I love this Washington Post story. Apparently, the National Pork Board (which is a government entity) threatened to sue the web site ThinkGeek, because one of their items for sale violated their trademarking of the phrase "the other white meat." It isn't actually a lawsuit... only a cease and desist letter, but it will undoubtably become an Internet classic.

There's just one problem: The meat in question comes from unicorns.

Let's let the lawyers from Faegre & Benson explain: "We are writing you in connection with your activities at the Web site www.thinkgeek.com, wherein you have been marketing a product called 'Radiant Farms Canned Unicorn Meat' using the slogan 'Unicorn -- the new white meat.' A copy of the Web site page is attached for your reference."

It goes on like that for 12 pages. The dry, legal response to an obvious joke has set off an Internet-wide case of the giggles, especially at the Web site targeted by the letter. The offending item was a prank "product launch" posted on April Fool's Day, complete with a picture of very unappealing, but fictional, canned meat.

"It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn," deadpanned Scott Kauffman, president and chief executive of Geeknet, the site's parent company. "In fact, ThinkGeek's canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red and not approved by any government entity."

In the end, ThinkGeek isn't afraid:

ThinkGeek says it's confident that its use of the slogan is protected as parody by fair-use laws. Either that, or by the unicorns.

My teenage son Ian just spent his life savings on a 42" LCD TV. I must admit I'm a little jealous. He is using it mostly for his Xbox 360 right now. Since we didn't have an HDMI cable to connect it, I did some quick Amazon shopping to see if I could find a decently priced cable for his use. I was very surprised to find this little gem: If you look through the various providers, you'll find DVI Gear with a $2.99 price and zero shipping.

The reviews on Amazon are predominantly positive. We'll know for ourselves when it arrives, but at $2.99, including shipping, it just seems too good to pass up. Read the rest of this post!

Hey, I'm as geeky as anyone, but this is just too much. I know the end is near.

"Muggles" took over Memorial Glade Thursday as onlookers, athletes and fans of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series gathered to try out for the UC Berkeley Quidditch league.

Quidditch, originally a fictional game where players fly on broomsticks, has slowly captured the attention of college students nationwide. To date, there are more than 200 Quidditch collegiate teams in the U.S. alone, according to the the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association Web site.

UC Berkeley is the third UC campus to develop a Quidditch league. Campus rival Stanford University also has a team.

A total of 36 students braved the cold weather and fog to try out for the inaugural squad, composed of the four positions of Seeker, Keeper, Chaser and Beater.

Team co-founder Charlie Strauss, a junior at UC Berkeley, said he decided to start a team after witnessing a Quidditch match on the East Coast.

"I knew people here were dorky enough to join," he said.

Someone pointed me to a letter from State Superintendent Jack O'Connell to school districts regarding problems with the CalPADS data system. CalPADS is the system that has been in progress since 2002. The state has spent millions of dollars on the project. They just rolled it out this year. Now, they're admitting that things aren't working quite as smoothly as they'd hoped. The State Superintendent wrote:

Due to unacceptable system performance issues that occurred during the rollout of CALPADS, I have directed IBM and CDE staff to focus all resources over the next two months on stabilizing the system.

The first step was to halt any additional changes to CALPADS while the system is thoroughly reviewed, top to bottom, to correct deficiencies and ensure that the system performs efficiently. Between now and late March, the CALPADS project team is performing a comprehensive system review and testing process on all CALPADS functions and components. This process will culminate in the release of a properly functioning system targeted for release on March 29, 2010. In the meantime, all previously scheduled CALPADS submittals from local educational agencies (LEAs) have been put on hold. Obviously, that will change our data collection processes in the near term.

The deadline for submitting Fall 1 data (including enrollment counts, graduate counts, and dropout counts) has been extended indefinitely and the Fall 1 information will be the only data required to be submitted to CALPADS in the 2009–10 school year. Other data submissions (Fall 2, Spring 1, and End-of-Year) will be accomplished through traditional means, the specifics of which will be communicated to your staff in a separate letter.

I thought this story from FoxNews was kind of humorous.

Authorities say a San Diego middle school was evacuated when a student's science project was mistaken for a bomb.

A Fire-Rescue spokesman says a concerned vice principal prompted the evacuation of Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School yesterday afternoon.

He says an arson team took photos and X-rays of the empty plastic bottle with wires and determined it was harmless.

He says the 11-year-old was trying to build a motion detector with instructions he found on the Internet and parts he bought online. His parents helped him buy the parts. They say they didn't realize the experiment looked threatening.

This is a kid who needs some attention. Any kid who is trying to build a motion detector at 11 could be the next Thomas Edison. I hope that this experience doesn't discourage him from continuing his experiments. If he gets the education that he deserves, we could be reading about his inventions on the web in another 10 years. Read the rest of this post!