web log.

The old:

The new:

When one of the country’s best-known oilman starts talking about renewable energy sources, you best take notice and listen.

More at pickensplan.com.

(All of the videos are worth watching, but this is the best intro.)

I know that I have that other site for posting stuff like this, but sometimes, I can’t refuse. Because there are some things that I must call out to my friends.

Like cows.

Pirate cows.

Yarr! Mooo!

As you were, then.

I’m trying another experiment: Appendix A.

I want this site to be clean, tidy, with a high signal-to-noise ratio. But that desire sometimes often nearly always conflicts with my desire to share a whole bunch of neat stuff with you. The desire to centralize online stuff can distort one’s focus. So, I’m trying out a separate Tumblr site (yes, again) to post those links, removed from the main flow of this site.

The name comes from one of my favorite books, which makes copious use of appendices. I think nearly half of the book is appendices and footnotes, and some of them are better than the source material! So, I figured it was about time for my own addendum.

It’s only a few days old, but I’d love to know what you think about it.

John C. Welch, Goodbye, Gary:

Gary helped do that. His creation, along with other people’s creations at the time, led to millions upon millions of creations. The Dragonlance epics. Ed Greenwood helping create the Forgotten Realms, Elminster, and all the rest. Books. Movies, usually bad.

For those of us his creation touched, he changed our lives. He brought me friends and times that I probably wouldn’t have found without him. He created something that anyone could do, and have fun with, and make their own. There’s not a lot of people you can say that about. In truth, I’d rank what he did above what even Woz and Jobs created. Those two created an industry. D&D created worlds.

pamie.com: ow.:

pamie: I’m… Okay, I’m eating this curry. And it’s seriously the hottest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. After every five minutes I have to stop eating it because my face hurts and my lips start to swell and I’m drooling.

jessica: Heeeeeee. You know, you sound really upset. I was worried.

pamie: Because I’m crying. But this curry is so good! I’m not kidding; I put the bowl down and wait until I can feel my face again, and my skin is getting kinda blotchy, but after five minutes I crave it and I’ve forgotten all about the pain. Then I dig in, shovel four bites into my mouth and then: “Flames! Flames, on the side of my face…heaving!”

jessica: Ha!

Language Log: Scrupulously avoiding sigma:

It’s not a new idea to base legal, educational, or social prescriptions on scientific findings. It’s not a bad idea, either, unless such arguments are based on bad science, or on good science badly applied. But I’m afraid that in today’s educational policy debates — and not just about segregation of the sexes — the density of bad or misrepresented science is high and rising. In self-defense, our society needs to persuade people like Anastasia Rubis that standard deviations should not be so scrupulously avoided.

Tonight, Merrystar pointed me to the Dewey Donation System’s 2008 Book Drive, where you can purchase books for kids who need them and surprise the crap out of some very nice librarians.

Which, all things considered, is both a good thing to do, and pretty damn fun, too.

(Via.)

New York Magazine, Learning to Lie:

Kids lie early, often, and for all sorts of reasons--to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. But now there’s a singular theory for one way this habit develops: They are just copying their parents.

Forget Dark Matter: This Astrophysicist Found the Fastest Way to Board a Plane:

Steffen is ready to show the industry what he’s found, and eager to do some real-world testing. But no one in the industry has called.

He isn’t surprised. “When they come across a problem,” he said, “I don’t think their first thought is, Let’s go talk to an astrophysicist. Oh look — here’s one that’s studied extra-solar planets. He’s our guy!”

Seth Godin has a short, but good post on social networking sites, and the difference between ‘friends’ and ‘that guy who saved my life’:

I don’t think a large volume at the easy end of the spectrum is a replacement for a few at the hard-earned end. Not at all.

Huh. OS X Help manages to even make managing Safari bookmarks interesting.

(I mean, it’s not quite as interesting as a visit to Diggerland, but it’s a well-done article on a dry subject. Right now nothing is cooler than Diggerland.)

Shall we play a game? (kottke.org):

But kids are amazing little adaptive sponges…Ollie understood the rules of the game at least as well as I did, even though we hadn’t actually agreed on any rules (or that we were even playing a game!) before starting. He just crawled off and followed his instincts.

This is going to be fun.

I’m enjoying reading OS X Help: Insanely simple tutorials for the first time Macintosh user, a new weblog on making the switch over to Macs. Much of my joy is seeing someone present things well to their intended audience.

Well done, Scott & co.!

(Via.)

From Shawn Blanc’s excellent interview with John Gruber, the following gem:

bq JOHN: … Who doesn’t like to hug their wife? Is there an anti-hugging contingent out there I’m not aware of?

SHAWN: No. My wife just likes to know how other wives are treated by their work-from-the-home-office husbands.

(The rest of it is quite good, too.)

Steven Brust’s written a Firefly novel, and released it online with a CC license.

(Via.)

Paul Graham has another great (short) piece out, “Six Principles for Making New Things”. It talks about informal presentation and rapid iteration, two phrases that sing close to my heart. (The Trilogy Fast Cycle Time methodology really left its mark on me.)

(Of course, I’d be remiss in not referencing the Worse is Better post, which is saying about the same things, but with more computerese.)

Perhaps this is why we’re seeing so many blogs lead to books these days?

If You Can’t Let Go, Twitter:

In theory, the five members of my immediate family could use our cellphones to broadcast our locations, kind of like a G.P.S. with words.

To get things rolling, I sent my daughters and husband standard Twitter e-mail invitations (“slatalla wants to keep up with you on twitter”) that contained a link to the service’s home page. Then, while I sat in my car in front of my youngest daughter’s school, I sent an update on my whereabouts: “car pool dilemma will French horn and trombone both fit in a mini” Then?

Nothing.

“hello” I typed. Three minutes passed. Four. Still nothing. For the first time in the nearly 19 years since I first gave birth, no one wanted to keep tabs on me.

Then suddenly my cellphone buzzed. It was my first Twitter — a text message from Zoe, my 18-year-old daughter, how exciting — and so I eagerly opened it onscreen.

It said, “twitter?? what the hell is this?”

My family finally text messages (blame the rampant iPhoneism), but they don’t get Twitter, either.

Oh well.

Oh, this takes me back. Unboxing an Apple //c.

(Via.)

MarsEdit has quickly moved up the list of software that I use on my Mac that I can no longer really imagine working without. (Take note, weblog platform developers: support XML-RPC, or there will be trouble.)

I mention this because Shawn Blanc continues his excellent series of Mac Software Reviews with the story of MarsEdit: Helping the Personal Publishing Revolution, which is well worth your time if you have a Mac, a weblog, or both. (Jim, I’m looking at you, Scrivener’s not the only Mac software worth considering…)

One of the best things about Shawn’s review is that even though I’ve used (and loved) MarsEdit for months, I learned ways to make it even more useful to me. Not many reviews go into enough detail for software that I use on an almost-daily basis to do that.

Jade over at Ars Technica conducts a MacBook Air spec shootout, and comes away with some interesting (i.e. not tainted by an obsession with the Toughbook) points:

Let’s be rational. It’s not even remotely affordable, especially at the high end--the high end being defined by the option of a 64GB SSD. There aren’t a lot of subnotebooks in that category but, if you are contemplating buying a MacBook Air, you still owe it to your credit card limit to do some research.

A friend of mine at work alerted me to a local musician — you may have heard of him — offering a free Christmas album from a recent performance.

Check out Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers’ Christmas 2007 (Live Music Give Away).

Nikon D3 / D300 Vs. Canon:

A friend once said to me that Canons are the best cameras available designed by engineers, and that Nikons are the best cameras one can buy designed by photographers. There may well be some truth to this aphorism.

(Via.)

Godspeed, Andy Olmsted.

(Via Jim, who knew him much better than I.)

James City Service Authority offers new rain barrel rebate:

The James City Service Authority (JCSA) has created a new Rain Barrel Rebate Program to reinforce water conservation efforts. A rain barrel collects and stores rainwater from your roof so it can be used to water lawns, gardens or indoor plants, fill birdbaths, and wash cars, boats, dogs or muddy shoes.

The JCSA will refund the purchase price of up to four rain barrels, with a maximum of $50 per rain barrel. Long range weather predictions call for a hot, dry growing season. By conserving water, you will save money, help ensure water availability for emergencies such as firefighting, reduce stormwater runoff to protect waterways, and promote wise water use and conservation.

For more information, click on “Rebates” at www.bewatersmart.org, e-mail bewatersmart@james-city.va.us or call 253-6859.

Meet Thievey, a ring-tailed lemur. He’s very cute, but he needs your help.

Consider doing something good and help Mike reach his goal before the end of 2007. He’s got 3 2 1 lemurs left to give away.

Update: Mike reached his goal, but there’s still time to make a difference. The MGF is totally blown away by the amount of support they’re getting here ($10,450 + $167/month for the next year), but there is still more need.

You may also consider purchasing one of the Moon Bears from Vermont Teddy Bear (which we got Trip for Christmas), or a contribution to Defenders of Wildlife. There are still like three hours left in 2007! Go!

I hereby dub this Gruber’s Law of Apple Analysis:

“A good rule of thumb, by the way, is that the more a writer attributes the actions of Apple, an enormous corporation with thousands of talented employees, to Steve Jobs, who is just one man and neither an engineer nor a designer, the more likely the writer is an idiot, a hack, or both.”

Of course. I go and let my Flickr Pro account lapse, and Flickr goes and rolls out stats… but only for Pro members.

Grumble.

From Why Are You Reading All That News?:

“The world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.”

This is very, very true. She will (and did.)

Shawn Blanc has begun A Series of Reviews: Some of The Greatest Software Available For Your Mac that, based on his previous posts, will be well worth your (Mac-using) time.

Update: That was fast. NetNewsWire is already up!

(Via, via)

Shopping at Target, I came across an entire line of Star Wars/ Transformers toys.

The hell?

I know that the Transformers line isn’t big on continuity, but I think this is even more of a travesty than the X-Men/Star Trek novel I ran across a few years ago.

Because, you know, that was fan-fiction. This is merchandizing.

| View | Upload your own

Via Blackfriar’s Marketing.

If you haven’t read it already, may I recommend the long (but well-done) rant regarding the state of the music industry: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.

Via kottke. Also.

Just saw this in the iTunes Store: 4 free episodes of “Learn Along Of Sesame” are now available for download:

I am seriously running out of disk space here, people! Enough with the free stuff!

Just saw this while picking up the iTunes Free Music Tuesday songs: the first season of Enterprise is now on iTunes.

I’m actually looking forward to cherry-picking the episodes instead of getting the whole series - mixed in among the gems are some real turkeys. (And I’m willing to skip almost all of the third season, Twilight excepted.)

The Amateur Gourmet: We Begin In Bellingham.

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

Search Engine Land: Fury Over Google’s Self Promotion & Wishing For Perspective:

I really dislike other companies getting free passes when Google is held up to higher standards. Blake notes that Microsoft and Yahoo both do self-promotion, but he somehow thinks it’s Google that should be put on fire. I disagree. They all should be put up on fire. Singling out Google distorts the underlying argument. If it’s bad, it’s bad for any of them to do it, not because we love Google so much and are disappointed or because Google should be held to a higher standard.

Typically when Google gets burned, it gets burned because I feel people are too lazy to survey the entire competitive landscape and call for general across the board changes. It’s much easier to point at Google and say Google’s the leader, so I’m focusing on them.

Google News is a good example of this. I honestly want to puke if I have to hear another thing about Google News needing to be more transparent when Yahoo News provides the same or less transparency but no one squawks about that. Want an example of this? Check out the mini-debate I had with Dan Gillmor last year on the issue.

Picking up on the Google “tips” stuff, Smugmug dives in to declare “Google’s gone evil.” Really, because of these tips? I’d rather reserve the evil charge for more serious things like, I dunno, censorship in China.

Dinosaur Comics: Resolution One.

jwz: delete yourself from the internets!

I do not quite know what I am doing when I get to your site. I want to download the 200 screen savers. I’m running fedora core 4 on and hp computer. What ever I click it doesn’t give me the option to install, can you give me a little help please?

O’Reily Radar: OpenID on the Upswing.

Aha, finally found it. Rodney Matthews now has a site, so Merrystar can now find out why she’s never been able to find The Moth and the Moon in any bookstore.

(It was never written.)

Bruce Sterling: My Final Prediction —

If an innovation works, some people will thrive on it, while others who are screwed up to begin with will face severe new problems.

I know this is true because I’ve lived it. I’m a pre-Internet novelist who became moderately famous online, only to have my paperback writing slow down as I began to spend uncontrollable amounts of time surfing and blogging. This experience is both grand and problematic. It reflects not two extremes but the slider-bar that is my everyday life.

dooce: As festive as I’ll ever be

After the chipmunk album broke we listened to a collection of Christmas songs by the Osmonds, songs I have never seen on any other compilation since. My favorite was a song called “Sleigh Ride,” and I remember thinking it had to have been sung by one of the cuter Osmonds, because only someone cute could rock that hard, or harder than any song I had ever been allowed to listen to. Not very hard at all. It was the only Christmas song I’d ever heard that featured an electric guitar, and it was fast and breathless and unforgiving, like a Sunday spent skipping church. When we played it we’d dance recklessly around the tree in our footed pajamas playing air guitar, hoping one day we would grow up to be as cool as the Osmonds. You could say that we had been taught to aim high in life.

James Duncan Davidson: More Lightroom and Aperture RAW Comparisons

Now it’s obvious, isn’t it? At least it should be unless your monitor is totally whacked. And this isn’t even really in the realm of pixel-peeping yet. What you are seeing above is a 500 pixel crop from a 1500 pixel wide rendering of a 4372 pixel wide original. In other words, looking at it on your screen here is probably about the same as looking at that crop on a 14” or so wide print, albeit at a lower resolution than what I could print for you in person.

As you can imagine, for a large print, the Lightroom rendering is going to win hands down. The icky blocky stuff from Aperture prints out like posterized muck. On Flickr, especially at the default presentation size of 500 pixels, it doesn’t matter so much. But, if I were just worried about pictures for Flickr, I’d still use my Canon Powershot for all of my images.

I think this may be my favorite fashion piece ever. Go Fug Yourself: The Fug Wears Prada :

My grandma had a doll that sat on top of her toilet. Her crocheted gown belled out to cover the extra roll of toilet paper that lived up there. As a child, this fascinated me. Why didn’t the toilet paper in my house have outfits? Why didn’t everything in my house have outfits: the spatulas, the drinking glasses, the cat? “Because that would be tacky,” my mother told me. “But Grandma’s toilet paper has an outfit,” I protested. “Your grandma is an eccentric and fascinating woman,” my mother replied, “but my toilet paper does not need a dress.”

Wohba! Slow Motion Golf Ball:

Excellent!

Also, discussion.

fire at the Blue Talon, originally uploaded by intheburg.

Fortunately, I don’t think anyone was hurt.

Over at the Yahoo! User Interface Blog, Performance Research, Part 1: What the 80/20 Rule Tells Us about Reducing HTTP Requests:

Using a packet sniffer, we discover what takes place in that other 80%. Figure 1 is a graphical view of where the time is spent loading http://www.yahoo.com with an empty cache. Each bar represents a specific component and is shown in the order started by the browser. The first bar is the time spent for the browser to retrieve just the HTML document. Notice only 10% of the time is spent here for the browser to request the HTML page, and for apache to stitch together the HTML and return the response back to the browser. The other 90% of the time is spent fetching other components in the page including images, scripts and stylesheets.

Oddly enough, today’s dinosaur comics is very apropos of a conversation Merrystar and I had on our drive into the City today.

Oh, dear lord, please make this happen.

Via jwz: A Building Shaped Like Godzilla —

The people of Tokyo should construct a giant building shaped like Godzilla. Imagine what it would do to the city’s skyline, and to the tourism industry. People would come from all over to take pictures. His eyes could flash red so airplanes don’t hit him. There could be an observatory in his mouth so people could look out over Tokyo. One of his arms could house a bar, and the other arm a restaurant. They could serve drinks called Mothra Martinis and dishes like Grilled Gamera Steaks, with a side of Mashed Potatoes.

The fuss over the tv.yahoo.com upgrade continues, with interesting observations from Dave Winer about how some (and I’m being careful not to generalize here out to “Silicon Valley”) are viewing the comments.

As a commenter on that thread, I object to charges of incivility and anonymity. I didn’t post any of the curse words that first came out of my mouth when Merrystar showed me the site. However, it’s easier to get page views by staking a position, so… whatever. The game’s afoot, the meta-analysis is on about what this means… I just want to know what time the football game is on.

Yahoo!, for all of their openness (and the willingness of past and current employees to comment on the matter really is impressive) still hasn’t restored the original tv.yahoo.com/grid, so it’s left me and Merrystar with a vaccuum. Like Dave, TitanTV gives me much of what I liked, so I’m probably jumping ship. Bookmarks are easy to change. I’m not that invested in the site.

There are more important things in life than spending time trying to convince a company to do things your way when they obviously don’t want to. I won’t completely abandon Yahoo! over this (Flickr still is better for my needs than Zooomr, for instance), but it says something that Merrystar — who uses Yahoo’s front page every day, for crying out loud — is tired of all the upgrades and improvements-that-aren’t.

Enough of this. Yahoo!, do what you want. I’ve got Christmas decorations to put up.

I feel better.

I just geotagged my screenshots of the tv.yahoo.com rant to Yahoo!’s corporate headquarters on both Flickr and Zooomr.

Petty? Perhaps. But it’s because they changed something I used that didn’t need to be changed. Sometimes, progress isn’t.

(And I would kill for users as passionate as the ones who use Yahoo!, by the way.)

Merrystar and I are both relatively content Yahoo! partisans; Merrystar even more so than me, I think. Which makes this post that much harder to write.

Yahoo! really fucked up, and badly. They released a new version of their TV listings pages - one of the only pages I could be reliably counted upon to hit, night after night - that not only gives worse performance than the old version, it doesn’t work in Safari.

Or Firefox.

Whaaaa?

No, seriously. Let me show you. This is what it looks like in Safari:

tv.yahoo.com home page Hosted on Zooomr

tv.yahoo.com listings page (safari) Hosted on Zooomr

And this is Firefox:

tv.yahoo.com listings (firefox) Hosted on Zooomr

By the way, the performance in Firefox is absolutely terrible. In the time it’s taken to write this post, I still haven’t gotten the new page to load.

I rarely call a site redesign absolute shit, but I think this might qualify. This is absolute shit. Did they not test it? What the hell were their QA people thinking?

Yahoo!: If you are reading this, please bring back the old TV listing. Please, please, please. Call this a beta, give us a link to the old stuff that actually worked. Otherwise, we’re switching to Google. Or TV Guide. Or anyone else.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Brett

(Please feel free to give the Yahoo! TV team a piece of your mind. They say they’re listening.)

Welcome to the club, Thomas Hawk!

(Pssst… Don’t forget to turn on Software Update. There’s a new patch out tonight.)

Doug serves us some compelling reasons to not see Borat in Match Frame: the problem with Borat.

There’s no question that BORAT is, more than occasionally, really damn funny. It’s also in my mind incredibly problematic. The difference between BORAT and the (even funnier) JACKASS 2 is that, after JACKASS 2 did something in public in front of unsuspecting people, they copped to who they were, and got release forms signed, and if you wouldn’t sign one, they’d pixelate your face or not use the footage. BORAT, by contrast, claimed to be a small production not intending to distribute in the States, and often not only set things up under entirely false pretenses but maintained those false pretenses well after the fact. […] This is a massive breach of filmmaking ettiquette (and, most likely, law); further, expect people who aren’t nearly as funny to duplicate the same kinds of stunts in the near future; further, as a result, expect any serious but seriously underfunded short-film or documentary filmmakers to have increasing amounts of trouble getting releases to film places.

More from Wohba: The Sorting Algorithm Demo.

Watching a bubble sort is actually painful in comparison to the other algorithms. Very good visualization.

Two weeks too late for me, but: How to Avoid a Moose or Deer Collision - WikiHow.

(Rule of thumb remains: Don’t Swerve.)

Via Wohba —

Can Dr. Evil Save the World?

(Via jwz.)

(Also, if this plot doesn’t show up in a movie in the next year, I’ll be seriously disappointed.)

Don’t forget to claim your Federal Excise Tax Refund Credit next year. If, for some reason, you’ve kept your phone bills for the last 4 years or so, you might want to dig them out when doing your 2006 taxes.

Otherwise, there’s a standard deduction you can take.

More Wohba!, this time: Ski-gliding:

I’m always impressed by how good XKCD is:

Whoba!: Fog Bows.

OmniNerd: 2006 Leonid Meteor Shower.

Astronomy buffs in Europe and America’s East Coast will be treated to a particularly powerful meteor shower this year. Barring weather, at 11:30pm EST on November 18th, viewing conditions will be excellent due to the new moon. If skies are overcast, however, try “listening” to the radio signals generated by shower’s electrified trails. Practiced observers say that even more meteors can be detected via radio waves than can be seen with the naked eye. For more information on this annual event, check out the Top 10 Leonid facts.

Evan Morris reminds me why Ballmer deserves his moniker.

LinuxWorld: Ballmer: Linux users owe Microsoft.

“Only customers that use SUSE have paid properly for intellectual property from Microsoft,” he said. “We are willing to do a deal with Red Hat and other Linux distributors.” The deal with SUSE Linux “is not exclusive,” Ballmer added.

This has pretty much guaranteed that I will be stripping SuSE Linux off of every machine I own. And that’s on top of no more money to Microsoft, ever!

Nicely done, Steve! Good job with that marketing.

(Via)

• Boing Boing: Patriot act makes it harder to get real Sudafed.
• Slate: Meth madness at _Newsweek_.

Dudes already know about chickens.

Like the man sayeth:

Instead of a quantum encyclopedia, with vandalism and falsehoods peppered throughout at various locations AND at various times, Wikipedia becomes a consistently RELIABLE encyclopedia that covers every topic in the universe, except chickens. We say it again: dudes already know about chickens.

evan morris: tastes like surrender.

And, for your amusement, more reasons why I don’t read digg.

jwz: Hacking Democracy.

Dooce: Monthly Newsletter: Month 33

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   “You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
North Central
The South
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Yeah, that’s true enough. You can take the boy out of the Midwest, but can’t take the Midwest out of the boy.

Presentation Zen: Boom!

jwz: R.I.P. Habeus Corpus, 1215 - 2006.

For a certain family member (you know who you are), I give you *ROCK ALBUM DEATHMATCH*:

Wow! My Moo Cards arrived today, and they turned out great. I have but one regret —

I forgot the oxford comma in my message.

(Via Amy.) Halushki: A Series of Unfortunate Conversations.

Woman: Hey girls! Guess what we’re going to do today?
Girls: What, Mommy, what?!
Woman: We’re going to visit the hospital!
Girls: Yipee! We‘re going to have the baby! The baby!
Woman: No, no…remember the bat we had in our house the other night?
Girls: Is the bat having babies?
Woman: The bat might have rabies.
Girls: Yipee! Rabies! Rabies!
Woman: Do you know what rabies is?
Girls: Rabies are bat babies!

Via JWZ — Keith Olbermann: Why does habeas corpus hate America?

In fact, Countdown has obtained a partially redacted copy of a colonial “declaration” indicating that back then, “depriving us of Trial by Jury” was actually considered sufficient cause to start a War of Independence, based on the then-fashionable idea that “liberty” was an unalienable right.

Today, thanks to modern, post-9/11 thinking, those rights are now fully alienable.

The reality is, without habeas corpus, a lot of other rights lose their meaning.

But if you look at the actual Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to that pesky Constitution — you’ll see just how many remain.

Well, ok, Number One’s gone.

If you’re detained without trial, you lose your freedom of religion, speech, the press and assembly. And you can’t petition the government for anything.

Number Two? While you’re in prison, your right to keep and bear arms just may be infringed upon.

Even if you’re in the NRA.

Three?

No forced sleepovers by soldiers at your house. OK. Three is unchanged.

Four?

You’re definitely not secure against searches and seizures, with or without probable cause - and this isn’t even limited to the guards.

Five… Grand juries and due process are obviously out.

Six. So are trials, let alone the right to counsel. Speedy trials? You want it when?

Seven. Hmmmm. I thought we covered “trials” and “juries” earlier.

Eight — So bail’s kind of a moot point…

Nine: “Other” rights retained by the people. Well, if you can name them during your water-boarding, we’ll consider them.

And Ten — powers not delegated to the United States federal government seem to have ended up there, anyway.

So as you can see, even without habeas corpus, at least one tenth of the Bill of Rights, I guess that’s the Bill of “Right” now… remains virtually intact.

Idle Words: Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was the first place where I ever felt like I was in the 21st century. Free internet terminals in the subway, Jetsons architecture, a giant Central Escalator, chirping traffic lights, storefronts filled with tiny robotic gadgets - this was the new millenium I’d been waiting for. From the moment my plane docked at the world’s most advanced airport and the cute policewoman scanned my eager retinas with her retina-scanning gun I felt like the future wasn’t just a cynically oversold ripoff, but a place I might actually want to spend some time.

Very cute, via the Muppet Wiki:

No comment.

Oh, my.

(Via Whoba.)

Presentation Zen: Urban life: Graphic design is everywhere.

By slowing down a bit we will be able to see all of the graphic design that fills our daily lives. Living in Japan is a designer’s dream in many ways; there is just so much to see. Some of the “best” graphic design in the world is right here in Japan, and so is some of the “worst.” Much can be learned by examining both extremes and all the bits in between. We can even learn something during the morning commute. I usually spend a couple of hours everyday on trains, all of which are filled with an ever-changing tapestry of banners, signs, and ad posters. All most every day I notice something particularly good (or bad).

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asks Will the Next Election be Hacked?

Magic 8-ball: Signs Point to Yes.

(Bonus reading: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?)

Dave Winer thinks our country has lost its mind, and I think I agree with him.

If you aren’t a regular reader of Amalah, I invite you to view her tribute to her son’s first birthday.

Really well done, Amy and Jason. Bravo.

DF: Kieren McCarthy: Still a Jackass

From Pajiba —

Via JWZ — The Fox Clinton Interview: transcript, movie

Oh boy. Christopher Tolkien finished The Children of Hurin?

I have many, many mixed emotions about this one.

Neat. How To Apply Conditional Formatting in Excel.

Omninerd: Martini Glass Ceiling

(But did they account for the cost of drinking in their analysis?)

Don’t forget, today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Wohba!: That’s No Sunspot!

I think I’m developing a serious YouTube problem.

I’m watching clouds on the internet, people. Help!

Boing Boing: Princeton researchers show how to steal an election with Diebold machines.

Via JWZ: Reno Balloon Race 2006.

Funny. I don’t watch much TV these days (_Project Runway_, golf and football as notable exceptions.)

But I do watch TV on YouTube. And the best part?

You can actually share things with other people. Like this.

Panasonic Toughbook line gets an update. Sweet!

Holy crap! Invisible cow alert!

I’m really coming to love xkcd.

After writing the previous, I am reminded of Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass —

That’s bonafide, 100%-real data, my friends. I took it myself over the course of two weeks. And this was not a leisurely two weeks, either; I busted my ass day and night in order to provide you with nothing but the best data possible. Now, let’s look a bit more closely at this data, remembering that it is absolutely first-rate. Do you see the exponential dependence? I sure don’t. I see a bunch of crap.

Amalah: Entirely Hypothetical.

Presentation Zen: Steve Irwin: ‘Passion, enthusiasm push an educational message.’

Signal to Noise: Even with primitive materials, one can work small wonders.

Daring Fireball: Vacation, All I Ever Wanted.

I hand three tickets to the attendant and carry Jonas toward the boat, which, thankfully, was ignored by the children ahead of us. Jonas takes his seat, and I ask him whether he wants me to stay. He’s been riding by himself on this and other similar rides all week, but this time he says, “Daddy stay with me.” And so, of course, I do. There’s a bench circling the central axis of the carousel, obviously intended for just this purpose. Jonas says, “No, here”, meaning here in the boat with him. I explain that I won’t fit in the boat, but that I’ll be here on this bench, close enough that we can hold hands. I show him, by holding out my left hand. He clasps my index and middle fingers, and that is good enough.

If you value your time, do not, for the love of all that is good, go visit flOw. It’s strangely beautiful and compelling.

And ruthless. (Just like life.)

(Via Table of Malcontents.)

Listening Post: DRM has a bad week.

The internet creates the oddest situations.

I’m watching the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational on TV. It’s on a time delay. Tiger is behind. There’s drama, but I’m not watching it.

Instead, I’m watching the real-time leaderboard on Yahoo! Sports. Tiger is ahead, but just dropped a shot.

Argh, my coat for an actual live video feed!

Unqualified Offerings: I Win!

Tinsleman: Bugfish.

BBC: ‘Product sabotage’ helps consumers.

Take the secret cappuccino, which you can buy in two of the leading coffee chains, Starbucks and Coffee Republic.

The sales assistants know what the drink is and they have a little button on their cash tills to ring it up. It’s cheaper than the other drinks on offer, but it doesn’t appear on the menu.

Starbucks claims that’s because they don’t have room on the menu board. Coffee Republic doesn’t even have that excuse: there’s a blank space with no price where this drink should be listed.

It’s called the “short cappuccino”, and it’s smaller, cheaper and better than the smallest size on the menu, the “tall”.

Pajiba — Snakes on a Plane.

And, of course New Line didn’t screen Snakes on a Plane for critics. Why? Because it motherfucking sucks. That’s why. The CGI is subpar. The plot is paper thin. The dialogue is atrocious. And the acting is downright horrendous. […]

And yet … and yet despite it all …

I haven’t had this much fun watching a movie since Ash Williams stood with a shotgun in one hand and a chainsaw in the other, beckoning: “Gimme some sugar, baby.” I shit you not, folks, Snakes on a Plane is every bit of god-awful fantastic that the hype portends. And I say this not as a movie critic, but as an enthusiast of so-bad-it’s-good. I consider the Final Destination series one of my favorite trilogies of all time; The Skulls is a minor classic, and nary anything can compare to the joy that was Cool as Ice. But Snakes on a Plane beats them all, hands down, fists balled, and middle finger to the sky. It absolutely kills. The only way I could’ve found it more entertaining is if the snake venom turned the passengers into zombies, but I suppose you gotta leave something for the sequel(s). […]

Truthfully, SoaP defies everything I ever believed about filmmakers who actually set out with the intention of making a good-bad flick; I didn’t think it could be done. And maybe without the attendant hype, it couldn’t have, because damn near half of Snakes success comes from the spectacle of 75 college kids ripped to the tits chanting “Snakes on a Plane” and tossing toy planes around the theater. Indeed, Snakes absolutely demands an audience. It’s a participatory event. And it may be the only time you can ever watch a film and not hate everyone in the theater for yelling throughout, because hell if you don’t find yourself treating the whole experience like a college basketball game, just waiting for Samuel Jackson to drain the Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane to win the game. I actually applauded. More than once. And I didn’t even shake my head in wonder when the audience gave it a standing ovation as the credits rolled.

Kathy Sierra: Give users a Hollywood ending.

Via Tinselman — Desolation Row

Bruce Schneier Facts.

Flying Spaghetti Monster apparition in flare salvo smoke.

No. Really.

Seth Godin: Awkward.

Welcome back, Jim.

You’re on notice!

Signal vs. Noise: Why Big Version Trains Are Always Late.

Amalah: Stuff On My Kid dot Com.

XKCD:

Reminds me of another happy/vicious cycle.

Eric Meyer: Angry, Indeed.

I don’t even know where to start with this. Presentation Zen: PowerPoint printouts used for communicating battle plans?

In the book, Ricks quotes an Army Lt. General who was frustrated over getting vague PowerPoint slide sent to him instead of clear orders or plans. Said Ricks:

“That reliance on slides rather than formal written orders seemed to some military professionals to capture the essence of Rumsfeld’s amateurish approach to war planning.”

— Thomas Ricks

Reliance on slides rather than formal written documents — sound familiar? It should. Remember the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003?

“The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic technical communication at NASA.“

— Columbia Accident Investigation Board

Déjà vu.

jwz: Terra! Terra! Terra!

As the initial “OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!” hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:

“The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!”

— was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.