At a meeting today, a Word document was being projected onto the screen. Clipit, the little paperclip assistant, sat in the corner. When I'm writing my own Word documents, I always turn it off, because it annoys me.

But today, Clipit had it out for me. It stared right at me, occasionally waggling its eyebrows, or pretending to look off in the corner or at my boss. One time it leered at me. I was starting to get pretty freaked out, but I calmed down when Clipit lay down for a little nap. Guess it wasn't interested in the phonological aspects of Brazilian Portuguese. Sometimes it would scratch its little paperclip head with its little paperclip arm, and a lightbulb would appear above its head. I wondered what Clipit was thinking about. How to be more helpful? Ways to increase a user's productivity? I doubt it. I think Clipit, along with Hoverbot, Power Pup, and Scribble the Cat, are scheming to find a way to help Microsoft take over the world.

Reminded me of an old joke, which was Word trying to help out someone who's writing a suicide note.

Elvis earned 35 million dollars last year. John Lennon pulled in a cool 20 mil. It's a little depressing knowing that I'll never earn that much while alive. (Link from Robot Wisdom)

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation. A look at what the Gettysburg Address might have been like, enhanced by today's fabulous technology.

If you sign up with Juno (a free ISP), you must download software that gives them the right to use your computer for any computation they see fit. Here's an excerpt:

"You expressly permit and authorize Juno to (i)
download to your computer one or more pieces of
software (the "Computational Software") designed
to perform computations, which may be unrelated
to the operation of the Service, on behalf of Juno
(or on behalf of such third parties as may be
authorized by Juno, subject to the Privacy
Statement), (ii) run the Computational Software on
your computer to perform and store the results of
such computations, and (iii) upload such results to
Juno's central computers during a subsequent
connection, whether initiated by you in the course
of using the Service or by the Computational
Software as further described below ... you agree
not to take any action to disable or interfere with
the operation of ... any component of the
Computational Software. "

Read the whole story in Byte.

Here are the top three most dangerous intersections in California:

1. Beverly Hills - Wilshire Boulevard & Santa Monica Boulevard
2. Huntington Beach - Adams Avenue & Brookhurst Street
3. Sacramento - Watt Avenue & Fair Oaks Boulevard

This is according to State Farm Insurance, who lists these statistics for every state. (link from Pop Culture Junk Mail)

Am I Going Down? will give you the odds on whether your flight is going to crash. I'm taking a flight to Seattle in April, on Alaska no less, but this site says the chances of me dying on this trip are 1 in 10,946,942. Not too shabby.

I especially like the error message if you click "next" without filing in your destination: Error! You need to select where you hope to arrive.