YOU HAVE GIL GRISSOM, WE HAVE HAL9000

My other favorite headline of the last 48 hours:



Which sounds awesome ... until you realize the “supercomputer” is a Major Incident Investigation and Disaster Support System (MIDSS) that the police use to crunch data in serial killer cases to try and detect patterns that could generate leads.

They also used it to track down close relatives of SARS patients six years ago.

Yesterday cops spent the day closing off the crime scene and tossing bottles off rooftops to try and work out which building the person might have chucked it from.

Background here (in case you missed it).

Does not compute,

This is dF

CONSCIOUSNESS IS NATURE’S WAY OF TELLING YOU YR AWAKE

I get email.

Sometimes it has things like this in it.



Which evidently has something to do with this.



What Hong Kong Polytechnic is doing sponsoring it, I have no idea. But it’s probably how I ended up on the mailing list.

I won’t be going, no. If I wanted consciousness, I wouldn’t drink bourbon. Anyway, with any luck I’ll be too busy bothering the music industry that week.

I’m only sleeping,

This is dF

WEEKEND READING: RELIGIOUS WARS FOR CHILDREN, CRUSADES FOR ADULTS AND THE HIGH COST OF POVERTY

Some weekend reading for you (because God knows you all have nothing better to do on yr day off than sitting in front of the computer reading long articles).

1. Santa Barbara public elementary schools have opened their doors to an afterschool program known as the “Good News Club”, which aims to convert young children to their form of Christianity and to encourage them to spread the word to fellow students.

Result: 6-year-old born-again Ashley goes up to Jewish classmate Emma and tells her: “You can’t go to heaven. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you are going to hell.” When the teacher explains that beliefs and truth aren’t the same thing, Ashley cries. “You mean they lied to me right here in school?! Because that’s what they taught me here! How can they lie?”

I'm not kidding.

2. Donald Rumsfeld’s Worldwide Intelligence Update, a top-secret daily digest of critical military intelligence, came with cover sheets adorned with Scripture quotes during the invasion of Iraq. And that’s one of Rumsfeld’s nicer qualities, according to his former peers.

3. You have to be rich to be poor. Put it another way: The poorer you are, the more things cost. For example:

You don't have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe's, where the middle class goes to save money. You don't have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar. A loaf of bread there costs you $2.99 for white. For wheat, it's $3.79.

Just a little something to keep in mind the next time you hear someone carry on about how hard it is to get by on $500,000 a year in Manhattan or $53,000 a week in Hartford CT.

In God we trust – all others pay cash,

This is dF

HERE COME THE BRIDES

ITEM [via popfiend]: So ... Betty or Veronica?

Archie will supposedly make up his mind in August. After 68 years.



Now, I’m not the biggest Archie fan in the world. Okay, sure, when I was seven, maybe. And only because of the Saturday morning cartoons. But it was there in my immediate pop-culture frame of reference, and over time it dawned on me that (1) Betty and Veronica were pretty hot, if not entirely likable, and (2) Archie was actually somehow dating both of them at once.

Which leaves an impression.

Still, the “Betty vs Veronica” debate never quite registered with me the same way as the, say, “Ginger vs Mary Ann” debate or the more crucial “Jennifer vs Bailey” debate, if only because, as I say, I don’t really like either of them as characters.

But now that we’re confronted with it, here’s my advice to The Arch.

Betty or Veronica?

Dude. It’s a false choice. Marry both of them.

Yes, it’s illegal in every state (especially Maine). So what? When you’ve dithered between two women for 68 years and they still manage to be good friends, there’s really no sense in making a choice. You made the choice years ago. You just didn’t know it yet.

So yes. You might as well make it a threesome and be done with it.

It’s what Dan DeCarlo would have wanted, I’m sure.

DISCLAIMER: My actual prediction is that the Archie people will cop out and have him marry Cheryl Blossom or Sabrina the Teenage Witch or one of the Pussycats or someone from that universe. Or they’ll opt for the old “It was all a crazy dream” scenario.

Or maybe they’ll surprise us all and Archie will marry Jughead. Progress!

Bells will be ringing,

This is dF

BUS STOPS OF THE FUTURE

ITEM: The Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed The EyeStop, a high-tech touch-screen bus shelter that monitors environmental conditions and real-time bus movement and also provides information and communication tools that can interact with your cell phone.

The EyeStop, which has touch sensitive e-Ink screens as well as LEDs, features a bus map plotting locations in real-time, e-mail and Web access, tools for planning a best route and getting directions, a community bulletin board, and, of course, a place for silent video advertisements. It will also use sensors to monitor and display local air quality.

Florence, Italy will be the first city to install them.

I’ve actually seen precursors of this in my line of work – Singapore has SMS-enabled bus stops where you send a message to a short code and you get a message back telling you how long before the next bus arrives.

In New Zealand, Vodafone is installing  hypertagged ads in bus shelters that push free content to yr mobile phone (if you want it).

The EyeStop is definitely uptown, though. I wonder how long it’d take for teenage hoodlums to destroy it. (To be fair, Carlo Ratti, the head of the design team, says they have thought of that and are looking at ways to make it graffiti-resistant.)

BONUS MATERIAL: See also this fine collection of artistically enhanced bus stops from around the world.

This one in London is my favorite.

Kiss me on the bus,

This is dF