Xfce 4.8 released after nearly two years of development. Hopefully, there are no added features or functionality! (That's a joke.) (In fact, there is a loss of functionality for BSD users who implement the *nix desktop environment. But let's not even talk about that problem because it opens a whole 'nuther can of worms.) Xfce is a Linux desktop enviornment like Gnome or KDE, but supposedly leaner and meaner, and thus more suitable where few bells and whistles are required, or older hardware is being used. If you are a Ubuntu user or otherwise familar with Linux, you've heard of Xubuntu…

At the expense of Mel Gibson:

It is very reasonable for a parent to worry about vaccines. For one thing, most of them involve sticking the baby or child with a sharp object, thus making the little one cry, and it would be abnormal to not have an automatic reaction to that. For another thing, they are drugs, in a sense. When the little one is ill, and you call in to the health care facility in the hopes that there will be some useful advice, most of the time you hear "No, we no longer recommend giving [fill in the blank with a medicine you thought might work] to children under [one or two months older than your child].…

Firefox Four is nearing readiness for your use. There are a massive 661 bug fixes, a number people are very excited about, but you've got to ask: How do you get that many unfixed bugs to begin with??? One of the features I'm looking forward is tabs in the title bar. I'm tired of giving up vertical screen real estate to the title bar, a few tool bars, a menu bar, a tab bar, and then within the web site, a banner add, a fancy decorative banner I don't need to see, etc. etc. When I look at my own blog on my lap top, I have to scroll down to see the title of the post! Tabs in the otherwise…

A blog carnival is a moving periodic blog posting collecting current entries in a particular topic, designed to give blog readers a list of things to do that they really do want to do. Current carnivals of which I'm aware are Berry Go Round, which is about plants; Carnival of the Blue, which is about stuff in the ocean; I and the bird, which is about birds, Festival of the Trees, which is about, you guessed it, trees; and Circus of the Spineless, which is about invertebrates such as insects and slugs and so on. Visit these carnivals, click on the links therein, and enjoy.

Virgin Mobile's "unlimited broadband" will be limited, as the communication company goes back on its deal with customers. "Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that means making difficult choices..." I don't see that as a difficult choice at all. Drop Virgin Mobile, or, if you don't use it, don't consider it. Details here. The first computer that stored apps to run on itself, EDSAC, will be rebuilt at Bletchley Park. "The EDSAC was two metres high and its 3,000 vacuum tubes took up four metres of floor space. It could perform 650…

Tom W. Clark, director of the Center for Naturalism and author of Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses, will appear on Atheist Talk radio Sunday Morning. Free will, as you know, does not really exist, and this has important implications for thinking about morality and so called "world views." Naturalism is a philosophy that addresses this seeming difficulty. The interview will be conducted by Atheist Talk Radio producer and host, Mike Huabrich. With Miked in the interview seat, Scott Lohman will host the show. Details are here.

King was born in 1929, and assassinated in 1968, on April 4th at the age of 39. When he was killed, someone asked "what kind of nation are we?"

Holly MIranda, I'd Rather Be Blind

Sometimes, that is what I think news reporters do. There are occasions when you know the story and have the opportunity to watch them spew out incorrect information. Sometimes you do not know the story but you can watch them getting it wrong and see that happening while they appear to remain oblivious to their own clumsy ineptitude. Several years ago Minnesotans watched in horror as the bodies of a dozen kids where pulled out of a cave where they had suffocated, a cave in a Mississippi River bluff in Saint Paul. Or was it six kids? Or was it a mine and not a cave? Or was it eight kids?…

So, Lizzie1 and I drove up to the restaurant in downtown Minneapolis and spotted the Valet Parking sign. I wanted to valet park because downtown, we'd have to park in a ramp2 anyway, so the cost would be the same or less, and much more convenient and comfortable on this slightly chilly winter night. Plus some kid would get a tip; Some kid saving for college or whatever. And as we got closer, we saw that the Valet Parking sign had a big arrow on it pointing down the street. So we drove slowly down the busy downtown street, looking for somebody or something resembling a valet. Then, we…

But in a scientific way not a nasty political way. Have a look: There are many things in this picture that are quite remarkable. Both of these galaxies are spiral galaxies. You can see that clearly in the blue one at the bottom of the photo. The yellow one at top is as well, but you are looking at it edge on, with the main spiral being a cigar-shaped zone tilted just off the horizontal. Perhaps these galaxies looked more similar to each other in the past, but they recently (a few hundred million years ago) ran into each other. When that happened, the yellow looking one on top in the…

According to the FluView report for the week ending January 1, influenza activity has picked up over the last few weeks in the United States. This increase in activity is typical of the start of flu season. The number of states reporting regional or widespread influenza activity increased. Although influenza activity can rise and fall during an influenza season, activity in the United States generally peaks in January or later in most years. CDC Of concern: Britain is experiencing a bit of a spike in flu cases and flu deaths, and it is thought that the "swine flu" H1N1 version that emerged…

Coming to theaters near you:

Right now, the FCC and Department of Justice are preparing to approve the NBC/Comcast merger -- something that would have dire consequences for years to come. Sign the petition.

Remember this? That was from the time of the first big Tut tour. Well, Steve Martin's silly rendition was not part of the tour, but one of the many fine cultural sidebars. This is not a cultural sidebar resulting from The Treasures of Tutankhamun: That comes from the observation of people trying to not fall down while walking on the ferry. Someone thought they looked like the figures in Ancient Egyptian paintings. It's all fairly culturally insensitive yet demonstrative of talent and highly entertaining for most people. I've not decided if making fun of Ancient Egyptians is OK or…