7/21/2003 ·  8/ 6/2003
 5/29/2003 ·  7/18/2003
 4/25/2003 ·  5/28/2003
 3/24/2003 ·  4/24/2003
 3/ 1/2003 ·  3/21/2003
 1/28/2003 ·  2/28/2003
11/30/2002 ·  1/23/2003
11/ 1/2002 · 11/29/2002
 9/23/2002 · 10/30/2002
 9/ 5/2002 ·  9/20/2002
 8/10/2002 ·  9/ 4/2002
 7/24/2002 ·  8/ 9/2002
 6/27/2002 ·  7/23/2002
 6/ 3/2002 ·  6/25/2002
 4/24/2002 ·  5/31/2002
 4/ 1/2002 ·  4/23/2002
 3/ 1/2002 ·  3/31/2002
 2/10/2002 ·  2/28/2002
 1/22/2002 ·  2/ 9/2002
 1/ 3/2002 ·  1/16/2002
12/16/2001 ·  1/ 2/2002
12/ 2/2001 · 12/15/2001
11/ 1/2001 · 11/29/2001
10/16/2001 · 10/31/2001
 9/23/2001 · 10/13/2001
 9/11/2001 ·  9/22/2001
 7/29/2001 ·  9/10/2001
 7/ 2/2001 ·  7/28/2001
 5/29/2001 ·  6/30/2001
 5/ 1/2001 ·  5/21/2001
 4/ 8/2001 ·  4/29/2001
 3/25/2001 ·  4/ 7/2001
 3/11/2001 ·  3/24/2001
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 2/18/2001 ·  3/ 3/2001
 2/ 4/2001 ·  2/17/2001
 1/23/2001 ·  2/ 2/2001
 1/ 1/2001 ·  1/22/2001
12/18/2000 · 12/31/2000
11/30/2000 · 12/ 7/2000
11/ 6/2000 · 11/28/2000
10/29/2000 · 11/ 5/2000
10/11/2000 · 10/19/2000
10/ 1/2000 · 10/ 9/2000
 9/24/2000 ·  9/30/2000
 9/15/2000 ·  9/22/2000
 9/ 7/2000 ·  9/13/2000

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This is my blogchalk:
United States, Massachusetts, Boston, Brighton, English, Ron, Male, Photography, Nudity.

December 16, 2001 - January 2, 2002 You can't offend all the people all the time...
<<<Previous<<<		>>>Next>>>

There are great rumors about the Macworld expo which starts January 7 at the Moscone Center. There are also plain rumormills and great rumormills, and even greater rumormills. And rumormills that glow red with heat! For example: "Apple will be dealt a bitter blow by the startling revelation that the Dalmation iMacs were made with real dalmations, bred in secret at the Cupertino campus."

Fortunately, the Wintel world doesn't have to suffer through this. We know the next chip will be several hundred mHz faster, and it will cost about $800 as a naked item, but that it won't make any observable difference because the next version of a Microsoft operating system or Office will come on twice as many CDs, cost 50% more, will include a dozen major additions that you never thought should be part of an operating system or "office pack," will consume 3 times the disk space, will require double the RAM, will have dropped small but important features that have been present in the 5 previous versions, will only work about half the time, and will be followed by an announcement of Service Pack 1 within 24 hours, which you can BUY on CD for $10-$15, or you can download the 100 meg file for free. Corollary prediction: Linux will look even better.

Windows/BeOS/Linux man falls for Mac OS X. (BeOS background here.)

Weird old comic book covers.

I've updated my book recommendations today.

Interesting comic here. And Part 2 here. Be sure to follow it all the way to the right and click on the "Next" link. All part of e-sheep.

A bicycle at the WTC immediately after the September 11 attacks.

I mistakenly thought this was a photo of "A" bicycle, but an astute, reliable, sharp-eyed reader in the wilds of western Massachusetts pointed out that the remains of at least a part of another bicycle can be seen in the lower right.

Today (I hope you noticed) I moved the ever-growing list of links off to a separate file, to try to keep this page smaller. I also added easier to find buttons at the top and bottom of this page that link to my sub-files for links, webrings, books, my photos and my bio. I'll drop a note here any time I update one of those pages. I hope to be updating my extremely neglected book recommendations soon.

This article in the Boston Phoenix discusses last year's predictions by soothsayers. They are the usual wish-wash of easy vagueness, such as "unrest in the mideast." Puh-leeze! But one astrologist (Doug Riemer) predicted "There may be some religious fanaticism.... Mideast stuff? I see 9/10–9/14 as being really bizarre.... Although everyone should use care in their activities during the entire month, this 4 day period is exceptional. To avoid problems, stay alert to your environment and avoid risky situations." But before you get too impressed, consider Lynne Palmer who in June 2000 wrote "Avoid terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001."

The Taj Mahal is to be camouflaged to protect it from possible attacks by Pakistan. Does this mean that India believes no one in Pakistan has the exact GPS coordinates of the Taj Mahal, or that Pakistan has no weapons that can be precisely aimed at a known target? Are they using World War II technology over there, with bombers visually aiming for ground targets?

Possible connections between the design of the WTC and Saudi architecture.

Look, folks, I don't know why Yahoo! keeps sending people here who are looking for "ronnie coleman naked." There's nothing here! I don't even know who Ronnie Coleman is, but I will go find out now.
[short pause …]
Wow! I've clearly overlooked a need to put a picture of Ronnie Coleman here. I still don't know why anyone would think they need a picture of him naked! I mean, do you think there's a surprise under those little yellow undies?

Google attitude.

Huge list of lists that purport to summarize 2001.

For reasons unknown, someone has suggested a blogger's convention in Las Vegas in August: Blog-Con 2002. Why would we want to meet each other face to face?

The Museum of Online Museums. For instance, The Gallery of Skatepark IDs:

Just as I predicted, the futon store that opened in the space of "Ellis The Rim Man" last August has closed, and the space is now being completely rehabbed.

An unusually informative warning sign I spotted while biking on Long Island.

Click for full size

A flowering plant near Palm Springs.

Click for full size

I've added a few other photos today too. Check the thumbnails to see them.

Learn grammar the easy way: from Ares, the seductive god of war. For example, here is the bit warning you away from the passive voice:

Active: Ares thrust his tongue down your throat.

Passive: Ares' tongue was thrust down your throat.

Oh, no!  In the second one, we've lost Ares.  He's not doing the action anymore, and we want him to thrust. Oh yes, yes.

The 1963 map of Disneyland.

The power of blogs. There was a blogger who shared the flight from Paris with the shoe-bomber. His report is here (December 24).

You can get Fellowship of the Ring commemorative stamps from New Zealand. Here's that sexy Strider:

Hangover cures. They don't list my most reliable preventative, which is Life Extension Anti-Alcohol Antioxidants which contain vitamins C, E and B1, along with selenium, cysteine, and glutathione. Works for me every time.

West Roxbury native, Edward Downs, dies at age 90. You may have known him as the Texaco Metropolitan Opera quizmaster.

Rough living in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Like a movie! Ballsy 17 year old girl shows cops how to snare a rapist.

China takes another great leap forward, and this time it exceeds its liberal brother across the Pacific (uh, that would be the United States) with a plan to execute 5000 to 10,000 criminals a year with lethal injections. What a glorious triumph of liberalism and mercy. They haven't yet, however, constructed the expensive and sophisticated lethal injection systems that are designed to protect the executioner and the condemned.

The presiding judge asked him if he was nervous. He said no, but when a court officer asked him to roll up his sleeve and lie down, "his face became ashen and his limbs stiffened," the newspaper said. A doctor rolled up his sleeve and bound a rubber hose around his arm to make it easier to find a vein. "Take it easy, it's like a normal injection," the doctor told him, according to the newspaper.

"The cost of shooting them all was too high," reported the Dec. 12 edition of Sanlian Life Weekly, a government-owned current affairs magazine. The magazine said it cost about 700 yuan, or $85, to execute a prisoner by gunshot, including "at least 100 yuan" paid to the executioner

While it's not clear what drugs are used for lethal injection in China, even the narcotic-poison mix used in the United States would not damage vital organs wanted for transplant. The condemned need only be given an injection of the anticoagulant heparin beforehand, doctors say. With the proper preparation, even the heart could be transplanted if it were removed quickly.

Headline of the day:
Enormous Icebergs Imperil Penguins

By ANDREW BRIDGES
AP Science Writer
December 28, 2001, 4:11 AM EST
LOS ANGELES --

Massive icebergs and an unprecedented amount of sea ice have nearly isolated one of Antarctica's largest populations of Adelie penguins, jeopardizing attempts by the birds to breed, scientists report.

Each year at this time, the penguins flock from their feeding grounds at sea to Ross Island, where they breed and lay their eggs in shallow nests lined with pebbles.

But satellite images released Thursday by NASA show the coast around Cape Crozier, normally home to a colony of about 130,000 breeding pairs of the penguins, is choked with ice and icebergs.

The largest of the bergs, dubbed B-15A, covers 2,100 square miles -- roughly the area of Delaware.

The amount of sea ice has increased -- and in some cases, doubled -- the distance between the breeding grounds and the open water, where penguins feast on krill, fish and squid. That means the birds must now walk rather than swim to their colonies, which can take them five times as long.

Scientist David Ainley of H.T. Harvey & Associates, ecological consultants based in San Jose, said the numbers of Adelie penguins is on the "low side" at Cape Crozier, threatening the survival of the colony.

The colony, the world's sixth-largest and southernmost population of the penguins, has been studied continuously since 1959. It had been increasing in size in recent years.

A smaller Adelie colony at nearby Cape Royds will "fail totally," Ainley said. A colony of 1,200 Emperor penguins at Cape Crozier also failed to raise chicks this year, according to researchers working on the National Science Foundation-funded study.

Among the natural culprits are B-15A and a smaller iceberg, C-16. The two bergs broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000 as part of a natural calving process and have gradually migrated along the shore, altering wind and current patterns in the process.

The bergs may eventually seal off sea access to McMurdo Station, the main U.S. facility in Antarctica, said Ian Joughin, a researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The movement of the bergs, and subsequent growth of sea ice in the region, was seen in NASA imagery captured by the agency's Terra satellite.

Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press

More auroras…this time on Saturn.

High praise for The Fellowship of the Ring

$20 one-way bus tickets Boston to NY! Such a deal, and seemingly legal.

Jon Schlissel in the NY Times.

December 23, 2001

Jon Schlissel: A Believer in Fitness

There were a lot of sides to Jon Schlissel, and he was passionate about every one of them. He was religious about maintaining his health, and he exercised nearly every day. At 51, Mr. Schlissel had washboard abs and a physique that was the envy of his friends. He was also a dedicated naturist.

To people who toured historic homes in Jersey City, Mr. Schlissel was the man who owned a 14-room Victorian-style brownstone, painstakingly restored and furnished with items from the Victorian era. His co-workers at the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, where Mr. Schlissel worked for 29 years, knew him as a dedicated employee. He last worked as a mediator for the agency, but he also knew how to stir things up. He challenged politicians on a variety of issues, including civil rights for gays, and was the kind of advocate who refused to let term limits stop him from serving in his neighborhood civic association.

"Even when he couldn't be in it anymore, he'd be the one making sure that there was ketchup for everyone when they had a potluck dinner," said his brother, Laurence.

Jon Schlissel was faithful to his 80-year-old mother, Ruth, calling her every Saturday morning and visiting her in Florida twice a year.

"My son Larry used to talk from 10 to 11, and then I'd talk to Jonny," his mother said. Now, she said, "At 11, I cry. My nieces and nephews call. They try. No one's going to take Jonny's place."

Booted up the PC and was delighted and surprised to see a message telling me the batteries in my Logitech cordless mouse were low! I didn't know it would warn me like that. When I read some of the reviews before buying it, at least one user told of using it until the batteries crapped out, leaving him mystified. Hard to miss an on-screen warning, I think.

It had acted a bit flaky this morning, making me think the batteries were at risk, or I needed to wipe the table top.

The Aurora Alarm. They have two detectors; one in Urbana, Illinois, the other in Walla Walla, Washington. Sign up for one or both and it will send you an e-mail the very instant it sees an aurora borealis. Very, very handy if you live in the vicinity of either of them.


By the way, their instructions on how to subscribe are confusing and partly wrong. There are 3 mailing lists: northwest, midwest and talk.
To subscribe to the midwest list:

• Address an e-mail to aurora-midwest-request@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu
• In the body (not the subject) of that message say this:
  subscribe aurora-midwest@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS
  substituting your e-mail address, of course. If your e-mail software will wrap the line, you need to put a backslash ( \ ) at the end of the first line, like this:
  subscribe aurora-midwest@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu \
  YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS

• Address an e-mail to aurora-northwest-request@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu
• In the body (not the subject) of that message say this:
  subscribe aurora-northwest@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS
  substituting your e-mail address, of course. If your e-mail software will wrap the line, you need to put a backslash ( \ ) at the end of the first line, like this:
  subscribe aurora-northwest@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu \
  YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS

• Address an e-mail to aurora-talk-request@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu
• In the body (not the subject) of that message say this:
  subscribe aurora-talk@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS
  substituting your e-mail address, of course. If your e-mail software will wrap the line, you need to put a backslash ( \ ) at the end of the first line, like this:
  subscribe aurora-talk@angwin.csl.uiuc.edu \
  YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS

If this isn't racism being practiced by American Airlines, I'd like someone to explain to me (real slowly) why it isn't. A Secret Service agent with proper credentials kicked off a flight, even after he offered to let the airline verify his status with Secret Service. He is a member of the Presidential security detail. What're they gonna say? He was drunk? Abusive? Nervous? I doubt it very much.

"Christmas and Mother's Day are the only dates on the calendar that missionary workers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are permitted to call home." Wow!. They must be very, very lonely. Very lonely. Far from home in those big, alien cities. Wonder what they're up to New Year's Eve.

Create your own O'Reilly bookcover!

A "Mac Browser Roundup" where they take a look at Opera Beta 5 for systems 7.5.3–9.2 and Internet Explorer 5.1/Mac for Mac OS 8.1 through 9.2x — so not exactly a "roundup" then. "Beta 5 is incredibly fast at rendering web pages. They seem to spring onto your screen in the blink of an eye. The browser is a mere 2 MB, and uses very little system memory to do its work." As for IE…well, would I waste electrons telling you what McDonald's is like?

The seven wonders of the web, one of which (www.multimap.com) I had never heard of somehow. It provides wonderfully clear maps. But in this map it shows a "Boston Opera House" on Washington Street a few blocks outside of Oak Square in Brighton!? Do you suppose they're picking up the address of the real Boston Opera House on the other Washington Street downtown? Boston streets win again! (Here's a link to the map of downtown Boston where the real Boston Opera House is missing.)

Oh my, it also gives me this error: "Searching for Kansas City , mo , United States did not find any matching names or places." Also this: "Kansas City , missouri , United States found no exact matches", but it did find King City and Knox City in Missouri. Ah, but it finds Kansas City, KANSAS! Ehh! Loser! Moves an opera house to the sticks, loses a city of half a million. This is a mapping service?!

Free e-mail guide.

A MetaFilter/MetaTalk book discussion club set up on Yahoo Groups. First selection: The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey.

Check out this "Cute teapot - really nice" auction. Admire the finish.

When did people (that is, web marketers) start using "creative" as a noun? I first ran across this in some e-mail from Netflix and was really confused by it, until I decided the person who wrote it was probably not a native speaker of English and should have said "creative materials" or something like that. But I've run into it several times since then. It refers mostly to banners or small ads when I see it. What's wrong with calling it "creative materials" or just "creations," if you've got to have a single word term for it.

In this article about marketing to the GLBT community they use it in this paragraph:

Just how important is it to include gay-specific creative when crafting your Web ad or marketing effort? According to Grant Lukenbill, author of Untold Millions: Secret Truths About Marketing to Gay and Lesbian Consumers, it all depends. "In general, it's good to have gay creative in an ad," he says. "But if a company is already established as being inclusive, it's not as important."

Click for full size

The Cinnamon Challenge. Not to be tried…yada yada yada

"Christianity was just another mystery cult until Jesus was born. The mother of Jesus was Mary, who was different from other women because of her immaculate contraption."

The Fellowship of the Ring! Wow! It was worth my 30 year wait. Saw it at the new Loew's Boston Common cinema, which seems to be a pretty fine place.

Hey, somebody found my log by searching for "Triboro Bridge Photos." Okay! Find 'em all right?

Okay, it's Cabernet Sauvignon from now on.

henotheism \HEH-nuh-thee-ih-zum ("th" as in "think")\ (noun) : the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods

Example sentence: During certain periods of Egyptian history, the pharaohs and their subjects practiced henotheism.

"Henotheism" comes to us from the German word "Henotheismus," which in turn is derived from the Greek "hen-" ("one") plus "theos" ("god"). Someone who engages in henotheism worships one god as supreme over all others. Max Muller, a respected 19th-century scholar, is credited with promoting the word "henotheism" as a counterpart to "polytheism" ("belief in or worship of more than one god") and "monotheism" ("the doctrine or belief that there is but one God"). Muller also offered the related word "kathenotheism" for the worship of several gods successively.

from www.Merriam-Webster.com

2001 as seen from Google's unique perspective. "Osama Bin Laden" came in second place to another man.

I have finally converted the thank you letter that I sent out after riding the 1997 California AIDS Ride 4 to a couple of web pages. If you were involved in that ride, you should go see if you're on the web now.

Foster's Special Bitter. I ran across this at a liquor store in the South End a couple days ago. I had never seen any kind of Foster's except their standard blue can lager, which is a lot like Rolling Rock, although with less body and flavor. Never thought much of it, except that it came in a big can, which is nice. But I am generous and thought I'd give this big can of kangaroo piss a try. It's lots better than their lager. It's getting into the range of a real beer. Pretty nice. BTW, Foster's has only this not-even-an-excuse page for a website.

More importantly, that evening I tried the new Guinness bottled draft stout. Incredible science, obviously intended solely for the American market. Genuine Guinness Stout designed to be drunk ice cold directly from the bottle. And it works! I'd say the only thing wrong is that you don't get to see the carbonation and you don't get to stick your moustache into the head; but those are sort of non-American tastes, eh? I don't want to be accused of endangering our national pride by admiring an Irish stout.

Hey, look! I got a t-shirt for Christmas!

Beautiful weather today. Did a short bike ride along a bit of the Charles where I spotted Mr. Robin Redbreast bob-bob-bobbin' along.

Cacoepy (Noun)

Pronunciation: [kæk-'o-ê-pee or 'kæk-o-e-pee]

Definition: Incorrect pronunciation.

Usage: Occasionally, we need words we have long since abandoned or that have abandoned us. We may be facing a period in our history now when we need to retrieve "cacoepy" from our lexical attic. "Cacoepy" is not to be confused with cacology "bad choice of words." The antonym of "cacoepy" is orthoepy "the correct pronunciation of words." "Cacoepistic" is the adjective form of today's word and a person who often mispronounces words is a "cacoepist."

Suggested Usage: We think that such a ten-dollar word (the legendary "fifty-cent word" adjusted for inflation) as today's ought to be reserved for those who consistently get it wrong. "The Cacoepist-In-Chief mispronounced word after word, even making up a few, leading one newspaper to ask 'Hain't English his Native Lingo?'"

Etymology: The first part of today's word comes from the Greek kakos "bad." The PIE root is kakka- "to defecate." Words like "poppycock" and "cacophony" have their origins in the same root. The second half, -epy, is from Greek: epos "song, word." Its PIE root is wekw-, which also turns up in "vocal," "voice," "invoke" and "vote."

from www.yourdictionary.com

Maybe it isn't so rare to see three Acelas at once at South Station, which is looking like this these days:

Click for full size
At lunch I saw three lined up there today.

I also spotted a new type of Acela engine. This was a two-headed engine, about the same overall length as the usual one-head. Same color and markings. It was just pulling away as I walked in, so all I got was this:

The lights are laid out differently, too.

Inside the station they have a huge flag whose stripes are made from artwork done by children.

A set of links to 10 different anti-virus product manufacturers. There seem to be two kinds of people who don't run anti-virus software:

1. The very naive. Education lies in their futures.
2. The macho geek. He knows where every electron in his sytem has been. He never uses Microsoft products. He sneers at those who have foolishly forked over money to anti-virus software manufacturers. When not doing that he will sneer at condoms, shoulder harnesses, bike helmets and designated drivers.

Red, White and Blue M&Ms! Profits go to the "Taking Care of America Everyday" campaign which benefits the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. They're $4 a pound at my nearby Stop & Shop.

Got some very interesting information today from reader A.K. who pointed out that Omega-3 fatty acids (in fish oil) may help relieve depression, especially if combined with borage oil (for Omega-6). He also pointed me to www.iHerb.com as a source for nutritional supplements.

In a related story: the New England Medical Journal this week includes an article acknowledging that some nutritional supplements are good for you. Folic acid supplements are cited as one clear example. (Sorry, I'm not a subscriber, so there's nothing for me to link to). MDs and nutrition advice! I'd as soon take bicycling hints from a fish. MDs make two arguments against nutritional supplements: 1) you could overdose and 2) it's a waste of money. Point 1 can be true for most minerals, some oil-based vitamins, and amino acids. But not true for C or B vitamins, and apparently not true for E, beta-carotene, calcium or magnesium. Point number 2 is a load of bullshit coming from MDs. Minimum to see an MD these days is $100. You know how many vitamins you could buy and flush for that?!

This belongs to a 12 year old girl.

Prepone (Verb)

Pronunciation: [pree-'pon ]

Definition: To advance a date or appointment.

Usage: Usage of this term seems to be rising in the medical profession, especially in Canada.

Suggested Usage: The new usage goes something like this: "We don't have any appointments for a later date; could we prepone your present appointment a week?" meaning move it forward a week. We need to find uses for this word to launch it properly. "Could we prepone lunch? I don't think I can wait until 12." Eventually people will be saying things like, "The nursery wasn't ready because the baby preponed itself two weeks," don't you think?

Etymology: yourDictionary is happy to announce the birth of a new word, brought to our attention by C. R. Smith of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. It is derived from English's bottomless pit of Latin lexical constituents, the prefix pre- "before" and ponere "to place, put" by analogy with "postpone."

from www.yourdictionary.com

Charles Busch

Discussion on one-button mouses on Macs here. Macs DO support multiple buttons and scrollwheels. One of the posters there claims a mouse with more than one button is "uncontestably confusing for new users" and "arguably confusing for other users too." He certainly has a low opinion of humans. Does he know anyone who drives a car? Touchtypes?

This link came to me via the courtesy of Brian B. who seems to be my Mac Man, since my little brother doesn't answer e-mail (I think he blames his Mac for that).

The creator of Casper the ghost, Seymour Reit, died last month. I never liked Casper.

Frances Holberton, one of the first 6 programmers of ENIAC, mother to COBOL and FORTRAN, innovator of the grey-beige exterior, creator of the sorting routine for UNIVAC, died earlier this month. She was given the Lovelace award in 1997. Here's a 1983 interview with her, in .PDF format.

Good computer history timeline here, from clay tablets to Windows 95 (we've gone full circle?).

I see someone has accessed Ron's Log with Netscape 3! I assume they did that to see if an antique browser would correctly display my site. Let me know how it came out.

"Opera Log Candy???" WTF?

Long, interesting article about the huge increase in autism in Santa Clara county, California - Silicon Valley. One hypothesis is that it is due to the breeding of digital whizzes who built the computer revolution. In the past, borderline autistics were less likely to reproduce.

Wow! A map of the Springfield of The Simpsons. Or, use this link to view it broken into segments. Amazingly detailed stuff, if you start here.

I've added an "About" page…something of a short bio. The link will normally reside over there on the left, under my picture.

I added it because I've been reading over a lot of web logs recently where the authors indicate their level of ultimate intellectual bohemian coolness by making it totally unreadable like this. There are a goodly number of them where even after scanning through weeks of entries I find myself asking "Is this author male or female?" "In what country does this author live?" "Is this author a teenager or a senior citizen?" Some of them have "About" pages where you can go check and see you have been totally wrong. The person who you thought was a silver-haired Jewish intellectual man at a university in Manhattan turns out to be a teenage girl who drives a tourist bus in Jamaica. And I worried, "My gawd, my writing is completely clear, totally honest, and never ambiguous but maybe some pothead reader can't quite grasp my identity. The horror!" Therefore, the "About" page. If you regret that I have not mentioned you specifically by name, or in sufficiently lofty and respectful terms, be sure to write!

Long story about NetFlix and how it's succeeding in its niche. (www.Netflix.com) They say they occasionally make a profit! "Customers visit the Web site to set up a queue of about 10 movies in the order they want to see them." Ha! I've got a queue of about 480 titles now. Ten! Why would I even waste my time if there were only 10 movies I just had to see? They say the average Netflix customer gets 5 DVDs a month. I did wonder about that. The article suggests that Blockbuster may offer a competing service. They just might, but I hope they're not as over-confident as Barnes and Noble was when it decided to compete with that rinky-dink Amazon. If you read the message board attached to the article on Yahoo you'll see at least one former Netflix customer has had better experience at rentmydvd. Another claimed good service at dvdovernight, although I see you have to return their DVDs within 7 days. Bit short for me, sometimes. Other people there offer complaints about poor service that I haven't experienced. I had a slow turnaround time only once. There is a theory that if you click on this link and sign up for Netflix, I will get actual cash payment. I've never gotten any, so I couldn't say if it doesn't really work, or no one's done it.

Article about Google's mail order catalog pages.

Boing Boing

Today was the holiday luncheon with my cow-orkers. The Cheesecake Factory in the Cambridgeside Galleria was the democratically chosen destination. So much for democracy. "Factory" it certainly is. It was about as bad as I imagined it might be. I'm surviving the experience, but why would people CHOOSE to go there, over some nice choices like McCormick and Schmicks, or some little non-chain place?

Of course, as long as I was in the neighborhood, I had to stop in at the new Apple store. First recommendation, if you go there, is bring some wraparound shades. That place is bright, bright white! If you've seasonal affective disorder, save yourself some money and just go browsing at the Apple store every day. You'll be happier, I guarantee it.

I touched the iPod and it does feel like it is dreamily engineered. The rotating control feels like those smooth, heavy, centrifigal dials that used to come on expensive stereos. So much so, that I tried giving it a hard spin to see if it would just keep a-going. It doesn't.

Played with an iMac and a G4 (I may have those names slightly skewed…I don't know Apples). Tried to play with one tiny notebook, but couldn't get the display to ignite. The unit was warm, so I guess it was getting power, but pressing every kind of key and surface on the thing still left me in the dark. Do Macs break??

What is it with Apple and that mouse? It seems pretty obvious that the Wintel-PC multi-button mouse with scrollwheel allows for much faster navigation with less movement than the single button mouse that was adopted when Jimmy Carter was President. What's the deal? Is it a religious thing, like the Trinity? Like, it was good enough for Xerox back in Aught-Seventy-Whatever, so it's good enough for you? It isn't as though Microsoft owns all the patents on the Wintel-PC multi-button mouse. Can one retro-fit a Mac with a more functional mouse? It also bothered me that "button" on the mice in the store was the entire surface of the mouse. It rocked like a seesaw. Click down on the front of the mouse and you feel the rear of it rising up into your palm. Irritating. I'm sure there is an after-market mouse you can buy that does that better, right?

One button to rule them all,
One button to find them.
One button to bring them all,
And in the darkness bind them…

Dropped in at Best Buy as well and finally got my first listen of real XM Radio coming from the satellite. Sounds good! They even had the Sony home model on display. It wasn't hooked to an antenna, and it was very thoroughly bolted (even cemented, I think) in place. But it had power, so you could fiddle with the display and imagine the functionality…like the fact that one of the menu functions is to set the line-out level confirms that there is indeed a line-out! In all the goddam gushing about satellite radio, some of the essential nitty-gritty details are being dropped. Like, does it plug into my stereo (yes), and how close to the window does it have to be (which is a question of how long can the wire to the antenna be).

I was tempted (again) to buy it on the spot (I don't know if they actually had any models in the store), but at $300 for the Sony home unit I hesitated. It feels like standing on thin ice in the spring thaw. The price should drop soon. I've seen no information on whether there will be a home unit for Sirius Radio which becomes available in February. The Sony in the stores right now is only for XM Radio.

Then I wandered through the video displays. That Best Buy store opened at about the time HDTV and/or digital TV (which are, I think, not necessarily the same thing, right?) became available. I remember being impressed that they had units on the floor that were labeled as "HDTV" but they had made some mistake in setting up the signal source (presumably a DVD player), or the connection, or the video unit itself because it was obviously distorted. I think the source was putting out an image with an aspect ratio for wide screen, but the unit was set to display it in old NTSC aspect ratio, so the result was the image was stretched vertically. I thought it was a pretty poor way to sell $3000 TVs, but they were brand new, and good help is hard to get, right? But today, with HDTV having been on the market for 2 or 3 years (longer?), they still have the same problem at Best Buy! How stupid!

Anyway, it's not like I'm giving any serious consideration to HDTV. I've seen it set up correctly a few times, and to my eyes the image seems only about 20% better than good NTSC, which I can see on a TV that costs only $125.

I also eyeballed a few Sony DVD players, thinking that a Sony might have better error correction than my Samsung. I could be wrong about that. I didn't see anything in the promo materials to suggest such a concept. Maybe the DVD system has one strict error correction system that all units use regardless of price. (Somebody tell me if they know anything about this). Anyway, I spotted a cute little Sony DVD unit hooked up to a big Sony TV. It was the only DVD player you could actually play with there, so I grabbed the neat looking remote and discovered the brains at Best Buy had shoved an audio CD into the player, so all I could do was listen to the music through the Sony TV. D'uh!

a member or members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, posing as computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft and attempted to plant "trojans, trapdoors, and bugs in Windows XP" according to Mohammad Afroze Abdul Razzak who was arrested by Mumbai police on October 2. How ridiculously unnecessary. I suppose Al Qaeda have also launched an insidious campaign to encourage Americans to overeat and buy excessively large motor vehicles. You'd think the guy might be a nut, but he also told the police a nutty story about a planned attack on the Indian parliament!

Real statistics! If you are scouring the world looking for the world's biggest city, it's ridiculous to use the numbers that only measure people within a city's legal limits. City limits are arbitrary things determined by history and local laws and won't tell you anything about traffic load, market size or quality of life. Go here to find the most populous urban agglomerations. Biggest? Tokyo at 34.5 million. New York is second (21.4 million) and Mexico City only fourth at 19.3 million. Only other American city on the list (besides NYC) is L.A. with 16.6 million.

According to this page the hottest sauce you can get is Smack My Ass and Call Me Sally … Chets Gone Mad which claims 1.5 million Scoville Units, making it 700 times hotter than regular Tabasco. You have to agree to a disclaimer and fork over $37.75 to get 1¾ ounces of it.

Interesting story about people discovering possible nutritional relief for a variety of psychiatric ills, including autism, ADHD, and bi-polar disorder. Quackery? Dunno. Here's the home page for the guys actually selling the nutritional supplement. And a list of ingredients here. Nothing too exotic here. Can find all of these on the vitamin shelves at Bread & Circus. Looks like the only thing you could lose by trying it is money.

The People's Daily writes about brand rankings. The most valuable brand in China is, of course, Hongtashan

Of all the products, the cigarette bearing the "HongtaShan" brand was granted the national gold medal, and the trademark was recognized by the National Administration for Industry and Commerce as a "Famous Trade Mark in China". In the report of Beijing Famous Trade Mark Assets Evaluation co., Ltd., the "HongtaShan" brand has increased its value to some 43.9 billion yuan, and has stayed at N0.1 in the league of National Famous brands six years continuously.

It was awarded the honorable title of "Enterprise with Remarkable Economic Benefits" by … the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau

In 2000, even though the market situation of tobacco was very weak, the group still sold 203 cases of cigarettes, and realized 16.1 billion yuan of taxes and profits.

Oh baby! Toronto firefighters ain't gonna live in the shadow of those Houston men. No, sir!

The tooth is in! It's still too early to give it the almond test, but maybe tomorrow.

Wow, somebody found Ron's Log today as they were using Google to search for "welder fucking another welder." Much to my surprise, Ron's Log comes up 13th on the list! That's what you call a false positive. This is a family site, where you can only find braisers fucking other braisers. None of that kinky welder stuff.

Here's a whole site of strange search requests.

This is a pretty entertaining way to complain about poor customer service, but it looks like you have to use IE and have Powerpoint installed on your PC to view it. I wouldn't normally link to such a Microsoft-centric virus-inviting site, but this one's good.

An "Autism Quotient" test. Average score is 16.4. Of those people diagnosed with "autism or a related disorder," 80% scored 32 or higher. I scored 18, only slightly more autistic than the general population of people who can click a mouse. Whew! I'm cuttin' back the ritalin.

A few interesting facts in the article entitle Ripples Spread Wide from Ground Zero in the 11/24/2001 (vol 160) of Science News: Siesmometers operated by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University reported that when the first plane struck the north tower of the WTC the 12-second shock was the equivalent of a magnitude 0.9 earthquake. The second plane striking the south tower was a magnitude 0.7. The collapse of the south tower equaled a 2.1 magnitude quake, while the north tower collapse was like a 2.3 magnitude.

An Iowa blog that's been nominated for Best Scripting Weblog. He explains where Iowa is, for the benefit of the provincials on the coasts.

Possible explanation for the mysterious disappearance of Clarinda, Iowa, boy Glenn Miller.

The Patriot Tree is available from the California Tree Company by phone or fax, but I can't find any info on HOW MUCH!

An op-ed piece discussing inequitable treatment of gay families under Social Security. It's surprisingly accurate.

Went to the 119 last night where I had several nice chats with several nice men. After leaving there, I headed over to Boston Beer Works on Canal to fortify myself with a pint of real stuff before cycling into the headwind going home. Sitting at the bar I was approached by a young man who was eager to tell me that I looked just like Rob Halford, formerly of Judas Priest. Well, I was totally blank on whether Rob Halford was intentionally imitating me or if he was just lucky, so I had to look him up when I got home. It turns out (small favors!) that Mr. Halford is gay and made some news when he came out. Here are a couple of photos:

I am dubious as to whether this man was trying to compliment me. Nonetheless, he was quite fun to chat with, being slightly buzzed from a Bruins game he had just attended. Soon I realized that dull looking, overdressed person 50 feet behind him was his girlfriend. She had been watching us VERY closely. I unsnapped the leash and allowed him to crawl back to her.

Here's an interview [link fixed!] with Rob Halford which includes some sexier pictures of him.

Oh, the life of a federal employee! I can so identify with this guy.:

FBI says Sampson call was botched
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff, 12/15/2001

An FBI clerical worker has been suspended after confessing that he answered the telephone last July when accused killer Gary Lee Sampson called the Boston office to surrender but inadvertently disconnected the call while transferring it to an agent.

The civilian employee was suspended Thursday night for "lack of candor," and could face criminal charges for denying he handled the call when agents questioned him earlier about Sampson's insistence that he called the office on July 23, the day before he allegedly carjacked and killed the first of three people, the FBI announced late yesterday.

US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan declined to comment on the case, but the FBI said it referred the investigation to Sullivan's office yesterday for possible prosecution. Making a false statement to an FBI agent is a federal crime that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.

"He was not suspended because he disconnected a phone call, because those things can happen," said Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI. "It's because while this investigation was ongoing, and he was asked if he received this call, he wasn't truthful."

The employee was filling in for a switchboard operator who had gone to lunch when he answered the telephone call from Sampson at 1 p.m., she said.

"The employee inadvertently disconnected the telephone while transferring the call to the complaint duty agent," according to an FBI press release.

Citing privacy concerns, Marcinkiewicz declined to identify the employee, but said he has worked at the Boston FBI office for 17 years, is "well-liked" within the agency, and has never had any work-related problems.

Marcinkiewicz also declined to comment on the content of the call or whether the clerical worker disputes Sampson's assertion that he identified himself as a bank robber and offered to surrender.

Sampson, 42, who was charged last summer with killing a Kingston teenager, an elderly Taunton man, and a third man in New Hampshire, was indicted last month in Boston on federal carjacking and murder charges that could carry the death penalty.

Boston attorneys Robert Sheketoff and Stephanie Page, and New Jersey attorney David Rhunke, who represent Sampson, couldn't be reached for comment last night.

But in earlier interviews, Sampson's attorneys have said that his telephone call to the FBI could play a key role in his defense, because Sampson says he wouldn't have killed anyone if the FBI had arrested him after the call.

Immediately after his arrest July 31 in Vermont, Sampson confessed to killing Philip McCloskey, 69, and Jonathan Rizzo, 19, a George Washington University student, after forcing them to drive to secluded areas in Marshfield and Abington, according to police.

He also confessed that he drove Rizzo's car to New Hampshire, where he killed Robert Whitney, 58, of Concord, N.H., police said.

Sampson said that on the day before he allegedly killed McCloskey, he called the FBI's Boston office from a pay telephone outside an Abington convenience store and identified himself by name as a North Carolina bank robbery suspect, according to his lawyers.

Sampson's attorneys say he claimed that he told a male agent: "Please come and get me. I don't want to stay in Abington, because I'm going to get in trouble."

Sampson said he waited at the 7-Eleven for several hours but left when agents didn't show up.

For several months, FBI officials said they had no evidence to support Sampson's claim because all of the dispatchers, duty agents, and civilian workers who fielded telephone calls on July 23 insisted they hadn't received a call like the one described by Sampson.

But on Sept. 14, the FBI confirmed that it had received telephone records that confirmed a 55-second telephone call to the Boston FBI office from the Abington store. But officials insisted there was still no evidence that Sampson offered to surrender.

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 12/15/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

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