Whether you lean Republican or Democrat, you have to admit that Christopher Buckley's (a conservative) endorsement of Obama is worth raising an eyebrow. And this quote is pretty tell too.

"Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case," he also wrote.

Spotted here.

Optical illusions are all over the web, but most are boring. One of my favorite animated optical illusions is below. Here's what you do:

1. Watch the purple dots on the outside. Nothing odd there, right?
2. Look in the center and peripherally look at the rotating purple dot. It's green!
3. Now stare hard at the center and eventually the dots will disappear.

The human brain is a funny thing, no?

This isn't going to mean anything to you, but it's my favorite birthday wish from a friend I've had for over 30 years. It came through Facebook, but I'm making it permanent here...

Happy Birthday old one.

You are as old as 1k personal computers. Slightly older.
You have taken apart toys that are no longer on the market.
You were born in the year featured in the show, Life on Mars.
You know the value of rote actions.
You know the secret of Derf, and once were good at Robotron.
You have probably forgotten the Markendon rules.
You may still be waiting for Istanbul.
And many more things besides!

The first item is referring to my first computer -- a ZX-81. See, I really am old

A recent issue of Fortune Magazine had this quote that made me once again wish I did something else for a living:

"The flavor of the day is buying your own debt at below face value. I'm buying bank debt in my deal with leverage from the bank that made me that deal." -- David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group

Nice!

Blatantly stolen from site I forgot to note, but that probably blatantly stole it from some other site.

I found this gem in an InformationWeek article:

"Meanwhile, IBM's lawsuit against Johnson, first reported by InformationWeek, remains ongoing. The executive claims his noncompete deal with IBM is invalid, in part because he intentionally signed the agreement in the wrong place, according to court records."

Do you think Dell, the company that hired Johnson away from IBM, is reviewing the documents he signed!?

This sort of thing has been circulating for a while, but this is a great example of how we can read words even when the order of the letters is mixed up.

Now here's a something you don't see everyday. Apparently, the Russian Army has its armored vehicles blessed by the Church. Am I the only one that thinks this is an odd thing for a peace-loving institution to do?

First seen here.

I came across this wonderful animated image that seems like a perfect metaphor for anything that is overly complicated.

An article on CNN recently looked at various technology predictions from many years ago and asked the question, "What happened to all of the things we were promised?" One quote in the article was particularly amusing:

The jet pack, though, has never really taken off, Wilson says. The problem is its practical application. While a rocket belt could propel a screaming human to 60 mph in seconds, its fuel lasted for only about half a minute, "which led to more screaming," Wilson says.

I have to imagine that the journalist was pretty amused with that one.