Entries from February 2006The Posts You Asked For

“Is it too soon for a city devastated by a hurricane six months ago to hold a party?” So asks CNN in its description of a story about Mardi Gras in New Orleans. There’s even a poll.
How about this: You don’t have to have an opinion about everything.
Yes, yes, in this day of polls [...]

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Did you see “Real Genius”? Remember Lazlo Hollyfeld, teh guy who lived in the closet and entered lots of sweepstakes? Well that’s what Karen is doing — entering Internet contests in her spare time. And, like Lazlo, she won.
Not quite as much, though. What she won was a toothbrush. But not just any toothbrush: The [...]

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From the Orlando Sentinal:
DAYTONA BEACH — Dennis Crouch had already slashed himself. And when he refused to drop his knife, Daytona Beach police Officer Betsy Cassidy decided she had no choice.
“Taser! Taser!” Cassidy shouted as she sent a two-pronged wire, packing 50,000 volts, at Crouch’s chest. What happened next stunned everyone.
A Taser probe pierced [...]

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This is a test of a new blogging tool called Performancing. I already see one problem: It doesn’t have the ability to add images to a post, unless you’ve already (and separately) uploaded the file to your site. Phooie.
Update: I stand (sort of) corrected. You can drag and drop an image from a Web site [...]

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From WLEX in Lexington, Ky.:
A Letcher County woman suffered a horrible injury early Thursday when her arm was severed in a car crash on the Mountain Parkway in Clark County.
[snip]
Her arm was found near the accident still clutching a cell phone.

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So our Christmas tree this year was free thanks to the good folks at Amazon who can’t keep their accounting straight..
It worked like this: We ordered an artificial tree (I call it “unnatural”) because in this house the only spot for it was too near the radiator. The price: $70, on sale from something like [...]

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There’s been a bit of a backlash against newspapers and television shows that are covering the Muhammad-cartoon story but refuse to show the images themselves. But, I think, some of that backlash is misplaced.
There is an important point missing from most if not all of these discussions and arguments. That is: Not all the [...]

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A site I visit regularly runs ads from a place called “Adult Friend Finder.” Evidently the site is able to trace my IP address back to Roanoke, which isn’t terribly surprising or difficult.
What the Adult Friend Finder people want you to think is that it has ads from women near you. In reality, Adult Friend [...]

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Like many cat owners, I’ve discovered the ultimate cat toy: a laser pointer. The red dot can provide endless amusement to the owner, and plenty of exercise for the cat. (Sure, after a few minutes of laser chasing the cat will be on edge for hours, but that’s a small price to pay for watching [...]

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Coming soon to a breathless television news show near you is the hidden danger of hybrid cars. They’re [gasp!] too quiet.
From a Motor Trend article:
Tom Battle of Los Altos recalled his own near-hit as he walked to his car in the parking lot at Symantec in Mountain View, where he is the director of engineering.
“I [...]

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Here’s an interesting article on how people perceived the ads shown during the Super Bowl.
I thought one spot was particularly interesting. Remember the FedEx, caveman-stomped-by-dino ad? You might have thought it was funny, but your brain thought otherwise.
There is a big jump in amygdala activity when the dinosaur crushes the caveman, as shown below. The [...]

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It seems that images of Mohammad (PBUH), made by Muslims, are far from unknown.
One site, in fact, has a gallery of them.
To quote:
[D]espite the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint [...]

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OK, picture Dick Cheney. Now add Darth Vader’s breathing. Got that in your head? Good.
Now Check out an option for our troops’ new facial armor.
:-)

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A NASA appointee — a former Bush campaign worker with no scientific credentials — is trying to get NASA’s speakers to abandon science, lest it conflict with religious dogma.
And from a related New York Times article:
Other National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists and public-affairs employees came forward this week to say that … there were [...]

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An excellent editorial by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe: “We are all Danes now.”
That anything so mild could trigger a reaction so crazed — riots, death threats, kidnappings, flag-burnings — speaks volumes about the chasm that separates the values of the civilized world from those in too much of the Islamic world. Freedom of [...]

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More resources on the plans of cable and phone companies.

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…in which I call shenanigans on the CEO of AT&T.
The plan being bandied about is to start charging websites to carry their content, or at least carry it fast enough for video. So you won’t be able to view video on the Discovery Channel’s site unless it has an agreement with your provider.
Quoth AT&T CEO [...]

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As I’ve written before, the future we’re headed for is one in which you’ll watch your favorite TV shows not when the network decided to air them, and not even time-shifted via TiVo or a VCR. Instead, you’ll watch them whenever you want because your television will connect to the Internet, and you’ll be able [...]

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I’m playing with a program called w.bloggar to post these messages. (It’s OK, but I’m really waiting for Frequency to fix a coupla bugs.) W.bloggar offers a spellchecker, so I ran it. I was surprised to see it flag this (click to enlarge):

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