yorker_ piece is where she talks about her character being an “unreliable narrator,” and her disinclination to dissect her act.

Roger Ebert’s list of the best films of 2005. I’ve only seen 3 of them, clearly I have a lot of catching up to do. Time to renew that NetFlix membership?

Rove Implicated In Santa Identity Leak: Clarke criticized the leak as “foolhardy,” saying it was “the kind of conduct you would expect from dangerous zealots who routinely confuse short-term political gain with the national interest.”

A new alliance of electronic manufacturers plan to make setting up a high definition home theater system trivial. They want to use FireWire as a common connection standard, allowing all of the devices to talk to each other and coordinate through a single cable. This was the hope of FireWire when it was introduced years ago and specifically designed to not require a computer “master” in order to operate. I’m glad electronic makers have *finally* realized that interoperability is a *good* thing.

In the opening scenes of _Shrek_ there is an effect that involves “mud poop.” Apparently generating said objects was much harder than you might imagine (PDF). (via Kelly)

After ten years of waiting, are wearable computers finally ready to burst onto the scene? Gosh I hope so, I’ve been waiting so long…

Cute Overload is a blog full of pictures of small furry animals and the like. Watch out, it might just make your head explode. (via BB)

Paul bought a pair of those shoes with the little wheels in them: What. Yes I realize maybe a 25 year old guy shouldn’t be into 8 year old kid fads, but these are shoes with wheels on them. This has to be the greatest innovation in shoe technology since nike invented the sneaker! Yeah, whatever dude.

Activist Judge Cancels Christmas

Having just finished Vernor Vinge’s excellent novel _Marooned in Realtime_, I feel the need to revisit his paper about the coming technology Singularity, in which he states that within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended. For other viewpoints, there is always the Wikipedia article.

In recent weeks Wikipedia bashing has become all the rage. This Slashdot poster puts it best when he tells people, “oh, shut up already”. (Follow the links to find out why.)