Today is the day!

While the House of Representatives discusses America’s first system for censoring the internet, sites everywhere are sending their users to contact Congress to stop this bill.

Click here to write Congress now!

Huge sites like Boing Boing, 4chan, Reddit, Mozilla (on the Firefox start page!) are participating, and more are joining fast. If you have a blog, a Tumblr page or a YouTube channel, black out your logo in protest. If you have a website you can also run a splash page asking your visitors to contact Congress.

Visit AmericanCensorship.org to write your representatives.

Joel Kehle

P.S. If you haven’t heard already, there’s a new bill in Congress called ‘SOPA’ that could pass *this month*. It would let the US government shut down websites, and jail users for posting harmless copyrighted clips to sites like YouTube or Tumblr. The bill would chill innovation, create huge liability for startups, and would set a terrible global precedent for government censorship of the internet. There’s a video at the link above if you’d like to learn more. After you take action, keep spreading the word!

Thanks for davidad for finding this.

I’ve always wondered why an equation with a squared variable was called a quadratic equation. Since ‘quad’ means four in Latin, shouldn’t a quadratic equation have cubed variables? Also consider quadrilateral and quadrant: both involve four elements. In case this has been keeping you up at night, Wikipedia has the answer!

The adjective quadratic comes from the Latin word quadratum for square. A term like x2 is called a square in algebra because it is the area of a square with side x. Quadratum is the Latin word for square because a square has four sides.

Whew! Now I can sleep at night.

If I only had paid more attention in my Latin class in Gymnasium (but that’s another story…)

Brad Feld just turned me onto a great Ray Kurzweil interview here.

The video is well worth the 25 minute cost. One great line from Ray “Failure is just success deferred”. Enjoy!

Unless you want to recommend your favorite audio player for blogging you can ignore this post.

I will delete it soon.

First Option

Second Option

May is the month were I figure out the three most important things I want to accomplish in the day each morning when I start my day. So there.

Anthony’s been busy.

Check out the mention of Candle Delirium in the New York Time’s article Burn Baby Burn.

Just in time for the holidays, Anthony’s new candle making company, Delirium & Co, has launched their first line. You can check it out over at Candle Delirium.

Congratulations to Anthony!

Wow, I seem to blog about human rights, robots and luxury candles. Who knew?
Just wanted to mention that Anthony’s store, Candle Delirium, got a mention on Extra. Click here for the news.

Hi Folks,

Just wanted to let everyone know that after three and a half years of doing startups, I have returned to Qualcomm. I am working in their middleware services group and managing their web administrators.

It’s an exciting time to be in the wireless space. Apple has demonstrated that the laptop is passé and “important” computer now fits in your pocket.

Qualcomm is involved in almost every aspect of the wireless industry so I think I am in for some fun times. If you want to check out what they are doing, they have some great videos at www.qualcomm.com.

Joel Kehle