| March 26, 2003 - April 24, 2003 | ||
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Special New England Summertime Alert: We are now in that narrow window of opportunity to buy sunblock. If you dash down to your nearest drug store, you'll find every variety of sunblock well stocked. Get your supply now! We all know that after Memorial Day the drug stores cease to restock the sunblock, so that by the Fourth of July all you can find is Johnson's Baby Sunblock SPF 60. Put it on your shopping list for tomorrow, and get enough to last through next winter's trip to more pleasant lands.
Purchased a small, uninteresting item at Best Buy in the Fenway today. The receipt included long instructions for a phone survey that I could take. I was a bit leery because the survey would require me to punch in a 16-digit number on my receipt. Obviously, this would allow them to link up my opinions with my phone number and anything else I had purchased with that credit card. But Best Buy is a respectable and honest business, isn't it? And my name would get tossed into a drawing for a $500 gift card, so why not? Called the 800 number where they had me press 5 to indicate I had a touchtone phone! Weird! Something wrong with using the standard "Press 1" test? Punched in the 16 digit number, which was probably immediately forwarded to Homeland Security and all the major airlines. Then they started asking me questions. At the beginning of the call they had said they wanted to know about this most recent purchase (which was satisfactory), but when they started asking the questions they said the scope covered my whole shopping experience at Best Buy. That's the sort of ambiguity and contradiction I'm used to in slipshod surveys, but in the case of Best Buy it allowed me to bring in all the times I've gotten crappy, rude service at the dirty, understocked store at Cambridgeside Galleria.
The questions proceeded normally until they asked one question and didn't provide me a scale for the answer. Most had been on something like a 1 to 7 scale of satisfaction. I waited to let it repeat the question and this time it provided a scale for the answer. Then a few questions later it asked for my opinion on some sweeping concept like whether it was fun to shop at Best Buy. The scale was "1 for terrible, your worst experience ever, to 10 for the most fun you've ever had shopping, 0 if the question is not applicable." Got that? The top end of the scale is 10! You got a 10 on your phone pad? And they don't mean zero, because they explicitly said zero means "not applicable." I could've experimented with a quick one-zero to see what happened, but I don't have fun at Best Buy, and I didn't want to risk skewing the results. So I hit a 2 or 3, and went on. Then two questions later they asked "Readily available?" That's it. The whole question. I pressed the star button to get a repeat thinking there had been a glitch. The question again was "Readily available?" followed by a scale for the answer. Man, a subject for that question would have helped quite a bit. Do you suppose they were offering me a job? Like, meaning could I start tomorrow? That's when I decided it was a load of shit and hung up, figuring it was most likely just an underhanded way to form a profile on me so they could make sales calls to me. They were probably monitoring the ambient noise on my phone too so they could measure how big my place is. I should've gone to a bar and borrowed someone's cellphone to complete the survey just to mess 'em up. DVD (and VHS) version of Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers will go on sale August 26, 2003. But, the special extended edition with 35 additional minutes (DVD only) will go on sale November 18, 2003.
An analysis of Netflix's DVD allocation system. [Thanks, Brian!] The conclusion is that in the month after a month when you've rented a lot of movies, popular DVDs will be less available to you. Rent few movies in a month, and the popular movies will become more available in the following month.
The Minolta Dimage S414, 4 megapixel, 4x zoom, $400. In other words, in the same ballpark as the G3, but $300 cheaper. Doesn't allow external flash. Only accepts Type I Compact Flash. Uses AA batteries.
Announcement received today:
BEACON HILL ART SHOWIt has been promised to me that the cheese will be cheap, but the quality of the wine is yet to be determined. Sure, we all know how important it is to avoid SARS, but what if you get it? Do you know what treatment your doctor should prescribe? Ribavirin. In Hong Kong, 90% of those treated with Ribavirin have recovered.
Behavior observed among the marathon audience: While riding the B train to the end of the line, one woman called out loudly to her friends, "We're already in Brighton!" just as St. John's Seminary hove into view. She had, at that point, been traveling in Brighton for a few miles, and would have ridden into Newton shortly, but it was, after all, the end of the line. A moment later the same woman, upon spying two recumbent bicycles with fairings passing by, shrieked out for the benefit of everyone on the train "The wheelchairs! The wheelchairs are already here!" It was 12:30 and we were at mile 22. The wheelchairs had left Hopkinton at 11:45. They would have had to average just under 30 MPH to get to Boston College in 45 minutes. I'm no expert, but without chaindrive and gearing, I don't think they can do that. Not long after that, the very same woman (clearly a problem case) came around the corner of a porta-potty, ignored the "Occupied" label on the door and pulled at the latch. Then she turned and spotted the half dozen of us who were waiting in line. Clearly she has never done an AIDS Ride or anything like that. In fact, I don't think she gets out in public much at all. Once I got myself positioned well near the top of Heartbreak Hill, I found myself next to a woman who had brought along her beagle. When the dog spotted another dog, he went into an unceasing frenzy of baying and pulling wildly at his leash. She seemed to have no method of control besides looking embarrassed, which didn't work. After a lot of this, she took the dog and put him in her car somewhere nearby. An older man said to his wife, after they (and many others) had been applauding the leading handful of runners, "Why don't they thank us for applauding? They really should thank us!" Right. Thousands of runners, 26.2 miles, many thousands more people lining the route, and it was all about this gray-haired man and whether those Kenyans thanked him properly at the top of Heartbreak Hill. A cyclist who straddled her bike in the road perpendicular to the curb because, after all, no runner is going to want to use a part of the road within five feet of the curb, are they? Another cyclist (might have been the same one) riding her bike in the crowd on the sidewalk. This was astonishing! It's hard enough to walk. There are kids, dogs, radios, snack trays, trash and everything else on those sidewalks. She rode right on my heels, then passed me and stopped right in front of me. I squeezed past her and found a spot a few feet in front of her where it would be good for photos. She started rolling directly at me without even looking. Caught herself just inches short of hitting me. Walking in the crowd from Heartbreak Hill I didn't smell a single cigarette until I got almost to Chestnut Hill Avenue. Once I got past Cleveland Circle, smoking was abundant, as people had set up picnics and barbecues in the front yards of their buildings. The smell of spilled alcohol became ubiquitous as well. Experience from past years is that the alcohol smell increases gradually as the race approaches Kenmore Square, where the whole atmosphere has the stench of a grain processing facility in the midwest. I was listening to the Channel 4 broadcast when they decided to take a commercial break just as the lead runners were climbing the last leg of Heartbreak Hill! WTF? We could trace their progress by the positions of the various helicopters. No work, sunny day, and the Boston Marathon running just a couple of blocks away. The Canon camera cried out to be taken to photograph the runners. Took a bunch of pictures, and I'll probably get them to you tomorrow.
Grub.org is trying to solve the problem of indexing the rapidly growing web by using distributed computing, like the screensaver search for ET. If you want, you too can run a screensaver as part of the project.
Greencine seems to be functioning well. Friday morning I mailed a DVD back to the San Francisco address. Today (Monday) I got an e-mail acknowledgement that they had recevied it. About 3 hours later they sent an e-mail to tell me they had mailed the next movie.
BTW, I didn't notice at first, but Greencine uses real postage stamps on the return envelope rather than the Business Reply Mail that Netflix uses. Stamps would be cheaper, as long as you aren't paying a human to stick them on. Gotta have this! The Epson Stylus Photo 900 can print directly onto CDs and DVDs. $200.
A discussion here of that H.J. Res 25 to repeal the 22nd amendment. All speculation.
Maybe you've seen those ads for coral calcium on TV, maybe not. I spotted my first one 3 or 4 weeks ago, and since then I've seen the words "coral calcium" almost as frequently as "Iraqi Information Minister." I was fortunate, I guess, that the first ad I saw featured the great doctor who started the whole scam. Maybe he doesn't call himself a doctor, but his name is "Barefoot." No, really. The ads are not half bad. I tuned in midway and was hooked waiting to hear what product they were hyping.
First, the good Dr. Barefoot claims somebody did a study that revealed there were something like seven isolated populations around the globe who enjoyed incredible health, great longevity, and no cancer. These populations all, with the exception of the Okinawans, live high up in the mountains so that their only source of water is glacial melt, which having soaked through many, many meters of rock comes to the people full of silt. The people drink it that way calling it "mountain milk," the good doctor explained. Just like all these sort of ads, the doctor had two "interviewers" to ask him the right questions and make exclamations of amazement, as appropriate. There was the woman, whose job it was to play the completely gullible fool and has the ultimate responsibility of asking "Just how much does this cost?" There's a woman like that on all these shows, whether they are selling pills or grills. The slightly satisfying difference on the Dr. Barefoot program was that there was also a male interviewer whose job was to be more skeptical and to bring the doctor back on track after every one of his rambling discourses. This man was not so skeptical as I, but played the role of a person with enough brain cells to read, say, the Boston Globe (if not the NY Times). And it was, indeed, the male interviewer who dragged Dr. Barefoot to the question we all wanted to ask, which was "Wait a minute, you mentioned the Okinawans. What about the Okinawans, because we know from all our WWII movies that there are no glaciers on Okinawa." Oh, clever scriptwriters! That's exactly what they wanted us to ask, because that's what they're selling: coral calcium dug from the pristine mountains of Okinawa. None of that shoddy coral calcium that lays on the beaches to get ruined by sun and wave and the blood of U.S. Marines. No! Virgin coral calcium, he says. Clean, rich, and very expensive to dig out and transport, but more than worth every penny. I interrupt for a bit here, to mention that our male interviewer was never so bright to get the doctor back to those mountain people and ask why, if coral calcium is so hard to get, why don't we just dig up gravel from the bottom of glaciers? That might be cheaper, right? And you could even sell the glacier water as a really premium product, eh? But no, that question didn't come up. Now that the doctor and the interviewers have it all out in the open now, and we know they are selling coral calcium from Okinawa and it is expensive, the hard sell comes fast and...uh...hard. There were many strong claims of huge health improvements in many different body systems by all kinds of people of all ages with all sorts of infirmities. But I only remember one claim clearly (and you will too). Dr. Barefoot claims that either the New England Journal of Medicine or the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article that says "coral calcium cures cancer." There you have it. Dr. Barefoot does qualify that by saying the research shows only that it cures some cancers, and he modestly admits that he has never had cancer himself, so he cannot attest first hand to those benefits. Other ads for coral calcium, done by other people, though make the unqualified statement that "coral calcium cures cancer." Your question now might be "Is it legal to claim that?" I suspect not, but who knows these days. You could probably go to jail for claiming marijuana improves appetite, but it's okay to sell barrels of coral calcium to people suffering with cancer. Naturally, this all smelled to high heaven of quackery and scam. For all we know, the Okinawans are selling us coral calcium mined from areas heavily polluted by American military wastes: lead, oil and possibly even radioactive wastes. But there were a couple of good bits of info hidden amidst the quackery. One is that Dr. Barefoot talked about the need for magnesium in addition to calcium. I think it's irresponsible the way the FDA and other sources of nutrition info push calcium, calcium, calcium and never mention magnesium. You need to consume magnesium along with calcium in a 2 to 5 ratio. A big load of calcium with insufficient magnesium does you no good. Fortunately, CVS and Costco (and probably Walgreens) sell a calcium/magnesium combo with the two elements at the correct ratio. I did a Google search on "coral calcium," hoping to find someone giving the level-headed story behind it. All I found were links to Dr. Barefoot or to sites selling coral calcium who all made reference to Dr. Barefoot. And so I was immensely pleased when the May 2003 issue of Life Extension which is really a promotional magazine for Life Extension nutritional supplements. These people sell some expensive stuff, but they do it in a way that appeals to people who can read at the level of the NY Times, or possibly even the Wall Street Journal, so we like it better. They could sell coral calcium, if they were just profit-hungry charlatans. And, in fact, they do carry a coral calcium made by somebody else, but they don't promote it. I scanned the Life Extension article about coral calcium, and you can read it here. To summarize: it's a ripoff. Coral calcium is just calcium carbonate, same as Tums antacid. Either calcium citrate or calcium bisglycinate are better absorbed. Long life among the Okinawans is more likely attributable to other aspects of their lifestyle such as low calorie diets and strong family ties. Yesterday, April 16, along the Muddy River, the first flowers of spring. Now, it is 31°(F) as I write.
Meanwhile, the obituary office at CNN was letting their pre-death obituary preparations just lie around in a publicly accessible part of their network. The Smoking Gun grabbed those of Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Pope John Paul II and more!
Union Street in Brighton would not meet with the aesthetic standards of Peoria, Arizona. Since 9/11/2001, and possibly before, the few blocks of Union Street have been lined with American flags on every utility pole, some of the street signs, and many of the homes. There are yellow ribbons too. This war memorial sits at one end of Union Street, where it intersects with Chestnut Hill Ave. and Winship Street.
It's difficult to get a good photograph highlighting all the flags along the street, but we can highlight the decorations at a couple of homes: 
An organized bike ride in Palm Springs: Tour de Palm Springs for charity.
Ben Davenport is blogging the daily menus of the Google headquarters cafeteria! Today's entree was grilled teriyaki mahi mahi.
Yeah, it was 80°(F) today in Boston, and my face is reddish, if not actually burned, and yes I saw several pale, soggy New Englanders arrayed around Walden Pond to finally begin working on their tans, but winter ain't over yet! Sub-freezing temps are predicted for Thursday night. And I saw snow piles in several places today, still trailing their wetness across parking lots. There's a little one just across the street in the Bread & Circus parking lot. They're waiting, they are. Waiting to call on their icy gods to send us one last reminder of their endless rule of these frozen lands.
OTOH, it only reached 74°(F) in Palm Springs, but they don't have a freeze predicted any time in the next few days.  New siding for the Transamerica Building? No, it's the proposed London Bridge Tower. More info here. Bill O'Reilly, screaming Republican, makes possibly racist joke at fundraiser. By the way, has anyone hooked up an electric generator to Abraham Lincoln? The way he must be spinning in his grave, he could produce more electricity than the whole California wind-generation industry.
Greencine. Sent me e-mails on April 9 (last Wednesday) saying my initial DVDs had been shipped. They all arrived today, Monday. Packed the same way Netflix does it. The return address is 537 Stevenson St., Suite 200; San Francisco CA 94103, which is info I couldn't find on their website.
I'll keep you updated. Vincent-louis Apruzzese of Behemoth Media is a rider on the Outrider Provincetown bike ride and is making a documentary about the ride. I went over to his studio in the South End this morning so he could shoot an interview of me. Got to meet his affectionate doggies, and had a nice time spilling my guts on a subject close to my heart.
After that I went by the Boston Buyer's Club and got caught up in a long chat with Michael P. who volunteers there. He gave me his April 14 copy of The New Yorker. I found an article in there about the various factions in Iraq so fascinating that I rode two stops past mine when coming home! In my 20 years of living on the "B" Line, this has never happened before. I think it was just that I found it so satisfying to read something well written about Iraq, after suffering with the shallow and rushed stories in newspapers and on TV for 3 weeks now, that I just lost myself in it. I would have ridden further, too, but I came to the end of the article, "wartime Friendships" by Jeffrey Goldberg. NY Times article about the film "School's Out: The Life of a Gay High School in Texas," which will be on MTV Thursday.
Mubarak Dahir's recent column on the continuing rapid decline in the basic rights of gay people in Egypt. A Marriott hotel had become one of the few safe havens for gay men. A Marriott hotel!
Here CNN talks about the Iraqi horror stories it never reported, all of which would have made it clear that Saddam was even worse than we thought.
And here James K. Glassman takes CNN to task, saying their reasons for staying silent are insufficient. And even worse, Yahoo finally spits out this story that Saddam acted in gay porn back in the 1960s! "Saddam's acting in the picture is actually quite good," al-Sabah notes. "One scene, in which he buries his face in a pillow and cries, is so touching you almost can forget you're watching a low-budget sexploitation film." Here's the official .PDF of the playing cards the military is issuing in Iraq now. You'll see their graphic artists don't seem to know how to maintain the aspect ratio of a photo. And why do they spell it "HUSAYN?" But we are sore disappointed that a certain Information Minister is missing entirely! Surely he could have been one of the jokers.
Here's the photo we've been looking for. I've seen a few quick shots on TV of Marines happily accepting the thanks of Iraqi men, but this is the first still photo I've seen.
Imagine my sheer delight upon discovering welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com, that is, "we love the Iraqi Information Minister dot com." Ron's Log has been getting hit by a lot of Google searches for Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf t-shirts, and how you can find them here! Alternative t-shirt here.
More about al-Sahaf here. Some of his best quotes here. Or make up some quotes here. John Dvorak continues his Alice In Wonderland fantasy about Apple on an Intel chip. While here he is shredded by John Gruber.
This really isn’t worth debunking point-by-point. Just remember that Dvorak is pulling all of this out of his ass. He has no sources, on- or off-record, claiming knowledge of such a project. Future of iPods: dropping the 5 Gb and 20 Gb models and introducing a 15 Gb and 30 Gb model. Redesign of the control buttons. 58% of iPods sold are Windows versions!
Wyoming congresswoman equates being black with being a drug addict. She refuses to apologize. Oh, and she's a Republican. Did that surprise you?
I'm sure there's still lots of bloody trouble ahead, but the news is certainly good today.
Some Iraqi in Baghdad has an American flag with Sylvester Stallone on it! Saw it on CNN. A few young men made quite a show of kissing Stallone's bare chest...again and again. Already we are missing the daily entertainment from Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf. Slate put together a few pointers for him back on Monday. I hope he hasn't been depending on Ron's Log for this info.
Never heard of GreenCine before. It's a DVD mail rental outfit like Netflix, but claims to have better selection in small, independent, foreign, and special interest films. We're evaluating it now for the benefit of Ron's Log readers. It certainly does include some titles I've looked for but never found at Netflix.
From their FAQ: HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE "GREENCINE"?An alternative is CafeDVD. If you're already a Netflix customer, here's a long, detailed critique of their user interface; website, envelopes, everything. This Crimson article starts out mentioning that the ice penis story nearly crashed their server, drawing more hits than any other story they've ever published...but then it advances into a long ramble about Harvard's special and unique place in the universe (also Boston, meaning Cambridge).
In case you're one of those people who have thirsted for one, single Democrat who tells the Bush Administration what's what, here's one: George Mc Govern.
It's okay with me if some dusty Marine in the theater of war wants to say "EYE-rack," but anyone else who does it is severely clueless. At the moment I see a new lightweight face on CNN Headline News (she calls herself "Liz") who says "SAD <glottal-stop> DAHM," equal emphasis on both syllables. Got a phone call from WBUR this morning as their pledge season has started. The male caller said "We was lookin' for support from you and was wonderin' if you was interested in pledging $60." I repressed my urge to respond in kind and simply said "No thanks," and hung up. I don't give my credit card number to nobody what can't match his predicates and subjects.
Today in Palm Springs 90° (F) and clear. In Boston I was awakened one more fucking time by the bang and scrape of snow shovels.
I am eagerly anticipating the day when the Iraqi Information Mnister is interrupted during one of his press conferences by U.S. soldiers coming up to seize him. Film at 11. Count on it.
The Amppack, a backpack designed for iPod integration.
Internet-enabled toilet paper roll. It prints!
Vertigo, Then And Now. Website compares scenes from Vertigo to photos of the same locations in San Francisco today. Here is Castro and Market.
Gay speed-dating in San Francisco. This stuff, speed-dating, seems pretty creepy to me, but I can't absolutely guarantee I would never try it.
I know a homosexual in San Francisco. Yes, I do. He tried this a couple of months ago and wrote this about it: Yes, while the concept is somewhat horrid, the HurryDate experience ended up being a hoot, Ron -- the hardest part of it was just getting motivated to get myself to the event. I met 18 guys in 54 minutes, circled "yes" on my private scorecard for nine of them, matched with two of those, and have had a date with one of 'em (who hasn't returned my call for a second date, alas). The other match is pretty busy this month but still seems interested from the tone of his e-mails, so we shall see. Even if the whole thing is played out before long, I would say that it was definitely a worthwhile experience to have. I would try it at least one more time, although I realize that it is not the ideal way to find true compatibility. "Officials of the Alliance for Downtown New York, the business improvement district that encompasses most of Manhattan south of City Hall, said yesterday that the organization will set up wireless access points, which are known as Wi-Fi connections or 'hot spots,' in City Hall Park, the South Street Seaport area and Bowling Green."
No word yet on when these hot spots will become smoke-free. Took a walk around Cambridge today, squeezing it in between snows. Saw something new in Central Square: guy riding a bike in the bike lane on Mass Ave, heading MIT-bound. Was holding a video camera to his eye and recording his ride. He was moving pretty fast...faster than traffic, anyway. The speed didn't bother me so much, nor the fact that he had only one hand on the handlebar, nor that he had no helmet. I think what bothered me was that he had his left eye closed, and was actually watching his route only through the camera viewfinder!
Harvard Stadium ("Soldier's Field?") was wide open, so I went in to walk around and get a few pictures. A few people were running the stairs. Ouch! 
This Is Not A Joke! The RAF is all set to start dropping concrete bombs. Technical term is "inert bombs;" they're laser guided.
Anderson Erickson Dairy in Iowa no longer handpacks its cottage cheese. Does George W. know about this?
No further word on what that enticing "non-traditional activity" was supposed to have been last night in Baghdad. That Information Minister is such a tease! I had been too shy yesterday to suggest it could have been the VERY Special Republican Guard in drag.
But here Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf says "Today we slaughtered them in the airport. They are out of Saddam International Airport. The force that was in the airport, this force was destroyed." So I'm thinking maybe the non-traditional warfare thing was that the Ministers and some of the Special Republican Guard retired to one of their deep underground bunkers and dropped some top grade acid! Andrew Gilligan writes: "We are seeing a curious limbo here, the gates of Baghdad remain open, there are no checkpoints. The Americans could come in by bus if they wanted, the buses are still running from the suburbs." Ha! They could, but only if they had exact change! Foiled! I'm beginning to suspect that the Information Minister is all that is left of the government. You know how we kept the Emperor of Japan alive at the end of WW2 so that he could surrender to us and get all the Japanese to go along? Well, we probably got too lucky in Baghdad and knocked off Saddam and his boys in that first attack and there's nobody left to organize a proper surrender except that Information Minister. And he knows that as soon as he surrenders, there goes his airtime. This is his 15 minutes of fame, and he's going to stretch it out as far as he can. An index of weblogs in Washington DC that lists them according to their proximity to the different Metro stops. Red Line is full of 'em, while the Green Line is thinly populated.
Time Magazine shows a rather appalling ignorance of Protestantism: "U.S. Marine Gunner Sergeant Kimberlee Williams from Dayton, Ohio, and Marine Johnnie Jackson cry while attending an emotional Protestant mass at an air base in Kuwait."
Sorry I didn't note his name, but one of the talking head experts on CNN last night repeatedly pronounced "infrastructure" as "infullstructure."
Nice little map game teaches you the countries of north Africa, middle east and central Asia. Works in Opera.
There's something going on Algeria where 29 European tourists have vanished since mid-February. X-Files? Slavers? Bandits?
I've developed a backlog of photos of the Longfellow Bridge, and in light of recent proposals to mount a major overhaul of the bridge, I thought it was time to post them here.
Don't expect to see this sold in the U.S.: a new Sony PVR (like Tivo) that includes a DVD burner (if it's Sony it must be DVD+R, right? Right?). Has an 80 Gb hard drive that can store 90 hours of TV. Goes on sale in Japan on April 12.
The Iraqi Information Minister (not Saddam, not the Defense Minister) promises something "non-traditional" tonight. That could mean almost anything. Maybe the Republican Guard will take off their uniforms and attack the Americans naked, rather than in civilian clothes. If that happens, I will curse the low resolution of those satellite phones. Maybe it means they will attack us on horse or camel back. Or maybe they will play bagpipes. Surely he doesn't mean to suggest any sort of guerrilla warfare, since that has been the very definition of "traditional" since Vietnam.
Why is it that Arab (or perhaps Moslem) culture seems to place such a high value on big talk that can't be backed up? I would think all cultures have something equivalent to "He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk?" "Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time, says Commerce Secretary Don Evans."
Oh, it's all clear now! We are up shit creek, and the paddle has gone off on a mission for God. Looks like we'll just have to sit here until the rainy season; i.e., election 2004. blogsagainstwar.net is a blog of anti-war blogs. There are a lot of bloggers there who would love to drop to their knees and suck Saddam's ass. You'll have to use your good judgement to sort out who's who.
UPS has redesigned their logo. I've been checking the UPS site for a couple of days while tracking a package, and never even noticed the change.
I've finished watching that Pride & Prejudice which originally arrived half broken. Netflix made nary a piffle of complaint about the two DVDs that were snapped by my letter carrier, and immediately replaced them.
I was a bit leery of that Pride & Prejudice, since I really despise those PBS mini-series that are based on novels of the British upper and middle classes of the 18th and 19th centuries. PBS takes the story and throws it right out the window. They just keep the vast lawns, country estates, snotty women, impossible costumes, and violent men on horseback. It's like Lifetime Channel, but with pledge breaks. But not so for this P&P which gets 9.1 stars out of 10 at IMDB. This is the A&E mini-series, and even though the horses outnumbered people 2 to 1, I found myself unable to tear myself away, as even my hard heart warmed to the honest (and stiff) Mr. Darcy. That Lizzy was such a fine daughter, dontcha think? Too good for her own mother. It didn't hurt that the slut daughter Lydia was played by Julia Sawalha, who played the tightass daughter on Absolutely Fabulous. This photo is very late. This is from California AIDS Ride 4 (1997). You all who've done an AIDS Ride know the photographer who comes along to shoot us and sell us the resulting pictures. Well, ya know, he sure as hell doesn't bother to check to make sure you're the subject of the photo you're buying. So I went and bought an 8 x 10 of Greg Lougainis, who was a rider that year. Somehow it got to me late, or got set aside or something, and I just ran across it today while emptying my front closet. So here, for those of you who want it, Greg Lougainis in the California AIDS Ride '97:
This is nice, with room for improvement. The Epson Rio PhotoPC Player; available this summer for about $590. It's a photo storage and viewing device. Compact Flash type II slot, USB connections, 10 Gb hard drive, 3.8 inch display. Supports direct printing to some Epson printers. I'm sure that shortly after it hits the market, they'll upgrade it with 20 Gb and 40 Gb hard drives. What it needs is a headphone plug and MP3 software.
I can't vouch for its reliability, but Debka.com, which is run by two Israeli journalists, has some interesting news items:
The Anti-Bloggies, "basically another B.S. awards ceremony." The only rule that seems to really separate the Anti-Bloggies from any other award is that Wil Wheaton is barred from winning one.
Things must be bad when al-Jazeera pulls out of Baghdad.
What I'd like to know is when they say American soldiers are 40 miles, or 30 miles, or 15 miles, or even 6 miles "from Baghdad," what point are they measuring from? If I said I was "6 miles from New York City," it would be almost meaningless. Does the city of Baghdad suddenly spring up full blown from an empty desert, or is it like every other city on earth, where density increases gradually as you approach? Surely, they are not measuring to the city limits, since that would only matter if we were thinking of buying some land there and were concerned about property tax rates and whether the schools were good. Another timeless question answered: "second annual" is more popular than "first annual." The researcher used Google to search for the number of occurences of "1st annual," "first annual," etc. up to fifteen.
Photographer plans 30-mile long continuous panorama of San Francisco streets.
 Pre-orders for the largest version will cost you $8000. Single frames $350...just in case he happens to walk by your place, I guess. While we can still remember what snow is like, here's yet another snow phallus photo. This one features genuine, natural pubic hair. I vaguely recall it was taken somewhere in the vicinity of Harvard a few years ago.
Lookit what I found at Virgin this evening:
It's an old fundraising CD for the Tanqueray AIDS Rides (logo on the back of the CD). Copyright date is 2000. Virgin is selling it for only $8, and not a single note of Enya on it! I had to get it just to see what it was like. It's pretty, uh, mediocre. The May 2003 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction (in finer book shops now!) has a review of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers which expands to cover the first movie as well. Those poor few of you who have found the LOTR movies to something less than The Greatest Cinema...EVER will like the review. It was this sentence that reminded me of the critical style of one of Ron's Log readers: "One of the ways in which I know that Two Towers is not the 'masterpiece' it is being called is that I could feel every minute that my lower extremities were asleep. (Roughly, the last hour of the movie)."
The reviewer has many positive things to say about The Two Towers, however, and her ultimate conclusion is that it is a "pretty good film." More travel by Breda today. I was on a double Breda both inbound and outbound. Inbound I observed they have the automatic stop announcement system operating again, unfortunately the PA system wasn't working, so when the driver decided to go express he had to just stand up and yell at us. This worked okay on the way in when the train was nearly empty, but coming back the cars were packed solid. You couldn't hear her at all, and the different levels of the floor made it impossible to even see the driver, so we wonder where did that voice come, what did it say, was it important?
A drawback to the automatic stop announcement system is that there doesn't seem to be any way to turn it off for those express runs. So even though we all know the train ain't going to stop until Kenmore, the little robot keeps telling us we're about to stop and the doors are going to open on the right. They fixed this on the return trip by disabling the whole announcement system. Today's trains didn't need any rebooting, but they are tediously slow. They've got an imposed speed limit of about 20 MPH. And if that isn't bad enough, the doors are really slow. We pull into a stop and there's a 5 to 10 second wait before the doors open. On older cars this would have brought forth the "back door!" cry to wake up the driver, but today everyone seemed patient. Once the doors are closed again, there's a long wait for the train to start rolling. I wonder if the drivers are required to do some sort of manual safety check before rolling away. Here's an interior shot of a nearly empty Breda. 
Got mail from Zipcar today saying they would be adding a Honda Element to their already interesting selection of cars. They're calling it their anti-Mini. (Surfboards not included).
The handy IraqoMeter keeps score for you!
Find and track your favorite embedded reporters at Poynter.org. Doesn't work in Opera, but does in IE.
Once or twice a year some nervous nelly tries to worry us with an article claiming that Moore's Law will cease to function for some device or format. Here is the first I've seen this year. After 2005 flash memory technology will begin to fall behind the pace dictated by Moore's Law. Woe! We are Undone!
Inevitably, within a month or two after a report like this, some company announces a technological breakthrough that puts everything back on track with Moore's Law. Mark your calendar now. Big Dig northbound opens 1 day ahead of schedule at 5:48 pm today (featuring Ted Kennedy)! Wow! Whatta country! First driver over the bridge is Shari Zakim, 15-year old daughter of Leonard P. Zakim. None of this is up on Boston.com. Apparently the Globe staff takes Saturday off, or they're all partying at the Bruins' match.
Here's a photo from The Globe of the Artery last night before the opening of the new tunnel and bridge. 
Here's a new idea: Dog Island. The website admits to being new and incomplete, but it also needs someone who writes better. Nonetheless, it seems that Dog Island is a cluster of islands 3 hours (by boat) from Tallahassee where dogs go to live a more natural life. It's not wild, because there are health facilities, and people come in to plant wild carrots for the rabbits who are the dogs' primary food source. Packs of dogs are artificially built up before being released to mingle with the other packs. They don't just toss single dogs out there with a "Good luck, fella!" It costs you nothing to send your dog there, but it's permanent. It isn't like a vacation spot for Rover.
Oh, wait. Sorry. According to Snopes the whole thing is a hoax! Wow, and such a website! Still, it's a cool idea. Can't find any war coverage you like? If it makes you feel better, nobody else can either. (But if you can get BBC World News on your PBS station, give it a try.)
Back in December when I first mentioned the sale on Dvorty keyboards, I suggested my Dvorty keyboard might be subjected to a shower. And now I've done it. A couple of weeks ago I gave it a light mist of diluted household detergent and then hit it with the shower hose. The first rinse water was embarrassingly gray, so I kept spraying for quite awhile. I let it air dry for these 2 weeks, and now these very words are being typed on it...in Qwerty mode. And now Dvorty mode, which I have gotten pretty rusty at. The keys are still too stiff, which was my initial complaint about the keyboard when I first got it. I just have to press more assertively, and it only causes errors when my limp pinky fingers are involved.
Dvorty keyboards here. I got an "invitation" yesterday from the ACLU to join. I get these once in awhile and never respond because despite the fact that they do a lot of worthwhile work, they are inconsistent in their protection of civil liberties, and sometimes work against them. Specifically, they never act to defend the 2nd Amendment. I don't think you can pick and choose from the Bill Of Rights and decide which of those are real civil liberties that are worth defending. They all work together as a package. In other cases, the ACLU has defended affirmative action, which is clearly contrary to the 14th Amendment.
Nonetheless, I am so fair-minded I am going to give you, my reader who is more willing to compromise on these points, the mailing address for the ACLU so that you can join, if you haven't already. Send at least $20 to: ACLU 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor New York NY 10004-2400 Back on the 18th I mentioned the The Vidicode Featurephone 175, which is a phone with a built-in CD burner to record your conversations. Today I have received mail from their Sales Manager, Eric Vielvoye, who is obviously a man who grasps the tremendous market shaping power of Ron's Log. At least he grasps it better than their web designers. He pointed me to their home website for more information and to www.vidicode.com for their "USA colleagues." Unfortunately, that USA site has no info on the phone at all, so I really can't tell you if it will be sold here, or what it's price might turn out to be.
We certainly appreciate Eric's outreach. Went into town today hoping to get some photos of the changes in the Central Artery, but there was nothing too photogenic. I could see where chunks had been cut out of the Storrow Drive exit, but a photo would have looked like nothing but a mass of rusting girders. I did find it interesting that some girders on the old highway have been labeled "SAVE" in orange spray paint. Reminds me of math class, where the instructor would write out a complex proof on the board, draw a line around it, and add the word "SAVE" so that the janitors wouldn't clean it off the board overnight. It always worked in my school. Let's hope the janitors at the Central Artery are at least as attentive!
Still, I bring you this photo of the still partly open top of the new Green Line tunnel going under the Fleet Center, and this photo of Faneuil Hall in wartime. Here's a little graphic that clearly summarizes the traffic changes. You may want to print it out and hang it from your rearview mirror...that, or carry a LOT of religious medallions. Either choice will work as well. 
During my sojourn I was able to stop in for my first visit to "Union Local 69," the bar that seems to have sort of replaced the late 119. The place is more rundown than 119 was, and filthy. My drinks were bought for me, so I can't say anything about their prices or the quality of the bar staff. I had beer, but the guys drinking mixed drinks said they were strong...the drinks, not necessarily the bar staff.
You climb a stinking, narrow wooden stairway (there is another fire exit) and at the top you encounter a couple of guys at the door who behave as though they may be employees. One stood in front of me, the light coming from behind him so I couldn't see his face. "Hi," he said. I said hi back, and waited for a request for money or ID or membership. He just stood there, finally saying "Hi" again. I waited. Nothing more issued from his mouth, and he didn't move, so I said hi again and moved around him. He might have just been some local burned-out alcoholic, but the bar seemed to allow him to behave like this. Summary: stay away! Later we went by the former Commonwealth Brewery (which was renamed Commonwealth Fish & Beer Company). I don't know what it's called now. They stopped brewing their own stuff a long time ago, but had a big inventory that they kept selling for a looong time. It eventually ran out, so now they sell nothing more than the usual beers you can find anywhere: Sam Adams, ya know, Bud. The menu is also greatly reduced. Business was busy, what with a Celtic game tonight. We got to sit in a little room that used to house one of their brewing tanks. Service was good. Summary: don't bother. Here's the NY Times article about Lawrence v. Texas (that's the sodomy thing). The Times seems optimistic, and included this social bit:
It was a cultural as well as a constitutional moment, marked by the presence in the courtroom of many gay men and women from among the core of elite Washington lawyers. The seats in the center of the courtroom reserved for members of the Supreme Court bar were all claimed by 6:30 this morning for the 11 o'clock argument. In more glorious news, the Times reports the number of gay personnel discharged from the American military dropped by about one-third in 2002 (compared to 2001).
I don't want you to miss the point that the Coast Guard was the only branch that increased its discharges of gay men and women. Isn't the Coast Guard part of Homeland Security now? The article includes a quote from a memo written by an officer at the 29 Palms Marine base (located conveniently close to Palm Springs): "Homosexuals can and do make some of the best Marines." Not only that, but I bet homosexuals can BE the best Marines. Just a guess. This has finally provided me the opportunity to share this historical photo. 
Slate has a nice summary of the Supreme Court reviewing the Texas anti-sodomy law. It's depressing reading shit like this:
Smith [attorney for Lawrence and Garner] says these laws say "you can't have sexual activity at all" if you are gay and Scalia objects: "They just say you can't have sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex." See? No problem. Homosexuals remain perfectly at liberty to have heterosexual sex in Texas.The upside is that Texas totally fucked up their defense of the law. Unfortunately, those justices don't have to listen to anybody. Somebody remind me which justice it is that's gay. Some time back I mentioned the Dvorty Keyboard. This is a keyboard that's switchable from Qwerty to the much more efficient Dvorak layout. Great thing about the keyboard is that the keys display both the Dvorak and the Qwerty layout (Qwerty in smaller size). Anyway, Dvorty was going out of business, and according to e-mail I got yesterday, they still haven't dumped their entire inventory. You can now buy a Dvorty Keyboard for only $35. The old price was $65. If you buy 10 keyboards the price drops to $30 each. If you've been wanting to try the Dvorak layout, this is about the easiest way to do it.
Here's one of those news stories that leaves out some essential bit of info:
Morocco offers US monkeys to detonate mineThey don't say if this is a suicide mission for the monkeys, or are they so well trained that they know how to defuse a mine, or maybe they are trained to walk around and dig in the dirt and find the mines, which do not explode because the monkeys are so much lighter than a human. I see no reason to assume this is some sort of gross cruelty. OTOH, we are talking about the Moroccans. The open maw of the Big Dig tunnel, northbound.
Starting tonight, northbound I-93 goes to one lane as they tear down the exit ramp to Storrow Drive. The official detour will take drivers to Sullivan Square! I presume an officer will be there to shoot the drivers and put them out of their misery. The officially suggested route from the airport to Mass General is to take the Ted Williams tunnel and follow the Mass Pike out to Brighton, then take Storrow Drive back into town from there! Oh yeah, everybody will figure that out real quick! And there is no way to get from I-93 to I-90?!?! Isn't I-90 the Mass Pike?? How did they miss that? The Globe's suggestions all boil down to this: DO NOT DRIVE. Walk, MBTA, bike, skate, stay home. Just don't drive. I forgot to mention that some of the Breda cars are back in service. Saturday morning I rode one into town. It was like 1983 all over again. The train had to be rebooted several times on our short journey and doors wouldn't close completely, even after rebooting. The automatic announcement system didn't work at all. But at least it never derailed! Here are a couple of recent Globe articles about the cars.
OFFICIALS EYE PUTTING BREDA TROLLEY CARS BACK ON TRACK BY END OF MONTH 8 BREDA TROLLEYS TO RETURN TO GREEN LINE A few pitchas:
The previously reported "WebDav" vulnerability of Windows 2000 machines is worse than originally thought. I find it irritating that the article says it's VERY important to download and install the Microsoft patch to fix this, but then fails to include a URL to lead you to the patch. Wankers. Anyway, go here for info from Microsoft or here for the patch itself.
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