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July 28, 2005
Adebisi goes to "Lost"!
Fans of "Oz" should be ecstatic. Non-fans of "Oz" have no idea what they're in for. What a terrific actor. http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?id=31834Posted by irons at 10:39 AM
July 27, 2005
"There is no demarcation of the absurd"
"Now, with increasing evidence that echinacea does not work for colds, scientists are confronting a problem, Dr. Sampson said, in that 'there is no 'demarcation of the absurd,' a point at which it is unwise to pursue an investigation further.'" Academy Award-winner Mary Steenburgen once suggested I take echinacea, but she was wrong. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/28/health/28cold.html?hp&ex=1122609600&en=784f4af866253b8f&ei=5094&partner=homepagePosted by irons at 09:20 PM
July 26, 2005
Adorable pictures of enormous tortoises
http://theocacao.com/document.page/138Posted by irons at 09:28 AM
July 23, 2005
On filching site designs
I thought the whole point of appropriating someone else's site design was that you were sneakily taking credit for something you hadn't done. The key element of "sneakily", however, would be ensuring that your audience doesn't recognize the source.
This is hard to do even when you're being clever about it, because affinity groups on the web are so varied, but why in the name of Jebus would an open-source RSS aggregator for Mac OS X think it was a good idea to rip off the site design of the #1 aggregator in the world, even if said aggregator didn't itself run on OS X? There's some consciousness of guilt going on here.
http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.html
Posted by irons at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)
Tom Yager's friendly guide to AMD's antitrust suit against Intel
I guess now I have to give a crap what happens in the Intel-compatible chip market. It's a little like being told I need to follow the futures market for brussels sprouts. Yager is an AMD partisan, but who knows, maybe I will be too. Good paragraph:AMD relates in its complaint that HP offered AMD an opportunity to put AMD processors in HP commercial desktop systems. HP, knowing that Intel would retaliate, asked AMD to help offset the cost of that retaliation. AMD agreed to give HP its first million CPUs free if HP would give them a chance; you see, AMD has never asked for a break or used its underdog status to claim it's entitled to business with an OEM. HP wisely signed up and set about building and boxing. But according to AMD, Intel caught wind of the AMD-based desktop the day before it was to launch and took quick action. HP was instructed to withhold the 160,000 systems it had built from the channel the desktop was designed to target. Not surprisingly, HP didn't build any more of those AMD desktops. If you can imagine it, a well-heeled OEM left 840,000 free processors in sealed crates rather than incur any more of Intel's wrath.http://weblog.infoworld.com/yager/archives/2005/06/intel_were_on_t.html
Posted by irons at 10:12 AM
July 22, 2005
I'm really starting to like Ann Telnaes
This is easily the best of the Roberts cartoons I've seen. http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=13&topicid=30Posted by irons at 09:23 AM
July 19, 2005
Daniel Gross says ethanol is worse than you thought
The superfluous insult: "[Ethanol] contains only about two-thirds as much energy as gasoline. Thus, when it gets blended with regular gasoline, it lowers the heat content of the fuel. So, while a gallon of ethanol-blended gas may cost the same as regular gasoline, it won't take you as far." http://www.slate.com/id/2122961/Posted by irons at 11:17 PM
July 18, 2005
After having been laid off by Salon, Charles Taylor is apparently now writing for Slate (and the Newark Star-Ledger)
Unless that's former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, but insightful criticisms of the studio system (and the gratuitous, undeserved swipe at Christopher Nolan) seem more likely to have come from the Salon guy. Good for Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2122783/Posted by irons at 12:50 PM
July 15, 2005
Google Maps in IE supports live zooming
I found myself using Google Maps the other day on a relatively recent Windows machine, and noticed that the zoom bar provides a pretty good live approximation of final results. Safari and Firefox just refresh when you let go of the zoom control. Booo!Posted by irons at 01:27 PM
Ted Rall finds a Gonzalez compromise
I usually find Rall a little too high-strung, but this is jolly good. http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=4&topicid=10Posted by irons at 09:46 AM
CFR roundtable on global pandemics
"Let's just step back for a second and imagine that in 1918, the influenza that spread had a less than 3 percent mortality rate in human beings. So--and it killed probably up to about 100 million people in the world. This H5N1 [the avian flu] that we're looking at in the people who have acquired it so far, it's been a 55 percent mortality rate. So we are way out of the ballpark here on mortality." The participants talk a lot about what a global flu would do to our highly interdependent, just-in-time global economy, and none of it is good. Those who would hope to ride it out with Powerbars and high-speed internet will be disappointed. See also John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza", which explains in great detail why the people with the most to fear are the healthy young adults with robust immune systems. http://www.cfr.org/pub8198/laurie_garrett_anthony_s_fauci_michael_osterholm_rita_colwell/the_threat_of_global_pandemics.phpPosted by irons at 08:14 AM
July 13, 2005
Toles on Rove
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinion/toles.html?name=Toles&date=20050713Posted by irons at 03:56 PM
Paul Gigot has absolutely enormous balls
Alternate-universe fantasy at a level The Onion may only dream of: "Karl Rove, Whistleblower" http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006955Posted by irons at 03:10 PM
July 04, 2005
The very model of a modern Labour minister
Remember that "This land is your land" Flash animation from the 2004 campaign? Here's a British version, aimed specifically at a daft national ID card plan, which gives its audience about 500% more credit than the Bush/Kerry ditty, while also including frequent cutaways to a cute dog in various costumes that plays a piano. http://eclectech.co.uk/clarkeidcards.phpPosted by irons at 10:19 PM
The dutch word for "father" is spelled "Vader"
I learned this watching "Character", which I enjoyed but which struck me as at least two different films edited down into one. It's primary about a very bad dad and it hinges on the fine points of Dutch bankruptcy law.Posted by irons at 08:52 AM