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The May 10 issue of Science News contained an article about testosterone therapy entitled Unproven Elixir. I've put a scanned copy here. For your reference as you read the article, my testosterone levels before beginning Androgel were 335 ng/dL (total) and 1.7 ng/dL (free). After being on the gel a few weeks my levels were 485 ng/dL and 1.5 ng/dL.
How to spam your friends with photos from your Sanyo 8100 phone. If any of my friends have a photo-taking cellphone, they have not seen fit to send me a picture yet. Be the first to do so, and I promise to post it here on Ron's Log. If necessary, I will fuzz out any really startling bits.
Two new small (2 megapixel) cameras from Sony coming out this summer. The DSC-U60 is "ruggedized," has a 1 second start up time, and is designed for use with only one hand. That one I think I could make good use of. The DSC-U30 has similar guts, but is not ruggedized and sports a concave mirror on the front so the photographer can (get this!) see himself when pointing the camera back at himself! Lots of the photographers on Fotolog could make good use of that!
Success with soy milk bread: I tried making bread with soy milk a few times long ago. Each try was a complete failure, showing all the symptoms of killed yeast. I don't know what the problem was, since other people reported success. Yesterday I was at the Chinese supermarket and picked up a half gallon of fresh soy milk. It costs about half as much as the super-sterilized, extremely altered stuff they sell in boxes most places. It's made in either Cambridge or Waltham, depending on whether you want the non-genetically modified or the Frankenstein version. The price is the same. I went with Frankenstein, unsweetened, unflavored. Here is the list of ingredients:
Epiboly (Noun)
Pronunciation: [i-'pi-bê-lee] Definition 1: The growth of one part about another, as rapidly dividing cells grow around a more slowly dividing group. Usage 1: Today's word comes to us from embryology, a specialization of biology engaged in research on the prenatal development of organisms. Its use is usually restricted to the medical profession but today we are going to suggest kidnapping it for the linguistic benefit of the general population. The adjective is epibolic [e-pê-'bah-lik]. Suggested Usage: The metaphorical applications of the broad concept explode on the fertile mind: "Giles is rarely seen without his new epiboly, Gladys, with her arms wrapped around his neck." Abstract epibolies are not difficult to spot, either, "Daria's new train-spotting hobby has turned out to be a heavy epiboly on her already busy schedule!" Etymology: From Greek epibole "addition" from epiballein "to thrown on." Epiballein results from epi- "on, over, at" + ballein "to throw." Before you ask, yes, we do get "ball" from the same origin but the one meaning the dance you throw. The round object, ball, devolved from the same source as English "blow," "balloon," "boulevard," and, of course, "bull." Here we see how etymological change can lead to identical unrelated words as surely as it can lead to radically different related words. yourDictionary.com An article in yesterday's Globe about Zipcar. It seems they've been losing money. The board of directors got kicked out last year, and now they've been replaced, there's a new CEO, and $5 million more invested. The article includes an interesting little bit on how they recovered a stolen Zipcar.
Last November, one of the company's Volkswagen Jettas disappeared from Manhattan. A new member had checked it out and simply didn't return it. Zipcar discovered he'd used a stolen credit card to open his account. The cars aren't equipped with a Lo-Jack recovery system, since theft hasn't been a problem. But from Cambridge, the company's engineers improvised a solution of their own. It's been cold here. May has been generally cool, but this last weekend has been terrible. Cold, cloudy, rainy. And here in my condo we have steam heat, which means one big boiler for all 54 units. When they turn it off, it's off, so we've had no heat since some time in April.
Well, I guess somebody finally complained (maybe they pointed out that we did come out $5000 under budget on fuel oil last year) and ten minutes ago the radiator started ticking. I sat here (4 days away from June) looking at it thinking "That sounds like the steam coming up. What could it be?" After 3 or 4 little bangs I walked over to it and felt heat! Oh, it's so wonderful! Okay, I've gone and created my own space on Fotolog.net where I will be posting some of my smaller photos. They resize everything so it is no larger than 500 by 375 pixels. Go check 'em out. What you may especially like about it is that you can comment directly on the page where my photo is displayed. Feel free to remain anonymous and abusive. You may also like some of the other Fotologs I link to, and you may want to create a Fotolog of your own. It's free. It's easy. You'd think it was 1998 all over again! No telling how long this will last.
On my Fotolog site you'll find:
Canon Powershot G5. I've been getting tons of Google hits from people searching for that camera, so I'm going to point you to what there is out there.
I've accumulated a small collection of photos take along the Charles River, including several large panoramas. Thought it best to just post them all at Fototime. You can go here to browse the collection or use the following links to go to the individual larger pictures.
Amongst the stuff in my old files is this 3-page letter written by my great-uncle Sutton Morris who had recently arrived in the Panama Canal Zone to his sister, my grandmother, in Clarinda, Iowa. Date: November 15, 1942. He talks about ordinary things: the food, weather, language (he didn't speak Spanish), blackouts, rationing, difficulty of sending mail during wartime, etc. I've scanned it and you can read it here.
I Googled to find out if his employer, Boyd Brothers, still existed. I found a trucking company in Alabama and a printing company in Panama City, Florida, but I have no reason to think either of those were connected with the steamship agents, who seem to have disappeared. I also found references to "Boyd Brothers" who were early settlers and ranchers in Nebraska and Montana. Some good panoramas, but (more importantly) a long list of links to panoramic resources.
And here you'll find a 360° panorama at the top of Mt. Everest. Cleaning out old files I keep running across interesting old stuff. Here's a cartoon from 1981 that I liked a lot.
Fotolog.net - possibly a good spot for those of you who have a few photos to share with the world. It's free (right now). They do resize uploaded images.
 A 1962 Dodge I spotted yesterday. Got three photos, including one of the owner's manual resting in the rear window where the sun is relentlessly bleaching the color away. This guy takes quick (sometimes bad) photos of famous people (or people who look a lot like famous people) at Starbucks in L.A. and then writes up some smartass comments. That's entertainment.
Got my first chance yesterday to really listen to Sirius radio in a real environment where I could hear it and play with the equipment a bit. The couple of times I've tried the XM equipment at Best Buy I could hardly hear it over the noise of everything else going on in the store, plus they don't supply a live satellite signal. It's a recording!
Anyway, real live satellite radio is really good! I ran through the 100 channels, skeptical of the accuracy of their identity. "Blues!" I sneered, "It won't really be blues." But I was wrong. The two channels that surprised me most were the non-stop Rave channel (they need to get a tie-in to an overseas esctacy distributor) and the Trucker's channel! The latter made me want to get a beat up old pickup and a 6 pack, and head out on a lonely drive down a 2 lane highway late at night.  Brazil comes closer to the truth every day. This is a virtual keyboard. Well, half of one. We presume a similar set up goes on the other hand, although none of the photos show both hands in use. Zipcar has put a new car in a new spot that's only half as far from here as the formerly closest car. If they get any closer I'll be able to just jump out my bedroom window and land in the Zipcar.
Anyway, this is a brand new Ford Focus wagon. I've driven their Focus wagons before, but this one had less than 1000 miles on it and was still equipped with new car smell. In my decades of driving various rented and borrowed cars, Ford has consistently had the worst designed layout of controls. Difficult for me to fathom how one company could stay stuck in that rut for so long, but they do it. The rear window wiper on the Focus was running when I turned the car on. It took me several miles and many tries before I got it turned off. Playing with the wiper stalk I could get it to speed up and slow down, but not to completely and finally stop. I examined the many icons on that wiper stalk. Not a single of them suggested "rear-ness" or "off-ness." All icons seemed to suggest "on-ness" and faster, more intense "on-ness," possibly coupled with wetness and even more wetness. Once I got the rear wiper to stop, I did not try to get it back on so I could repeat the experiment. Then there was the stereo. This was different from what I've seen in other Focii. It was labeled "blaupunkt," but the famous blue dot was white, suggesting to me that it was actually just a bootleg "weißpunkt." Honestly, I suspect Ford bought blaupunkt sometime without telling me, and now they simply slap the name on any ol' piece of audio crap they want to...because crap this was. First, the user interface showed all the genius of Ford design. It was huge, and wasted space with several single-function buttons, like the treble and bass buttons. The mute button was on the opposite side from the volume control. The seek buttons were on the opposite side from the tuner and scan buttons. On most cars when you've selected the bass or treble control, the volume knob usually controls the the bass and treble levels. Not on this blaupunkt. The radio displayed many arrows, and I tried all of them to no avail. Finally, it turned out to be the tuner (diagonally across the radio display) that was used to set the levels. Using it I discovered why someone had already set the bass to a -6 and treble to +6. Very unusual! When I set them flat the stereo sounded like I was listening through pure shit...and I know what I'm talking about. I re-set the bass to about -4 and the treble to +6, which allowed it to sound like an average cheap car radio. Having never owned a blaupunkt, I don't know if their user interfaces have always been bad, but I was pretty sure they were known for good sound quality. Oh, on the up side, the stereo would play MP3 discs...or at least it said it did. I didn't have one with me to test it. Anti-spammer vigilantes! Yes! Force feed those spammers viagra! Sign 'em up for about 500 mortgages! Give 'em ten foot penises! I'm all for it. I want to buy the video.
A 501-page academic study of masturbation. Worthwhile, I think. It's just too bad it came from UC Berkeley.
We can expect COPS (and spinoffs) to improve and expand with this introduction of DIGITAL video cameras in police cars. I like the 2 to 4 minute lookback feature.
 Today I saw this ad in the May 15, 2003 issue of Bay Windows. I quickly formed a low opinion of it. Something like "WTF are they doing wasting money on this, when there's vaccine research to be financed?" And then I came across Paul Varnell's guest opinion in the same issue. No need for me to make an effort, when he's already saying it better. For example: As for turning AIDS ribbons - remember those? - upside down, what about "V" for "Victim" - of a pathetic, patronizing, empty public relations gimmick. But, come to think of it, if you display an American flag upside down it is a distress signal meaning something is very wrong. So maybe turning a ribbon upside down is apt after all.Here's the official gov't website for further useless info on this current drain on your pocket change. NY Times discusses the issue of revealing personal information on weblogs. I think the people who spill excessive information about themselves, their friends or family are just displaying their low self-esteem for us to see. Me, I'm a discreet weblogger because I think every word I write here could end up on page 2 of the NY Times any day now, and I know all of you read the Times, right? So you won't catch me spilling the beans here about who has lots of money, lots of debt, interesting surgeries, endless endoscopies, huge illegal drug appetites, huge sexual appetites, or who can't even program a VCR. You can, however, go read about a friend's hemorrhoids here. And I do have that naked photo of an old boyfriend that I am just dying to spread around somehow, but probably not here. By the way, if the old boyfriend wants to come forward, we can negotiate this. I haven't changed my address or phone since the photo was taken in the late '80s.
From the Times article: Indeed, for many bloggers being noticed seems to be the point. John M. Grohol, a psychologist in the Boston area who has written about bloggers, said they often offered intimate details of their lives as a ploy to build readership.This is why you should never pay a Boston psychologist for his opinion. He's just gonna tell ya somethin' ya already know...or can be found on page 21 of The Idiot's Guide to Blogging. Why do you think I spilled the beans about my prostate biopsy and my Androgel? Weird. How to make your own infrared-vision goggles for under $10. If you try it, let me know.
Do you think you need a 2 Gb USB drive? Got $1300? An iPod has lots greater capacity, is cheaper, and can do more things. It's a bigger format, but nobody looks at your $1300 USB drive and says how cool it is. Okay then. That's TWO reasons now to buy an iPod.
The Wall Street Journal offers high tech advice on how to slack off at work (for those of you who do that), and cover it up.
"If you're out playing golf, and you look like you've spent four hours in the office. ... If everybody does that, the company goes bankrupt," says Stuart Gilman, director of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington.God, there's always some little whiny-pants who didn't get beat up often enough at recess. Was at the pizza place today with a friend, waiting for order of fatty food. In comes a young man who wanted the proprietors to break a ten dollar bill. I continued chatting with friend. Interrupted by young man "Sir, can you change a ten? A five and five ones?" I think there is a suggestion he needs the change for the laundry across the street, which can't deal with tens. I start digging through my wallet where the bills are in no particular order. I pull out three ones and find lots more ones as I dig for a five, before I offer the guy ten ones. My friend says "That's three there, isn't it? I've got seven." and he lays down seven on my three. I push it over to the young man, as I dig seven out of my billfold for my friend, so I can just take the ten. The young man, however, is just staring at the stack of ones. "That's seven?" he asks, sounding rather vague. "No," I said, "it's ten. Here count it." I shove it towards him and he commenced an obviously painful process to count to ten. It disheartened me terribly. Nothing about this guy had given me any clue that counting to ten was going to take longer than a Sesame Street sketch. He looked like a street-savvy, do-ragged, pierced, average guy for my neighborhood. Frankly, I thought he looked like he had the skills to convert grams to ounces a lot faster than I could. After he walked away, I observed to my friend that this guy was my job competition if I wanted to get a part-time selling fries at McDonald's.
 Braggin' rights! That CD, Spanning The Century: New Works For Winds by the Metropolitan Wind Symphony is out! You alert readers will recall that the photo of the Zakim Bridge you see on that CD is mine! Mine, I say, mine! And they gave me credit with a link to this very website. Lordy, the great artists who will come streaming through here now! I may have to shine up my act a bit. You will like the music...you can even hum a lot of it! Click the CD or here to see a larger scan, plus scans of the paper insert which includes both a color and black & white version of my photo. The Symphony will be appearing June 7 at 1 o'clock P.M. in the Festival of Bands at Faneuil Hall. I assume the CD will be for sale there. I can't find any info on their website about the CD, so maybe they haven't released it to the whole wide world yet. In which case, you read it here first. I hope they offer sales on their website, because I don't want to have to go to this festival just to buy the hundreds of CDs that my friends will be demanding. Demanding, I tell you! Those friends might even WRITE to the Symphony (contact information here) to find out how to buy this lovely music with the lovely photo. Since it isn't up on their website, I guess I need to provide titles here:
The Iowa commemorative quarters. (Thanks to Publicserf). My first impression is that I could probably get a job being a web designer for the State of Iowa. I wonder if I would have to live there? But we plow forward nonetheless (ROFLMAO at my own jokes!). The winning design will be selected later this year, and minted in December 2004. These images link to full size, slow loading images on the Iowa website.
Want to remind you all that AIDS LifeCycle is coming up on June 8 to 14. During the event, photos and video will appear here.
Amtrak is offering a bright, shiny $250 Amtrak gift certificate (that's equal to 50 little bottles of that really bad wine they sell on board) for your photograph of an Amtrak train (with logo) for use in the 2004 corporate calendar. Here are some of the rules they e-mailed to me [rules here]. (Bear in mind that Amtrak is that very progressive "corporation" that developed the Acela, America's answer to slow-moving cheap trains: a slow-moving expensive train).
Mail an 8 x 10 color photograph suitable to be enlarged to approximately 25 inches (horizontally) to: 2004 Calendar Contest, Amtrak, 60 Massachusetts Ave, N.E., Suite 4E-315, Washington, D.C. 20002. The photograph must be clearly labeled on the back with entrant’s name, day and evening phone numbers, address, and email address (if available). The front of the photograph may not include names, signatures, or other identifying marks.Yes, they are asking for printed photographs only. Sensible, you may think, as a way to clearly identify the owner of the photo, right? No, it goes on. Finalists will be contacted to submit their original transparency, slide or negative for use in producing the calendar with the winning photograph.Oh, wait a minute...how do I get it from my flash card onto a negative or transparency? Is that a Photoshop plug-in I need to get? For others who are as plug-stupid as I, Amtrak makes it a bit more clear: No digital images will be accepted.Amtrak. Rushing headlong into the 20th century at 150 MPH (along a short stretch of track in Rhode Island). In the interest of fairness, should I mention that they cut the fare on Acela recently? $99 Boston to NYC, now. Well...they couldn't make it faster, at least they made it cheaper. Hey! New corporate slogan for 'em: We couldn't make it faster, so we made it cheaper! Cycling Singles, where you can meet that other cycling single of your heart's desire. Trouble is, they ask for quite a bit of personal info when you register, and you have to register before you can see anything substantial on the website. If you like those kind of risks, let me know how the site is.
Rumors of a Canon Powershot G5 coming in July with 5 or 6 megapixels. One person guesses that they are skipping "G4" because it sounds too much like "die" in Japanese.
Finally! A good reason to buy an iPod! (Jes' teezin' guyz!) It's installed as a back up at the transmitter site for WFMU radio, so that when the link to the studio goes down they can just click on the iPod (via telephone) and away it goes with it's "5000 songs" or whatever. I'm disappointed they lowballed with the 5 Gb version. I'd guess somebody at the station upgraded to one of the bigger iPods, and unloaded this old model.
Wait wait!. Microsoft now says the internet-enabled porta-potty project is real. Real, I say! It was not an April Fools joke. Not even a May Fools joke. That Microsoft. Solid and reliable.
A real history of the internet. Includes this note for 2001:
 I must point out that I have no pets. Tommy Chong pleads guilty to a federal charge of conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia. He also claims he has stopped smoking pot!
The Treasury's interactive twenty dollar bill site is very informative. Explains that those ugly yellow spots that look like dirt in some images are a bunch of little yellow "20s".
One more try: Atlas Shrugged as a movie. At least it sounds like it's probably intended to be a movie, not a TV mini-series this time. "Set in near-future America, the novel depicts a nation whose economy is collapsing due to the growth of dictatorial government power." We don't make this stuff up, although Ayn Rand did.
The website for the old project (atlas-shrugged-the-movie.com) is gone. That was a TNT project, undone by the Time-Warner AOL merger. Little league mother and secretary joins her son in attacking and kicking an 11-year old boy on the other (winning) team! All this in lovely Wakefield, Mass.
Duct tape kills, and ya know it was the Republicans who were behind the recent increase in duct tape sales. Say no more, say no more.
When I was in DC last January, I went with a couple of friends to visit "The George Washington Masonic National Memorial" in Alexandria. You might know this better as "that tower off to the left as you land at National Airport" (assuming a southerly approach). This is an odd place with a collection of truly historic material (including the holy grail of Washington-fetish: his trowel), some beautiful artwork, and some bizarre ticky-tacky. Go visit. It's free, and easily accessible by public transit. When you enter you're in Memorial Hall, which is dominated by this 17 foot tall statue of Washington:
 Or you might want to go for the view. The tour includes a visit to the observation deck atop the tower. Much to our amazement, we were allowed to step out onto this open-air deck for a panoramic view of all of DC; the Pentagon, the White House, the Capitol, Library of Congress, National Airport, every major building except the Supreme Court could be clearly seen. No metal scanners, no searches, no men in uniform harrassed us. The only authority were a bunch of friendly, gray-haired Masons who loved their job. It took me back to the days when this used to be a free country. Here is the panorama I shot from the observation deck (171 Kb). Microsoft confirms that the internet-enabled porta-potty really was an April Fool's joke. (Earlier link here.) We can only guess that MS was using their own calendar software when they pulled an "April Fools" joke in May.
In another MS story, Bill Gates and Tom Brokaw stiff a waitress for $6 worth of coffee...maybe. Maybe it was another joke. Confessions of a former spammer. Says it was the hardest work he ever did.
Review: the Dell Interns vs. the Dell Guy. Do you care? Don't you find the Gateway website much more informative? I recently had a go-round with Dell trying to get some specifics on a particular PC. Their site includes almost no technical info, and there's no way to contact technical help until you have actually bought and received your PC. Several e-mails to the sales help address were answered with instructions to contact technical support (impossible), write to another e-mail address (it bounced), or call an 800 number (the number was no good).
Ex-wife uncovers videotape documenting her ex-husband, a New Jersey State Police officer, using racial epithets during traffic stops, performing illegal searches, and discarding evidence. Gotta wonder why he left this bombshell lying around in a shoebox.
Toshiba working on a blue laser DVD that will not be compatible with Sony's, but will be backward compatible and maintain the same form factor as current DVD discs. Potentially 36 Gb per disc.
AT&T Wireless introduces 411 via text messaging for only 50¢ per query, rather than the usual $1.25 for a voice call to 411. The instructions on the ZDNet site are inaccurate, though. They confuse e-mail and text messaging, which even us 'tards know is not right. AT&T's instructions are here. The format is actually more like this:
.lastname firstname.location Then you send it as a text message (not e-mail) to 2411. Location can be city, state, zipcode, and/or street address. If there is more than one match you reply with a message containing simply "N" and AT&T will send you the Next one in the list. I assume each of these costs another 50¢ while had you simply made the $1.25 voice call, you could probably have narrowed down a list at no additional charge. If you use city and state you can run into the problem that the phone company lists your city as the one to which your exchange is assigned. Around New England this can be a big deal. A Dorchester exchange, for example, gets listed as Dorchester, not Boston. And the phone company's borders don't correspond exactly with political boundaries. Brookline exchanges (not part of Boston) extend into Boston on all sides, including Brighton (which is part of Boston). For myself, however, I seem to be the only Ronald Gilbert listed on my street (I did not specify city or state), so that's unambiguous and can be done for only 50¢. It's gonna be like a Google search. You're going to try to provide the least ambiguous info you can.  A 360° panorama (207 Kb) of Dupont Circle. I shot this last year (I think) and it didn't stitch well. Now that I've got better photostitching software, here is the fairly successful result. concinnity \kuhn-SIN-uh-tee\
noun: 1. Internal harmony or fitness in the adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other. 2. Studied elegance of design or arrangement — used chiefly of literary style. 3. An instance of concinnity. He has what one character calls "the gifts of concinnity and concision," that deft swipe with a phrase that can be so devastating in children. —Elizabeth Ward Denis Donoghue is a primary critic of our time, catholic in scope, unique in literary apprehension, crucially gratifying in the clear concinnity of his prose. —Ihab Hassan Even so, rules are not merely there to be ignored; in fact, they constitute a democratic aristocracy based not on Debrett's Peerage or the Almanach de Gotha but on the user's respect for comprehensibility, consistency, concision and concinnity — or, simply, elegance. —John Simon, "House Rules," New York Times, October 31, 1999 Concinnity comes from Latin concinnitas, "elegance; harmony of style," from concinnus, "well put together; pleasing, on account of harmony and proportion." Dictionary.com Word of the Day Dog bites man! Oh my, Microsoft has a security problem! A security problem that was reported to them several times by a responsible gentleman, which reports they ignored and ignored! Then when said gentleman spilled the beans on the internet, Microsoft snapped to attention and closed that barn door right quick. Horses? We don't know how many got out or where they are, but Microsoft says it's all okay anyway. Do you feel deja vu? Do you feel deja vu? Were you foolish enough to rely on Microsoft Passport? Then you'll want to read the story here. Me, I'd rather trust the gummint than MS.
Went to see Bulgarian Lovers at the Gay & Lesbian film fest at the MFA last night. It made me realize the reason that Brazilian men are held in such high esteem in the U.S. is that we don't have enough Bulgarian men to go around. My friend Richard will want to know he needs to add this to his list of male full frontal films.
I met Tony Bowser in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1978 (give or take a year). I thought he was just a big, possibly dumb, very sexy, motorcyclist from Washington, Iowa. When I met him he was on his way home from a visit to the famous "House On The Rock" in Wisconsin. Ten years later I read an article in the Des Moines Register that told of how he had become quite the public AIDS activist in Iowa. I saved the article and just ran across it today while cleaning out old stuff. I've scanned it and you can read it here. I know I saw and also saved his obituary, but I haven't run across that yet.
The current fundraising drive on WBUR cannot pass by without remark. Every year at this time they offer a deal where you can get flowers or candy delivered to your mother in return for a large donation. This year it's $120. The drive has been going on for about 2 weeks. This year they are playing highlights from movies with powerful mother characters. When it started 2 weeks ago the selections were what you would expect: bright, ideal, loving mothers. Now, though, it has completely turned and they are playing bits from The Sopranos, Throw Momma From The Train, and even Psycho (the original)! Then the crew in the studio all laugh and say something like "If you love your mother like Tony Soprano loves his..."
It is really too funnily bizarre. I'm guessing that the sweet kids who think their mothers are saints are easy marks who have already planned for and bought their mothers gifts, so this year WBUR decided to focus on troubled kids with strong mixed feelings about their mothers. The depth of that market is probably unplumbed. Possibly confirming anecdotal evidence for recently referenced theory of Netflix queueing: I added Jackass, The Movie to my queue about 6 weeks ago. Put it in the number 1 spot where it sat and sat, identified as "Long Wait." April, however, was a light Netflix month for me, because I signed up with Greencine as well. I also reduced my Netflix rate from 4 movies down to 3. What's the first movie they send me in the month of May? Jackass, The Movie, of course!
It's got to be one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Had me laughing out loud lots! I coulda done with less vomiting, but I was somewhat prepared for that. The most troubling part came when I listened to the cast commentary. None of the cast knew who Lon Chaney was. Half of them guessed he was female. I had thought these were bright young men, up and comingin show business. A couple of them show signs of not being entirely heterosexual. But to know nothing of Lon Chaney? What sort of junk have those fools been shooting up? Every Taco Bell in Springfield, Illinois, is shut down! What's a legislator to do after a night of pub crawling?
According to the Chicago Tribune, only 38 pieces are missing from the National Museum in Baghdad. That's quite a discrepancy. If we're lucky, the recent NY Times story that Saddam trucked out $1 billion just before the bombing started will turn out to be an exaggeration as well. Maybe he really stole nothing more than a bag of old NYC subway tokens.
"I was going downhill at what I thought was 90," Smith said, standing on the shoulder of the Cajon Pass recently as CHP Officer Mark D. Conner issued the citation. "I didn't even notice, because the music was on, I was dialing numbers on my phone and I was switching lanes."He was actually doing 101 mph. Stories about the tornadoes that hit Kansas City yesterday. I heard an NPR reporter very clearly say that the twister that hit Northmoor, Missouri, was "500 miles wide." Most of my readers will already realize that such a twister would be twice as wide as the entire state of Missouri.
Boston smoking ban goes into effect today. Mechanism is similar to NYC, that is, any penalty is assessed against the establishment where the smoking occurs. But the top fine is only $1000. Best of all, from your libertarian point of view, there is no smoking ban in Cambridge (of all places!), so we may see some movement in both directions. Take your choice! Ya wanna hang with a buncha communist eggheads ridden with cancer and emphysema? That'd be Cambridge.
Thank god, that eyesore tent on City Hall plaza is gone! It started out housing some Christmas thing, after Jordan Marsh/Macy's stopped doing their traditional Christmas display. Then they began leaving it up year-round. It made the plaze look like a trailer trash park — which, from your libertarian point of view, was maybe a good thing.
Some photos:
I have somehow neglected to link to Coro Allegro, "Boston's acclaimed chorus for members and friends of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities." It's sort of like the Boston Gay Men's Chorus, except it includes women, and the audience comes for the music [meow].
Another Giveaway!
I've got this box of stuff called "Barcode Anything" that I bought ages ago. Never used it one bit. Still all in the box. Virgin. Anybody who wants it, let me know, and it's yours. I might be able to deliver this one, but you should count on picking it up from me in Brighton. The requirements are a bit old-fashioned, so here's a scan of the end flap that lists them. Please note, you must have a floppy drive to install. I'm sure they're 3.5 inch disks, not 5.25. It's not THAT old! 
Yes, indeed, it's for Windows 3.1. But if you've been looking for a bar code for that OS2 Warp partition you've got, then this is your big chance! It should work okay on Win 95 and 98, who cares about ME. I think we can safely guess it is not XP-compliant. Anyone who asks whether it's USB or Firewire, gets promoted to my hall of shame. New Hampshire's Man In The Mountain has finally collapsed. Hell, they'll probably cancel next year's primaries and elect a Socialist governor now.
Some PFLAG members meet with Senator Santorum. "What we tried to do in this meeting was reach him on a human level, and we found no humanity there." Um, yeah, he is a Republican Senataor, ya know?
In the process of cleaning house, I ran across this old postcard (1959 I think) of the Surf Motel in San Francisco (2265 Lombard Street). It was mailed by Evie, about to head to Hollywood from SF, to Tess in Whitman, Massachusetts. Go here to see a larger scan of both sides of the card with message.
Tivo-style radio device. Records 4 hours of radio broadcast. Also an MP3 player that can use SD/MMC cards. $150.
This article purports to be about the risk posed to aviation by the use of cellphones on board planes, but it gives no real specifics. The two incidents it sites are simply cases where someone refused to turn off a phone.
New Canon SD100 is Canon's smallest digital camera, and first to use SD/MMC memory cards. 3 megapixel, 2x zoom.
Do not miss this! It's like watching a pulsar born from a supernova. It's "ABlog,MyBlog,MyOwnBlog,IBloggedIt" by a friend of mine, Dale, somewhere out there deep within America's borders. He writes great, guys, but he's vulnerable, so if you phrase it just right you can probably talk him into doing ANYthing!
The I/O Magic Digital Photo Library might be nice. For $230 it's got a 20 Gb hard drive and slots supporting CF Type I/II including MicroDrive, Smart Media, Memory Stick, and SD/MMC. But the user interface? It doesn't look like it can even display a list of files.
The first stolen Segway. Can drunken Segwaying be far behind?
Force Of Mouth tells us a bit about himself:
For the curious, here's a little more about the real me: I run the mile in under five minutes and can bench press twice my body weight. I have 20/15 vision in both eyes, washboard abs, an IQ in the low 160s, white teeth, a full head of hair and I do not have acne or dandruff. I have a deep, natural suntan. Before I started medical school, I earned a Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics from Caltech at the age of twelve, and deferred teaching appointments at Oxford and Princeton to do back-to-back Peace Corps tours in Borneo and Ethiopia. I briefly tutored Stephan Wolfram on the finer points of the practical application of discrete mathematics. I am an expert marksman and mountaineer, and most would consider me an authority on both Kenpo and Brazilian Jujutsu. I have mastered the game of chess and once beat Bobby Fischer in a clandestine on-line game. I speak Spanish, French, Russian, and Swahili fluently and am conversant in Quechua and German. When not otherwise occupied, I make my summer home at vineyard in the Napa Valley, where my days are filled with the business and pleasure of the making of fine wines. I winter on the Persian Gulf, where I divert myself by teaching the local children the ancient art of pearl diving. I drive a vintage Ferrari Testarossa, and own a line of winning thoroughbreds directly descended from Secretariat.Ha! I believe he misspelled "jujitsu," but it may be one of those words with multiple spellings. In addition, he pointed us to Mr. Brains' Pork Faggots We pride ourselves on using the finest pork and pork liver for our faggots, topped with a generous serving of delicious West Country sauce. It's no wonder 100 million faggots are eaten in the UK every year!It seems the first National Faggot Week started 1/26/2003. Go here for your recipes for Faggot Kebabs, Faggot Stuffed Peppers, Faggot's Nest, and (sure to be my new favorite!) Faggot Cobbler! Young Lewis here prefers his Faggots with mashed potatoes and peas.
JPButler.com, a Cantabrigian.
Boston-Online.com list of Boston weblogs. BostonBlogs.com looking all high tech and all, but apparently the only way to be added to their list is to send an e-mail and ask to be added. "The Boston Blog" he calls it. Boston Bus Route Field Guide. The guy reviews MBTA bus routes! Here's a sample: T Route 1 Harvard-Dudley via Mass AveBigmattress.com! Really! It's gotta be "In the mind of Laquidara," Charles Laquidara, that is, who is a Hawaiian now of course. There are 115 Dunkin' Donuts outlets within a 5 mile radius of my home, but 5 miles in Boston goes a long way. Medford and Dorchester, specifically. Word is that Crayola is going to try to dump Burnt Sienna. Also on the chopping block are Blizzard Blue, Mulberry, Teal Blue and Magic Mint. I never even heard of those.
NEWS FLASH! BBC is reporting that our boy Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is attempting to surrender but Americans are refusing to arrest him because he's not in deck of cards. Iraq's history is replete with great tragedies such as this. As in all their wars the number of Iraqis who are eager to surrender can outnumber the conquering forces 1000 to 1 or worse. MTV could hire this guy to replace the Osbournes.
Some recent statistics on digital photography:
Tired of those careless people with X-10 cameras who let their signal leak everywhere? Go here to find simple instructions for a setup whereby you can eavesdrop on their signal and watch what they're watching.
Is there really a good reason to ban the use of cellphones while in flight? My favorite theory that I read somewhere is that cellphone companies lobbied for this because at times the plane passes through cells so quickly, the billing could get screwed up. I.e., you might get a free call.
Is it wrong for U.S. forces to punish looters in Iraq by forcing them to walk naked in public? Of all the terrible things that could be happening, I find it hard to believe people are getting upset about this. Naked in the streets. Sheesh, lotsa people do that for fun.
From the Memoryhole.org we get pictures. These are especially for Ken who complained I don't put enough naked guys on my site.
Here's an amazing site. One huge page showing all sorts of things on the same scale: 1 pixel = 1 meter. Images include The Hindenburg, Empire State Building, the Stay-Puft Marshamallow Man, Godzilla, the Mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, every possible ship in Star Trek, and the biggest thing on there: the Star Wars Space Slug. You can drag the images around, too!
Watta fukkup! Those Republicans scheduled their 2004 convention to open August 30. The winner will accept his nomination on September 2. Too bad for him, the deadline for certifying presidential candidates is September 1 in D.C. and 3 states, including the not entirely insignificant California. If nothing is done to fix this deal, the Republican nominee will have to be a write-in candidate in those jurisdictions.
I was checking parts of the Outriders Boston-Provincetown bike ride route yesterday. Big changes in Orleans. Here's the message I sent to the volunteer organizers.
I went out yesterday by car and checked most of the route from here to the new bridge in Orleans. I found a few stretches of new asphalt, all in areas that I don't recall being in poor condition last year.  Next in the series of fabulous giveaways, this old hospital bed table. It's in excellent shape, has easily adjustable height, and I'm giving it away for free. Go here for more photos and details. Republican Party Update:
I've been getting lots of mail from various sources this week, mostly from gay people all on fire because Senator Santorum (Republican, Pennsylvania) said this: if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.Most of the complainers are writing that he has besmirched homsexuality by equating it with bigamy, incest, polygamy and adultery. My point of view runs the other way. I want to know what's so wrong with bigamy, incest, polygamy and adultery? Sure, they could all be problematic, but all sexual relationships take work. Meanwhile, another Republican has been hard at work for good ol' normal, heterosexual, nuclear family values. Richard Delgaudio of Burke, Virginia, is a prominent fundraiser for the Republicans. Once he called Bill Clinton "a lawbreaker and a terrible example to our nation's young people." He is a frequent talk-radio guest and national figure in conservative politics. He is president of the Legal Affairs Council. He's also a bit of an amateur photographer and always a friend to young people. He "was arrested in November 2001 with a book of obscene photographs he had taken of 15- and 16-year-old girls, according to court documents. The teen-agers went with him on several occasions to a hotel on Pulaski Highway, where they had sex and he paid them to pose in erotic positions for his camera, records show." There was inadmissable evidence of sexual relations with a younger girl. Thank god, the Bill of Rights even protects family-loving Republicans. QuackWatch.org has a long page shredding Robert Barefoot (not a doctor, it turns out) and his outrageous coral calcium claims. Much better (and meaner) than the article I copied earlier.
Back on June 19, 2002, I linked to a story about students in the Investigative Reporting class of the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who were trying to determine the real identity of "Deep Throat." At that time they had it narrowed down to seven choices, with Pat Buchanan at the top of the list. Now they have released their ultimate, final conclusion and have named Fred Fielding (first assistant to John Dean and #6 on their earlier list) as "Deep Throat." Here's the report on the University's own website. Links for the documentation supporting the investigation are here.
Aaron Brown (our friend at CNN) interviews the professor and two of the students. Fred Fielding was counsel for Reagan and is currently on 9/11 Commission! Pat Buchanan states that it is neither Fielding nor himself. Carl Bernstein has turned into a stiff old man...a lot like Nixon: The Illinois journalism program that had students try to find the identity of the Washington Post's "Deep Throat" informant "should be disaccredited" and the teacher who oversaw the project "should be spanked." I'm in the middle of watching Nixon right now, so this is very timely. I bought NeatImage Pro graphic noise reduction software yesterday. Ran it on that sorry image of Svetlana Zakharova in the Boston Marathon. View the results here, where I have 4 images:
The founders of the space shuttle program told the Columbia Accident Investigation Board on Wednesday that the leading edges of the wings of the spacecraft had not been designed to withstand the impact of flying debris.Okay, that sounds totally reasonable to me because, after all, it was never their intent to use the space shuttle in atmosphere, and there has been our longtime multi-billion dollar program to sweep the orbital paths free of all debris. If any of you are scratching your fuzzy heads, go read the article and scroll down to where that good, level-headed Air Force Major General John Barry lays it out sans sarcasm. On April 15 I linked to a story on ABC News about a bouncer who was killed while trying to enforce the new NYC anti-tobacco law. Yesterday I received this e-mail from a friend of the bouncer.
I came across your site while searching the web. I read your statements on bouncer, Dana Blake and assumed that you had never met him. Dana was a friend of mine. He was not a "wannabe Barney Fife" as you stated. He was a man who was doing his job and did not deserve to die the way he did. He was a good man, a responsible man and had the most beautiful personality you could ever encounter. We miss him terribly. I understand that these are just your opinions, so I respect your free speech. It just bothers me to see Dana's death being placed in a comedic fasion. Still and all, just like Dana, I will not judge, but I too am just voicing my opinion. Thank you for taking the time to read this email. Good day.I think most of you readers understand that my point was to once again point out the stupidity of the NYC anti-smoking law, and to wonder at a judicial system that lets the killer(s) off without a charge. Further, those of you who are fully in touch with popular culture are immediately aware that Barney Fife was an honest and decent law officer who enjoyed the affection and respect of everyone in Mayberry. If I had wanted to insult the deceased (which I did not) I could have referred to Chief Wiggum or Officer Obie, both of whom are corrupt and disrespected. Last week's Bay Windows include a column by Paul Varnell in which he argues that the big liberal schools should bring back ROTC. His reasoning is that the military takes its officers where it can get them. If it can only get them at redneck, backwoods colleges in solid Republican states, then that increases the chances that more military officers will be homophobic. It makes sense to me. I can't imagine what it might be like if the military was dominated by officers from Harvard and Yale, but I don't suppose that would really come about.
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Bill shows off his shirt.
Faneuil Hall, where it's like candy land!
This mining machinery in Joshua Tree N.P.
