It turns out that whole thing about space germs in meteorites?

Yeah, crap. P.Z. Myers explains:

[The Journal of Cosmology] isn’t a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth. It doesn’t exist in print, consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s, and publishes lots of empty noise with no substantial editorial restraint. For a while, it seemed to be entirely the domain of a crackpot named Rhawn Joseph who called himself the emeritus professor of something mysteriously called the Brain Research Laboratory, based in the general neighborhood of Northern California (seriously, that was the address: “Northern California”), and self-published all of his pseudo-scientific “publications” on this web site.

Of the paper itself, Myers notes:

It’s a dump of miscellaneous facts about carbonaceous chondrites, not well-honed arguments edited to promote concision or cogency. The figures are annoying; when you skim through them, several will jump out at you as very provocative and looking an awful lot like real bacteria, but then without exception they all turn out to be photos of terrestrial organisms thrown in for reference. The extraterrestrial ‘bacteria’ all look like random mineral squiggles and bumps on a field full of random squiggles and bumps, and apparently, the authors thought some particular squiggle looked sort of like some photo of a bug.

Sometimes, visual communication is just cool.

So I’m standing up a new Sharepoint 2010 server, and I get this when I point it to one of our database servers:

There’s so much wrong with this it’s not even funny.

• BigSQL is running the latest major version of SQL Server.
• The dialog helpfully tells me what specific build I’m using, but does not tell me what version I need.
• The dialog box does not include any meaningful information in and of itself, and instead redirects me to a URL.
• The URL is neither selectable nor clickable.

Fuck whoever did this. I mean, seriously. This right here? This is why people hate you.

A crazy, brilliant dude decided to start with a DOS 5 virtual machine and install Windows 1 — and then upgrade it, step by step, all the way to Windows 7. Astonishingly, his DOS apps — Monkey Island and Doom 2 — survived the trip. (The brief mention of PIF files gave me the heebie jeebies, Dorman.)

Long, but worth it. Via MeFi.

SMBC is full of win.

(By the way, the Paradox of the Court is a real thing.)

Jamie Murai tried to join the RIM Playbook development program. Madcap hilarity ensues.

That genius of action figures and re-imagination Sillof has created a suite of figures based on Star Wars, but set in the old west. Yes, this includes human versions of C-3PO and R2-D2, and they are awesome. Via Io9, but linking directly to Sillof because fuck Denton, that’s why. ;)

This mild rejection of the current tablet landscape is worth your time:

In general, it’s less optimal to have an output area that also doubles as an input area. This is why the mouse and keyboard will be with us for decades hence—because they let you keep your hands away from what you’re trying to focus on.

Go check this out. Via Reddit.

Interim Apple Chief Under Fire After Unveiling Grotesque New Macbook:

CUPERTINO, CA — In his first major product release since stepping in for an ailing Steve Jobs last month, interim Apple CEO Tim Cook faced a storm of harsh criticism Monday after unveiling a grotesque new version of the company’s popular MacBook that many in attendance described as “disgusting.”

Cook presented the bizarre, malformed new product to stunned silence during a media event at Apple headquarters, revealing a device that, while vaguely similar to a computer in certain respects, appeared to be encased in a thick, flesh-like coating that was visibly moist and engorged.

“Oh, my sweet God,” Apple employee Kurt Starfeldt said after viewing the MacBook up close. “It appeared to be discharging some sort of mucus-type substance from the headphone jack and making these weird murmuring sounds. And then it started quivering at one point when Tim was demonstrating how to use the touch pad. It was quite upsetting, actually.”

and

One customer, who had been anticipating the release of the new MacBook for months, claimed he felt “nauseous” when multiple software applications running at once caused the computer to started wheezing.

“I tried to force-quit some of the programs, but it got all slow and began to turn this sickly purple color,” Bill DeLain, 39, said. “Finally I hit the eject button and a tray popped open and spit out a bunch of teeth. Why does it have teeth?”