Casiello Family Weblog

The U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) lets Internet users in Iran and China bypass their governments’ blocking filters, but puts in a few of its own. By blocking all sites with a set of porn-esque words like ‘ass’, and ‘hot’, they’ve inadvertently blocked usembassy.state.gov and hotels.com. More examples are listed here in the study that points out the problem. Interestingly, they have a ‘whitelist’, a list of sites that can get through, even though they’d otherwise be blocked, which includes http://www.breast–enlargement.us/. Can’t let those poor Iranians and Chinese fail to learn the advantages of really huge breasts!

(via kottke.org)

What happens when NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications group plays one too many ’80s video game? PACMANHATTAN

(via Home-Ed Math Cabal)

You’ve probably heard about Google’s IPO, where they hope to raise 2.7 billion dollars. Well, their IPO filing has the exact proposed figure: $2,718,281,828.

Math-heads will recognize that as the first ten digits of e, otherwise known as the Euler number, Napier’s constant, the base for natural logarithms.

Google is raising e billion dollars.

(via norman.walsh.name)

A Lego Mindstorms robot that solves Rubik’s cubes.

…if you do it on the right kind of road. Of course, it’s a little hard to turn.

(via Fark)

Simpson’s creator Matt Groening will be a guest voice on the show for the first time. He’s playing himself, signing autographs at a sci-fi convention.

(via Science News)

…or you can pick your nose. But you can’t pick your friend’s nose…that is, unless you’re a capuchin monkey.

(via New Scientiest)

Okay so we were wrong about the soccer ball. Turns out the universe is shaped like a horn.

Tuberculosis killed off the most aggressive members of a troop of baboons in Kenya twenty years ago. The troop is still more peaceful, 20 years later; the current residents apparently teach their more pacifistic culture to newcomers.

(via devnull)

A new symbol has been added to Morse code – the @ symbol; now email addresses can be transmitted over ham radio!

Hmm, can a spam->ham gateway be far behind?

(via s-t>

According to the Star Tribune:

“ALISO VIEJO, Calif. — City officials were so concerned
about the potentially dangerous properties of dihydrogen monoxide
that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the
chemical was used in their production.”

More on the chemical can be found at www.dhmo.org

Note to public school teachers: Don’t let your students write letters against charter schools. You may not like the results.

Hey, hey! We just got our first comment spam last week! We’re popular!

But only with evil lowlife scum.

I installed a spam filter, we’ll see how it goes.

(via IP)

According to NASA, Mars was once sopping wet.

From the article: “Liquid water once flowed through these rocks. It changed their texture, and it changed their chemistry,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. “We’ve been able to read the tell-tale clues the water left behind, giving us confidence in that conclusion,” he said.

and:

Dr. James Garvin, lead scientist for Mars and lunar exploration at NASA Headquarters, Washington, said, “NASA launched the Mars Exploration Rover mission specifically to check whether at least one part of Mars ever had a persistently wet environment that could possibly have been hospitable to life. Today we have strong evidence for an exciting answer: Yes.”

Cool!

and Wet!

Theodor Seuss Geisel, “Dr. Seuss”, was born March 2, 1904, in Springfield, MA, so he would have been 100 today.

The homepage of the Dr. Seuss Memorial in Springfield. Theodor Geisel was also a political cartoonist, and an ad man.

(via st)

It turns out that dogs are really good at picking up on human gestures and cues.

Either that, or monkeys don’t like dog food.

(via devnull)
This is worse.

I thought I had entered this before, but I guess not. Here’s some truly spectacular chalk sidewalk art. Move over, Bert the chimney-sweep!

newseum.org has images of the front pages of over 300 newspapers, updated every day.

Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel Martin Freeman will star in Spyglass/Disney’s
Hitchhiker’s Guide