September 26, 2003
The Reagan Letters
In a letter, Ronald Reagan admitted to a friend that "even in marriage I had a little guilty feeling about sex, as if the whole thing was tinged with evil."
Hmh?
It's difficult for me to understand how the "leader of the free world" found one of the most central aspects of life itself - both for humans and a goodly number of the life forms we live with - "tinged with evil." Maybe I'm just in an odd mood tonight, but I found that incredibly creepy.
Anyway. TIME published a short but interesting article about the Reagan letters.
26 Sep 0:20 | Link | Category: Politics
Captain of Industry, Esq.
Move aside, Boeing and Alcoa. Make way for the lawsuit industry.
26 Sep 0:18 | Link | Category: Current Events
September 25, 2003
Plastic surgery gone bad
Awful Plastic Surgery is a blog chronicling celebrity plastic surgery.
25 Sep 23:57 | Link | Category: Cool Links
Microsoft Monoculture and Mac Supercomputers
Computers at the U.S. Department of State were hit by the Welchia worm (a relative of MSBlast), seriously disrupting systems, including the database for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history. Ironically, this happened at the same time the CCIA released a study that says Microsoft's dominance in PC operating systems has created a 'monoculture' that allows viruses to spread like wildfire over the Internet. (One positive note is that the Office of Management and Budget recently added Linux and Mac OS X to the "supporting platforms" section of its Technical Reference Model.)
In other (semi-related) geek news, "Virginia Tech was looking for a way to put together a supercomputing cluster without breaking its budget. So it grabbed some Linux boxes, right? Actually, no -- it bought a bunch of Macs." The 1,100 Power Mac G5s "provided significant price and performance benefits over hardware running Linux or any other Unix-based solution."
Update: New Scientist reports the cluster will rank among the top machines in the world. (Also see the Wired article.)
25 Sep 23:20 | Link | Category: Technology & Computing
Deep Thoughts
Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey. (You can also visit here, here, and here.)
25 Sep 23:15 | Link | Category: Humor
September 16, 2003
Disney 'n' Dali
In 1946, surrealist Salvador Dalí teamed up with Walt Disney (oddly enough) on a short film called Destino. It was later shelved (mainly for financial reasons). Now, a team of Disney animators finished it!
16 Sep 20:06 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment
Numbers, anyone?
Numbers, anyone?
- 10 questions for Kofi Annan (Suddenly he's a mentionable person again, now that people are realizing the UN probably had the best approach to Iraq all along...)
- The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2002-2003 (also see previous years)
- 1000 reasons to dump George W. Bush (or the Top 10, for the lazy)
16 Sep 19:47 | Link | Category: Current Events
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash always loomed large in my mind's catalog of definitive American voices, but I guess I never realized until now that he was such a well-known icon. (One odd thing worth mentioning is that the night before he died, I checked out one of his albums to a woman and we had a brief chat about him... wwweeiiird.) Since his passing, I've enjoyed reading all the newspaper & magazine articles and viewing the television clips. The other night CNN aired a rerun of his last interview with Larry King; I found it quite interesting. He told a story I hadn't heard before, about how his wife June threw a party the night before he recorded Live at San Quentin in 1969. According to Cash, Bob Dylan sang "Lay Lady Lay" for the first time, Kris Kristofferson sang "Me and Bobby McGee," Shel Silverstein sang "A Boy Named Sue," Graham Nash sang "Marrakesh Express," and Joni Mitchell sang "Both Sides Now" - all of them sung for the first time that night. (Cash performed "A Boy Named Sue" at San Quentin the next day, at his wife's urging.) Quite a party that would have been.
16 Sep 19:10 | Link | Category: Music
Bar code art
Check out Scott Blake's Bar Code Art site.
16 Sep 15:53 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment
Visual Elements Periodic Table
The Visual Elements Periodic Table contains basic information about each element accompanied by artwork / animation.
16 Sep 15:37 | Link | Category: Cool Links
The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation
After seeing my post regarding PowerPoint, someone sent me this little gem: The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation.