I have black hair again – at last I can be truly emo. Something you may not know about me is that my upper lip hair (I guess I could have said moustache) is very reddish compared to the rest of my hair. Hmm, yes. Intriguing.

Say, does anyone have a tape-to-tape recorder that I could borrow some time in the near future? I need to get on this c:>/Fastur Octopus! Krill! Krill!/Damn the Torpedoes/Whatever music side project thing

Here are some interesting news items from this week and last week:

LAST WEEK:

A giant star was observed eating three planets.

Physicists in Romania created gaseous plasma blobs that grow, replicate themselves, and communicate, suggesting that life might emerge in a wider variety of conditions than scientists have thought possible.

The Galileo spacecraft crashed into Jupiter.

THIS WEEK

The Computer and Communications Industry Association released a report warning that the US government’s growing reliance on Microsoft operating systems and software was exposing federal computer networks to “massive, cascading failures.” The author of the report was fired the next day by his employer, a consulting firm that does business with Microsoft.

The recording industry let it be known that it was promoting a “stealing is bad” curriculum for the nation’s schools that will include classes on the history of copyright and games such as Starving Artist, a role-playing game in which children pretend to be musicians who no longer receive royalties because their work has been copied on the Internet.

Six thousand Segway scooters were recalled because they tend to throw their riders when the battery gets low. President Bush was photographed falling off one of the $4,950 scooters in June, though he had simply neglected to turn it on.

Charlton Heston was named as the first recipient of the Charlton Heston Prize.