Wikipëdia:
It is a form of marketing that evokes stereotypes of boldness and strength commonly attributed to ancient north European peoples, such as the Vikings and Goths; author Reebee Garofalo has attributed its use to a desire for a “Gothic horror” feel.
Metal umläuts are awesöme. Anybödy who says otherwise is both wröng and sïlly,
$30 gets you six great looking AA rechargeable batteries, and a beautiful wall charger. If Apple is to be believed, their batteries are actually greener and better than other rechargeable batteries. Kind of makes sense when you realize that Duracel is in the selling batteries business, not in the saving the world business. I think Apple is probably using their better, greener batteries to push cool, high-margin tech like the wireless keyboard, mouse, and trackpad.
Regardless of why and the thinking behind their batteries, I’m glad they’re doing it. I suspect I’ll end up with a set.
Origin 8 bar end drops. I’ve linked to them before, but now I own a pair. They were $26 after shipping, and for what they did to my ride, worth twice the price. A stellar product that offers great results.
My race number was 605, and I finished in 1 hour 57 minutes. I was terrible at the transitions. It took me way too long to go from swimming to biking, and from biking to running. Next time, I’ll do a lot better.
[iTunes link] It’s called Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes, and the audio is exactly what I expected. Great performances of great songs. New vocalist Tomi Jousten delivers the Pasi Koskinen-era songs with confidence and verve. If Amorphis were to release a live album, it should sound like this.
The biggest trick seemed to be composting everything. Well, that and totally changing how they go food shopping.
Their only trash for 12 months — about 75 scraps such as eight used razor blades, a burned-out light bulb, two Theraflu pouches and a broken Christmas ornament — fits in a shoebox that weighs about 4 pounds.
Incredible and inspiring. Take that, Walmart!
Not quite cause to celebrate, though. PopSci.com indicates his new heart pump creates a constant flow of blood. So he’s not dead yet, but the AP says his life expectancy is only about two years, which means there’s still hope.
Who ever thought they would live to see Oakland doing the Lord’s work? On the other hand, trust Oakland to turn it into a fight. SF Gate:
Oakland’s City Council was poised Tuesday to adopt regulations permitting industrial-scale marijuana farms, a plan that some small farmers have argued would squeeze them out of the industry they have helped to build.
Council members and proponents of marijuana cultivation regulation view the proposal as smart public policy: It would generate revenue, ensure that fire and building codes are enforced, keep neighborhoods safe from robberies and further position Oakland as the center of the state’s cannabis economy.
[...]
“Government should not choose the winners and losers but create a level playing field,” [Steve DeAngelo, owner of Oakland's Harborside Health Center, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the nation] said. “Some people might prefer mass production, assembly-line cannabis that costs less. Others might prefer cannabis grown by a master gardener in a smaller plot.
“Let the market sort it out,” he said.
Oakland.
Turns out Skyy doesn’t flavor their vodka with syrup, but by steeping the vodka in fruit. I knew there was a reason Skyy’s the vodka of choice in my house. (We don’t drink much flavored vodka, mind you, bur vanilla vodka with orange juice is a deliciously alcoholic 50/50 bar.)
Also didn’t know that Skyy owns Wild Turkey and Cabo Wabo. Gonna have to give those guys a second look. (Thanks Christopher.)
The SNL parody (parody parody?) video is also pretty good, but not really any funnier or stupider than the original. That’s right: an SNL parody that can’t get any stupider than the subject it’s parodying. (“Parodying” is a word. I know because my spell-checker corrected it for me.)
While not safe for work, this idiot band’s new video is hilarious. Maybe self-mocking would be the better phrase. Maybe unintentionally hilariously self-ridiculing would be even closer.
People love this stuff.
The following was written by guest author, friend, and brother in law Christopher Culbreath. I thank him for an excellent and thorough essay.
· · ·
I love Apple products. People who know me, know this. I got an Apple logo tattoo when I was 18 (I’m 26 now), and my wife has one to match. I bought a 32GB Wi-Fi iPad which I had delivered to my door on day one. After three months of regular use, I’ve decided to sell my iPad. While my decision to sell the iPad is a confluence of many factors, my recent two-week trip to California, on which I lugged my iPad around for the entire trip and didn’t use it, has convinced me of its un-usefullness.
MY SETUP
My main computer is the first 27-inch iMac, base model. I’ve got an iPhone 4, and my wife has a 2 year old 13-inch aluminum unibody MacBook, which I get to use most any time I need to. I bought the iPad with a few tasks in mind: I wanted to use it for casual browsing, Physics book reading, and viewing and storing pictures in the course of my work as a photographer.
SHORTCOMINGS OF THE IPAD
TABS
The single biggest feature missing from the iPad to make it a viable internet device in my life is a usable implementation of tabbed browsing. When I sit down to do some serious internet research, I break my process into two parts: searching and reading. During the searching phase, I perform searches. On an OS X machine, I use Google, Wikipedia, or eBay, whatever the tool at hand, to perform various searches. I quickly parse the results and Command-Click on the results of interest. On any desktop browser, this action loads the requested pages in the background, in background tabs. These tabs are then waiting for me when I’m done searching and I’m ready to read and assimilate the information I’m looking for (the reading phase). Sure, the iPad allows you to “Open Link in Window” by tapping-and-holding on the link, but this causes the link to open in the foreground and requires that you tap the window manager (invoking a cool, but slow, zoom transition) and then tap the original page to return to your search results (zoom animation again): Too many taps, and too much time.
The problem is further compounded by the iPad’s relatively limited amount of RAM. Even if you go through this open-in-new-window-switch-to-origninal-window fancy-zoomed dance, the windows that live in the background soon get dumped from memory and have to be reloaded when its time to use them. The result is a cumbersome experience impeded by extra taps and waiting. If you just read one website at a time and then go on to another, the iPad would likely be a good match for your uses, but for involved internet research, the iPad just doesn’t cut it.
KEYBOARD
I’m quite used to the touch keyboard on the iPhone. It’s great for what it is; I don’t use it for writing emails or long documents, but it gets the job done when it needs to. The iPad keyboard isn’t as good. The landscape orientation requires that you awkwardly balance the iPad on your lap when you touch type, and the portrait orientation is a little too big to comfortably thumb type. The result is two orientations which are both best suited to holding with one hand an one-finger typing with the other hand: slow and awkward. I’m an advocate of the touch screen keyboard, in general, but a split keyboard that facilitates thumb typing, would be a welcome improvement. The on screen keyboard in just another reason that I groan inside when I go to use the iPad.
KEYNOTE DISAPPOINTMENT
During Apple’s release of the iPad, they spent quite a bit of keynote time touting their new iWork apps for the iPad. In fact, this was one of the big draws for me in buying an iPad. I’m a graduate student working on my Ph.D. in chemical physics. One of the major ways that scientists share information with each other is through powerpoint-presentation fueled conferences. I’ve long loved keynote for making presentations, and I use almost everyone of its features.
Keynote for iPad cannot open Keynote for Mac files. Instead, it imports them into a special iPad-keynote file. This would be fine, except that the iPad doesn’t support many of the features of the Mac files. Most frustratingly, the iPad doesn’t support any sort of object groups, which play a major role in building clever animations and slides in Keynote. Yes, you export from Keynote for Mac into Quicktime and play that on the iPad, but animations render less smoothly, and the Quicktime Player affords less control than Keynote and doesn’t offer presenter view.
Not only is this an overall disappointment from the demo Apple offered, but it cost me $10. Thumbs down.
GOOD AS A READER, BUT LACKING SOFTWARE
The iPad’s killer app is reading. As an aspiring scientist, this is especially true of reading PDFs. As a student taking courses, the iPad has nearly all of my physics textbooks on it. It also is great for reading scientific papers. Having books and papers with you at all times makes you more likely to read them. Unfortunately, there isn’t a good library manager for PDFs on the iPad. Apple’s solution, iBooks, is beautiful and renders PDFs quickly, but is hampered by the lack of any sort of file management. Hello, Apple? Remember iTunes and the iPod? You wrote the book on making lumps of data easy and fun to access. Is pretty-fake-wood-bookshelf the best thing you can do for a pile of books? There’s no column-view, no browser, no search, no folders, no sorting options, just a big-ass-shelf. As far as keeping scientific papers organized, iBooks is totally useless. iBooks is further hampered by only offering two methods for adding PDFs to its library: a wired connection to iTunes or from email. There’s no option for saving PDFs off the web.
There are a few 3rd party solutions. The most popular (and cheapest) of these is Goodreader. Goodreader gives you a lot for the money, but has a bit of a “kitchen-sink” approach to their software, with every conceivable feature implemented, often poorly. Goodreader supports a weird little file system, with folders for keeping things organized. You can get files into Goodreader from an amazing number of sources. It connects to the web, email, dropbox, FTP servers (AFP is notably missing), you can connect over bluetooth or via WiFi. But, Goodreader is buggy and often slow. It had very awkward navigation controls until its most recent update. It doesn’t support true PDF page numbers; there’s no page thumbnails; it doesn’t seem to support links or navigation within the PDF. Overall I’d give Goodreader a thumbs up, since it makes the iPad a viable reader for science and textbooks, but it’s laking some features and stability to make it shine.
In the end, its the iPad’s capabilities as a book reader is what I like most. As I’ve weighed the option of selling my iPad it has been its capabilities as a book reader that I’ve compared against the notion of cash in my pocket. But, at $600 it’s just too much reader for my budget.
SYNCING
The abysmal syncing situation on the iPad has been written about before. In short, there is no file syncing on the iPad. The iPad is about as smart as a floppy drive when it comes to moving files on and off. For maintaining a large PDF library of scientific papers this is particularly cumbersome. Mendelely promises to support the iPad sometime soon, but in the meantime its full manual library management.
An aside, Apple should buy Dropbox. Apple has had a long time to demonstrate that they suck at online services. Dropbox is flat-out awesome, supports over the air syncing for Mac, Windows and Linux and they have clients for iPad and iPhone. I use Dropbox everyday and I love it. Just the fact that Dropbox is the best online service out there that Google doesn’t own, is reason enough for Apple to buy it. It would be a great cornerstone to the MobileMe suite, and worth paying for extra space. Apple: save MobileMe by buying Dropbox.
IPHONE CANNIBAL
The nail in the coffin for the iPad in my life was my new iPhone 4. Between the retina display, iOS 4, FaceTime, and the more responsive hardware (thanks in part to more RAM) the current iPad seems sluggish and behind the times. I’m sure Apple will address all of these issues and perhaps more in the next release of the iPad, but for the time being it makes the iPad seem even more like a $600 toy. Product cannibalism is a term that pundits and analysts often toss around, and this is the first time I’ve personally encountered it. The iPhone 4 is so good (take that, antenna critics) that it makes my almost-new iPad seem obsolete.
WHAT THIS DOESN’T MEAN
The iPad isn’t doomed. I’m a power user, admittedly. Even so, the iPad does have a spot in my life for reading and photos, but not a $600 spot. For the non-power users out there the iPad is great. I convinced my 89 year-old grandmother to buy one, and its working out really well for her. Similarly, my non-iPhone using scientist friends seems to like their iPads too. I still think the iPad is great for a majority of users and would still encourage them to get one (Anna, Blaine and Grandpa C I’m looking at you). But for me in my three months on use, the expense didn’t outweigh its benefits.
Improv Everywhere performed the first scene on a subway. It’s awesome, absurd, and safe for work. I want to be a part of this group, but I live in a city with only 30,000 people, and they’re all half-asleep most of the time.
While it’s a well-written article, author Larry Knowles focuses on the whiny nerdy junior high point of view. I’ve got a grown-up friend who unicycles — he has a typical run-of-the-mill unicycle, one with a 3-foot wheel, and a mountain unicycle with a knobby tire and hydraulic brake — and he couldn’t care less about what people thought. He’s out to have a good time, and he does it.
There’s a stellar video of some extreme mountain unicycling (with the stupidest song of all time?) in the article, but the tone of Knowles’ writing is both apologetic and sort of antagonistic. I’d be ashamed to have my name on it.
In the year AD 2293, a post-apocalypse Earth is inhabited mostly by the “Brutals”, who are ruled by the “Eternals” who use other “Brutals” called “Exterminators”, “the Chosen” warrior class. The Exterminators worship the god Zardoz, a huge, flying, hollow stone head. Zardoz teaches:
The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth . . . and kill!
The trailer is a sheer cliff of insanity. “Beyond 1984. Beyond 2001. Beyond Love, Beyond Death,” is what it says, but mostly it looks like a floating hollow head and Sean Connery (in his 2nd post-Bond film – how did he ever get acting work again?) running around in a weird Borat swimsuit and waving a revolver around. Oh, and his mustache reminds me of my dad’s from the same era.
The trailer is technically safe for work. However, I suspect if your coworkers happen to see you looking at this video… I don’t even know. Would there even be repercussions? I suspect the sheer weirdness of the trailer is so weird, it would go into my head, but without any memory hooks. I wouldn’t be able to associate my weird coworker with the trailer’s bombardment of bizarre, so no change in opinion could happen.
Germany or Florida: There was a two-car crash caused “by a 37-year-old woman driver who was shaving her bikini area while her ex-husband took the wheel from the passenger seat.” They were on the way to see the woman’s boyfriend.
Oh, and she was driving with a suspended license. Oh, and after the wreck, the woman and her ex switched seats so she wouldn’t get busted, but the air-bag burns gave her away.
I just love the idea of the conversation that must have taken place to make this wreck happen.
37-year-old woman driver: Go with me to see my boyfriend!
Ex-husband: Huh?
37-year-old woman driver: Just get in the car! C’mon!
Ex-husband: Ok.
37-year-old woman driver: Take the wheel! I gotta look good!
Ex-husband: What the hell?
Crash.
update:How about a mug shot! Pubes are the least of this woman’s physical issues.
Michael Zinman, collector of panhandling signs brazenly brandished by the homeless or otherwise panhandling scum of the earth:
I did engage with all the individuals I purchased signs from, and quite often, my offer of purchase was declined. I would guess at least two out of every five people on the street turned me down, and I was not able to purchase their signs. They were just unwilling to part with them. I think it was a matter of self dignity, and I was ever sensitive to their condition and never tried to further persuade them to sell.
Criminy, he bought cardboard panhandling signs. What ever happened to the good old days where you could just kill the homeless person and take the sign?
short version
Google wins because Bing is ugly.
long version, including screen shots
Last week, I made Bing the default search engine in all the web browsers on my computer and iPhone. It was how I searched for info, products, pictures, and websites and local businesses.
On my iPhone, the only place Bing was any better was with the local business search. It put the business front and center, and made calling them a snap. Google’s take on this is pretty good, but Bing was the clear winner here.
Then there’s the image search. Here, Google wins a lot. I couldn’t remember any of the no-go image searches I did in Bing, but a lot of the time, the images link at the top wasn’t even there. Super irritating.
Last, and this more than anything was the clincher, Bing is just plain ugly. Note in the above screen shots that Bing has ads first, taking up valuable mobile real estate. Just plain stupid. Contempt for their users is unsurprising coming from Microsoft (Bing is a Microsoft product), and I’m voting by not using them.
Anyway, the following is a pretty run-of-the-mill general search. Bing’s quick bio at the very top is pretty cool, in a general kind of way. I feel like Google’s link to the Wikipedia entry within the first screen is more real-world useful, though. This is certainly an arguable point, but the important part is Google just looks nicer. It’s more open and airy and inviting. Also, looking below, the Google search options are at the very top, in high-contrast text. The Bing options vary from image to image, and are very low-contrast, and kind of difficult to read. Especially in the car or in direct sunlight. Again, consistency isn’t something Microsoft is really known for.
On the desktop, the experience was very similar, only larger: Bing is almost as usable as Google, yet far uglier
conclusion
What I was left with after a week of Bing was this: Microsoft just isn’t happy to let somebody else be the kings of any particular sector of computing. They feel they have to have their fingers in every single pie, and get butt-hurt when they’re not the king. Back in the day, Google spanked MSN. They’re making a ton of money in advertising. Their web browser, Chrome, is better than IE. Gmail is better than Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail. Not content to cede search to Google, they made a Google knock-off in classic knock-off fashion: not as good as the original, but a lot cheaper. Except using Google is free, which makes Bing doubly uncompelling.
That distinct shape is beneficial since the flat sides of the cubes keep the droppings in place on their precarious locations.
There’s no how-to guide, though.
Joey “Jaws” Chestnut won his fourth consecutive title at today’s 95th annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island, eating 54 hot dogs in 10 minutes.
That the contest ended in an arrest is beside the point. Seriously: 54 hot dogs in 10 minutes. That’s one hot dog every 11 seconds. Criminy!
Happy 4th of July! On this day, in 1492, we signed the constitution and declared independance from Germany! Go America!
She’s wrong, of course. On this day, we celebrate the birth of our lord and savior’s country (America!) by praising the lord and eating only patriotic hot dogs. (No Hebrew National!)
My granddad bought it brand new in 1959 because it was the mode that won the 1959 Tour de France. The last ride it went on was in the late summer of 1972. On the way home, says my dad (who was on his still-new 1971 Mondia), at Point Fermin Park in San Pedro, California, my grandpa almost hit a skunk. After that ride, the bike sat in the garage until it got hung in the rafters of the garage a few years later.
Since then, my grandpa’s brains have gone steadily downhill. He now has a full-time caretaker and can hardly remember ten minutes ago; asking him about anything from his past is an exercise in futility.
On a trip down to my grandpa’s house to pick up a few items from his shop, my dad grabbed the bike for me. The paint is still bright and beautiful, the wheels straight. The leather saddle is hard as a rock, and I’ve been periodically soaking it in neat’s foot oil, but the softening is pretty slow-going.
Up to this point, I’ve replaced the tubes and tires; brake cables, housings, and pads; and put a different, more supple, yet non-anachronistic saddle on it. The front derailleur has a handle on it rather than a cable and a shifter, so I haven’t had to replace the cable. The rear derailleur’s cable splits off into two cables before vanishing into the mechanism itself. I haven’t replaced that cable yet because I want an entire day wide open to work on it.
I’ve also cleaned and re-lubed the bearings in the front and rear wheels, but still need to do the bottom-bracket and headset. The crank has a cotter pin in it, and like the rear derailleur, I want a day to deal with it. And the headset feels fine, so is simply a low priority. I also need to re-wrap the bars with new tape.
The thing to take away from this narrative is that old stuff isn’t always obsolete. Just because something new and better becomes available doesn’t mean your old thing automatically sucks. My fifty-one year old bike is ridable, and is a fantastic project. I love working on it, and when I’m done, I’ll have a work of art and history that works. I probably wont win any races, but that’s obviously not the point. The point is I’ll have the same model of bike that won the 1959 Tour de France; the bike my granddad rode for some thirteen years and put untold miles on. It’s hard to put any price on that kind of story.
I’d say he did pretty good! I think it’s fair to say he didn’t embarrass himself at all. Other than the strech-pants and bigger-than-I-remember-it belly. If you count both of those things, then he embarrassed himself quite a lot.
Here’s a link to the actual auction, but eventually it’ll go away, so I took some screen shots of the auction itself and also the photos and slapped ‘em on Flickr. It’s just too cool to fade into the sunset.
Anyway, the thing looks spectacular, if spectacularly useless. I’m really glad it exists and that somebody had the hutzpah to make it. I’m weirded they added the guy to it. If you rode it, it would look homo-erotic (and let’s face it, there’s not a girl on the planet interested enough in Tron to spend more than about fifteen seconds looking at it).
Since all the politicians can’t pass a budget, Arnold wants to pay all state employees minimum wage. Shouldn’t it be the state Legislature who gets minimum wage till a budget is passed? I don’t think Arnold’s very smart.
Kyle Reese, paraphrased:
Listen, and understand. That governaator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are broke.
Adam Carolla: “It’s like my grate-grandfather Hezakia ManGrate used to say to me: go Grate or go home.”
I feel weird linking to an ad spot on a podcast I listen to (not an ad spot for a podcast, mind you), but when it’s so bad it’s good, it’s, um… work safe.
Judd Apatow: “Let’s face it, the world needs more Pee-wee Herman.”
Agreed.
Barbara Bradley Hagerty:
“What if I told you that a psychopath has an emotional IQ that’s like a 5-year-old?” Kiehl asks. “Well, if that was the case, we’d make the same argument for individuals with low emotional IQ — that maybe they’re not as deserving of punishment, not as deserving of culpability, etc.”
Fascinating article. It’s very layman-oriented, and easy to understand.
The biggest complaint I hear from the women in my life about their husbands and boyfriends is this: husbands are disorganized, can’t remember dates, can’t remember essential information, and they don’t get things done.
I think I have a solution.
First, guys tend to have a hard time with remembering details. We’re able to remember that Steve Zing played with Danzig back in the Samhain days, and so we’re stoked he played bass on the new Danzig album, but your measurements? Your birthday? Your sister’s name? Our brain cells were not built for that.
We can remember recipes for meat marinades, who has the best price for Jamison, and all the back road routes to anywhere in town, but that the kid has a doctor’s appointment on Thursday? That you switched shifts and will be home late on the 5th? Forget it.
The problem with us guys is that our brains just don’t work that way. We let women worry about day to day details because you’ll worry about them for us. If you want us to know about anything, you have to make it easy. Remember the old saying, make the good choice the easy choice? Exactly.
So for those of you who are married, I suggest a couple of smart phones. iPhones and Android will do what I recommend, but I don’t know about others.
You each get a smart phone. You switch all your information to Google so you’ve got email and calendar integration. Then you, the wife, will have access to your husband’s calendar. The kid has a doctor’s appointment? Put it on his calendar, and set a reminder for two days, one day, and the day of the event. Since he’ll have his phone with him everywhere (unlimited porn gaming anywhere is a pretty compelling reason to hang onto a phone), your job stops at data entry.
Oh, and you can slap all kinds of notes into a contact on an iPhone (and, presumably, Android). Measurements, relatives, birthdays, everything you can think of, really, can be two taps away. Easy!
However, phones are expensive. 1 And maybe you’re not married, just dating. Things are only now beginning getting really serious. Like, you finally care that he knows your mom’s name. It’s not worth buying him an iPhone over. What’s your solution?
Moleskine notebooks, that’s what.
All guys like high-quality products, and the Moleskine notebook is certainly that. The Cahier (not a misspelling) is jeans back-pocket sized, and the cover is made of heavy yet flexable cardboard in a variety of colors, there’s a small pocket in the back cover, the paper is an absolute joy to write on, the last half of the book’s pages are perforated for easy tearing out, and come in plain, lined, and graph paper pages.
So what you, the chick with the potential idiot boyfriend, does is pick up a 3-pack of graph paper books. Why graph paper? Because guys who prefer lined paper and guys who prefer blank paper can both deal with graph paper just fine.
Now you’ve got your 3-pack, you take out the first book and fill the first two pages with important stuff. Your full name, birthdate, measurements, allergies, the names of your family and where they live, all that stuff.
And now he’s got all the pertinent info, plus a place to write down ideas and appointments and to-do lists all that stuff that he’ll be busted for forgetting.
It’s an everybody wins solution, and for only $8. Means if he can’t stand you making him write down his honey-do list and breaks up with you, you’ve got two more notebooks stashed in your underwear drawer.
[iTunes link.] Here’s my major complaint with Ozzy: his 2001 album, Down to Earth had a song on it called Gets Me Through. The linup on the song was incredible: Black Label Society’s Zakk Wylde, eventual Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, and Faith No More’s Mike Bordin. The music sounds like armageddon. It is played with such confidence and competence, and should have been a heavy metal song above heavy metal songs. The lyrics should be about a serial killer, about zombies, about the end of days, about the wrath of god.
Instead:
I try to entertain you the best I can
I wish I’d started walking before I ran
But I still love the feeling I get from you
I hope you’ll never stop cause it gets me through yeah
It gets me through yeah
We don’t need more of this bait-and-switch drivel. I’ll give the new album as open minded a listen as I can, but I’m already kind of passing judgement: the album closer is called I Love You All. Criminy.
[iTunes link.] Love this stuff. Best since 1990′s Lucifuge?
iOS 4 adds Bing as one of Safari’s search options. Safari and Chrome on my Mac also support Bing as the default search engine. For the next week, starting today, Bing will be my default search engine on both my desktop and iPhone. I’ll review the experience next weekend. Good luck to me!
This is why I’m about 85% ok with animal testing. I don’t give a hoot about the awesome kitty getting to live, but I do like that it’ll inevitably benefit human amputees.
After all, $3000 just for the legs, not counting the surgeries, is a stupid amount to spend on a cat. It almost has to improve human medicine, else the owners are insane.
Karen Grigsby Bates for NPR:
The big difference between Jackson now and Jackson a year or so ago — besides the obvious — is he’s making money, but his outlay has changed dramatically.
Inspiring! Stirring! Wonderful! Work safe! Nine minutes long! (Part 1 is here.)
My site is an exercise in narcissism. It’s even called Creig’s Site. Creig. That’s me! I’m the only one who writes here. I quote other people, but it’s because they said something I’m interested in. I post stuff I’d want to read if I weren’t writing my site.
Do you see how me-centric this is?
I’m beating you over the head with me (visualize that for a second) because there’s been a lot of talk on the Interwebs about sites and comments. One of my favorite sites, Daring Fireball, has no comments. On this topic, propeieter John Gruber wrote:
You write on your site; I write on mine. That’s a response.
[...]
Comments, at least on popular websites, aren’t conversations. They’re cacophonous shouting matches. DF is a curated conversation, to be sure, but that’s the whole premise.
Taking this idea and running, Derek Powazek (who’s site also has no comments) wrote:
The choice is not really to have comments on or off. The choice is: What is the level of community interaction you want to foster on your site? What’s the purpose of the site, and is community interaction part of that purpose?
Both pieces are thoughtful and fair and good. I agree with them.
Thing is, my site is a whole different beast.
Beast? More like a whole different small creature beneath notice; but that’s why I’ve got comments on. Mostly.
My site has two types of posts: links and essays. A link will have a smaller title font, and clicking on the title will take you to another site I want you to look at. Those posts generally have quotes and I didn’t really do much besides draw your attention to them. I don’t have comments enabled there because I didn’t do anything, and don’t feel that my site is really the forum on which to discuss whatever it is I’m linking to. Comment on the site I linked to instead.
Essays on the other hand, are larger, more thoughtful pieces I’ve written, generally to argue a point or make you see the world the way I see it. Most of my readers (hi, Mom!) don’t have their own website and don’t blog, so any interaction I’m going to get from them will be through comments.
I like criticism, richly deserved grammar nit-picks, and the opinions of the people who’s opinions I value (the people who read me).
Some day, if my site ever becomes popular, I may change my stance. But for now, with my limited, intimate audience, I like it exactly the way it is.
A letter to the editor of the San Luis Obispo newspaper The New Times:
Rush Limbaugh is now officially the Sierra Club’s biggest fundraiser, and we’ll be sending him a thank-you note on behalf of everyone who’s contributed.
I work in a college town. My wife works at the college. I’m horrified by how stupid and dangerous the kids are. I’ve lost count of all the times I’ve seen some stupid kid walking across a busy street all slow, with 100% of his attention on his cell phone.
Come to think of it, I’ve lost count of all the times I’ve seen some stupid driver cruising down some busy street, distractedly glancing up from her cell phone to be sure she’s not wondered too far into oncoming traffic.
And while it’s only a matter of time before those two meet and disaster strikes, my real worry is this: I ride my bike from the bus stop to work and back on a daily basis. I have to share the road with these college drivers. Drivers who’s brains aren’t fully formed (and are far more likely to get into a fatal car wreck) are blasting past me on my way to work. They’re texting, iPodding, Facebooking, sleep-deprived, hung over, drunk, high, and don’t care one tiny bit about my daughter having a dad for the rest of her childhood.
All of which is why, even though we couldn’t really afford it, we got me a new helmet when my old one fell off my bike and was run over by the bus on the way to work. I’m a very strong rider, I pay excellent attention, and I don’t doubt my skills one tiny little bit; but I sure do doubt your stupid kid’s ability to to keep her eyes on the road for three consecutive seconds and not run me down.
The lesson here is two-fold: first, help my kid keep her dad by training your kids not to be total distracto stupids behind the wheel (or, better, don’t let them have a wheel to get behind while they’re in college; get ‘em a bus pass and a bike; they’re cheaper than a car, too). Second, like the title says: ride fast, take chances, but wear a helmet.
Not if it’s your 8-year-old girl getting it for you. Your horrible wife, though? Pretty funny.
Mark your calendars. It’s true.
Michael O’Brien of The Hill reported that a document prepared for President Obama and Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowseke says, “Keeping drugs illegal reduces their availability and lessens willingness to use them.”
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, told the Fox Biz Network:
If somebody’s gonna to smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society.
Sarah Palin makes zero sense to me. On one hand, weed is ok; on the other, the BP oil spill is the fault of environmentalists. She’s why our founding fathers felt there should be a layer between the common man and the government. She (and GW, now that I’m thinking about it) was both the common man and the government, and that didn’t turn up roses. (Thanks to Christopher for the head’s up.)
Why would you ever need this? I’m horrified. (It seems to be inspired by this $88 pile of crap.)
Of course I’m not upgrading till I’m sure all my plugins will work. None of my plugins are too specialized, so I’ve got high hopes.
NY Daily News:
“I apologize,” Barton told Hayward at a House Energy Committee panel hearing on BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. “I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it’s a tragedy.”
Barton was referring to President Obama’s faceoff with the BP barons that ended with the oil company saying sorry for the mammoth oil spill currently fouling the Gulf of Mexico – and promising to finance a $20 billion fund to compensate the victims.
According to the article, and this one, Joe Barton’s received about 1.5 million since 1989 from Big Oil And Gas. In the words of Mike Monteiro, “that’s the new Judas mark.”
This is a pretty boutique website; not many people read it, so I’m able to post whatever silly joke stuff I want.
“Did you hear about the Pollack’s new invention? It’s a solar powered flashlight! [guffaw]“
Black machete, tomahawk, and leather-man style multi tool. Badass. (Via Jimmy Kimmel.)
Wikipedia:
As much as the U.S. Navy has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, for example, in terms of tonnage, its battle fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined—and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners.
USA IS NUMER 1!!!!
The NY Times has an excellent story on emerging gender roles in Sweden; me are taking — are expected to take — more time off to care for their children.
Birgitta Ohlsson, European affairs minister, as quoted in the article:
Machos with dinosaur values don’t make the top-10 lists of attractive men in women’s magazines anymore. [...] Now men can have it all — a successful career and being a responsible daddy. It’s a new kind of manly. It’s more wholesome.
Republicans, please take note of what real family values look like. (Via Kottke.)
I took the following photographs in the city of Atascadero less than one mile from each other.
