This is a cool graphical representation of zip codes. Click on the map and type in a code. As each number is typed, the map shows the limits for that part of the zip.
You need to be running the Java VM, which is no longer included with Windows, for this applet to work.
By now most people have seen the Carl’s Jr. ad for their low-carb burger. It uses lettuce to hold things together instead of a bun. It turns out that In-N-Out has had this for a while on their “Secret Menu“; it’s called “Protein Style”.
They don’t have a name for what I eat at home: everything sitting on top of half a bun. I guess I could get a Double Double “Flying Dutchman” style and a mix it with a dry “2×4”. And then be really, really full.
MoveOn.org is having a contest to come up with a 30 second campaign ad showing Bush’s accomplishments. The initial 1000+ entries were voted for on the web, getting it down to fifteen finalists.
Take a look at the final fifteen at www.BushIn30Seconds.org
Almost no news has been reported about the government’s new powers to look at your finances. That’s because it was signed on a Saturday at the same time that Hussein’s capture was announced. The only reporting seems to be from the San Antonio Current article With a Whisper, Not A Bang:
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein’s capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don’t suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.
The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of “financial institution,” which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business “whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.”
The fact that I couldn’t find this on any of the news services made me do a little more research than usual. I found the text of the bill, H.R. 2417, and an announcement that it was signed. But even that doesn’t make clear what happened because the text of the bill refers to the United States Code. The new meaning of financial institution is finally made clear there.
On and on… it seems the article is correct, but perhaps not as sweeping as it sounds. That’s because only the smaller institutions were added; the big ones were already there. At least from what I can tell from that legal morass.
The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs. In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated.
Why Part 1 in the title? With things going this way, there’s no doubt that a part 2 will show up soon. Maybe people carrying maps.
What A Crappy Present. Ho, ho, ho!
Depending upon what you read, either “US Internet Growth and Broadband Adoption Slow” or “US Broadband Up 18% in H1”. But they’re both using the same reports.
According to a Dec. 22 Pew Internet report:
It’s the last number that caught my interest. I can’t imagine using a dial-up connection any more and wondered how many others had made the move. I have friends that won’t look at anything on the internet unless they really, really need to because it takes too long to load.
Those numbers mean that only about 20% of the U.S. population (at those using home access) are surfing at high speed. I guess I better make my blog and website smaller.
Just got this neat tip in the mail for Internet Explorer:
Type the main part of a URL but instead of hitting Enter use CTRL+Enter and IE will add the http:// and .com to what you typed.
LOTR’s third installment, ROTK, has introduced a character that fans are not happy about. (You can never have too many TLAs or ETLAs.)
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.
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.
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.
December 14th, 2003 marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Michel de Nostredame (whose Latinized name was Nostradamus).
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”
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.”
It’s G.I. Joke! Weapons of mass destruction are, of course, not included.
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.
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.
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?
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.
