Several of you are no doubt aware of the theory that there's a sort of karmic balance in the universe-- that for every bad thing that happens, a good thing pops up somewhere else. While this concept is usually applied to individual action and behavior (as in, "someday you'll pay for that extra newspaper you took from the machine when an anvil falls on your head and makes you go all accordion-like"), we like to think it holds up just as well on a macrocosmic scale. That is, just as energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only transferred from place to place and from form to form, there is also a "Conservation of Coolness" law that just sort of takes care of itself.

So, first the bad news: according to NoBeige, at least some sources are claiming that Formac has (hopefully temporarily) halted development of the iPowerRaid. The iPowerRaid, for those of you who missed it, is an expansion card for the iMac's hidden Perch slot that would add a SCSI interface to Apple's new consumer machine for only $150 or less. Originally expected in November, now it appears that the iPowerRaid may never surface at all, as Formac is waiting for Apple's position on future support of the Perch slot. That brings up a possibililty that for some reason never occurred to us: perhaps Apple has been telling third party developers not to work on Perch expansion cards simply because they plan to omit the slot in future iMacs. We consider that possibility unlikely, but it's there nonetheless. Anyway, it's possible that the very cool iPowerRaid may never see the light of day. Only time will tell.

On the other hand, the good news is that Judge "Grouchy" Wapner, formerly of "People's Court" fame until he was displaced by former New York mayor Ed Koch, is back in business. Now he's working his grumpy magic on "Judge Wapner's Animal Court," a new show on the Animal Planet network. It's exactly like "People's Court," except that Doug Llewelyn is nowhere to be found (not at all a bad thing) and all of the cases involve animals in some way. (Honestly. We couldn't make up anything this goofy if we tried all night.) Even Rusty the Bailiff is back! Of course, you may not care about any of this, and it has literally nothing to do with the world of Apple, but do you see how it all works out for us?