National Geographic: Inside a Cult. I highly recommend this National Geographic special. It will next air on Wednesday, May 14th. It focuses attention on Doomsday cult leader Michael Travesser and his followers. You may also find this Houston Chronicle article about Travesser to be interesting.

Related: Cognitive Dissonance, Millenarianism.

ZDNet: Minimizing XP SP3 Woes - Some good tips on precautions to take before installing SP3 for Windows XP.

Well, the Duggars are having another child, number 18 for them. Remember, folks, "It's not a clown car".

Seriously, though, as long as they can provide for all of those kids, congratulations to them.

Ed Bott: Learn to Use Vista's Real-Time Performance Sleuth

The Atlantic: "The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art held its annual gala last night, attracting a red-carpet lineup of fashion and movie stars. As guests entered the Museum's Great Hall, they were confronted by three superhero figures looming nearly 20 feet high -- Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman -- made of high-density foam and painted to resemble monumental sculptures. Reminiscent of the marble figures in the nearby Greek and Roman galleries, these statues were mere foam, disposable after a night of partying."

Hillary failed to win North Carolina last night. This almost guarantees that Obama will be the Democratic nominee in November. Current polling data of Obama vs. McCain shows Obama with a slight edge.

You may have discovered, like I have, that AVG AntiVirus 8 Free Edition has an annoying feature called LinkScanner. This feature is simply not something most power users would want. It slows down browsing and it consumes CPU cycles and RAM. If you simply disable the feature within AVG, the status icon in your system tray will grey out and display an exclamation mark, which is undesirable. What's the fix?

By following these instructions's on AVG's site, you may Install AVG 8 Free Edition Without LinkScanner.

Washington Post: "Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908. About 22 percent of the population is 65 or older, the highest proportion in the world. And that number is on the rise. By 2020, the elderly will outnumber children by nearly 3 to 1, the government report predicted. By 2040, they will outnumber them by nearly 4 to 1. The economic and social consequences of these trends are difficult to overstate. Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050..."

"Brooklyn Heights’ famed Bossert Hotel, on the auction block since January, has reportedly snagged a buyer. Robert Levine, the same developer behind One Brooklyn Bridge Park, has reportedly made a deal to buy the Bossert for upwards of $100 million, according to real estate blog Brownstoner. That answers questions of whether a softening real estate market might keep the famed building from commanding a price tag over $100 million. The 224-unit building at 98 Montague Street has 20,000 square feet of space. With some renovation, the Bossert could make up to $1,000 per square foot, according to Brownstoner."

Mark Pilgrim, on why you should NEVER purchase encrypted music files: "So what happens on August 31, 2008? On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already "purchased" through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter "the victims") will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point -- transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer -- the Microsoft music player running on the victim's PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they're both giving you the finger."

A new trailer has been released for the upcoming M. Night Shayamalan film, The Happening. (The older trailer is here.)

My expectations are absolutely ZERO for this film, so perhaps I won't be disappointed. His last two films were stinkers.

I think this is a nice photo. (via Flickr Interestingness)

Movie Trailer: My Kid Could Paint That. This documentary has been highly recommended to me by a friend who loves film. It does indeed look interesting.

New Batman Trailer

Iron Man is getting good reviews. Disclosure: RDJ is one of my favorite actors.

James Berardinelli says, "Over the years, there have been only a handful of exceptional superhero movies, and Iron Man is among them." Speaking of RDJ, he continues, " His performance is riveting. He commands the screen."