I ran across this list of "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord." The author definitely had too much time on his hands, but at least he did something pretty creative and humorous with it. We need to seriously start some government-funded programs for people who can't do that when they have too much time on their hands, otherwise they go around trying to make national smiley faces with pipebombs.

Over drinks tonight, I was talking with friends about how the spread of technology really has affected civilization, and that I think the emphasis on certain kinds of technology has definitely skewed our pressures away from necessities. Case in point: last winter, when I was in Mexico, we took a daytrip to Chichen-Itza to see the Mayan ruins. On the way there, we passed through some really rundown villages -- I'm talking no running water, chickens running all over the place, tiny thatched-roof huts, the usual thing you see in movies when the characters go through this itty bitty villages in the middle of nowhere. Except these little villages in Mexico had a small difference in that outside of several of these tiny thatched-roof huts without running water but with running chickens, satellite dishes were mounted.