God's chauffeur revisted too.

Man, dead links are just sprouting up everywhere in blogland. Had to just copy the God's Chauffeur joke too:

After getting all of Pope Benedict's luggage loaded into the limo, and He doesn't travel light, the driver notices that the Pope is still standing on the curb. 'Excuse me, Your Holiness,' says the driver, 'Would you please take your seat so we can leave?' 'Well, to tell you the truth,' says the Pope, 'they never let me drive at the Vatican, and I'd really like to drive today.' 'I'm sorry but I cannot let you do that. I'd lose my job! And what if something should happen?' protests the driver, wishing he'd never gone to work that morning. 'There might be something extra in it for you,' says The Pope. Reluctantly, the driver gets in the back as the Pope climbs in behind the wheel.

The driver quickly regrets his decision when, after exiting the airport, the Pontiff floors it, accelerating the limo to 105 mph. 'Please slow down, Your Holiness!!!' pleads the worried driver, but the Pope keeps the pedal to the metal until they hear sirens. 'Oh, dear God, I’m gonna lose my license,' moans the driver. The Pope pulls over and rolls down the window as the cop approaches, but the cop takes one look at him, goes back to his motorcycle, and gets on the radio. 'I need to talk to the Chief,' he says to the dispatcher. The Chief gets on the radio and the cop tells him that he's stopped a limo going a hundred and five. 'So bust him,' says the Chief. 'I don't think we want to do that - he's really important,' said the Cop. The Chief exclaimed, 'All the more reason!' 'No, I mean really important,' said the cop. The Chief then asked, 'Who have you got there, the Mayor?' Cop: 'Bigger.' Chief: 'Governor?' Cop: 'Bigger.' 'Well,' said the Chief, 'Who is it?' Cop: 'I think it's God!' Chief: 'What makes you think it's God?' Cop: 'He's got the *&^% Pope as a chauffeur!'

Punxsutawney Jesus Revisited.

Well, the blog page I linked to with the Punxsutawney Jesus joke died and went away so I just thought I'd put it up myself:

Three blondes died and found themselves standing before St. Peter. He told them that before they could enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he had to test them for worthiness. They had to tell him what Easter was.

The first blonde said, "Easter is a holiday where they have a big feast and we give thanks and eat turkey." St. Peter said, "Noooooo," and he banished her to hell.

The second blonde said, "Easter is when we celebrate Jesus' birth and exchange gifts." St. Peter said, "Noooooo," and he banished her to hell.

The third blonde said, she knew what Easter is, and St. Peter said "So, tell me." She said, "Easter is a Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish festival of Passover. Jesus was having Passover feast with His disciples when he was betrayed by Judas, and the Romans arrested him. The Romans hung Him on the cross and eventually He died. Then they buried Him in a tomb behind a very large boulder." St. Peter said, "Verrrrrry good!!!" Then the blonde continued, "Now every year the Jews roll away the boulder and Jesus comes out and if Jesus sees his shadow, then that means we will have six more weeks of hockey."

Talk about maximizing your 15 minutes of fame!

Well, it looks like Joe the Plumber wants to get out of the plumbing business.

He has a flashy web site which even has an online shop:

http://www.secureourdream.com/

and he's coming out with a book in December:

http://www.thingsforgottenbook.com/bookstore/index.php?main_page=document_product_info&cPath=65&products_id=182&zenid=4f9rcfunggnujlb20sqcvl0931

Too bad for him his guy McCain didn't win --- he might have gotten a cabinet post!

Punxsutawney Jesus

Found another funny joke, this one about Easter (and I found it on Easter!) Here is the "real" meaning of Easter:

http://starbirdcanada.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/the-real-meaning-of-easter/

Can Yahoo make the semantic web a widespread reality?

I've been working in the semantic web area (specifically related to life sciences) for several years now but I and the people I worked with always harbored doubts about the likelihood of the semantic web really taking off and becoming widely used. A key problem is that it was hard to see a clear "killer app" for the semantic web. Generating data using semantic web standards such as RDF and OWL can be a pain and what is the payoff for users to do it? Well, Yahoo has just announced that they are going to be supporting semantic web related standards in a big way, and it is possible they could become this killer app. Here is the relevant post from the Yahoo search blog:

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000527.html

I've even seen some posts on other blogs speculating that this is the main reason Yahoo is holding out against Microsoft's takeover bid --- they see this new emphasis on the semantic web as a crucial way they can compete with Google and thus want to go it alone.

A chat with Barack Obama while he was still a relatively normal guy.

Just saw this on Marc Andreesen's blog:

http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/03/an-hour-and-a-h.html

He had the chance to meet and talk for an hour and a half with Barack Obama over a year ago, before his campaign went into overdrive and he became so well known. Interesting. Makes me feel better about him being the likely democratic nominee for president.

God's chauffeur

The minister at the church my wife and I have been attending told this joke a couple Sunday's ago:


http://www.officejest.com/2005/12/lol-gods-chauffeur.html

as kind of an ice breaker in her sermon. I thought it was pretty hilarious, so enjoy!

Just forwarded buddyroo.com here.

I have the domain name buddyroo.com and I used to just forward it to my page at Yale in the Gerstein lab. But I think I'll try to start using this blog more, so I have forwarded buddyroo.com here. Easy to remember domain name. I still keep hoping somebody will come along and offer me like $100,000 for buddyroo.com (its just so catchy, isn't it?), but the good old wild west days of the web are long over (where things like this used to happen) and unfortunately it hasn't happened yet so I might as well start trying to use it. FYI, buddyroo was my nickname in college and I still like to use it for fun (like the name of my domain and this blog!) There is also a famous reference in the book "Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger: "go ahead, be a buddyroo!"

anti-depressants don't work

A very interesting recent study shows that anti-depressants don't work better than placebos:

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2008/02/25/depressing-news-on-antidepressants.aspx

The placebo effect seems quite powerful and interesting and should really be studied more. I also came across this very interesting article related to this:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/related_features/surprise_yourself/article3432227.ece

A potentially very negative side-effect of this study --- I wonder if the effectiveness of anti-depressants will now go DOWN. Many people will probably see articles about
this study showing anti-depressants don't really work and so now the major placebo effect aspect of the anti-depressants is gone (since people now know they don't really work). I.e. they worked before because people truly believed they worked, but now they know they don't so they will lose their effectiveness. Too bad, because we might start seeing a lot more depressed people.