It's been awhile since my last newsdump

So, here's some news.

First, BoingBoing reports that a guy named Brad Templeton has some cool ideas about WiFi hotspots.

I wondered if we might do much more with a special beacon.

This beacon would deliberately tell you a bit about the access or location. It would contain a mixed XML/HTML packet with a variety of useful fields and general text. These could range from simple descriptions ("This access point belongs to Joe Smith, I'm a programmer") to information ("On this site, Paul Revere stopped on his ride to consult with local minutemen") to street directions ("Turn right to get to highway 101, left for downtown") to, of course, advertising ("We sell fresh fruit and have a special on plums today.")

I'm not particularly wireless yet. I don't cart around my laptop or a Blackberry or anything. But I like the idea of going wireless. I've previously mentioned that I like the thought of geocaching, too. I think it's neat that we could use technology to enhance our experiences in the real world, instead of technology chaining us to desks.

In a bizarre and sad story, a woman has killed herself in order to donate her corneas to her blind sons, but doctors say that corneal transplants might not even work. From Reuters, via Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough.

A Cessna crashed in Nicholasville recently, but I'm interested in the story not because it involves airplanes, but because it involves one of the most inscrutable utterances I've ever seen:

"Look at that plane just crashed in that field, went turned around sit and watched it."

There's another head-scratcher in that article, but at least that one makes sense if you change "lucky" to "luckily". Is this poor transcription on the part of LEX 18, or are people in Nicholasville speaking a new dialect?

There was a big earthquake in Kyushu recently. I don't think it affected my host family, as it seemed to deal the most damage to Fukuoka, which is in a different prefecture. Hopefully they are all okay.

Lastly, students in Japan are getting better at English. (This inspired me to try to write some Japanese in an email to my host sister just now.)

おわり！