What's important today?

Today is a busy day. Any pick from Google news would be very interesting.

To name a few:

The most important:
Judge Samuel Alito was confirmed by the Senator: Most likely this is the turning point that would shape the political and legal system in the next 30 years.

Coretta Scott King died in Mexico: She fought nearly 40 years for what her husband died for.

The Oscars nomination is out: I'm really happy Crash gets on the list big time. Go Sandra! One of the similar outstand movies by her is A Time to Kill.

A strange news about the police missed two bodies on the master bedroom's bed while searching a house.

and the least important
President Bush gave his sixth State of the Union speech: which didn't say much about anything important as the previous five.

To me, the most important is I finally watched the movie "50 first dates". It is a romantic comedy about a guy (Adam Sandler) loves a girl (Drew Barrymore whose forgets whatever during the day, everyday) so much that he tried to get her fall in love with him from scratch every day. From my love to the "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", it will not need a neurosurgen to figure out why I love this movie. What's more interesting, I accidentally found out MoreMax was playing the latter tonight.

What are you searching for?

I'm glad Google stood up against the request this time, while not surprisingly, Yahoo and MSN (it seems MS is always on the wrong side) failed. The question, however, is what information Google has? Here is what Leslie Walker has to say about that.

"Our personal search histories are highly sensitive information -- and obviously open to misinterpretation -- because they offer such a unique view into what we are thinking."

"There is simply no telling how much long-term control we are giving up over our digital reputations in these still-early days of the Web."

"So if the government scares people into thinking more about their own Internet histories by slapping subpoenas on the search engines, maybe that's not a bad thing."

You may find another related blog from Danny Sulivan at the Search Engine Watch.

"...the privacy freakout about Google was based on lots of 'might dos' or 'could dos' rather than 'has done.'"

"...the bigger issue, ... trust. AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo DID NOT VIOLATE THE PRIVACY of any user by handing over this information. ... Privacy may not have been lost but trust was."

"The problem is that America was founded the principle of liberty. Stay out of my life, unless I'm doing something harmful to others. .... Don't suspect everyone, monitor everyone and assume everyone is guilty."

"I'd be happier if they (google) 'd shared with the world that they'd been subpoenaed back when it happened last year. "

"Google also looked to be negotiating on compliance. We don't have enough details to know why they ultimately didn't give in, but some changes, and perhaps they might have."

Road rage

According to the driving style test, I am
an average safe driver, and
a aggressive driver, and
a courteous driver, and
a potential road rager.

Can these things go together on the same person?

At least the last statement is true. The first impression when I saw the results was that "I'm not aggressive enough."

Today, when I was driving at 80MPH in a 65 zone, a mid-aged woman in a white Grand Cherokee was tailgating me such that I couldn't even see its lights. My car is much lower than the Jeep, so she must have been less than one car length. Although in the fast lane, I didn't feel like I was particularly slower than anyone around me. So I slightly touched the brake to ask her backup off.

Well, she didn't.

I got a little annoyed.

The traffic was quite heavy and there's a huge semi on my right, there's no good chance to change lane. So I slowed down to 70MPH and then accelerated quickly so we got some distance inbetween.

Now the bxxx got excited. She turned on her high beam and got closer.

Then, she showed me the finger.

I returned the favor. I shouldn't have, but just couldn't help it.

After that, I slowed down more and changed to the right lane behind the truck.

She followed me with high beam on and the finger.

I pulled out my phone and took a picture aiming back. She saw that and took off at the next exit.

Drive safely.

Only in the FA Cup

In today's FA cup matches, the almighty Manchester United was forced a goalless draw by a team of amateur soccer players from Burton Albion. Although I had my doubt with the expensive season pass from Dish Network, it pays off at least for this Sunday.

We've got TV

After two months, we finally got TV. Thank god we had professional installation. The dish guy spent almost five hours on the roof since our neighbour's tree blocks almost all the good spots on the roof.

But after two months' life without watching TV, I really didn't feel missing anything.

What is news?

What's more important news to you? A teen from Florida went to Iraq for his term paper or a family of 14 were killed by US air raid?

Your answer may be "it depends", but Google News listed 1251 hits from news agencies for the former, most of which are from US sources; while a mere 13 "related stories" for the latter with only ABC news and Reuters as the representatives of all US news agencies. On the other side, Yahoo News did pick it up as one of today's top stories.

On the side bar, according to Reuters' interview with US military officials, the strike that killed several members of the family, including at least two children, was prompted by a sighting of three man digging a hole at 9pm(suspected may be setting up a roadside bomb, or some other unknown reasons) and went back to the house. I call that pretty efficient decision making comparing with the average 20 years death row.

The Rovers that keep going

No, I wasn't talking about the rovers made by Ford that keep breaking down. I'm talking about the two Mars Rovers that keep going three times of their expected lifetime. Of course, there're many moments that everybody thought they're dead in the water, including one right after they landed on our neighboring planet. However, the guys and gals in JPL eventually got around the problems have both them keep doing what's "beyond the call of duty."

To me that's $820 million of my tax dollar well spent, so did the extra $82 million so far to keep it going. I was watching the 2nd season of the West Wing recently. Here's the perfect pitch for NASA from the episode of "Galileo" when Mallory was playing with Sam and Sam answered her question regarding the Mars mission:

Mallory O'Brian: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?
Sam Seaborn: Yes.
Mallory O'Brian: Why?
Sam Seaborn: Because it's next. Because we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is on a timeline of explorations and this is What's next.