Link before I go to work:  The Pirates of Second Life.

Seems that in the MMORPG "Second Life", which we've discussed before, you really can do anything you can imagine.  Anything your heart can desire.

And apparently, some people's true desire in life is to be a pirate, with his crew dressed as Mayor McCheese, riding around in flying pirate ships, setting all the Second Life geeks' houses and mansions on fire, and having their way with the virtual wenches (40 year old fat dudes) in the game.

We all have our goals in life.

As a SCUBA diver from NC, I'd always heard it rumored that a team from UNC was investigating the Queen Anne's Revenge (Blackbeard's ship) off the coast of NC. Apparently, it is the real deal. Check out the headline from CNN: "Is it Blackbeard's Ship? Archaeological Booty says 'Aye'".

The Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters. From Ryan Clark Holiday's excellent web log.

And it seems aviendha1979  has hit upon an interesting fact. Most of Youtube and Google Video has become a wasteland of people singing and doing stupid stuff in front of their webcams, after the copyright people took down all the cool videos. Indeed, when I uploaded some videos to Google Video (from our briefing antics this past week), I noticed that the "Related Videos" section for these videos includes (as the #1 choice), these two German chicks singing "Barbie Girl". For some reason, I don't know why, I watched this video.  Repeatedly.    Apparently, a lot of people did too, as they just got voted in as the "Google Idol".

So, soldiergrrrl  , if you are in the Frankfurt area, please ask these two girls if they put subliminal messages or something like that in these videos. Seriously. They've even got their own Wikipedia entry now.