Mike DeWolfe : The Daily Edition

I was watching Regenesis and they were talking about bacteriophages-- viruses that target bacteria. What a cool idea. With antibiotics being countered at every turn imagine that one day your pills were not made of some variant of penincillin, but a whole colony of anti-bacterial viruses. What's more, this isn't a new idea. The Soviets have been working with it since the 1940s! More on this comes from Wikipedia: A bacteriophage (from ' bacteria ' and Greek phagein , 'to eat') is a virus that infects bacteria. The term is commonly used in its shortened form, phage . Like viruses that infect eukaryotes (plants, animals and fungi), a large diversity of phage structure and function exists. Typically, they consist of an outer protein hull enclosing genetic material . The genetic material can be either RNA or DNA, but is usually double-stranded DNA between 5 and 500 kilo base pairs long. Bacteriophages are usually between 20 and 200 nm in size. Phages are ub...

I love how many people whine in my direction and then take my advice: 70% of my advice. Our web page doesn't work! Fool: why did you change all of your settings then call me? I don't have any money! Idiot: you're spending 40 hours per week creating content and posting on stupid-ass websites for free; the same content can be sold for money, like in the old days. Like someone said recently, the crap you see on Youtube.com used to be schilled by Fox and America's Funniest Videos. Pap is still currency. Until someone gets tired of a monkey washing a cat, it always will be. When I wish to, I will post a long list of how-tos for making money on the web on my own website . I have to get to an online meeting/post some material. Schmuck: you're leaving a gathering of real people for digital output that simulates people. It's like leaving a party to go to a portrait gallery. The difference with the portrait gallery is that the portraits have artistic merit. Your plan...

I remember in the winter of 1976 watching New Yorkers try to chip the ice in their toilet out with broom handles. They predicted another Ice Age (or was it the Nippy Era?). Thirty years later my latest sculpture partially melts on the weekend. What if there is a cycle that we cannot influence, but ride it out like a wave. That's what Khabibullo Abdusamatov thinks is going on: MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval. Khabibullo Abdusamatov expects a repeat of the period known as the Little Ice Age. During the 16th century, the Baltic Sea froze so hard that hotels were built on the ice for people crossing the sea in coaches. The Little Ice Age is believed to have contributed to the end of the Norse colony in Greenland, which was founded during an interval of much warmer weather. Abdusamatov and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory said the prediction is base...

I like going to see things cold. I’m dropped into a room and voila the event starts. When I did a lot of movie reviews, most of them went like this. My wife caught word of this play coming to the Fringe play, called Bolloxed . We decided to go. I had a busy week and I didn’t have a chance to look up what this play was about. So, we sit down in this dimly lit room. If you’ve been to a Fringe play, you know what they’re all about, impromptu locations and Spartan sets. Our Fringe play was held in a private school auditorium. Out comes a guy that looks like an IT guy—kind of hip clothes, kind of lousy physique and he’s itching his balls. It’s quickly revealed that this play is all about the balls, namely our protagonist, Jack, and his aching balls. What’s wrong with them? Could it be cancer? Could it be something even worse? A play about genitals (e.g. Vagina Monologues) is a ticket to low-ball humor (no pun intended) and squeamish introspection. Correction: that’s the case with a play ...

I made the mistake of going downtown today. I realized that I seldom go into town and its a splash of icy feculant water whenever I do. It took us 20 min. to get from Broughton/Douglas to Broad near Yates by car; likely it would have taken 15 minutes to do so by foot. I did have one happy moment. A ponderously fat man crossed the sidewalk over the course of a couple of minutes. When we were on foot, I saw this large man walk towards us. I "accidentally" turned to my wife and began gesturing and shifting my position thereby blocking the sidewalk (blocking a whole sidewalk? Think about it: a fat man blocking a fat man?) and I kept this man from his destination. Ah... petty, yes, but that's the kind of man I am. Okay, that's for the jaywalkers. What about the drug addicts and riff raff? All I can say is that as bad as we have it, other places have it much, much worse: BERLIN (Reuters) - A homeless woman refuses to stop bathing naked in Munich's public fountains desp...

Batttlestar Galactica's Season Three can't come soon enough: Trailer One: Trailer Two: Trailer Three: What freaks me out is that Commander Adama with the moustache looks like a manager from a store I used to work at. So what's more likely? Adama will stare at the screen and say, "Mike: clean up the midway." Or that retail manager will spontaneously order the nearest department store to do a calculation for a jump to light speed.

So, in reading this resume, I have to ask: are some of the girls he mentions no longer alive? Did he leave off the ones he murdered? I have an old addage: criminals don't go to jail for all of their crimes, just the ones wherein they were caught. I'll bet this isn't a proud feat of publicity for the folks at www.job4teacher.com .

This guy took the convienence of putting a Staples next to a Michaels. He bought a bluetooth headset on discount, trucked over to Michaels and bought a styrofoam/fake banana. Then, he mounted the headset bits into the banana.

About 20 years ago I saw the movie, The Wicker Man . With word of the new Nicholas Cage version coming out, it piqued our curiosity. So, we trucked down to Victoria's best video store, Pic-A-Flic . They had a copy of the extended version. Extended? Flashback to the UK ca. 1972: the government was in a shambles, labour strikes were rampant. This was the breeding ground for the Sex Pistols and punk rock. The film was produced at a time of crisis in the British film industry. The studio in charge of production, British Lion Films , was in financial trouble and was bought out by millionaire businessman John Bentley . In order to convince the unions that he was not about to asset-strip the company, Bentley needed to get a film into production quickly. This meant that The Wicker Man , a film set during early summer, was actually filmed in October; in order to look convincing, artificial leaves and blossoms had to be glued to trees in many scenes. Christopher Lee was extremely keen to g...

I get really melancholy about the past. History distorts the past and loses the foundations-- the people. The people from the past are the real historians. They lived back then: their comfort and suffering is one of the largest things of interest to us-- even if we don't realize it. In October of 2004, I lost my second to last link to the past. I have a great aunt of that vintage and I should spent more time with her. The Library of Congress has released a series of photos-- color photos of people from the 30's and 40s'. They show the mundanes lives of people from this era. I think each of them is more signifigant that the flag raising of Iwo Jima-- after all, almost everyone has dinner and smiles for the camera. I think it's very humbling to see they photos. Get rid of the circus folk who think they're fashionable. Get rid of the idiots with cellphones. They remainder look the same from generation to generation. What we miss from these photos are the people's ...

These guys are running an injured player off of the field. Too bad they forgot to mention to the medics that the stretchers have wheels.

At the end of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart tosses it to Stephen Colbert. What if they did it the other way...

I got a post via a Victoria newsgroup: Anyone know what's up with the CDI offices downtown? They're clearing out, with desks & monitors going for cheap (and, from the look of them, deservedly so). CDI Kaput? Following in the footsteps of Computermaster and so many other technical "schools" in the region, CDI's Victoria "campus" has shut down. I went to the CDI site and looked up their British Columbia location. No longer was there a mention of the Victoria location. So, it appears there's a fire sale at their old offices: equipment, furniture, a diploma gestetner-- you name it. The rest of the branches are still alive from the looks of it. I don't know how the other branches conducted themselves, I only have experience from this branch. There are two more IT technical boils in the city to be popped. One of them steals content and makes unpaid interns do janitorial duties instead of hone their trade. The other is run by a chimpanzee who didn...