PaulSpoerry.com

Google introduced a set of themes for your personalized homepage (or iGoogle) a few months back. But if you’re looking for a few more customization options, check out this new Google gadget. Once you install the gadget on your homepage, you can choose from a variety of custom skins, create your own, or submit themes for other users to install. It currently provides 10 new skins.

 The gadget features three main tabs; a skins directory which mimics the built-in iGoogle theme selector, a tab with details of how to create and upload skins and a skins submission form. Unlike many other gadgets, this one does rely on a server side component to retrieve a list of available skins from the database in JSON format and also to validate and insert new skins submissions. This little gadget will also permit a different skin per tab - and thankfully no more reloading the page when switching skins. Works in IE and FF.

   Custom iGoogle Skins

Check out BonstioNet for the latest.

A student at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical “dihydrogen monoxide.” And for plenty of good reasons, since:

1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting
2. it is a major component in acid rain
3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
4. accidental inhalation can kill you
5. it contributes to erosion
6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical.

• Forty-three (43) said yes,
• Six (6) were undecided,
• Only one (1) knew that the chemical was water.

The title of his prize winning project was, “How Gullible Are We?”He feels the conclusion is obvious. This reminds me of a bit I saw where they walked around asking for people to sign a petition to end womens suffrage. Check the almighty wiki for the history of the prank.

For anyone still confused about global politics, this pretty much sums it up. We consume more gas than anybody else per day… in fact, we consume more than everybody else combined per day.

Of course you could try to explain that by our urban sprawl… or by the vast size of our nation. Then again, Russia is pretty darn big too. ;O)

There has been a push to try to force the auto makers into creating more fuel efficient cars. They always push back claiming it will cost to much. But if you tie together our current use and then show how other countries (who consume far less) have tried to implement legislation that required higher fuel standards you see we are horribly behind the rest of the world:

The above image is from the article Stricter U.S. Gas Standards Stalled.

Before you start calling me a hippie… I do drive a car, though I work remote so I don’t consume all that much. Beyond that there is no reasonable form of public transit in Saint Louis.

Mitchell Howe has a short article called “What are the Odds?” which discusses the bet between Ray Kurzweil and Mitchell Kapor. I love Kurzweil’s books so this caught my attention.

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a topic that always seems to drop on and off the radar of public interest in synch with Hollywood portrayals and celebrity prognostications. Indeed, the most recent spat of attention has followed a much-publicized $10,000 wager made by futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil against corporate trailblazer Mitchell Kapor. The bet, solemnized at www.longbets.org (where all winnings go to charity), is that a computer, or “machine intelligence,” will pass the so-called Turing test by 2029. The Turing test, a challenge to see if a computer can fool a human judge into thinking it is human, is a traditional benchmark for the point when true Artificial Intelligence can be said to have been achieved - a historic moment, by any measure.

But with recent discussion of AI taking place in the context of a wager, debates have tended to focus on the difficulty of the problem rather than the implications - as though the arrival of true Artificial Intelligence would only mean the difference between a robot making your coffee and brewing it yourself.

What are the stakes, really? Why should this wager matter to you personally? And what, exactly, are the odds?”

Mitchell then delves in at a high level explaining the two sides of the bet. This is a great little read if you’re at all interested in AI. For further reading you should check out The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. This book is so fascinating that I read it from front to back in just a few days.

Click on over and check out Mitchell’s article “What are the Odds?”

Have some invitations that you want to get off your hands? Why not share them with others.

This new site offers a unique solution to finding invitations to invite only sites. If you have an invitation to say… Joost. You post one or more of your invites for others. They in turn provide invites to you for another closed beta or member invite only site. So you could get a Pownce invite by sharing your Joost invites. The more you share, the higher you are in the queue to receive an invite. Pretty neat idea if you’re into playing with the latest and greatest web stuff.

InviteShare.com