Monday Links: June 16th, 2008

Holy Moly, it must be Jarred’s birthday.

Be sure to check out the latest entries in our Bomomo contest. We’ve gotten some great submissions; maybe later this week we’ll fire up a poll to determine a winner. How about a few links to start the week off right:

• I’ve started casually following an oceans and fisheries conservation blog called blogfish. Recently, the blogfish bloggers pointed out this fascinating account of the New England Aquarium’s latest collection trip to the Bahamas. I now know how aquariums get their fish, and you can too. Random, but fascinating stuff. Come on, check it out (lots of gorgeous tropical fish!).

• Not to get too political, but being the “change lovers” that we are, I think we’re entitled to post an Obama speech every once in a while. From his Father’s Day remarks at a church in Chicago (via Ezra Klein):

Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities.

But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one.

• Sam points out an important pending case related to internet privacy. You may remember hearing this tragic and twisted story a few months ago; this is the case where a 14 year old commits suicide after receiving devastating messages from a “boy” on MySpace who turns out to be one of her classmates’ mother. This piece helps emphasizes why, despite the horrible circumstances, precedent in this case could (negatively) impact life on the web:

How many of you have lied about who you are online? How many have fudged the numbers on how old you are? Be honest, your MySpace profile says your 103 years-old, doesn’t it? How about creating fake email addresses so you have a place to direct annoying SPAM emails you’d be otherwise inundated with should you be forced to cough up your genuine email domain? Imagine that each time you lied to a computer, you committed a felony

• I haven’t written about algae in a while (don’t worry, I’m still an algae fanboy), but one company (Solazyme) leading the way on algae biodiesel recently met US standards for auto-ready fuel. Exciting stuff, although a commercial roll-out is still distant.

• Mental Floss features a best-of gallery full of passive aggressive notes. They found a few masterpieces, to be sure.

• I couldn’t figure out what to give Jarred for his birthday (read: I am a lame friend), so I opted for a little somethin’ somethin’ from…The Something Store. I even decided to give it a shot myself. We’ll report back this week with what our respective “somethings” turned out to be (fingers crossed for a Kindle; realistic expectation is a flash drive).

That’s all for now–more stuff later this week, including “50 things Jarred looks forward to doing after the LSAT.”