Collected Thoughts 05-30-09

• Avi Buffalo on Rollingstone.com.

• Pop Hiss has a solid piece on the current state of Michael Jackson affairs. I sat-in on most of the Jackson trial a few years ago, so I've heard most of the names in that piece. I'll be shocked if Michael ever performs one show in London, let alone 50. Michael Jackson is such a big risk that only grandstanders, gambling addicts, profiteers, and madmen would dare try to help him. The only people who could ever save Michael are too smart to even try. This too is grasping for the wind.
  

• Gub'ment Internets Leader

• This is relevant to my interests: Mouse Guard. (yuk yuk) Seriously, it's a paper-and-dice RPG where you play sword-wielding mice. The two-part mission structure is intriguing to me.
  

• Geneticists have made a monkey that gets human diseases. This is okay with me, but I still think that if we're going to engage in morally questionable genetic tinkering, we should go for broke. I want new animals, not cows that make human milk or some boring shit.

• Everyone loves a music video with the words changed to describe the video. This is one of the better ones:

• El oh el. The Wasilla Frontiersman ran an anti-gay op ed, but a gay social networking site's advertisement popped-up on the same page. This is exactly why conservative opposition to a perfectly normal, ordinary sexual alignment is absurd on its face.

• Remember how I wanted a social networking aggregator? Google Wave seems to be the beginning of the answer:
  
  
  
  How does Google continuously make the best "products"? I think part of it is that they are their own target demographic. Everything Google makes (search engines, email clients, blog aggregators, etc) are things that Google requires in order to make those things. These people could use Google Wave in their own everyday office environment, and they are encouraged within their own corporate culture to build a functional office environment in every aspect of their work. Google runs its company as though running the company were developing a program itself. So it makes sense that the programs they develop help run companies particularly well.