The Daily Drift
Today's horoscope says:Cut the excess today.
Some believe that nothing exceeds like excess, but you're definitely not in the opposite camp, and especially now.
You're much hardier, and you know that those with the lightest baggage move at the quickest pace.
Whatever you find excessive, heavy or just plain unnecessary you need to leave behind.
If it turns out you need it later, you can always improvise.
Some of our readers today have been in:
Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
as well as France, and the United States in such cities as West Columbia, Los Angeles, New York, Durham and more.
For some reason yet to be explained the service we use to track our visitors ceased functioning properly at 4AM on July 8th so the tracking is off for the moment.
Today is Thursday, July 9, the 190th day of 2010.
There are 175 days left in the year.
Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:
Martyrdom of the Bab Day
Just like video killed the radio star, are Facebook and Twitter killing blogs? Here’s an interesting article over at The Economist about how the growth of blogging has slowed down and, in some countries, even stalled:
After intense media scrutiny, the Transportation Security Administration on Tuesday backed off a new policy that would have restricted employees from visiting "controversial opinion" sites at work. 
According to the court, the two set out to sabotage their own case, filing "meaningless and nonsensical documents," wearing prison garb in front of the jury, and making bizarre comments such as asking the jury to "enter a guilty plea for us." The defendants also advanced a "peculiar theory" that "they were 'sentient human beings' distinct from the abstract titles 'Defendants KURT F. JOHNSON AND DALE SCOTT HEINEMAN' as they were referred to in the indictment and court documents." That sounds a lot like the thoroughly dumb "personal sovereignty" arguments that we have seen before, and although you have to wonder whether people making these arguments are not entirely in touch with reality, the trial judge had these guys were evaluated by a doctor who found neither one was suffering from a mental disorder. But on appeal - after an unsurprising conviction - they argued that the district court should not have let them represent themselves, as they had demanded, because "their own courtroom behavior rendered their trial unfair." 
Scientists used geographic modeling software to come up with a realistic answer to an unrealistic question: what would happen if the earth ceased its rotation?
