So looking back at my list from 2008, there’s some stuff that’s still ongoing, like the Rotoscope record. Oy veh. One day, I swear.

1. Exercize

Check. Started with InfoEther and we go twice a week to a personal trainer. Oh yeah!

2. Be prepared

Not really something to check off, just more of a mindframe shift. Getting there.

3. Clean out the junk in these boxes I haven’t seen in a year

About half of them are done. The rest are in the storage unit. So clean out the storage unit is what this has become.

4. Expand the Balcony garden

Boy did I ever.

Going to give it a whirl again this summer with some variations upon the plantings and a bit more cyclical to get it all working right. Also, continuing on canning the stuff (Jalapeño Jelly FTW!)

5. Learn to shoot (yes, a weapon)

Slightly untrue, as I’ve know how to shoot a rifle since I was ten. But I went and took a class from a Secret Service instructor via the NRA here in Northern Virginia and have been enjoying going to the range every once in a while. A fun sport for sure!

6. Relax

Fail.

Here’s the list for 2009:

1. Zero the debt (except for college loans)
2. Finish the Rotoscope record. For serious.
3. Get in shape and stay that way
4. Maintain a more positive attitude
5. Read 2 books a month

I know those are nebulous and wimpy but whatever. I’m just happy I survived the last half of 2008.

NSA Eavesdropped on Americans, Journalists in Baghdad | Two whistleblowers came forward to allege that “it was common practice at the NSA facility [in the Green Zone] to not only record the phone conversations of ordinary Americans with no connection to terrorism, but to single out the exchanges that were somehow novel or salacious for sharing, ridicule, and general discussion.” Your tax dollars at work. How long until this happens domestically? My money is on that it already does happen here.

The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition | Really, truly, one of the best new bands I’ve seen since MuteMath. From Melbourne, Australia. As Tom Bridge said in a conversation with me, “It has a great urgency to it. I MUST ROCK. IT CANNOT WAIT. ROCK!”

Honey Can Help Fight Sinusitis | Well, certain types, and it’s limited to petri dish testing. It goes to show that Mother Nature really makes the best medicine.

The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget | Just a great feel-good story about an old lady and a cab driver. It’s the little things we do that make a difference.

Mad Men Illustrated | A great group of images of illustrated scenes from Mad Men. Well done art! (via .sara)

Consumers not waiting for Automakers to Install Plug-in on Hybrids | This shows the obstinance of Detroit on getting with the program. When people are moding hteir cars so much in order to increase mileage, it might be something to look into…

No-Tech Hacking | Security is often focused on firewalls and digital encryption and randomized passwords. This is a great look at how non-technical issues can often do you in, how situational awareness is paramount, and how you car, dress and haircut can tell someone more about you than you care to let on. (Defcon talk by Johnny Long)

Typography for Lawyers | Or other clients who just don’t seem to get it.

Grocery Items rise 10.5% from Last Year | Maybe food will be the next hot market. Of course, most of these things aren’t storeable, and these hikes all seem to be related to costs of inputs on the agricultural end as well as transportation costs.

As the bailout has passed the Senate and the House, it appears to be the law of the land. $700,000,000,000.00 dollars. That’s a lot of zeros. “700 Billion” doesn’t look as bad as $700,000,000,000.00 does it? It seems that everyone is now lining up for money because of the credit crisis. California is asking for $7 Billion ($673B left) to “pay for teachers salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and ever other state-funded service” [emphasis mine].

Two quotes are applicable:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

“The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic destroyed.”
– Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864, a letter to William F. Elkins

Telling indeed.

And now to read about others blaming religion for making them financially insolvent due to "Prosperity theology". The thought “that God would ‘make a way’ for poor people to enjoy the better things in life” is more than a little disconcerting. The way is, and always has been, work. There are no entitlements. You deserver absolutely nothing in life. And some of the things that are most important to you will be suddenly and mercilessly taken away from you. God didn’t want you to get a house. God didn’t want your loved one to die. Let me be perfectly clear in my belief on this:

God doesn’t act.

He cares, okay. Fine. I’ll go with that. But if God’s hand is at work everywhere, then free will cannot exist. And saying “it’s God’s way” is another means for one to absolve themselves of responsibility for the actions that the take on a daily basis.

Take responsibility for yourself. Live within your means. Strive to improve your situation. Don’t give up on life. Don’t expect a handout. And don’t blame God for your problems.

People are to blame.

Ask Umbra Gets Noticed by the New York Times | My friend, Jennifer Prediger, gets props from the NY Times about her new “Ask Umbra” featurettes on the environmental site, grist.org. Yay!

Urban Vehicle Camouflage | Someone spent a lot of time to look like a generic fleet vehicle.

What Happened to Muxtape | Sad that the industry couldn’t figure out how to make this work in their favor. Seems they keep stepping on anything that would help them sell music.

Creating a Magical Rainbow Color Flame in Photoshop | Veerle comes through again with an amazing tutorial showing how to create a very nice effect in Photoshop.

And finally, a funny image from Amy Hoy:

I’ve been a bit absent from this blog of late. The summer got very busy between Juniper Lane going into the studio to record 3 new songs and then being selected to open for Coldplay at the Verizon Center. I had a pretty busy August planned, culminating in a trip to Berlin and Vienna with my girlfriend, Leanne, for Amy Hoy’s wedding.

On August 4th, that all changed. It was the day after the Coldplay show and things seemed normal (besides leaving my cell phone at Chris Bonavia’s house after the Coldplay show) until I got an IM from my brother that Leanne’s Dad had called and that they hadn’t heard from her (she called every day to her mom). The police entered her apartment that afternoon and found she had passed (later determined to have been a brain aneurysm). You can read the obituary here.

Things have been pretty much a maelstrom since that point. I have good days and bad days. I still can’t believe that I had finally found someone that just seemed to fit perfectly and then it was gone in a flash. I still don’t know what to say about it, so I’ll just put up roughly what I read at her funeral and the memorial service a week later:

I think most of you know me, but for those that may not, I’m John Athayde——Leanne’s boyfriend. I was hoping to be meeting you all at a rehearsal dinner or something like that. I had conned Leanne into a trip up here in the fall. I think she was afraid of me meeting the parents or something. We were going to visit her friend in Syracuse, then see my cousin in Rochester, and finish it out with a few days in Erie. A good time to ask her parents blessing and all that.

Most everything I’m going to say about Leanne you already know. She was amazing, caring, intelligent, beautiful inside and out. She was my cheerleader, my sounding board, my shopping guide, my confidant, best friend and more.

Her friends had told me that even before we started dating, she thought we were soul mates. It sure felt like that the more I got to know her. She was so positive all the time. The closest thing we had to a disagreement was that she would use up the toilet paper and not change the roll. I didn’t know if she just didn’t know how to change it so I asked her if she needed me to show her how to change it up.

She worked with rescue animals and… Angela was telling me how she had signed up for a cat while they were hanging out one night, forgetting she was allergic to cats. The benefits of reading the email list while drinking wine. But that was Leanne – always thinking of others before herself. The low maintenance girl with the high maintenance dog. The fierce defender of her friends. The amazing cupcake and cookie baker. The lover of history and learning. A shining light for all in her life. A beacon to guide me home. I am sad for all of those who will never know her the way we know her. I am sad for the future generation who would have known her as a mother, aunt, grandmother, and ancestor.

She was a radiant woman who will always be a light for us.

I at least have that the last words I said to her when I dropped her off were “I love you” and I will keep that with me always.

Please consider donating to her memorial fund at Homeward Trails. Leanne was very involved in animal rescue and fostering animals and there’s a place on the top of that page by which you can donate to her fund.

In time I hope to be able to talk about this a bit more eloquently in a public sphere. Please keep her and her family in your prayers.

Hello, friends. We’re your usability consultants.

Is your web app tired? Run down? Listless? Does it poop out at diggings? Is it unpopular on del.icio.us?

The answer to all of your problems is in this little bottle consulting package. Hyphenated People Prix Fixe. Yes, Hyphenated People Prix Fixe contains vitamins, meat, vegetables, and minerals and 150% of your daily dosage of usability expertise.

Yes, with Hyphenated People Prix Fixe you can buy your way to web application health. All you do is take a big dose after every meal once. It’s so tasty, too. Tastes just like candy. So why don’t you join the thousands of happy peppy people and order your Hyphenated People Prix Fixe today. That’s Hyphenated People Prix Fixe.

Hyphenated People Prix Fixe

Over at Hyphenated People, we’ve been spending the summer cooking up something new: a fixed-price deal. Fun and challenging for us, and affordable for you.

For a flat rate, you can choose either:

• The Inspector. In which we explore and analyze your entire application¹ and deliver to you a fancy report including a written analysis (including callouts and sketches) and suggestions for improvement. Topics considered include application structure, flow, individual screens’ usability and layout, insights about targeted users, and aesthetics (aka “the pretty”).
• The Drive-By Design. In which we explore your application, and thence, with that knowledge, take any single, full page of your choosing and redesign it from the ground up to be more effective. In this case we deliver to you a fully-realized design, original design source files (PSDs) and a written explanation of our recommendations for that page and its situation in the entire application.

Either package is ideal for smaller companies and startups, and anyone who is having a difficult time loosening the purse strings for hiring usability consultants for a long-term project.

There’s no further obligation. Our reports and advice are yours. We will happily make ourselves available for further assistance (availability permitting), but you can implement our suggestions any way you want, and with whomever you want.

That Price, Which is Fixed

The price for either package is just $3,500 USD. If you’d like further details, drop us a line at yo@hyphenateme.com with your preferred method of contact and we’ll give you a prompt return call or email.

Write us now. You know you want to.

Nota bene: We’re only budgeting the time for a few of these projects this summer. It’d be a clever marketing tactic to make that up and then urge you to contact us now if not sooner, but it’s actually true. This is something we’ll be doing in addition to our normal, larger jobs. We will of course deliver our very best (as we always do), but this is an experiment for us from a business standpoint.

[1] This assumes a fairly typically sized application: similar to or bigger than Basecamp, smaller than Salesforce.

My Dad sent me an op-ed from the New York Times entitled Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave this morning and asked my opinion on it. I agree with a lot of what the author says, but I think that we’re missing the boat entirely on this stuff. People are thinking about this as “how do we replace oil?” The real question they should be asking is “How do I live without oil?”

Not radically different, but if we only look at how to replace oil, we limit the potential of what can happen. Everyone scrambling for a piece of the pie too. “Clean Coal” — which I believe to be the biggest oxymoron since “slightly racist” — sponsored most of the Presidential debates. You know what that got us? Very few questions or discussion about a real energy policy.

Anyway, here’s my reply, in whole, to my father. It was written quickly, not proofread, and is missing links. I’ve tried to add them where appropriate to fill in the context of conversations not shared, but the idea is there. The bold paragraph at the end is the most important thing.

— Begin —

Oh, where do I begin?! :)

deeep breath

Basically, even if we found new reserves in US Territory and sucked them dry, that would only account for something like 8 Billion barrels (gotta find where I read that). At 120 million barrels of world consumption a day, that’s a little more than two months supply.

Two months

Those reserves would take years to find and even longer to bring online, and then we don’t have the transportation in place to get most of that to refineries (well, the coastal shelf stuff we do, but not the ANWR). Also, it’s a reserve. Regardless of what you think might be there, it was set aside for a reason. Is Bush’s next element of the energy policy to open Yosemite to geothermal companies and The George Washington Forest to loggers?

It’s basic macroeconomics: The problem is a combination of an increase in demand without an increase in supply. And there really isn’t any more supply. The OPEC guys can’t get it out of the ground fast enough to keep up with China and India’s demand. And we can’t tell them to not develop. Their people see American culture and want to live that way. Problem is, that culture was built on sixty years of cheap oil.

Alternate energy isn’t much better at this point because all of it – every single thing that’s out there today, relies on an underlying fossil fuel economy in order for it’s manufacture, delivery, marketing, etc. Yes we’ve been losing research jobs in alt energy overseas, but that’s as much to blame on bad policy since 1970. All nuclear engineers go to France or China because we’ve not launched a new plant since Three Mile Island. “Nuclear power is great! except… um… put it in HIS backyard” – that’s the problem.

Geothermal is great too. This would work well in the Northern central plains where heating is critical more so than anything else. But how do you tell an out of work auto worker or small family farmer that they need to drop thousands of dollars on a new geothermal heat pump? Only if it’s cheaper than their heating bill from oil. Wave energy looks cool too, and would be quite successful in our area I feel (with the sheer area covered by the massively tidal Chesapeake, it could be quite a boon) and is also working 24-7. But that’s a lot of investment and maintenance (corrosive salt water).

Solar? Cool stuff. We have a massive desert in the southwest, the majority of which is still federally held land. Smack some arrays down there and make a combo solar/wind farm. Or do Algae. Some big Texas oil men are already dumping money into wind to take advantage of the free stuff they get on the plains. Again, manufacture and transportation rely on oil. Photovalactic cells have come a long way, and are still progressing. Same with battery banks. They all have a shelf life as well.

Another issue with solar is cost. In the state of Virginia, I can’t make back my investment because of the way that Dominion power doesn’t really pay you for the power you generate back to the grid. Waldo has an excellent article on this from last year. With energy starting to skyrocket tho, it might become cost effective in the math.

On a smaller scale, you can do what they did at Gaviotas in Columbia. A solar reflector (basically aluminum) heats water and creates a turbine. It’s like a coal fired engine but with the sun. Now that is renewable and not oil dependent (except maybe for milling of pipe, etc). That can also be used as just a water heater for showers and for distilling water.

Ethanol? Corn is such a crappy fuel. We put almost as much into it via petrochemicals (that also pollute the crap out of the Mississippi and turn the Gulf of Mexico into an algae bloom, killing off other species) that it’s a zero gain situation. And with world grain consumption and crop failures up (3 million acres of corn lost from these recent floods) you’re going to have food riots (already happening overseas) and all food prices are going to increase and stay high (see this article about the CEO of Nestle ). We could use switchgrass, but you’ve got farmers paid to raise corn, not switchgrass. Brazil is all ethanol based, and look what sugar production is doing to the Amazon.

That algae based idea would be great if they could get it into production. The return per acre would make the american southwest the algae ethanol king. Heck, Mexico could even be better than us in the Sonora states.

The author, James Howard Kunstler, writes about a lot of these technologies in his book “The Long Emergency”, which, while quite dour, is a potential vision of what we’re up against. I’ve already seen many of the ideas he espoused years ago in main stream media outlets (McMansions are the new ghettos, etc). (See his article in the Washington Post from May.)

I agree that a real President would get up and do a Kennedy-esque speech of energy independence before the next decade is out. Seeing as I don’t foresee Sen. McCain making it through the next decade, that leaves the only logical choice :) But it’s not just energy. It’s about sustainable human settlement patterns. It’s about bringing back victory gardens. It’s about effective mass transit. It’s about tearing down the temples of commerce sitting in seas of asphalt (e.g. malls, strip malls, etc) and building livable, walkable communities. It’s about reverting the way america lives to pre-WWII. It’s about family farming. It’s about sustainable agriculture.

I expect to see replays of the 1970s sooner rather than later, regardless of the direction taken by any President or Congress. We’ve already had rice rationing in some states. It’s like getting prepared for a massive hurricane that will leave you without power, food, or gas for years.

Man. I want a farm.

— End —

So yeah. Um. Discuss?

Here’s what just went up on the HBA blog on MySpace:

Dear friends and fans of HBA:

It is with a heavy heart that I announce my departure from Honor By August. Over the last (almost) two years, I’ve had the time of my life on the road with the guys but it’s come to the point where I cannot give my full attention and energies to furthering the band. I feel that in this critical stage in the band’s development, they need an individual who will be there in full mind and body at every moment. And I sadly am not that person right now in my life.

Some of you know that I’ve been working on my solo project, Rotoscope (www.myspace.com/rotoscope) for many years and also my electronic project, Boboroshi and Kynz (www.myspace.com/boboroshikynz). Both projects have full-length records coming out before the end of the year. I’m also starting a production career with Brian Frederick of Juniper Lane called Borealis Studios.

So I, as my predecessor Joe, will pass the torch to the next person. I will miss every moment on stage and will hold this time close to my heart. I’ll be going away for a while to the studio and performing locally both solo and with Juniper Lane (www.myspace.com/juniperlane). In the words of Bono, it’s “time to go away and dream it all up again…”

I hope to see you in the audience at an HBA show in the future. This time standing next to you as a fan.

Love and Peace -
John Athayde/Kid A

Catch you all on the flip side…

1000 Abstract Brushes for Photoshop | These are the things I live on to do a lot of my design work. PaulW put out all these free brushes and they’re pretty cool. Enjoy!

Science vs. Religion | An xkcd style comic of science vs religion commentary.

Orphan Works: A Collosal Mess | The new orphan works proposed revision to the Copyright code is a crappy fix to a problem the copyright office brought upon itself. A nice op-ed piece by Lawrence Lessig.

As Homes Foreclus in US, Squatters Move In | Homeless are taking over empty houses owned by the banks and local authorities are having a headache getting them out and then keeping them out. And the squatters are getting smart about it too, forcing the banks into courts or offering to leave for cash.

People Moving Off Grid | In this case, off the grid means living out of their car. The city of Santa Barbara actually has set up lots where people can sleep in their cards form 7pm until 7am. How long until this starts to look like the 1930s?

$200-a-Barrel Crude Prediction | the NY Times has a article that references a Goldman Sachs analyst who believes that a super-spike could drive oil prices up to $200 a barrel.

As we’re off to play at the Bitter End in NYC tonight, I present the Friday link collection. Enjoy!

Houdini for Mac OS X | For you visual effects people, SideEffects is finally releasing a new version of Houdini for Mac that will bring it in line with the Windows and Linux versions. Just shows you how far the platform has come in the last ten years.

Foreclosure Filings Hit Record in April | Up 65% from last year, foreclosures are not only hurting families, but municipalities as well as their tax revenue plummets. Without property taxes, cities and towns will have to find new revenue streams, which means new and or different taxes.

Oregon: Our Laws Our Copyrighted And You CAn’t Publish Them | Cory Doctorow rips the state of Oregon on their recent claim that their laws are copyrighted and that they can’t be published outside of the state site. I’d be interested to see this go into court with the whole provision of critique or ridicule being considered fair-use. (via Waldo)

Farmer Outside Boston Preserving Endangered Livestock | A PhD in Pathology and fourth generation farmer, Jennifer Cermak has a small farm in Berlin, outside Boston, and helps maintain populations of endangered livestock species, many of them from the colonial era.

As Food Prices Shoot Up, So Do Backyard Gardens | I’ve got a balcony garden and it’s the same idea. The best way to eat local is to start in your own back yard. Then join a CSA locally. Then buy from local farmers markets. You’d be suprised how little you have to get from the actual grocery store.

Slow Down a Little, Save a Lot of Gas | What your parents always told you is true. You can save a lot of money, especially with gas prices going through the roof, by driving at a lower speed. The goal is to keep the RPMs of the engine as low as possible, so cruising in your highest gear at the lowest RPMs. This won’t work for those of you on the mountain, but it’s a good practice to get into anyway.

Ecobeam Systems | An interesting technology for construction that utilizes wood and steel girder-like beams to replace typical stud construction that can be curved, assembled on site, used to span larger distances, and utilize sandbags as bricks. Keeping this on the list for when I build to see how it could help in a passive solar system (thick masonry like wall = thermal stability)

Helvetica Serif | Joey the “Accordion Guy” posted the most brilliant and offensive type joke of the last year. Or call it Arial Serif. Everyone knows they’re the same thing.

Chloe the Labrador Retriever | Daily Puppy would be my downfall if my apartment building allowed for dogs. Instead, I can just say “aww so cute!” about other people’s labradors.

What WMATA Is Really Suggesting | New metro proposal for the system in 2030. I wish this existed today. It would be nice. Check out the map drawn based on the presentation by the guys at Greater Greater Washington.

California: Disappearing is $6Trillion in housing Wealth | At the rate housing prices are falling, the average homeowner will experience a loss of $85,000 in this year alone.

HCFS Not Natural says FDA | Finally, the FDA has declared high fructose corn syrup is not a natural ingredient, and therefore products containing it cannot be labeled as such. HFCS is one of the main components, in this author’s humble opinion, of our national nutrition and obesity problems..

Pizza Hut Delivery Driver Fired for Shooting Armed Robber | In more of the “don’t defend yourself!” news, Pizza Hut fired a driver because of a policy violation, even though he kept himself from being robbed. Another point of stupid corporate policies being followed to the letter because of fear of lawsuits.

BBC: Do You Need To Stock Up The Bunker? | Even the Brits are getting in on the end of the world preparations. It’s based off Barton Biggs’ book “Wealth, War and Wisdom” which talks about wealth preservation during war, specifically, World War II in Europe. Lessons are applicable to modern day life.

The Clean Energy Scam | Agricultural biofuels are not going to save the planet. In fact, they are hurting it just as much as oil through deforestation, agrochemicals, and more.

Algae: The Ultimate In Renewable Energy | Making biofuels from algae farms can produce 100,000 gallons of biofuel in an acre per year. Compare this to 30 for corn and 50 for soybeans. Bring on the pond scum!

Buffett Says Recession May Be Worse Than Feared | Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the world’s richest man at $62B, stated that this “recession will be longer and deeper than most people think” and “think[s] consumers are feeling gas and food prices and not feeling they’ve got a lot of money for other things.”

Gardening in Suburbia: Hot New Trend | Watch out, it’s the new hot trend! Turn your lawn into a garden! This is awesome to see and fits in nicely with the article from last week’s remaindered links about the town in Hampshire doing something similar.

The End of Flight as We Know It | An op-ed from the great Bacon’s Rebellion e-magazine this week about the end of cheap air travel and looking ahead at an era when international travel at the drop of the hat will only be for those “at the top of the economic pyramid”. “There is no way to have “low cost, safe, convenient flights.” No amount of traditional subsidy or oversight can mask realty. The only way that there can be safe, on-time air travel is for every ticket to cost far more than it has in the past.” All too true.

Costco Food Rationing | In certain Costco’s they are limiting the amount of certain items that people can buy due to international shortages (or perceived shortages) in things such as rice, oil and flour. Toss this into the debunk file for “it could never happen here”. Also see Riots, Instability Spread as Food Prices Skyrocket and Time Magazine’s No Grain, Big Pain article. And finally: The Wall Street Journal Suggests Americans Stockpile Food

A Message to Pennsylvanians from Bill Clinton | Bill Clinton’s speech for John Kerry in October 2004.

Now one of Clinton’s laws of politics is this: If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is trying to get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope. That’s the best.

Oops. Bill, I guess Hillary didn’t hear that speech. Nor did anyone in Pennsylvania seem to remember it this past Tuesday. Pity.

Urban Planners vs. City Residents | Even the best laid plans are laid to waste by people who simply do not want to leave the place they live. Youngstown, Ohio’s city planners would love to shut down and raze vacant and run down areas, but the few remaining residents don’t agree.

We’ve released the music video for the Honor By August single Into the Light, Directed by our good friend Timothy Devine

Check it out!!

Texas Oil Billionaire Bets on Wind | It’s nice to see private industry going after alternative energy. Mesa Power, owned by Texas oil man T. Boon Pickens, has put forth a plan to spend $10 Billion to build the largest wind farm on the planet. And it’s not from his “let’s save the environment” reasoning. He sees the profit in going green.

An Entire Village in UK Grows its Own Food | The village of Martin, nestled into the Hampshire countryside, is pretty nondescript. But the village has rolled back the clock and now over 2/3rds of residents participate in a program to grown their own food. The nearest supermarket is only six miles away, but most people are buying their food from the community allotment, which sells 45 different vegetables and over 100 chickens a week.

Nuclear Attack on DC: A Hypothetical Disaster | The Washington Times (which has typically been a very right-wing leaning paper) has an interesting “what-if” about a 10-kiloton detonation at street level near the White House. Some of the experts interviewed, such as Cham Dallas of the University of Georgia, claim that it’s a likely occurrence in the next 20 years. The bigger concern? The Metro area is in no way, shape, or form prepared to respond to something of this nature.

Coptic Priest Fights Fire with Fire | A Coptic (Christian) priest in Egypt has been named Islam’s Public Enemy #1 by an Arabic Newspaper. He has forged a discussion of the Koran and some of the more archaic laws present in the Hadith. He preaches in Arabic and asks deep questions and responds with a point by point argument that would win some of the toughest debates. The result? A frustrated ulema (a body of prominent Muslim theologians) and a large number of converts to Christianity.

Vitamins May Increase Mortality | Looks like highly processed vitamins aren’t that good for you after all. Michael Pollan’s points from The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food ring more and more true every day.

Nalgene to Phase Out Hard-Plastic Bottles | Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical present in certain hard-plastic Nalgene bottles, is being phased out. The chemical has been linked to neurological and behavioral problems as well as obesity, cancer and diabetes.