Via Kevin Rose, check out TheyRule.net. It's nifty flash website that plots the web of relationships between corporations and members of their boards of directors. You can build your own maps, or just use some of the predefined ones. Click "Load Map" then "Popular" to browse their presets, which are usually constructed to illustrate some entertaining point about the secret, unspeakable desires of global conglomerates (e.g. money contributed to Democrats vs. Republicans; media outlets owned; that sort of thing).

Does anybody care about them? It occurred to Catherine and me that eliminating them in favor of the advantageously-bland "permalink" might help prevent doocing. If you'd be sorry to see them go, speak now or forever... well, you know the drill.

I know I've been pretty quiet recently, but today should put me firmly back in the blogging saddle. Unfortunately, unlike you lazy federal government employees, I don't get MLK Day off from work -- funny how it works out that way in small companies with no minority employees (at least our boss didn't declare the inauguration a holiday, either). But today should still be highly unproductive, work-wise: the last week or so has allowed me to witness a phenomenal string of technical failures, from laptops to ipods to the goddamn roof collapsing over my company's server in the US Capitol. At the moment, there isn't much work that can be done, making the "will be done" subset even smaller than usual. Plus, perhaps in sympathy, my own body has decided to come down with a cold, despite the epic quantities of antibiotics that until recently were coarsing through my veins. It's cool though -- getting sick is totally in right now.

As you might imagine, I've been pretty busy attending to these various matters via the only productive avenues available: downing Nyquil, playing huge amounts of Halo and buying new gadgets like USB controllers and ipod skins. I've nearly completed this important work, though. I'll resume pulling my weight around here shortly.