Simply amazing.

The White House’s website has a special section that allows people to create and sign petitions online called We The People.  The intent, as stated on their website, is to “give all Americans a way to engage their government on the issues that matter to them”.

As it turns out 35,435 citizens have petitioned the US Government to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016”.  Seriously.

The administration, politely replied as follows:

This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For

By Paul Shawcross

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

You can read the rest of the official response here.

Etsy – the online marketplace for handmade / vintage items hit a major miles stone in Nov. – they broke $100M per month in GMV (gross merchandise volume).  Hats off to them.

While I’ve never shopped on Etsy, I do enjoy skimming some of their finer offerings on the blog Regretsy.

According to my phone, over its lifetime I’ve logged 4.29 billion days of call time.  That’s 11.7 million years of call time.  I do have free nights and weekends + roll over minutes so luckily that kind of usage hasn’t resulted in overage charges.

Just when you thought you’ve seen everything, someone goes and makes a web site like this (the running cat is in fact a link).  Apparently it’s been around since 2011 and the original incarnation, a YouTube video, ranked as the #5 most viewed video in 2011.

Hat tip: LS

…. Now back to our regularly scheduled program…

Not really sure where this came from or who I can give credit to but I came across this gem on Facebook a while back.  You can read more about the 5 Second Rule here.

If you haven’t checked out the Google Cultural Institute website then do yourself a favor and wander on over there.  Very interesting stuff – I spent a good part of my morning thus far exploring it – it’s kind of like the Wikipedia wormhole where you go to read one article then suddenly realize you just spent the last hour letting yourself wonder through the site.

This is hilarious