MP3 Player
I received my MP3 player today. It has been charging for a couple of hours. This one was recommended by only a couple of people. There are so many "iPod Killers" out there now, that it is difficult to tell them apart. I haven't thought of many new requirements for the ultimate personal device.
I'm having some trouble getting my old MP3 DVD to read. Most of the MP3's I've acquired over the years are burned to data CDs. I recently burned a data DVD and it has some trouble reading. I hope it is not corrupt. The copy faze is going to take longer than I thought. I don't really have an index of my stuff, so I just have to go digging. You can only really copy one thing off a CD or DVD at a time because the head has to jump from one spot to the other. That operation is extremely time consuming on a CD or DVD drive.
Lets see, how many MP3s do I have.70 data CDs and one data DVD. Lets say that those CDs are about 85% full. (750 * .85) * 70 + (4.3 * 85) = 44 990.5 gigabytes. That is not nearly as many as I thought. I'm only putting  I'll be able to go through my whole collection.

Poker
We are going to try again this Sunday. This one is a cheaper game, so I should only be out a couple of bucks for a fun time.

God Kills
This comment (from samizdata.net) makes an interesting extension of how candles may lead to lung cancer via churches. You know Europe is on the way to making tobacco illegal. They ban smoking everywhere. They are talking about making fatty foods illegal in the States. It is never going to end. As long as there are new politicians or news correspondents who need a cause, something has to be the top story.
Politicians need crusades to fight for. They need the voters to be just pissed about something to vote for them.
News people need news. There is not always a plane crash to cover. They want you to be just mad enough to keep watching.
What is the answer? Talk to people around you. Talk to your family. Turn off the TV. Find a pen pal in another country. Don't be afraid to say something every now and then.

Addictive Behavior
This article scares me. I remember a few years ago at my day job some people were passing some pornographic images around through email.. They got busted and many of them got fired over the incidents. Some people who had very long histories with the company were allowed to stay with the company with a promis to stop. They did not stop. They just tried to hide it better. They sued the company and ended up getting their jobs back, sort of. I bet their argument had something to do with the addictive nature of pornography.
I remember sitting in some one's office/cube talking about why someone would keep doing the transfers via email even after they had been caught. I told this coworker that I thought it was because porn is addictive.

News
Who's Next?
Between North Korea, Pakistan, Iran and the U.S.  selling all kins of bad stuff all over the world, this whole axis of evil thing is more or less true. I'm sure Russia and China are not far behind. Hell, France sells jets to African nations. If memory serves those jets France blew up in the Ivory Coast last month were French made.
Some Good News
A Polish woman was freed after being held in Iraq for a while. I guess you can't make any Polish jokes about freeing hostages.
Contractors Die in Iraq
Wow, allot of contractors have been killed and injured in Iraq. I had no idea. (from IntelDump). I know at my company contractors are teated a bit like they just don't count. We do much of the same work and have no benefits. I wonder how many direct employees of those companies have been killed or injured. Or, is the term contractor being used differently here? I may just need to get my terms straight.
Scramjet
Scram Jet Test is successful. It is basically a high speed ramjet (the f-16 has a ramjet design). I thought scramjets were invented in the 60s. I've looked around and it looks like the ramjet was invented in 1913. The scramjet seems to be considered a variant on that design and there is not much of a line drawn between the development of both.