(Via BoingBoing)

I’m loving this retro-future stuff from the early 1960s. Apparently, it’s the way the steel industry figured life was headed. Looks like a menacing utopia indeed.

Reports have been confirmed — there is now a project under way to create a translation of the Bible into LOL Cats, the pidgin dialect associated with sites like ICanHasCheezburger?. Here’s a snippet from Genesis 1:

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

9 An Ceiling Cat gotted all teh waterz in ur base, An Ceiling Cat hadz dry placez cuz kittehs DO NOT WANT get wet.10 An Ceiling Cat called no waterz urth and waters oshun. Iz good.

11 An Ceiling Cat sayed, DO WANT grass! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels. An a Corm. It happen.12 An Ceiling Cat sawed that weedz ish good, so, letz there be weedz.13 An so teh threeth day jazzhands.

Translation into LOLCats has to lower your IQ…

Barack Obama’s speech on race, given earlier this week in Philadelphia, is probably the best speech a politician has given in my lifetime. There is here honesty about race and media and politics at a level that is absolutely unprecedented on the national stage—every American should watch this.

(On YouTube in four parts)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Here’s what Andrew Sullivan had to say about it:

It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

…

I have never felt more convinced that this man's candidacy – not this man, his candidacy – and what he can bring us to achieve – is an historic opportunity. This was a testing; and he did not merely pass it by uttering safe bromides. He addressed the intimate, painful love he has for an imperfect and sometimes embittered man. And how that love enables him to see that man's faults and pain as well as his promise. This is what my faith is about. It is what the Gospels are about. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian.

After watching this, I consider the nomination fight currently going on in the Democratic party and one impression stands out clearer than the rest – Hillary Clinton is finding herself on the wrong side of an historical, even singular moment in American history.

There’s no lingering doubt in my mind: this man will make a magnificent President.

I think the iPhone SDK is going to push me to finally learn Objective-C. I don’t know how much Apple’s perceived reluctance to fully open the development structure (certifying developers through a program, attempting to make the iTunes Store the only source of “legitimate” iPhone apps) is going to actually end up affecting the development community. After all, people have done damn well developing for the iPhone so far, even without an SDK. A book’s even coming out called iPhone Open Application Development, written by one of the main iPhone Dev Team hackers.

This thing is going to get bigger than Apple, and fast. But I can’t buy the idea that Apple doesn’t kind of want it that way. I think that the lessons of the old, closed-shop model of development that drove Apple nearly into the ground have been learned — popularity is good. Openness is good. People wanting desperately to program on/for your platform is good. OS X has become a nerd platform. Over the last few years, Apple computers have moved from being objects of developer derision to being objects of developer lust, and they’ve done that by embracing open standards, UNIX underpinnings, and all the other juicy tidbits that make developers swoon.

The chance to program for such a revolutionary platform as the iPhone is quite an enticement, and I’m betting that it’s probably going to end up minting quite a few new developers in the next months. I haven’t messed with anything related to C since college, and I never got very good at it, but the idea of making an iPhone app makes me want to bite the bullet and learn.

As of right now, the thing that pops up when you get to Apple.com is a full-screen promo for the iPhone SDK. Revolutions are coming, because the little computer in your pocket is finally getting the training wheels off — Apple’s letting for-reals development commence on the iPhone.

The announcement video is amazing. No question that this is going to be a big, big deal. EA took two weeks to get a working demo of Spore running on the iPhone. Salesforce.com got an enterprise productivity app going, based on its web backend. SEGA rolled Super Monkey Ball onto the iPhone. Epocrates has an innovative program helping doctors at point-of-care. And to top it all off, Apple erased 99% of enterprise’s issues with the iPhone by making it fully compatible with the ubiquitous Microsoft comms juggernaut Exchange Server. Push email. Push contacts. Push calendar. Just like Blackberry, only sexier, and no need to round trip all your data to RIM’s Canadian servers.

Verily, the iPhone SDK is revolutionary. Even Kleiner Perkins thinks so — to the tune of a billion dollars worth of VC.

But here’s the weird thing: everyone who’s tried to get a dev license so far — tried to pay for a dev license from Apple, which Jobs said you’d be able to do and which is advertised on the site itself, has gotten a rejection letter from the company, saying the program is too full right now. ZDNet and Tuaw have both noted the phenomenon, with ZD going so far as to ascribe motive to Apple:

I’m not surprised at Apple’s “greet and toss” tactic – greet the high-profile big-name commercial companies and invite them in under the velvet rope, and toss out the riff-raff who were going to make their products available at a price (or lack of a price) that would mean that Apple wouldn’t be making money off the products.

I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think that the certificate system isn’t ready yet, and that Apple thought “might as well give people a head start on dev, even if we can’t let them sell for another couple months.”