People can be very quick to judge what is normal and what isn't. This also applies to human behavior. It would be a thesis in itself to define the constraints and limits of normal behavior. For now, let's just ask ourselves this simple question: When is abnormal behavior excusable?

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This weeks cocktail is a silky smooth, supremely elegant libation that can be enjoyed absolutely anywhere. I first discovered it in Eric Felten's column in the Wall Street Journal and in trying to research it further have found little additional information about it. It seems to be attributed to Dale DeGroff originally, and the recipe I have here matches his exactly. I am referring to none other than the Millennium Cocktail!

[kingcocktail.com]

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Right and wrong are ideas that are in themselves hard to define, as are good and evil. What is right? How do we know when something is right or wrong? Morals are principals of right and wrong behaviors, ethics - the study of the principles relating to right and wrong. One of the confounding things about studying right and wrong is that often the line separating one from the other changes depending on the observer.

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Well thank God we made it through that eclipse! Today's Cocktail of the Week is an amazing concoction. That it is also one of the first, if not the first cocktail ever invented only adds to the mystique of this New Orleans classic.

[The Sazerac Cocktail: neworleansonline.com]

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People like to have ways to excuse away their actions without taking personal responsibility. "The dog ate my homework!" is the classic, but tonight, you have one of the best excuses for running amok: a total solar eclipse.

[Photo: Luc Viatour]

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"We don't want nobody tellin' us what to do, we don't want nobody pushing us around. We wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride, an' we wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a good time, we're gonna have a party."
[Peter Fonda as Heavenly Blues in The Wild Angels (1966)]

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What would bring someone to read this? Why should someone spend his time plowing through some text? Before someone’s eyes pass over these words, prior to the effort necessary for comprehension, of turning squiggles into symbols, is the consent of the will to the act. No one will seek what he doesn’t wish to find. No one will come here and read unless he is already possessed of some inclination to do so.

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Today's Wiki of the Week is going to be a little challenging because it is long. Any "wall of text" or "TL;DR" types can just skip it now, it will only cause you angst; here's your consolation prize, now get out. For the rest of you, I know we're all busy these days doing important things like watching TV, playing computer games, and driving to bars for a drink, so I'll try to give you incentive to actually click through. Here it is: political discord, your free pass to hate.

I don't care what side you think you're on politically, I don't care if you use your directional signal during rush hour, but I do hope that after reading some of this we can join together and just say one thing as civilized human beings - Torture is bad.

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Many of you have heard of SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI has been trying to find signs of aliens in radio signals that are received here on earth. The task is sorting through the junk (man made signals, naturally occurring signals) to find signals that would have meaning. There is a project run by the University of California at Berkeley called SETI@home that will enable you to use your computer to analyze radio signals as part of a distributed computing effort.

Folding@home is a similar idea, using spare computing power of many, small home computers to tackle extremely large computing tasks. In the case of Folding@home, the task is molecular modeling and the goal is to prevent human disease. The program is being run by the Pande lab at Stanford University.

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Mid July. The heat is blasting you inside and out and you need relief. Relief is easy to find because Jackrabbitscrewball brings you a new cocktail every week and makes it easy for you to mix 'em up. I hesitated on this selection though, not because it isn't universally loved, but because you've already had it. Still, I think here the pros outweigh the cons and it is essential that this very important cocktail be given the once over, especially now.

I'm referring to none other than the classic Margarita!

[Gal Yaniv - cocktail-guru.com]

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"Is it a rebellion?" asked Louis XVI of the count who informed him of the fall of the Bastille.

"No, sire," came the reply. "It is a revolution."

Enjoy your freedom, France!

You hate them on television. You hate them on the radio. The internet is full of them as well, and you hate them there too. Ads, ads, ads! The bane of “free” content ever since there was content. Means to block advertising have been around since we could tape record broadcast radio or TV shows. But not all advertising is seen as a scourge upon civilization. Some ads could be considered more important than the content they accompany, such as the recent ad surge during football's Super Bowl.

When is advertising bad and when it is good? Should we block advertising or can we all just get along and coexist peacefully?

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Our age is inarguably a scientific one, marked by an unparalleled degree of technological achievement. When speaking this way, scientifically, a man can recite more facts about more things than anyone ever could. See that shining dot about the horizon just before dawn? That is Venus, the second planet from the sun; its equatorial diameter is 7521 miles; it is 67.2 million miles from the sun; its period of revolution is 224.68 days. That red dot over there? It is Mars, the fourth planet; it has a diameter of 4222 miles and orbits at 141.6 million miles every 686.95 days.

But in this flurry of fact, something has been lost: meaning.

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This one is interesting. Not that we would ever post a wiki of the week that wasn't, but this has all the things you look for in a good read: sex, magic, scandal, and the occult. The man you will be reading about was referred to as "The Beast" by his mother, and by the press as "The Wickedest Man in the World".

You're curious now?

We are referring to none other than Aleister Crowley.

Enjoy!

Google's has announced (7/7/2009) that they're delveloping a “new” operating system called Google Chrome. It isn't surprising that they want to translate their success in online search and serving ads into other products. What does it mean when the biggest name next to Microsoft throws itself into the operating system arena? Is this good for us all or just another selfish corporate play for market share and money? (Hint: it's both)

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Well it's hump day. It's July, and it's hot. Furthermore, it's officially 4:30 here on the East Coast and that makes it time for a proper cocktail. The "Cocktail of the Week" today is the Ward Eight. I first discovered this in a column written by Eric Felten, the author of "How's your drink?: Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well".

The Ward Eight
In a shaker of ice, combine
2oz Rye whiskey
1/2 oz orange juice
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz grenadine

(Image from liqurious.com)

Shake, strain into a proper martini glass and garnish with a cherry! I promise you'll love it. You can substitute scotch or bourbon, but when you have a chance, try it with rye. Rye has an edgy, earthy quality that you won't find in either of the other. If you use bourbon, cut back on the grenadine, to balance the sweetness.

You can trust me.

I love yogurt, I always have. It's the breakfast, lunch, or dessert I never feel guilty eating. When I have time, I make it myself because it is surprisingly easy to do. The trouble is, I don't always have the motivation or the time and I wind up at the store in the yogurt aisle. This is where my utopian world of happy, dancing, free-range yogurts turns ugly.

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Wikis are everywhere. Not only has the entire sum of human knowledge already been transferred to wikipedia, but every company, team, project, and special interest has their own wiki. What changed? What happened to the Web? What about Web 2.0? How do all these wikis fit in?

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My typical evening starts with me reminding my human servants that dinner is impending and that I should be receiving my food soon. In fact, I should get my dinner immediately when I demand it. I think my servant gets a little mad but I really need him not to forget. Be that as it may, I have made an interesting observation.
When we do finally get fed, the servants are bustling about doing the things they do. Noises are made, people are walking around, trash is being put away. However, when we are done and the servants sit down at their dinner, my friend the dog, has to leave and be quiet. The dog is very good about that. (I taught him well .)

This morning, at 2AM July 4 2009, our planet reached Aphelion, or the point in its orbit around the sun where the distance between (us and them) is the greatest. I find it slightly counterintuitive that this corresponds to the the peak of Summer for me (in the Northern Hemisphere). In fact, the Earth’s distance from the Sun has little to do with seasons. It is, instead, the tilt of Earth on its axis which causes seasonal climate changes.

Either way, Happy 4th of July!

In addition to my usual overly technical posts, I’ll be posting my “Wiki-of-the-Week” here every Friday!

Today’s wiki page is Moral Panic

Just think about that when you get cut off on your morning commute! Ok, moral panic is a little more serious than your morning commute. Are you one of them or one of us?

I’m a big fan of anything that goes against the “System” or sticks it to “the Man”.  It’s hard to believe that I was once a Microsoft fanboy.

I vividly remember the chaotic anarchy of forces pushing the computer industry in so many different directions back in the late 70’s and 80’s. I owned a Commodore 64 when friends had Apple II, Texas Instruments, Atari, or Radio Shack TRS-80 computers. We didn’t share much software. We didn’t have much really, but a couple of cassette tapes or later, floppy disks, with tiny crude programs that entertained and kept us busy. What we did have though was enthusiasm and excitement for the seemingly limitless possibilities that all these nascent computers offered.

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Hello everyone! My name is Alice and I’ll be doing some writing here. My goal is to entertain you, but only if I can make you think and challenge the status quo. Please feel free to comment, make suggestions, rant, and rave! If you really want to rant though, you might want to get your own blog. Rants are the pinnacle of achievement in the blogosphere and you wouldn’t want to waste a good one without really getting credit!
–Alice

There are exciting things to come!  Stay tuned here…

Jackrabbitscrewball has moved from Wordpress to b2evolution! It will take a little while for us to get the site back to normal. We are looking forward to using b2evo and all the special features it includes!