LOTR’s third installment, ROTK, has introduced a character that fans are not happy about. (You can never have too many TLAs or ETLAs.)
Category: Uncategorized
I've Got Music Covered
If you’ve got some time to kill, check out this collection of strange album covers.
Then top it off with the Worst Album Covers Ever.
Spam Canned?
Last Thursday Gaven Stubberfield, number 8 on Spamhaus’ Top 10 Spamers list, was arrested and charged with four felony counts of using fraudulent means to transmit unsolicited bulk e-mail, the first felony prosecution in the nation specifically using an antispam law.
My incoming spam dropped by more than 90% over the weekend. There was only one this morning instead of the usual 40 to 60. Was it due to the federal antispam bill? No, that hasn’t been signed yet; and Spamhaus says it shouldn’t be. Whatever the reason, it’s good to see spam slowing.
State of Hyphened Awareness
Who decides if anti-spam gets a hyphen? It seems to be running about 50-50 now.
Tomb With A View
The Theban Mapping Project has been working to prepare a comprehensive, detailed map and database of every archaeological, geological, and ethnographic feature in Thebes. Fly over and zoom into the temples, tombs and palaces of Luxor’s West Bank with the Atlas of the Theban Necropolis.
I Knew That Would Happen
December 14th, 2003 marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Michel de Nostredame (whose Latinized name was Nostradamus).
Graphical Goat Ephemera
The Cult of the Goat contains more bock beer label bock* pictures than we actually care to see, along with a history of why goats are associated with evil.
But that’s just one time eater at NoRelevance.com, “an obsession with the obsolete, discarded, forgotten and otherwise passed-over”.
* “bock” is actually the German word for “billy goat”
Madman Munch?
Astronomers say the colors in Edvard Munch’s famous painting, The Scream, was not from his own imagination, but was inspired by the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa. Its ash cloud affected sunsets for more than a year and Oslo’s local newspaper reported that the phenomenon was widely seen. The astronomers found the location where the painting was conceived, and determined that Munch was looking in the direction west of Java.
I don’t suspect art critics will change their stance that the painting “depicts not so much an incident or a landscape as a state of mind.”
Mad Magazine's Bush Tribute
It’s G.I. Joke! Weapons of mass destruction are, of course, not included.
DNA Sequencing For Children
James Watson was only 24 when he discovered the helical structure of DNA. But why should today’s kids wait to get started? Discovery.com is selling an $80 toy called DNA Explorer that allows children to extract and sequence the DNA from a variety of foodstuffs.
Or they can try Discovery’s Forensics Lab
And to think that I used to be happy playing with chemicals that would only change colors, foam, and crack the sink.
Sittin' On Top Of The World
The view from Everest is literally breathtaking, but carrying oxygen isn’t a requirement to see the picture. Bring some time and bandwidth to see the rest of the images at the Astronomy Picture of the Day archive, or just take a quick look at today’s picture.
More Or Less, We're Talking Jobs
Ah, but that’s the question: more or less? There were two articles this morning about the labor market.
One headline states that Jobless Claims Rise to 365,000. The four-week moving average of new claims, a less volatile indicator, rose to 362,500 last week. (NY Times)
Another says that Businesses Add 57,000 New Jobs in Nov., although that was lower than the 150,000 that had been predicted. (ABC News)
Does that mean a net loss of 308,000 jobs? Or does it mean that although there were 365k new people unemployed, that 422k unemployed people got jobs, giving a net gain of 57k jobs? I had been thinking it was the former, but because the unemployment rate went down it looks more like the later.
Is this good news? Are there more jobs or fewer? And finally, why aren’t these numbers ever in the same article?
Electronic Voting, Part 2
e-voting on Nov. 11 with background info.)
Here are a couple of other important updates:
November 22, 2003: California is requiring that all electronic voting machines produce a voter-verifiable paper receipt by 2006. While this is a move toward sensible e-voting safeguards, the action isn’t quick enough to stop the stealing of the 2004 presidential election.
December 3, 2003: The Ohio Secretary of State has announced the results of a study his office commissioned, which examined four e-voting systems. Each system had at least one “high risk” problem. The review turned up so many potential security flaws in the systems that the state’s top elections official has called off deploying them in March.
Google Humor
Oh those funny Googlers. First it was searching for “weapons of mass destruction” giving this not found website when you hit “I’m feeling lucky”.
The new one is doing a Lucky search for miserable failure (no quotes). Or do a regular search and check out the first item of the search results.
Hint: this is his first presidentiary.
Not a Photo-Op. Really.
The turkey looked perfect, but don’t try to eat it. In the Iraq Thanksgiving picture seen so frequently, Bush is holding the centerpiece.
It’s like he’s a Truth Compass. Just look at Bush and truth is the other way.
Just Hot Air
The military is looking to something old as a new weapon in the war on terrorism: blimps. They can travel up to 60 mph and fly at an altitude of about 2,000-3,000 feet. Wow.
This just in: A Goodyear blimp crashed Wednesday night…
Next up: catapults making a comeback. Secret military plans have been leaked.
Digital Sundial
A what? It contains no electronics. Light travels through the fibers to illuminate the segments of the display to form a readable number in the tens-of-minutes portion of the display.
Hines Labs sells blueprints and grants rights to build one. But to make it easier, Digital Sundials International sells them.
Time Flies
They say, “Time flies!”, but how can you when they go so fast?
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of this blog. I’m guessing there are about 250 posts. To commemorate, here are some pointless destinations:
See a sonic boom!
See the boxer with the world’s longest dog tongue – 17 inches (43 cm)!
See moving rocks!
See & play a bunch of stupid little Flash games!
See The Day The Clown Cried!
See the boxer with the world’s longest dog tongue – 17 inches (43 cm)!
See moving rocks!
See & play a bunch of stupid little Flash games!
See The Day The Clown Cried!
Okay, I don’t really know why you would want to do that last one unless you’re French.
Big Muff Pi Fuzz Box
Probably only of interest to guitarists is the history of the Electro-Harmonix Company (which made the Big Muff Pi) and its relation to Sovtek, which makes vacuum tubes in Russia for those few of us that still need them.
Conspicuous Consumption
Three somewhat related subtopics here: Food, Wal-Mart, and Food
Why Turkey?
I’ve got a beef with having two holidays that seem to mandate the eating of what is typically a dry, somewhat tasteless fowl as the main event. How did this happen?
In 2001, about 272 million turkeys were raised. The National Turkey Federation estimates that 46 million of those turkeys were eaten at Thanksgiving, 22 million at Christmas and 19 million at Easter.
There is no real evidence that turkey was served at the Pilgrim’s first thanksgiving, but through ages it became an indispensable part of the Thanksgiving tradition. The tradition of turkey is rooted in the ‘History Of Plymouth Plantation’, written by William Bradford some 22 years after the actual celebration.
Turkey is often regarded as the usual Christmas meal but appeared on the menu only around 1650 after European colonization of North America. It was introduced to Europe by Sebastian Cabot on his return from the New World. The bird got its name after merchants from Turkey made it a popular dish. Prior to this Swan, Goose, Peacock or Boar were associated with the Christmas feast.
A wild bird, native to America, was taken back to Europe and became “a popular dish at banquets held by the French nobility”. The wild turkey is then rediscovered by the Pilgrims, who had also brought domesticated turkeys from Europe, essentially creating the double-shot of turkey.
I still don’t know how it happened. But I bet the holiday meal would be different if all the above had all been about cattle. Or even the venison served at the first Thanksgiving.
Big Spender
The AlterNet story Mad In The USA includes this:
Giant retail chains like Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot, have been muscling large manufacturers to move their factories overseas, primarily to China. With more than nine percent of U.S. retail sales and a third of the market for numerous products from dog food to diapers, what Wal-Mart says, goes. The company does so much business in China that it ranks as the country’s 8th largest trading partner, ahead of Britain and Russia.
And a 11/23 LA Times article on Wal-Mart includes the following:
- Wal-Mart has 2,966 U.S. stores, with global sales of $244.5 billion and $8,039 million in net income. That’s nearly four times the sales of the fourth largest retailer, Kroger, and twice the sales of the second largest, France’s Carrefour Group.
- 4% of the growth in the U.S. economy’s productivity from 1995 to 1999 was due to Wal-Mart alone. It also forced competitors to be more efficient, driving the nation’s productivity even higher.
- They are 8% of the nonautomotive, nonrestaurant sales in the U.S.
- On average Wal-Mart’s wage-and-benefit package is $10 an hour less than those offered by unionized supermarkets.
- One vendor moved his production to China where workers earn 25¢ compared with $13 in Chicago.
Ahead of Russia and Britain? 8% of sales? Wow. That’s a lot of political / economic muscle.
Oh yeah, this ties in from all the food that was bought and the ongoing supermarket strike.
Speaking of Meat
Every year, Americans consume on average 60 hot dogs. When I eat them, it’s usually two dogs; just keeping up means having them slightly more frequently than every other week. My intake may be falling below average, which is a surprise because I’m mostly a carnivore.
A historical note from a page about hamburgers:
THE ALL AMERICAN (BUT ACTUALLY GERMAN) HOT DOG:
Sausages produced in Frankfurt, Germany, were introduced to American tastes in St. Louis, Missouri, during the 1880s. Harry Stevens popularized frankfurter sales at the Polo Grounds baseball park in New York City. The term “hot dog” was coined by cartoonist T. A. Dorgan in 1906.
England Visit
A Daily Show With Jon Stewart reran with this opening:
“We begin tonight with national security � an issue President Bush has emphasized here at home and is utterly disrupting across the Atlantic. Tomorrow the president flies to England for a three-day state visit with coalition partner Tony Blair. In preparation, British officials are stepping up security measures and putting more police on the streets than at any time since the end of World War II in anticipation of possible violence. Remember, this is England… our ally [very long pause] � I guess all the cops and troops are there to make sure things don’t get too friendly. … British Intelligence services have even taken the step of raising England’s terror alert level to ‘severe general’, which is � I hate the metric system � I think it is orange.” �Jon Stewart
Here are a couple of other good comments on the subject, all from Working For Change – Quote of the Day:
“President Bush and Queen Elizabeth have a lot in common — they both came into power without being elected.” �David Letterman
“President Bush says his visit to England is going so well, if time permits, he wants to visit the United Kingdom and Great Britain as well.” �Jay Leno
