Here’s a great and humurous perspective on the matter.

Apparently, over 2 billion books were “loaned” last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself…

…From what we’ve been able to piece together, the book “lending” takes place in “libraries”.

The grammatical genesis of ‘Johnny on the spot’ cannot be traced very clearly, but the phrase certainly originated from the longer and less expressive one, ‘Johnny is always on the spot when wanted.’ … The expression is to some extent a variation or rather a continuation of that other phrase, ‘He gets there.’” Johnny here must be a general name for any young male and doesn’t refer to a real person.

Source.

I present to you a list of the ways our baby’s size has been described, over the last 16 weeks. Italicized, are those I find amusing.

• a head of cauliflower
• an English hothouse cucumber
• an average rutabaga
• an ear of corn
• a large mango
• a spaghetti squash
• a carrot
• a large heirloom tomato
• a bell pepper
• a turnip
• an avocado
• an apple
• a lemon
• a medium shrimp
• a lime
• a fig
• a grape

I’m sure kumquat was listed one week, but I can’t find it now.

Insane.

Gizmodo have yet another exclusive Lego video. I don’t recall if I posted the last one… I can’t find it here when I search. Here’s the links. Anyway, the new video is a demo of the minifig assembly process. Quite impressive.

First, the raw plastic material is put into the molds to create all the parts: the head, the torso, the minuscule hands, the hips, and the left and right arms and legs, plus any minifig complements, like helmets or tools.

• The head and torsos are always decorated. This is a complicated process that makes the minifig the most expensive part of any Lego set. This is why sets like the Death Star diorama are among the most expensive. The stamping of the colors is usually made in several passes. In older times, the faces always had the same designs. Today, however, they have different features that require different layers (personally, I like the classic ones more than the ones with different faces).

• Once they are decorated, the torsos are put into the body assembly machine, where the left and right arms are put into them mechanically. The same machine then places the hands inside the arms with absolute precision at lightning speed.

• The torsos are then taken to the packaging production line, where they are put together in the bags along with the head, hair/helmet/hat, and legs with hips. Before, the machines also connected the heads and legs, so the Lego aficionado would find the minifig complete inside the box. Now, however, this is left for the player except for the vintage minifig set, which comes with the minifigs completely built.

For your enjoyment, via Slashdot.

According to these five terms of service and EULA, Google owns any content you create using its Chrome browser and can filter your Gmail messages if it likes. Facebook says it can sell its users’ uploaded images as stock photography. YouTube can keep footage of your kids forever, even after you’ve deleted it from the site. And AOL can ban you for using vulgar language on AIM. Funny, right? That’s why Valleywag calls them ‘The 5 most laughable terms of service on the Net.‘

Note that Google have since updated the EULA for Chrome so that they DON’T own anything you create. Thank the lords of Kobol.

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I’ve decided there are too many fan pages for people I think it’s silly to declare yourself a fan of. The catalyst for me has been Christian leaders and teachers. These are good people we assume, maybe I would be even be a supporter of them. But I’m not a FAN of anyone of them anymore than I am a fan of my wife, or many of my friends. In fact, there are many who I agree with theologically but am NOT a fan of at all!

So I did the only thing I could do under the circumstance and created fan pages for a number of my friends. Normal people. I am truly fans of them. I encourage you to do the same.

Just don’t do it as fast as I did, cause Facebook will shut down your operation (see above).

I absolutely believe the truth of this tale. Ingram Micro is terrible for excessive packaging, but HP really takes the cake on this one. The box below was used to ship 32 sheets of A4 paper.

Read HP Shatters Excessive Packaging Record

See what I did there?

Anyway. Check it. And then get yourself a copy of the book Jennifer Government, which I just finished reading. It’s a superb piece of fiction, examining an Orwellian style future-present where corporations, not the government, control the world. Very funny, and quite disturbing, in it’s familiarity.

And a book review:

I just finished studying Frank Viola’s and George Barna’s recent book, Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices. I want to start to say what I appreciate about the book and finish with what I think are some concerns.

Reading this book reminded me of the hours of ambitious dreaming and passionate debates that occurred during my bible college and seminary days with other visionary young radicals. It evoked the intensity with which I first went into the pastoral ministry, like a bull in a china shop, like Jesus with a woven whip into the den of thieves. In other words, I agree with almost everything they say. I have a problem with churches owning so much money, property and buildings; I question liturgy and orders of worship; I struggle with the one-man monologue sermon model; I have always wrestled with “full-time paid ministry” pastor positions; I disregard Sunday dress; I don’t like the control of worship music by a select and talented few; I don’t believe in tithing; I question the sacraments, formal Christian education, and our whole approach to the New Testament. In short, I too kick against the system. So, if you want to get an idea of what the authors insist are the pagan roots of most of our religious practices and compare them to the New Testament and early Church, get this book. With the plentiful footnotes and bibliography, it’ll give you enough to study.

But I have some concerns. Even before I got to the substance of the book, I read a line in the forward that concerned me. The following, they say, is their “proposal“…

I plan to get this book. It sounds interesting.

Enjoy.

Guitar Hero 3… will it blend? That is the question.

The 10 wildest gamers you have EVER seen. Tetris and Mario impress me the most. I pooped myself while watching this.

My own gaming took a sudden turn for the better, followed by a decisive turn to the nonexistent, just a few hours ago. Our neighbors brought a projector over and we watched Little Miss Sunshine (hadn’t seen it in 6 months). I suggested he might let me keep the projector for the weekend, and upon his answering to the affirmative my 360 was immediately unpacked.

The power and audio required a little jerry-rigging. 10 minutes of rigging for the sound, to be honest.

The fun lasted precisely 11 minutes. That’s 1 minutes of full stereo. Then everything went dark. Turns out the 360 draws an average of 250watts or thereabouts, while my voltage changer only handles 100. I spent the rest of the evening and following morning researching my options and calling every store in Jyväskylä for higher wattage voltage changers or European 360 power adapters. All to no avail my friends. No avail.

Start here.

Finish in a blaze of glory here.

Oh Gawd.