Geeks at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have put together some of the coolest videos I’ve seen — they’re virtual camera views, of a camera that starts out way up in orbit above a city and literally falls until it is a couple hundred feet above the ground. Here’s Washington, D.C.; they also did Atlanta, Orlando, San Fran, and Los Angeles. (Each is an MPEG movie; consider yourself warned.) Go check ‘em out, now.

The Brunching Shuttlecocks has a great set of life lessons learned from Black and White. Like the True God is “whichever one dumps the most food and lumber in your home town. It’s a lot like Congress.”

Lately, I’ve enjoyed reading Lia’s cheesedip; now, if there were only a couple more sites like ours, we’d be able to cobble together a clan of cheese devotees.

Why is it that (arguably useful) companies like Kozmo, Pets.com, and Deepleap have gone under, yet (completely useless) companies like Digital Convergence are still alive and kicking? There seems to be a major injustice afoot. (A benefit of Digital Convergence’s continued life, though, is that you can still go and read the FAQ page for the CueCat; it is pretty much the most asinine group of questions I’ve ever read, each repeated about twenty times in ever possible iteration and phrasing.)

It seems so tragic when Darwin tries to grab hold of another young American. (In all seriousness, what’s tragic is that there’s another kid who has so little guidance as to what’s right and wrong from his family that he’s both watching Jackass and imitating stunts from the show.)

John Dvorak has weighed in with his opinion on Microsoft’s newest licensing strategy (online authorization of WinXP and Office XP); it’s been a while since I’ve seen an editorial so full of sheer conjecture and suppositions. Of course, any online op-ed piece about Microsoft is worth reading, if only for the rabid comments by users. (P.S.: John, it’s “toe the line,” not “tow the line.”)

I have to confess, I don’t really understand why people are sooo up in arms about the licensing scheme for Windows XP and Office XP. Microsoft is faced with a problem — many, many people pirate the company’s software, on the person-to-person level (intra-office, in homes) and on the mass-production level (Israeli and Chinese pirating organizations). Because of this, Microsoft loses lots of money. Now, one thing we all agree on is that Microsoft is a company which exists to make money; being a publicly-held company means that it exists to make money for its shareholders. It would be irresponsible of the company to not institute a strict control system for licenses on their products; they don’t exist to give things to people who are too greedy, lazy, or otherwise disinclined to part with their money for products which they install and use.

My newest little patient went home from the hospital today, pink, healthy, breathing comfortably, and eating “mucho, mucho mas.” Mom is bringing him in to see me in clinic on Monday.