Finally, confirmation for what everyone has subconsciously suspected for a very long time: Meetings are bad for your health.

I'm keeping all my meetings to 30 minutes max in the future, and plan on leaving other peoples meetings after 40 minutes. So you're warned.

I like a hot cup of coffee in the morning, and I certainly like a cold pint with friends in the evening now and then. But coffee and beer in the same bottle? I mean, can they do that?

A colossal pain in the butt, and yet strangely fun and highly addictive.

I made it to 11.485 seconds, but it took me about 15 tries.

Flying Car sighting in Australia!!

The evidence speaks for itself...

(via Tim Blair : "Any wrongs committed against us will be met with hovering")

Can't stop thinking about the future? I gotchyer Carnival of Tomorrow right here!

Any day now I'll finally get my flying car...

Blog nearly abandoned -- pulled back from the abyss by the arrogance and insolence of my town's Board of Education. It seems there was a teachers workshop scheduled for Wednesday, January 25th, which was absurd by its own right. I mean a Wednesday? In January? But whatever; at least its been on the calendar for the entire school year. It snowed Monday (well sort of -- it rained, but the weatherman swore there'd be lots of snow), so schools closed.

Suddenly, without notice, and with appallingly little communication and virtually no formal announcement, the long planned school closing for Wednesday the 25th was changed to Thursday the 26th.

If you're going to have your schedule turned inside out by the arbitrary whims of an elitist cabal who somehow believe you're available to accommodate their schedule, well then you may as well at least consider the option of homeschooling.

So consider this my public service: Here is the most recent Carnival of Homeschooling.

And here's the previous Carnival of Homeschooling, which I'd meant to post but never got around to. Check them out; they're loaded with straightforward, clearheaded advise and information. Unlike, say, public schools.

Aaron Swartz is deactivating some of the less useful emotions...

Wait, let me get this straight: a television game show featuring Howie Mandel as host and hyperventilating contestants, masquerading as a mathematics lesson and a microeconomic microcosm? Well, yes...

Professor Bainbridge points to an article that studies word choices to determine age and gender of the users, specifically bloggers. He quickly points out the words that haven't appeared in any of his blog posts...

I finally managed to find time to watch the movie Serenity a few days ago, and clearly it should be on everyone's list as one of the top movies of 2005. The day after I watched it, the Not My Fault daughter checked it out after school, and I watched it again later that night. A great main story, an entertaining sub-story, and allegories and subtleties galore. Sharp dialog, well-rounded characters, believable sci-fi technologies, and just enough FX without detracting from the movie.

The movie was actually a continuation of the Firefly television series, which I didn't watch much of, but certainly plan to now.

Details of where the Serenity movie and the Firefly series connect can be found in this fine review...

And while I'm on the subject of believable sci-fi technology, there was a news story that made a minor splash last week that claims the US government is developing a theoretical hyperspace engine. A healthy dose of skepticism should greet much of these developments, but then again, the Singularity will be on us sooner than we think.

The Not My Fault blogiversary was noted by the Bloggers Blog, a group that blogs the blogoshere. I'm the very last entry, but hey, it's a long slow road to perfection.

The Education Wonks have just posted the newest edition of the Carnival of Education.

Alternatively, for those that think they can do it better, or are otherwise not impressed with the state of public education, here's the first ever Carnival of Homeschooling.

Ah yes, the wonderful (under)world of French rap and hip-hop...While the locked-out youth of France are given a voice by the underclass of the French ghettos, French law (the one that protects the French language) ensures that local media are required to spread the message, so to speak... Double contrainte, non?

Helpfully, France's Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin (who is a man), has gone on record to state that "the government is not anti-hip hop."

I really should be nicer to my pet, and so should you.

Finally, a year-end list worth checking out, if only because I deserve an honorable mention...here's 2005's ten sexiest geeks. Best inclusions? Jessa Crispin and Nick Denton.

Maybe I'll make it in 2006...

He said whaaat?

By every reasonable economic measurement, 2005 was a very good year for both domestic and global economies. So why do media insist on portraying all economic news as bad? It's almost as if they had some sort of, oh I don't know, hidden agenda...

Here's the real story of the Rodney Dangerfield economy -- the one that just doesn't get any respect.

MainStreamMedia don't just get stories wrong, they get them spectacularly wrong. Historically, there was never any real accountability. That's why Walter Duranty, for example, was able to keep his blood-soaked Pulitzer.

Luckily, technology and the blogosphere are forcing greater accountability on media generally, and 2005 served as a great example: from poison popcorn to french fry fright to toothpaste terror to wrong sex babies, the media served up a grand pile of garbage...

The Volokh Conspiracy reminds us that yesterday was indeed a happy anniversary for a huge swath of humanity...

My 2005 was an up and down and up kind of thing, but 2006 looks like a bright new tomorrow.