BW: Time for Apple to Spread the Beat.  Encouragement, if any were needed, for Apple to proceed with the Windows version of their online music store...

You all know I'm an America's Cup aficionado.  Well, as benefits the most expensive sport on earth, Forbes has an article about the state of play: Sailing for the Gold.  The next cup will most likely be in the summer of 2007, at either Lisbon or Marseilles.  Sounds like a terrific excuse for a trip to Europe :)

Xeni Jardin attending Burning Man 2003, and filed this report, and posted these pictures.  Yeah, you want to know, What is Burning Man?  "Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind."  Oh.

Time did a recent cover on What's Next, which features What's Always Next?  Interestingly, many of these innovations which were predicted but never came to pass are now on the cusp of reality:

• Videophones.  Look at all the cell phones with cameras.  Think video conferencing won't happen?
• A Moon colony.  Okay, this is a little farfetched.  Still, I expect to see one in my lifetime.
• Food in pills.  Well, it's here, but it just isn't quite as fun as a nice steak.
• Cars that drive themselves.  Pretty darn close.
• Jet packs.  This one is pretty far out there.  May never happen.
• Moving sidewalks.  Probably not, but how about Segways :)

I'll be the one-millionth blogger to link this: The Ultimate Boy's Toy.  The Gibbs Aquada is a 100mph car which is also a 30mph boat.  Yeah, everyone wants one - but it's $200,000...

A little more affordable is this car from Sony Ericsson, which you can control with your bluetooth cellphone.

This is terrific!  CheeseburgerBrown on Traffic Zoology.  You've got to love any article about traffic which starts by quoting Richard Dawkins.  I can't do it justice here, please just read it.  [ via Cory Doctorow ]

This brings to mind one of my favorite passages from Godel, Escher, Bach, which remains my favorite book ever, in which Douglas Hofstadter invents a character named Aunt Hillary, a self-conscious ant- hill.  The underlying idea is that at one level an ant-hill is a bunch of ants running around, seemingly without purpose, while at a higher level they are best regarded as a single organism.  Way cool.

Maybe someday we really will have Moon colonies, and travel to Mars also.  In which case you might need The Traveler's Guide to Mars.  In the meantime you might read it just because it is a great overview of Mars, including the exploration history, the likely geologic evolution of the planet, and [of course] interesting places to visit while you're there.

Haight Speech: Depriving the Third World of Flush Toilets.  It sounds like a headline from the Onion, but this is serious, as is the International Dry-Toilet Conference.  And no, I am not making this up.

From Adam Curry: We take our soccer seriously in Holland.  A hilarious short movie.

That's all for now... more later.  Because I'm ready for some football!