2005.02.25
The Washington Post:
Saudi Vote Stirs New Enthusiasm.
"... in informal meetings such as the one visited by Quayid, energized participants are debating platforms and campaign strategy, renewed in their belief that something important may be at stake in the municipal elections, even though women have been barred from all involvement and the councils will remain subordinate to royal rule, splitting local power with appointed officials."
Is "thin pickings" a British term? --
The Telegraph:
Thin pickings from Bush's transatlantic foray.
"The challenge faced by the President is best illustrated by a poll published in Germany on Tuesday. Two thirds of respondents said the country need no longer be thankful to America for its help after 1945. And 29 per cent of them (as opposed to 24 per cent taking the contrary view) thought Mr Putin more trustworthy than Mr Bush."
2005.02.22
Mercury News:
He paved the way for the PC revolution.
"On Dec. 9, 1968, when a computer was the size of a room, Engelbart and his team of researchers unveiled personal computing workstations that could talk to each other. Users from anywhere in the world could access and work on the same document. On that day, Engelbart officially gave birth to the mouse, e-mail, video conferencing and even hyperlinks .... He holds more than 25 patents."
2005.02.14
AP:
75 years after its discovery, Pluto still mostly a mystery.
"[Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History] provocatively removed Pluto from his exhibit of planets five years ago, lumping it instead with a belt of comets at the edge of the solar system.
"‘I still have folders of hate mail from third-graders,’ he said."
2005.02.11
NYT:
2004 Was Fourth-Warmest Year Ever Recorded.
"The highest global average was measured in 1998, when temperatures were raised by a strong cycle of El Niņo in the Pacific Ocean; 2002 and 2003 were second and third warmest."
> So this is a cooling trend, right? :-)
Here's an interesting concept for a blog. The blogger, whoever it is, occasionally posts snippets of strangers' conversations that he/she has heard "in passing" --
In Passing ...
Gene Kelly break dancing.
[via Scripting News]
2005.02.07
AP:
Super Bowl Ads Test Limits of Credulity.
"... no wardrobe malfunctions ... unless you count a cheeky spot from newcomer GoDaddy.com, a vendor of Web site names, that poked fun at the hubbub over the halftime incident from last year with a fake hearing into broadcast decency. An elderly politician clutches for an oxygen mask after a buxom woman's top nearly falls down from a broken shoulder strap."
> I don't mind "testing the limits of credulity." But I have to wonder whether a commercial was any good when immediately afterwards, I don't know who the advertiser was or what they were advertising.
> After that GoDaddy ad, I was able to quote their rates for registering a web site name. Now that's an effective use of advertising dollars, IMHO.
Division Two:
Mac Mini: The Emperor's New Computer.
"So is the mini a maxi value? For me, clearly, no. When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware -- none of which are available for the Mac platform -- it doesn't make sense for me to ‘switch’ to a Mac at this time."
> Wickedly funny; be sure to note the creditials of the author!
2005.02.04
Associated Press:
German boxing legend Max Schmeling dies at 99.
"Despite the portrayal of him in the United States as a tool of the Nazis, Schmeling had run-ins with the regime even before the first fight with Louis."
Associated Press:
'American Idiot' finds Green Day at top of its game.
"These are heady days for Green Day. They knew while recording that their album, American Idiot, was the best thing they'd ever done."
> Absolutely. If you've got Apple's iTunes installed on your computer, then you can buy the nine-minute-long "Jesus of Suburbia" for $1.
> That's worth the money even if you don't have an iPod.
2005.02.02
Strange happenings in Melbourne --
AAP:
Bolt may have triggered 'tremor'.
"A spokesman for electricity supplier Powercor said the company's theory was that the rumblings, reported to have happened about 3.08am, might have something to do with a lightning bolt that struck a power pole in Melton in Melbourne's west. The lightning blew the 6m pole and an attached transformer to bits, leaving nothing more than a stump, the spokesman said." ...
"Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Terry Ryan said there was no record of thunder or lightning in Melbourne last night."
Here's a silly Statoil TV advertisement --
Ice Scraping.
