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September 30, 2005
What Happens To Indicted Congressmen?
An historical overview. http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/29/114240/927Posted by irons at 11:15 AM
September 28, 2005
TPMCafe's full-text RSS feeds have finally figured out how to do linebreaks
I sent them a note about this a few weeks ago; wonder if it had any effect. http://tpmcafe.comPosted by irons at 06:06 PM
Two years ago, I won an honorary mention in the teevee.org dead pool
Steve Holt! My three guesses were One Tree Hill, Luis, and Threat Matrix, in that order. I am shamed by the alleged continuing existence of One Tree Hill. In retrospect, Threat Matrix was a bad bet -- an inevitable cancellation, but too expensive to axe before December or so. This year, the first show to get canceled was some legal comedy that I'd never heard of. http://www.teevee.org/archive/weblog/2005/09/28/140746.htmlPosted by irons at 04:04 PM
September 19, 2005
Jason Shiga
Andy Baio this morning highlights Adam Kempa's evangelization of comic artist Jason Shiga, with whom I went to high school driver's ed classes, which were taught by an apocalyptic Christian named Marcus, who didn't care much about whether we could drive properly because he sincerely believed the devil told him that civilization would collapse in or by the year 2000. Nice to see Jason getting some wider recognition; also, the Shigabooks site redesign is done, after "two years of inactivity due to laziness". http://www.kempa.com/blog/archives/001006.htmlPosted by irons at 10:24 AM
September 18, 2005
Oh noes! Michael Medved's gonna be so angry
"At the Central Park Zoo, Silo and Roy, two male Chinstrap penguins, have been in an exclusive relationship for four years. Last mating season, they even fostered an egg together. "'They got all excited when we gave them the egg,' said Rob Gramzay, senior keeper for polar birds at the zoo. He took the egg from a young, inexperienced couple that hatched an extra and gave it to Silo and Roy. 'And they did a really great job of taking care of the chick and feeding it.'" http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/cns/2002-06-10/591.aspPosted by irons at 10:57 PM
September 16, 2005
US disaster declarations by county
Via slate, this nifty FEMA map graphic depicts relative declared-disaster frequency since 1965. Population plays a large role, of course. Floods, storms, hurricanes and tornados appear to account for more than 75% of the crises by their raw totals. http://www.fema.gov/library/images/dd-1964_gif.htmlPosted by irons at 10:14 AM
September 15, 2005
Slow Seismic Slip Event Underway in Pacific Northwest
As we learned after the Sumatra tsunami, the pacific northwest is susceptible to the same kind of underwater seismic activity. Apparently a comparable tsunami happens "every 500 years or so", with the last one coming in 1700. At the moment we're enjoying a predicted slow rumbling called "episodic tremor and slip" between the Juan de Fuca and North American tectonic plates, which happens about every 14 months and while underway increases the relative risk of a rip-snorting earthquake by a factor of about 30. "Having said that, 30 times a small number is still a small number," says geologist John Cassidy. I need offsite backups. http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050913_slip.htmlPosted by irons at 08:57 AM
September 14, 2005
Xserve RAID updated quietly
Tom Yager: "Apple claims to have delivered 76 petabytes' worth of storage to customers." Wikipedia says, "the [Star Trek] android Data was built with an ultimate storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits, or approximately 88 petabytes." http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/archives/2005/09/apple_ships_7_t.htmlPosted by irons at 09:04 AM
Jack Handey: What I'd Say to the Martians
"We are a warlike species, you claim, and you show me films of Earth battles to prove it. But I have seen all the films about twenty times. Get some new films, or, so help me, if I ever get out of here I will empty my laser pistol into everyone I see, even pets." http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/articles/050808sh_shoutsPosted by irons at 08:19 AM
September 13, 2005
Barry Bonds is ridiculous
From the AP recap of the Giants 5-4 win over San Diego: "When Bonds struck out swinging in the seventh Monday night, it marked the first time he struck out by swinging and missing on three pitches since Aug. 26, 1998, against the Mets' Hideo Nomo in a loss to New York at Candlestick Park, according to STATS Inc." 1998. This is what I mean when I say that any steroid use by Bonds is not really meaningful to me -- he's so much better than the second-best hitter in baseball that performance-enhancing drugs cannot explain it. See also Robert Mankoff. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=250913126Posted by irons at 10:44 PM
Jared is a dashboard widget
Hooray! http://www.freeverse.com/jared/Posted by irons at 02:11 PM
September 12, 2005
TimesSelect mutates in unfriendly fashion
The New York Times' paid-access program has shifted from its original description -- access to the paper's archives is still included in the $50/year program, but is now capped at 100 articles a month. Boooo! http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/editorsletter.html?hpPosted by irons at 11:31 AM
September 10, 2005
So much for digging a hole to China
Thanks to this neat Brazilian Google Maps hack, I now know that if I dig a hole down from Seattle I will pop out in the Indian ocean, nearabouts halfway between Madagascar and Antarctica. So, I won't be doing that. http://grad.icmc.usp.br/~cipriani/bighole.php?lang=enPosted by irons at 02:56 PM
September 06, 2005
With Great Power Comes Little Else
The indispensable Fafblog: "Of course, the lion's share of responsibility for disaster management falls on the individual. With their homes destroyed and their city flooded, the people of New Orleans could have simply designed and constructed boats from the plentiful driftwood and sailed to safety; instead, they panicked and scrambled for uncontaminated water and insulin." http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/with-great-power-comes-little-else.htmlPosted by irons at 08:20 PM
Gasoline in Iraq costs four cents a gallon?
So says Kevin Drum. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007065.phpPosted by irons at 08:17 PM
Improving the CSS 2.1 strict parser for IE 7
"To be very clear the root node selector was a bug. This was introduced by Chris Wilson back in IE 4 which is why we don't let him work with the code anymore." http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/02/460115.aspxPosted by irons at 03:58 PM
September 03, 2005
Bobby Shaftoe
My first surprise, while looking for David Holmes' project The Free Association in the iTMS, was to stumble across an unrelated song called "Bobby Shaftoe", named (I presume, despite having been released the same year as the book) for the stupendous badass filling approximately half of Neal Stephenson's epic novel Cryptonomicon. My second surprise is that it's in the New Age section. Listen to the sample and revel in the peculiarity. http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=49589407&selectedItemId=49589405Posted by irons at 11:56 AM
September 02, 2005
Dailykos: the GOP agenda in action
Grover Norquist's "drown it in a bathtub" comment comes back to haunt him. Grover's worried that Katrina's aftermath is going to make it much harder to permanently repeal the estate tax next week. Here's hoping. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/153018/3558Posted by irons at 06:27 PM
Arnold is officially out of excuses
Opposite day: "Signaling a likely veto if it does pass, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman said he preferred to let judges sort out the legality of gay marriage; such a case is moving toward the state Supreme Court." [via] http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marriage2sep02,0,4562261.story?coll=la-home-localPosted by irons at 11:25 AM
Peter Daou's ethical analysis of Iraq hawkery
http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-46bc-af30-fcb819c848a1Posted by irons at 10:32 AM
Fats Domino looks pretty good
... especially for a guy, you know, feared to be dead. http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/01/katrina.fats.domino/Posted by irons at 10:07 AM
September 01, 2005
Kepler's Books went out of business
A great bookstore, a great loss. It was just about the nicest thing in Palo Alto, even if it was in Menlo Park. http://www.keplers.com/Posted by irons at 08:31 PM
Is intelligent design a hoax?
Daniel Dennett's excellent NYT editorial; good way to think about it. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/opinion/28dennett.html?ex=1282881600&en=5e66afa05b9ed96b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssPosted by irons at 09:12 AM