If you have an extra $500 sitting around, you could buy the hottest new video card on the planet–ATI’s Radeon 9800XT. Here’s a review from HardOCP.com. While paying $500 for a video card is ridiculous, one option is to buy the Radeon 9600XT when it comes out. It will sell for $200, but it comes bundled with Half Life 2. Half Life 2 alone will likely cost $50.

According to reports by Reuters 43 state Attorneys General have been harassing Wal-Mart and others about selling tobacco products to kids. But the Attorneys General even admit that Wal-Mart hasn’t been trying to break the law. A spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said, “I don’t think it’s a deliberate flouting of the law.” If Attorneys General are so concerned about companies “not deliberately flouting the law” it makes me wonder if there are any real criminals left and the Attorneys General are really searching for something to make them look good.

I want to thank Jeremy Manning for the encouragement and advice in starting my blog/website. Jeremy was my first roommate when I moved to DC 5 years ago and he is one of the best people you will ever meet.

According to a story on Yahoo News:

Astronauts stranded for two extra months aboard the International Space Station after the shuttle Columbia accident showed that humans are strong enough to make the long trip to Mars, one of the expedition’s members said on Monday.

Donald Pettit, one of three members of the station’s Expedition Six, said he and his two crew-mates who spent 161 days on the space station inadvertently demonstrated humans’ fitness for interplanetary travel.

“The whole experience had an uncanny resemblance to a trip to and landing on Mars,” Pettit said at a briefing at NASA (news – web sites) headquarters, referring to the extended stay in orbit and the return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz space taxi, which landed in Kazakhstan on May 3.

I have a simple question: Why should we pay billions upon billions of dollars to go to Mars? I’m a fan of space travel and I love science fiction books, but what is the point of going to Mars? It would be “cool,” but other than that I can’t dream up any reason to do it. Comments?

**UPDATE**
Anais in the comments argues that exploring has likely always been expensive and that many cool inventions have come from space exploration, as well as the exploring of yesteryear. I admit that she is right that many inventions have come from space exploration and I’m glad Columbus sailed to America. But, from a cost-benefit angle, space exploration isn’t worth it. It was very “cool” that we went to the moon, but it turned out to be an expensive cold war photo op.

I hope that as technology advances private companies will find reasons to go to the Moon and Mars. I’m a fan of space exploration, but I don’t want a wasteful organization like NASA wasting my money. I would prefer for private investors to bet on projects they think will work, not politicians and bureaucrats betting on projects that will give them the biggest political gains.

According to IMDB, shooting of Star Wars: Episode III has wrapped, though the movie won’t come out for 18 months. I pray that George Lucas had some competent help writing the script and directing the movie. The original Star Wars was both elegantly simple and a brilliant adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s “Hidden Fortress.” But Lucas’ films are getting progressively worse. One can only hope for a film-making miracle.

By the way, if you haven’t seen “George Lucas in Love” search the internet for it. It is an amusing short.

Upgrading comptuer hardward is always an interesting task. As soon as you upgrade, something newer, faster, and better comes out. A top-of-the line computer is suddenly a dinosaur. The same will continue to be true. Next year Intel should be releasing its new Pentium V’s. According to the Inq:

The Pentium V is likely to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz, have 2MB plus of level two cache, be built on a 90 nanometer process, and have a stackable design.Translation: It will be very, very fast and very small.

What is the point of such processing power, especially since I think an 800 mhz machine works perfectly well for office tasks? Faster, better games of course is one answer. The only other reason would be video or audio editing.

I met Joel Schwartz at a conference I was at over the weekend. Joel is a very bright guy that writes interesting things about air quality. Specifically, that air quality is improving, and it will continue to improve. If you want to read solid thinking about air quality, check out Joel’s website at http://www.joelschwartz.com/.

Thomas Boswell writes in today’s Post:

If you don’t watch this year’s four first-round playoff series this week, you’re not only dead to the charms of baseball, you may just be dead, period.

For only the second time since 1918, both the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, the two most beloved — and star-crossed — teams in American sports history, are in the postseason. The Red Sox last won the World Series in ’18, against the Cubs. In retrospect, perhaps the explanation is simple. One of ‘em had to win.

The odds on a Red Sox-Cubs World Series are long. But, at least this week, we’re allowed to fantasize. After all, what were the odds that two franchises could go 95 and 85 years without a championship?

The Washington Post reports that some “administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist.” While I’m not a Republican, I have Republican sympathies. I would like to believe that Republicans are more moral that Democrats, but the facts don’t bear that out.

Here’s a little test for including pictures in posts.