>> good news for them. Bad news for the controversial couple that was eliminated from "the amazing race" last night. The question everyone is asking today -- is Jonathan just a passionate game player or an abusive spouse? Now, Dr. Phil's on the case. >> You're driving me crazy, man. I'm going to get a divorce. >> That's not the real Jonathan. He's such a pussycat. >> I don't know. I'm not Reading the map! >> So funny.

• They're a hundred million miles away
  
• It takes up 45 minutes to communicate with them.
  
• They were designed to last 3 months on the surface. (1 year olds now.)
  
• They were launched with a crippling design defect related to the file system in their on-board memory.
  
• Their solar panels generate less power than required to light a 100-watt bulb. (A year in, they generate half as much as at landing.)
  
• The rovers are operating in temperatures from -12F to -200F.
  
• Mars has a propensity for eating spacecraft.

Sen. Charles Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the possibility that the system may be scrapped is disappointing.

"I hope we haven't just been pouring money down a rat hole at taxpayers' expense," said Grassley, R-Iowa.

The top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, called the FBI computer overhaul "a train wreck in slow motion" and said money alone won't solve the problem.

The possibility remains that a design flaw in Cassini's radio receiver system will hopelessly scramble the data. Engineers anticipated that signals from the wind-tossed Huygens would vary widely in frequency and strength, and thus compensated for it in the receiver's design. But they had failed to take into account frequency shifts that would also throw off the timing of the encoded data, leaving it a garbled mess.

The very act of trying to suppress the information creates a kind of rebound effect, causing thoughts of an affair, late-night excursions or an undisclosed debt to flood the consciousness, especially when a person who would be harmed by disclosure of the secret is nearby

"Contrary to what many people assume," Dr. Kwawer said, "quite often a secret life can bring a more lively, more intimate, more energized part of themselves out of the dark."

The pediatrician treated by Dr. Aronson, for example, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household in which his mother frequently and disapprovingly compared him to his uncle, who was a rogue and a drinker.

In another, psychologists at Harvard found that they could increase the attraction between male and female strangers simply by encouraging them to play footsie as part of a lab experiment.

My advice is to drop the MST3K fan requirement for the woman.

1. Finish the degree.
   
   It's one test away, high time this undergraduate thing is put to sleep.
   
2. Find a classy lady.
   
   This one's long overdue. Non-smokers, thanks. Must appreciate Mystery Science Theater 3000 and not scoff if I begin a sentance "So, I was watching Nova last night...". I am told that this variety of female exists but need to further investigate the supporting evidence.
   
3. Find a better job.
   
   This one is (theoretically) dependant on the degree. Need a job where the products are well-defined and software development practices don't resemble a combination of the aforementioned monkeys and crossed fingers.
   
4. Find a church that fits.
   
   Preferably where the people are both friendly AND will speak to you. Membership must also not neatly coincide with that of an old folk's home.
   
5. Release a piece of software that reaches 10,000 downloads.
   
   If I'm shooting for pie in the sky, it might as well be tasty.
   
6. See an ocean.
   
   Atlantic, Pacific, it matters not. The midwest has waves of grain and drifts of snow, but both lack the simple ability to plop down on a beach and build a sand castle in the sun.
   

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Did you notice anything unusual occur during the video?

I sure didn't... But now, go back and watch the video again. Don't count the balls -- in fact, ignore them completely. Look at the people.

You'll see someone in a gorilla suit walk into the group of people, thump his chest, and walk out. I'm not joking. I saw this bit on a tv program once, and I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe that I'd missed something so obvious.

This is the same principle of distraction that makes magic work. Human focus can be dogged but can also make you blind to anything else that's happening (even things, literally, in front of your face). What kinds of questions does this raise about our perceptions of reality in more general terms? What sort of obvious stuff have I missed? What have you missed?

An MTV reality spawned brunette marketing vector for the sexualized prepubesent - recently embroiled in a national lip fiasco- will perform for 70,000 football crazed, testosterone hyped men congregated for the sole purpose of cheering on other even more testostermone laden padded men in thier attempt to physically disassemble each other.

Orange Bowl representatives said they were pleased with Simpson's performance and feel the booing was just backlash from her "Saturday Night Live" lip synching incident.

Social scientists at the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Britain tested the IQs of 900 boys and girls at the age of 11 and then checked on their rates of marriage 40 years later. They found that higher IQ increases the chances a man will marry but high IQ causes an even greater decrease in the chances that a woman will marry.

“The finding that IQ in early life appears to be associated with the likelihood to marry is important because factors in childhood may determine a person’s marital status in adulthood, which may in turn influence future health and mortality,” says the study, to appear in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences.

For boys, there is a 35% increase in the likelihood of marriage for each 16-point rise in IQ. For girls, there is a 40% drop for each 16-point increase.

Saturday, laws went into effect to restrict kids from riding scooters or riding in the front seat of a car. They'll also be kept out of tanning salons and face costly fines for drag racing in the streets.

But they will face fines for playing with toy and BB guns that look too much like the real thing, or e-mailing pirated music and movies to friends.

California already has the nation's toughest helmet law for kids on bikes and skateboards, and calorie-laden soda pop was banned in elementary and junior high schools last year.

...

Children under 14 are banned from using tanning salons, unless they have a doctor's note, and those 14 to 18 need parental permission to receive a tan.

The moral of the story is that computer science is not the same as software development. If you're really really lucky, your school might have a decent software development curriculum, although, they might not, because elite schools think that teaching practical skills is better left to the technical-vocational institutes and the prison rehabilitation programs.