Nate Edel's blog
Too strange not to post:
Ian’s Shoelace Site
Fun, fashion & science in this quirky site about shoelaces. Whether you want to learn to lace shoes, tie shoelaces, stop shoelaces from coming undone, calculate shoelace lengths or even repair aglets, Ian’s Shoelace Site has the answer!
MSNBC has a section on “Animal Peculiarity“.
I found “Man bites panda in Beijing zoo as retribution” via their front page, which in turn led to that section. (I’m resisting the urge to file this under “morons” – my point is on the section, not on the Chinese fellow who wanted to pet a panda.)
It also features such wonderful headlines as: “He done her chicken wrong … allegedly” and “Never hug a Swiss cow, hikers told”
Alrighty-then.
In other potentially tasty but equally trivial news, McDonald’s considers selling breakfast all day. I for one would quite enjoy being able to get a Big Breakfast (eggs, sausage patty, and biscuit) for lunch.
Plenty of news out of Thailand, none of what is making it to the states agreeing with each other about what is exactly happening. There is a state of emergency, and rumors of a possible coup attempt.
The web sites for Bangkok’s two English-language papers, the Bangkok Post and the Nation have been nearly uselessly slow this morning.
Interesting times!
World’s first hypo-allergenic cat
Sept. 18 – There’s a new solution for cat lovers allergic to cats.
San Diego based company Allerca says it has successfully produced the world’s first hypoallergenic cat, something that could allow allergic pet lovers to enjoy cats again.
Paivthra George reports.
SOUNDBITE: Stephen May, Allerca Spokesperson
In an article on MSNBC, Senate committee rejects Bush anti-terror plan
The president’s measure would go further than the Senate package in allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials, using coerced testimony and protecting U.S. interrogators against prosecution for using methods that violate the Geneva Conventions.
Lovely. Does anyone yet doubt Bush is a fascist at heart?
Via Troy, on DBA:
Bush ran as a moderate, tacked right and governed ineffectually — before 9/11. Since then he’s become the most radical American president in history — and arguably the worst.
Editor’s note: Following is the introduction to Sidney Blumenthal’s new book, “How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime,” recently published by the Princeton University Press.
By Sidney Blumenthal
No one predicted just how radical a president George W. Bush would be. Neither his opponents, nor the reporters covering him, nor his closest campaign aides suggested that he would be the most willfully radical president in American history.
In his 2000 campaign, Bush permitted himself few hints of radicalism. On the contrary he made ready promises of moderation, judiciously offering himself as a “compassionate conservative,” an identity carefully crafted to contrast with the discredited Republican radicals of the House of Representatives. After capturing the Congress in 1994 and proclaiming a “revolution,” they had twice shut down the government over the budget and staged an impeachment trial that resulted in the acquittal of President Clinton. Seeking to distance himself from the congressional Republicans, Bush declared that he was not hostile to government. He would, he said, “change the tone in Washington.” He would be more reasonable than the House Republicans and more moral than Clinton. Governor Bush went out of his way to point to his record of bipartisan cooperation with Democrats in Texas, stressing that he would be “a uniter, not a divider.”
The article non-free but visible behind the ad at Salon’s site and is well worth a read.
Electoral-Vote.com which preoccupied many of us during the 2004 campaign, has now released their 2006 Senate page. I know I will be checking in a couple of times every day.
It certainly was one of my favorite sites in the run-up to the 2004 election, and it’s run by a well-known computer science professor.
Side note: more content coming, I promise.
At Jon Lech Johansen’s reason for moving to San Francisco from San Diego.
More posts soon, I promise! Maybe even a “reboot” of the blog.
97f today. Forecast on Yahoo was for a 93f high. Rather weak AC here in the office has it barely controlled to the lower 80s.
Gah. I hope my air conditioner works at home.
For lack of a better place to write about them:
1) As I was scootering on Hillsdale between Edgewater and El Camino a helicopter went coverhead. This, in itself is not that unusual; we get traffic, police and occasionally executive helicopters a lot – Hillsdale is between (probably roughly halfway, in fact) between SFO and the San Carlos airport.
What WAS unusual is this was VERY obviously not a civilian helicopter. It went by quickly, but it was the narror profile and shape (especially the front and back cockpit) of an attack helicopter. I’m pretty sure it was some sort of Cobra, not an Apache, as it was not angular enough for the latter – though this much is on looking at photos online and not an instant recognition.
Interesting. I’d have needed a much better camera than the one in my phone to get it.
2) We had a fire alarm malfunction at work today. They were supposed to be doing some kind of checking on the sprinkler system, and apparantly they set it off. Annoying.
…but this seems to take the fun out of it for me. They’re trying to get rid of “monopoly money” in the UK edition of the game:
In-game advertising comes to Monopoly
7/25/2006 11:39:06 AM, by Nate Anderson
In an effort to remain relevant, venerable board game Monopoly has been given an electronic European makeover. Capitalist robber barons in the UK will now have the option of making a cashless fortune thanks to a new version of the game that features an electronic card from Visa instead of paper money.
The new card, which resembles a debit card, is inserted into a small plastic reader/writer that can display and update the balance on the card. Traditional money is gone altogether, though purists can still purchase the original version. Visa’s partnership with Parker Bros. seems designed to bolster the belief that using paper money is baffling and insecure.
First, saw Clerks 2 tonight. Best movie… ev… well, not quite, but certainly best comedy in quite a while and a truly fitting finale to the New Jersey saga.
Second, file under unclassifiable 100 Reasons Why I Hate My Husband; sad, but very funny.
Lastly, via RASSF, on MSNBC we get: Outer-space sex carries complications
Experts say new devices and data would be needed to hit the zero-G-spot
LAS VEGAS – Having sex in the weightlessness of outer space is the stuff of urban legends and romantic fantasy — but experts say that there would be definite downsides as well.
etc… it mentions briefly sex during Zero-G flights (such as on the “Vomit Comet”) – which has been done in an adult movie, Private’s The Uranus Experiment
And that’s all for today.