I just looked out my window to the office parking lot and counted at least three dragonflies perched on the radio antennas of the cars parked there. Almost every day, I’ll walk out to my car to find a dragonfly attempting to mate with my car’s radio antenna. While they usually fly away when I walk up, I HAVE considered what would happen if I cranked out 60 watts of RF while they’re sitting there. 🙂

I wonder what the attraction is…

An article in the Independent suggests clouds may be public transportation for viruses and bacteria.

Makes sense to me. I’ve often wondered the same thing.

There is, they say, growing evidence that bacteria, fungal spores and viruses may spend large amounts of time – even their entire lives – in the air, riding clouds across the planet. And they don’t just inhabit the clouds – they may also be creating them. Certainly, many of the clouds’ newly discovered inhabitants are exquisitely designed to create the maximum number of ice crystals, the basic building-blocks of clouds. Some Darwinian biologists even argue that the bugs may have evolved for that very job.

I’ve put some pictures up from N.C. State’s Open Pratice from last Sunday. This is one roll of at least two that I took. More will be on the way soon, and the URL will change once I settle on a new gallery script.

For now, you can see the pictures here.

I used to think Michael Powell was doing a fine thing by shaking up the moribund Federal Communications Commission. Now I think he’s just a tool for the monopolistic telecommunications companies intent on owning all the media.

Powell was instrumental in the FCC’s controversial decision to relax media ownership rules (like we need more monopolies), and did this in spite of the vocal opposition of many people from all political persuasions. Seeing how the voice of the little guy was getting drowned by the flood of dollars pouring in from the big networks, Congress took matters into its own hands, drawing up legislation to repeal any FCC rulings relaxing ownership rules. This legislation has a good chance of passing both houses and heading to the President, who may have a hard time vetoing it.

Now that Powell sees the forces lining up against him, he has suddenly got religion and now wants to explore localism. This is the same guy who said “we don’t need local forums” when the other commissioners sought public input on the ownership rules. Only when Powell is about to have his ass handed to him by Congress does he get a clue.

I’m hoping this whole incident raises public awareness about how our airwaves are being mismanaged.

Find out how to make your voice heard by heading over to the Center for Digital Democracy.

Garner’s own Best Buy opens tomorrow. I’m in big trouble. 🙂