Reading an article today on the Ansari X Prize today, I noticed that SpaceShipOne was sponsored by Virgin — the megagroup that includes wireless phones and record labels. Upon further reading, I found that the new name for their space-ventures is Virgin Galactic. That is awesome. Word on the street that the first CEO will be Galacticus, Eater of Worlds. VP is of course, Silver Surfer.

photo credit: Yahoo News

After Bill O’Reilly (jokingly) referred to The Daily Show’s audience as “stoned slackers”, it would seem in actuality that O’Reilly’s audience is less-educated than the audience of The Daily Show.

I know a college education isn’t everything, but that certain refutes O’Reilly’s joking statement. It’s funny — I was watching “Fox & Friends” for a bit at the gym on Monday, as ESPN’s Sportcenter was showing football (yawn) highlights, and they interviewed Ed Schultz, a liberal talk-radio host, who used to be a conservative. He’s got a book out now, so he’s making the media rounds. They get to talking to him about his book, and quickly after a softball question or two, question him about a section in the book where he talks about his dislike of the Fox News Channel. I can’t find a transcript of that broadcast, so I’ll attempt to paraphrase… (click Read full story below)

Update: Check out this link ‘Daily Show’ viewers ace political quiz, and this quote.

“Daily Show” viewers are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education, while O’Reilly’s audience is only 24 percent more likely to have that much schooling.

Plus, the network noted, “Daily Show” viewers are 26 percent more likely to have a household income more than $100,000, while O’Reilly’s audience is only 11 percent more likely to make that much money.

So the guy watching Stewart may not only be smart, but may also be rich.

{more}

“Well, I don’t hate anyone, but you guys have an overwhelming number of conservative/Republic leaning commentators or this network, and you portray yourself as ‘Fair & Balanced’, so what gives?”. Steve Doocy (the co-host) retorts: “Well, you are on the show now, hawking your own book! Why are you here?”. Schultz replies: “You invited me here.” Later, Schultz is speaking to how well Fox News has done in capturing market share, and keep people coming back. Part of which, he believes, is due to Fox News’ portrayal of itself as “Fair and Balanced” and yet having a slate of nearly all conservatives as hosts and commentators, thereby duping the general viewing public. Either Doocy or his co-host Brian Kilmeade come back with: “So you think the American public is stupid, Ed?” Wow. Obviously, that is what he is saying!

It’s that kind of retort that truly disheartens me about the current culture of news media. “Raising the level of political discourse” in this country has been a banner for many people on both sides of the political landscape in this country for a while now, but really they are just feeding the filthy need for drama that “the average American audience” seems to love so much. “Reality shows” really aren&#rsquo;t reality so much as real situtations carefully crafted and put into motion by TV producers, and most politically-charged news media isn&#rsquo;t reality either, I&#rsquo;d say. It&#rsquo;s just as fake, dramatic, and wildly entertaining as any reality show or professional wrestling.

I&#rsquo;m not a fan of either reality shows (mostly) or of professional wrestling, but I know people who are and they are (mostly) not idiots, but they like to be entertained in dramatic and exciting ways. TV has shown that it&#rsquo;s easy and cheap to produce these shows, so I guess it would follow that it&#rsquo;s easy and cheap to make dramatic and entertaining “political discourse” on the same level. But like I said, that&#rsquo;s not reality. It&#rsquo;s dramatized, entertaining reality. Politics shouldn&#rsquo;t be dramatized, sanded-down, simplified, or easy to swallow. It&#rsquo;s our lot in life living in a democracy to be well-informed, and thanks to media outlets like Fox News, you can be fed just about anything and be entertained by some verbal catfights as well! How novel! Some people can see through the slick packaging and tasty morsels of drama, and some don&#rsquo;t. It just so happens that the former are more likely to be better educated than the latter. Go figure!

Geoff and his girl Anne invited Kelly and I to go to the Louisville Science Center on Saturday. Geoff captured lots of photos. We also saw Space Station, the first-ever IMAX film shot in space! It was awesome to say the least. Then we grabbed a bite to eat at Saffron’s a tasty Mediterranean restaurant on Main Street. Thanks Geoff! Thanks Anne!

GAIM is an Instant Messaging client which can use AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, and many other protocols. Originally, it was solely for Linux, but last year they put out a Windows port, and just now they have finally release version 1.0 for both platforms. It’s been a long, long time coming, and I’ve been using it on both platforms for a long, long time so it is great to see the project reach this milestone. I suggest highly that if you are using AOL’s client, you dump it immediately and go and download a copy right now!

Update: This is from an email I sent to the developers to congratulate them, and Sean Egan replied:

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 10:38:59 -0400, Ben Wilson wrote:

Thought I’d drop a line and congratulate you on Gaim v1.0. Being a developer, I know that version numbers don’t really mean that much technologically, but they are a huge psychological barrier. I’m sure it’s a big relief.

Actually, you’re wrong. 1.0.0 is entirely insignificant. The only reason for it is that we decided to change to a major-minor-micro versioning scheme, and 1.0.0 was the most logical place to start.


-s.

So, nevermind! Actually, not really. I’m giving Gaim their props anyway.

Further update from Rob Flynn, maintainer of GAIM:

Thanks :) It’s always good to hear these kinds of things. :)

Further further update:

(13:41:10) HunterDixon: ooh, just installed gaim
(13:41:11) HunterDixon: i like
(13:41:30) HunterDixon: oh wow, tabs
(14:00:08) HunterDixon logged out.

From a collection of Japanese cigarette PSA graphics, with
more here. I love you, Japan. I do.

Kelly and I went up to Dayton on Friday so that Kelly could run the Air Force Marathon Half-Marathon (13.1 miles). The race was on Saturday, and Kelly did really well, completing the race in just under 2 hours — a real improvement over her miniMarathon time of 2 hours 12 minutes (and vastly improved over her 2 hour 45 minute time in the 2003 miniMarathon). The course was very hilly, but Kelly has been training with lots of hills, and really kicked some ass! Me, on the other hand, was around for moral support only. We did, however take in the Air Force Museum after the race, and it too was awesome.

We took many pictures:

View the 2004.09.18 Air Force Marathon gallery.

Hey, that’s me!

Geoff has been helpind Odd Todd out with various and sundry flash games over the last couple of years, and they’ve finally released Mep Ball, a Kick-ups style game, and I was credited for beta-testing with ol’ Geoffy. Mostly, I played Mep Ball and tried to cheat a lot. It turned out very well — very fun indeed!

I decided to build myself a nice, flat workbench last night. I looked for some free plans on Google and quickly came up with Building a Basic Work Bench. It’s a little smaller than what I wanted, and I already had a perfectly good workbench-top, a door (80″ x 30″) that we had removed from it’s hinges upstairs! 80″ x 30″ = 2400″ square inches of pure workbench. So, with a rough plan in mind, we headed to Home Depot.

I already had one 2″ x 4″ at home, so we got 5 of the straightest 2×4’s we could find, and box of 3″ deck screws. I returned home and made a quick plan (as you can see in the image above). It only took about 2 hours to complete, so I was happy with my spur-of-the-moment build. Now I have a nice, flat place to build the next sailplane I will crash! Some photos were taken and my rough plan was made with The Gimp, and you can see them in the workbench gallery.