Campbell's monkeys appear to combine the same calls in different ways, using rules of grammar that turn sound into language.

Whoa.

A diesel-electric hybrid? Nice.

An iPhone app that one can use to mark where AT&T service is crappy? Oh, I’m going to get some use out of this app.

Bad first: I rarely ever watch football and I don’t really follow or call myself a fan of any given team. But today, feeling under the weather, I settled in and watched the New Orleans Saints play the Washington Redskins. It was a thoroughly entertaining game, the likes of which I haven’t seen in years. And then, as the Saints appeared to possibly make a comeback with less than two minutes remaining on the clock, FOX decided to cut from that game to the 49ers/Seahawks. Unbelievable. I found out later that the Saints did make the comeback, and it must have been something pretty incredible to watch. Sadly, I was watching a pathetic opening to another game that I couldn’t care less about. So lame.

Now the good: I’ve only been to one real college football game: a Nebraska Huskers game while visiting my wife’s home in Nebraska. It was a lot of fun. We just bought tickets to the bowl game they’re playing on the 30th and then spending New Year’s Eve down in SoCal. Should be a lot of fun.

I guess everyone thinks having their own store is a good idea now. I don't think I've ever wondered to myself where I could by software written specifically in Java, nor am I sure why I should. In fact, I generally think of desktop software, with a few notable exceptions (I'm looking at you, IDEA), as tangibly worse than otherwise equivalent software written "natively".

As an aside, it's funny that the post lists others who have launched stores recently, while not mentioning Apple, regardless of the fact that they started it all. Since it didn't launch in 2009, I guess that would be a reason to omit the mention, but it still seems weird somehow.

(via Tim Bray on Twitter.)

I use Movable Type as the backend software for this blog, and when I create an entry, it notifies several blog-indexing services of the new post. One of them, Technorati, has recently stopped accepting pings at the address http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, resulting in an error on every post. I thought I’d spread the word here in case anyone else is confused by the error.

Nice site featuring photography and photographer-written stories. It’s obviously new and getting slammed, so keep trying if you get some errors. There’s some good stuff up there.

Node.js looks interesting. Its about page says that it’s goal is to “provide an easy way to build scalable network programs.” Build them using JavaScript, that is. Ryan Dahl’s talk at JSConf is a long-ish watch, but good.

Surprise, surprise. AT&T's comment on the story, added at the bottom, indicates that they didn't take my advice to heart. ;)

Without question the surest indication of customer satisfaction is churn, or turnover. For the last quarter, our postpaid churn was just 1.17 percent.

Way to spin it, folks. You suck. Losing the iPhone before you fix your problems could be catastrophic.

Wasp on a Mission, originally uploaded by Roeselien Raimond.

Great pic!

Square seems like a great solution to a real-world problem that many have: how to take someone’s credit/debit card in a low-ceremony way. It was created by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, and I think it looks like potential second home-run. Here’s Wired’s take.

Grab it here.

Wonderful review of the i7-powered 27" iMac. If I wasn’t sold on portables, I’d have one of these in a jiffy. Given the text of the review, I’m surprised it only rated 8 out of 10. Read like a 9 to me.

Gregg on MTBR recently outlined his 10 favorite mountain bike YouTube vids. Some pretty good ones in there.

I so want this thing, no matter how dorky it may be. Better than using a chair as to hold my wheel up while getting my Forza 3 on.