Microsoft still wants to buy Yahoo. And maybe Facebook?

This is wild. I guess originally Microsoft said, "Yo Yahoo! Get over here, gimme your lunch money."

And Yahoo said, "Aaaaahhhh!" and ran home to his brother, a karate instructor, who taught him the martial arts in four hours.

The next day, Yahoo saw Microsoft at school. Microsoft said, "Yahoo! Glad to see ya, gimme your lunch money."

"HIYYAAAAHH!!" Yahoo yelled, landing a punch on Microsoft.

Microsoft didn't even flinch, the punch didn't hurt, he was fine, but people all around were remarking to each other that, "Wow, Yahoo can take care of himself!" "Yeah, Yahoo's tough!"

Microsoft had wanted a quick fix, lunch money with no resistance. He didn't know Yahoo would put up a fight.

At home that day, Microsoft regroups, and thinks things out. Maybe he'll have to… play nice.

So Microsoft lets a week go by, allowing the bulk of Yahoo's congratulations to wear off.

Then at school, Microsoft goes over during lunch and says, "Hey Yahoo? Why don't we team up? Together we could Rule the School!"

Yahoo says, in a newly practiced calm cool way, "I'll think about it."

Microsoft, silently infuriated, walks over to Facebook's table. "I never thought about this before, but right now it makes sense. If I can't get Yahoo, I'll get Facebook instead," he thinks.

I was reading some Yahoo news today, complete with links to the New York Times, and I was surprised to see that "A new study says it's possible to boost the amount of mental ability you were born with."

I understand what they're going for, and I get their point.

BUT! The wording just sounds like you can do something in the here and now that would retroactively impact how smart you were at the moment of birth. If you could "boost the amount of mental ability you were born with" by 100%, you'd effectively double how smart you were however many years ago you were born. But that would cause ripples throughout the past 20-60 years…

Let's see if the article (from the Times) can shed some light on the matter. Surely it will be much clearer than the short Yahoo headline.

The first sentence of the article reads, "A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth."

Wow, this is serious. This is great! So long, SAT score of 200! I'm gonna change everything.

First I'll go back and double how smart I was at age 0. Then I'll live my life up to April 30, 2008, and go back and double my intelligence again! And again and again and again…

(This Summer, hit band "Facebook Is Not Secure" to release its newest album, "We Are Not Secure")

I just read on Yahoo that Facebook's recent security upgrades still don't prevent evil strangers from looking up all your private stuff.

Bottom line, don't post it.

There was a link (on Yahoo) to another article or video. The text was, "Military warns soldiers not to post info on Facebook."

It all makes so much sense! But some people conclude that the pros outweigh the cons. It's weird. Of course Facebook is making gobs of money by facilitating this sharing. But any site can be hacked. I assume that since Facebook isn't a bank, it is not as secure as PayPal. Maybe it should be.

Lately I've been watching "Total Recall" a lot. You know, the movie where Schwarzenegger goes in for a memory implant of a vacation to Mars as a secret agent, and then the rest of the movie is exactly like the implant should have been, so you don't know whether it's purely the implant at work, a free-form delusion based on the implant, or total reality? Well anyway, there's one scene that is pretty neat (like most of the others) in which Arnold walks behind an X-ray screen. We, the viewers, then see him as a green skeleton on a black background. Later when he tries to walk behind the screen with a gun, the gun shows up as red, on his green skeleton, and sets off alarms.

This is an incredible piece of (imagined?) technology, and the potential applications for it are fantastic (such as in problem areas). But that's just a 1989 take on the future, right? Guess so… or so I thought.

Yesterday, I read on Yahoo that

First off, T5000?! Holy crap! Arnold's got his hands full this time…

But seriously, if you've seen "Total Recall" and know what I'm talking about, check out the picture Yahoo shows with the article. Sure, the guy is solid red, not a green skeleton, but still this thing looks like a step in the predetermined "right" direction. Awesome…

But wait! There's more. Then…

Last night I was watching a rerun of "American Dad" on Fox, and I think it was when the father took the son to the CIA that we, the audience, saw what the American Dad referred to as the XR-21 (X-Ray 21?), a machine that looked suspiciously like the screen from Total Recall. The father and son walked behind it, and they appeared to us as green skeletons.

That's three references to the same obscure piece of fiction-turning-fact machinery in just about 24 hours! What does it mean?

1. Coincidence.

2. Apophenia.

3. If we build it… in an hour, he could have total recall.

Saw this on Yahoo:

I see smiling people on top (Democrats), and non-smiling people beneath (Republicans). Sure, Obama isn't fully smiling, but he still looks happier than Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney.

I think Yahoo wants us to think more favorably of Democratic candidates than Republicans.

I speak English, so my Yahoo! email account is in English. Today I went to do a search through my 81,246,598 saved messages, and suddenly all my high school Spanish classes were put to the test (well, more like a quiz :). I typed in my query, and was taken to a page where instead of the normal Yahoo! logo, they showed me this:

My messages were all in English, but all the words Yahoo! provided for navigation around the site had been converted to Spanish.

After I found what I was looking for, I clicked the, "Check Mail" button, which at that point looked like this:

And everything went back to normal.

So now I know: Yahoo! has hidden rooms. And sometimes a glitch will get you in for free!

I wonder if people speaking in tongues are really suddenly using another language, because of a similar glitch? Cue the Twilight Zone theme…