Category: general

BoingBoing has a piece today about a guy named Steve who was taken into custody by police because he wouldn’t stop taking photographs of San Francisco’s public transit system until he was told what law he was breaking by doing so. As the security guards and cops couldn’t cite a law, they just hauled him in and gave him a hard time.

Here’s Steve’s blog post about the incident. (He has kind of a funny entry directed towards blog spammers, too. It’s as if he thinks people are spamming blogs manually…)

A reader named Jen wrote in to BoingBoing with a link to this explanation of a photographer’s rights. It, handily, can be downloaded and printed. It’s probably a good idea for photographers in the US to have this document on them at all times, unfortunately.

(Speaking of legislation against photographers, BoingBoing has also been following the story of how people in Chicago are not allowed to take pictures of a piece of art downtown because it is copyrighted. Much like the Eiffel Tower. Come on. Copyrighting is just spinning completely out of control. What’s next, fines for people who mention a corporation’s name without permission?)

From something called RedNova (via BoingBoing):

DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the ‘eye’ of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events.

The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened – but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.

Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with apparently inexplicable powers.

My favorite quote from the article:

Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future.

Okay, ignoring how fanboyish this article is, and how ridiculous its claims…what would happen if we “unlocked our potential” and started seeing the future? How would society change? God, there is a great science fiction book here somewhere.

Edit 2005/02/13 11:29 am: The BoingBoing article has been revised with a link from a reader to this investigation into the Global Consciousness Project. One of the best parts:

Another serious problem with the September 11 result was that during the days before the attacks, there were several instances of the eggs picking up data that showed the same fluctuation as on September 11th. When I asked [Dean] Radin what had happened on those days, the answer was:

“I don’t know.”

I then asked him – and I’ll admit that I was a bit flabbergasted – why on earth he hadn’t gone back to see if similar “global events” had happened there since he got the same fluctuations. He answered that it would be “shoe-horning” – fitting the data to the result.

Checking your hypothesis against seemingly contradictory data is “shoe-horning”?

For once, I was speechless.

From MSNBC:

For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin has been mostly oblivious to the world around her — the victim of a drunken driver who struck her down as she walked to her car. Today, after a remarkable recovery, she can talk again.

This is amazing. I am just filled with conflicting emotions. First, I am so happy for her and her family, that they are able to communicate. But I am also so very, very angry. Twenty years of her life were stolen from her, and she will never fully recover. All because some jackass decided to party before he got behind the wheel.

I don’t care if you think you’re fine to drive, you are not fine to drive if you are under the influence of alcohol, drugs, medication, or what have you. Your life isn’t the only one at stake.

I made a Quiz for you! Take my Quiz! and then Check out the Scoreboard!

That default invite text is pretty exuberant. You’d better click the link and see what all the fuss is about.

It’s a mood that comes and goes. It’ll go soon, I hope.

SUMMARY:
We are seeking a motivated self-starter who is looking for the kind of challenge that understanding and participating in a total business can provide. This is an opportunity to learn and grow at a profitable manufacturing company with a well known brand and solid Fortune 400 level benefit package & retirement program.

Education and/or Experience: 4-year degree in Engineering, preferably Mechanical Engineering. MBA or additional Certifications desirable. Minimum 5 years of experience.

Physical Demands: The physical demands described here are representatives of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Work Environment: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Optional: Established organization with outstanding benefits, compensation and relocation package.

Compensation: High: $140,000.00
Low: $120,000.00

Holy shit.

Surely, they want in on some of that pop-up comment action. But the lag they are causing me as I try to simply reply to a comment is inexcusable! All of you, stop republishing right now.

I mean it, mister! Don’t make me come over there!

I should read this stuff more regularly.

For your viewing pleasure, allow me to direct your attention to “Reading-Too-Much-Into-Things Comprehension“.

(I debated quite a bit about whether or not to capitalize “into”, and finally decided it looked lonely all by itself. I then consulted dictionary.com for a rationalization.)

When Fans! ends, I hope there is a compilation put out, or something. I want to read the whole thing from start to finish, but paying a subscription fee and then paging back through all the archives just sounds annoying to me. I’d rather just buy a book. (Does that make me old school?)

This guy uses Moveable Type, and has a secondary blog called “Neil’s Smaller World” embedded into his primary blog, in the sidebar. This is similar to what Luke does.

I’m not sure if I could get WordPress to do that or not. I know that WordPress doesn’t support multiple blogs with one install, so I would have to install WordPress into the main journal directory and into the sidebar directory. Then it would be a matter of a php include, I think.

It seems doable. I just need to figure out if everything would render correctly.

From the McDuffie Mirror:

Cathie Ryan, one of the nation’s leading voices in Celtic music, is looking forward to bringing her unique style to the people of McDuffie County.

“It’s so nice to be in a place like Thomson,” said Ms. Ryan, who will perform Thursday, Feb. 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Depot.

[…]

Admission is $8 for individuals and $15 for couples. For ticket information, call 597-1000 or 267-5416 in Augusta.

I want to go see her perform!

From Japan Today:

Abbas A-Ali Al-Malky, who is believed to have contracted leukemia from depleted uranium used in the Iraq war

Wait, they’re still on that?

Okay, this is getting irritating. Many intelligent people have rationally explained that depleted uranium is not dangerous. But so many people claim otherwise.

Is this going to be like the global warming debate?

I realize that we all like to try and find a reason for everything. Hell, I know better than anyone. Nobody has a clue why I got leukemia, and that is really annoying. But isn’t it wrong to use this child’s death to make a political point that is not supported by science?

From Mainichi:

Thousands of hungry people flocked to Yoshinoya restaurants across Japan on Friday for a special one-day revival of its popular beef-on-rice dish, with one excited customer smashing his car into a store and another customer becoming violent because the beef bowls had sold out.

The Yoshinioya [sic] chain suspended sales of beef bowls, or gyudon in Japanese, on Feb. 11 last year, after the Japanese government banned beef imports from the United States following the discovery of mad cow disease there.

Gyudon is delicious. I know how to make it, nyah nyah!

I just noticed that Jen Garrett uses something called Sideblog. Pretty cool! This is definitely an option.

Blogger has updated its comments system. From the Blogger Dashboard:

Good news everyone! We’ve updated the way comments work. Among the many improvements are pop-up windows for comments and the ability for commenters to fill in their name and web site info–no Blogger account needed.

– Biz [2/10/2005 05:06:00 PM]

You just watch, this will totally fuck up my comments exporting code. :>

Seriously, though; I’m glad they made these changes. I don’t really care about the pop-up windows, but letting people post comments without requiring a Blogger account is a huge improvement.

One other feature that Biz doesn’t mention is the change to the posting form. Now you can see the post and the comments while you’re writing your comment, which makes it far easier to respond to people!