Guess and Check

2/3/2009

Joe Ades died

Filed under: Current Events — 5:09 pm

Aww man, Joe Ades died.

That guy was awesome.

Via Valerio.

7/31/2008

Large Hadron Rap

Filed under: Current Events,Technology — 2:52 pm

A rap about CERN‘s Large Hadron Collider.

Written and performed by alpinekat, aka Katherine McAlpine. Beats by Will Barras.

Best rap ever.

3/11/2008

Wacky NASA guys

Filed under: Current Events,Technology — 10:22 am

Space Shuttle Endeavour launched earlier this morning, they’re going to assemble a giant robot up there.

It was brought to my attention that “those wacky NASA guys” are hilarious, case in point the informational text on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft seen in this image.

Via Ben.

4/12/2007

Pearls Before Breakfast Article

Filed under: Current Events — 11:13 am

I read a great article this week titled Pearls Before Breakfast in the Washington Post by Gene Weingarten (with help from Emily Shroder, Rachel Manteuffel, John W. Poole and Tom Shroder) about how the Washington Post hired amazingly talanted world-famous violinist Joshua Bell to play his three and a half million dollar Gibson ex Huberman for spare change outside the L’Enfant Plaza D.C. Metro station on the morning of January 12 to see if anyone would notice and to see how much he’d make.

A tremendously interesting experiment and article.

Standout quote:

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Besides being completely worth it to read the entire article the whole way through (it’s long), be sure not to miss the videos or the link for the complete audio of the performance.

2/21/2007

Don’t Always Blame The Parents

Filed under: Current Events — 8:16 pm

On Monday, Mike Krahulik (Gabe) of Penny Arcade posted a satire piece about a CNN story on how Nathan Moore and the others involved (Andrew Ihrcke and Luis Oyola) in the first degree reckless homicide of homeless man Rex Baum equated the thrill to something from a violent video game. Gabe’s piece satirically pointed at the parents of the kids as being more responsible then any violet video game.

Gabe followed up today with an explanation and a email from Moore’s step-mother. Her 1,614 word email gives amazing insight into the back story and the probable reasons behind Moore’s claims. I am very thankful that I was able to gain the knowledge that I did from reading what she wrote, it truly is a remarkable story. Like Gabe says, as crazy as the kid may be, he’s apparently not stupid.

10/26/2006

Retirement Wishes for Deborah T. Poritz

Filed under: Current Events — 1:26 pm

I’d like to wish Deborah T. Poritz a happy retirement. Her seventieth birthday is today and she retired yesterday from her position as Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Choice quote:

“You say it over and over again, it is a historical fact, as Justice Long has pointed out, that marriage has been defined as between a man and a woman, but there are other historical facts that for a long time, women were property in the marriage relationship. For a long time, women could not make a claim of rape against a husband. There’ve been lots of ways in which the traditional idea of marriage and the relationship of marriage has changed, so why would we just simply defer. It’s historical. It’s over.”

That’s from some of the earlier proceedings in the Lewis v. Harris case decided yesterday. She certainly went out with a great opinion. If you have the time, be sure to read it on pages 70-89 of the court’s decision (PDF).

8/8/2006

Automated Parking Garages

Filed under: Current Events,Technology — 1:42 pm

So I saw a Wired news article about an automated parking garage in Hoboken this morning. This thing sounded really cool, so I did a little research and found out that while the whole idea of an automated parking garage is cool, there are far cooler ones than the Hoboken Garage. The earliest mention I could find was this Slate article that mentions there were only two in the United States at the time of publication in April of 2004.

Volkswagen‘s new storage facility and their transparent factory in Dresden are very high in cool-factor.

I’d totally park my car in an automated garage over a traditional garage any day.

10/26/2005

That’s My High School!

Filed under: Current Events,General — 7:40 pm

I just happened to be browsing Slashdot’s front page when a certain article summary made me do a double-take.

wayward writes “Students at Pope John XIII, a Catholic high school, were told to take down their blogs from sites like Xanga and MySpace or face suspension. Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school’s principal, said that he was trying to protect students from online predators. Not too surprisingly, free speech advocates got more than a little concerned.

The reason for the double take is that I attended Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, New Jersey. Yeah, the article and the summary both get the name of the school wrong, but that sure is Rev. Msgr. Kieran McHugh they’re talking about. I guess the person who wrote the article for the Asbury Park Press didn’t do too well with Roman numerals.

I’m going to be keeping myself abreast of the situation, and if I find out anything interesting, I’ll be sure to post about it.

8/18/2005

ThinkGeek shirt

Filed under: Current Events,General — 8:58 am

I got an email this morning from ThinkGeek informing me that a t-shirt exactly like the one that I own has been in space.

It appears that NASA Astronaut Stephen Robinson owns the same shirt that I do and was photographed wearing it on the latest Discovery mission.

See the photo for proof. Very cool.

8/9/2005

W3C Validator’s new look

Filed under: Current Events,Technology — 12:17 pm

The W3C Markup Validation Service has a new look.

And apparently, it’s not just a new look:

2005-08-08 — 0.7.0 Release:
Stable release including all the fixes and improvements made in consecutive beta versions 0.7.0 Beta #2 and 0.7.0 Beta #1.

It was a little disconcerting to get a green bar when I was so used to the old familiar blue bar. But hey, it looks great.

5/7/2005

FoxTrot mentions Wikipedia

Filed under: Current Events — 10:33 am

May 7, 2005 FoxTrot Panels One and Two
(Click for the whole strip at ucomics.com)

Totally cool is right.

Via today’s foxtrot.com front page.

Update: See this archived version of Wikipedia’s Warthog article for another laugh.

4/1/2005

Odd WordPress “Articles”

Filed under: Current Events,Technology — 10:11 am

Slashdot reported yesterday on the WordPress spamming I noticed a month and a half ago.

Waxy.org has the full scoop.

3/30/2005

Pizza belongs in a triangle

Filed under: Current Events,General — 11:48 am

Well, looks like ol’ Heather has finally hit the Information Superhighway like a flaming sack of crap.

Uh, I mean my sister-in-law Heather set up a blog: a breadtangle of pizza. I think this will be quite interesting, especially if both my brother and her post.

And I suppose I can learn some things too. I didn’t even know they went to Mexico.

2/24/2005

Firefox 1.0.1

Filed under: Current Events,Technology — 11:21 pm

Firefox 1.0.1 has been officially released by the Mozilla Foundation, with some important security fixes. An announcement and release notes are available.

Via Slashdot.

2/2/2005

Google dictionary switch

Filed under: Current Events,Technology — 2:29 pm

Did anyone else notice that Google now uses answers.com for their definitions instead of dictionary.com?

Here’s a news article Google News found on the subject.

10/31/2004

G.B. Trudeau vs. F

Filed under: Current Events — 4:03 pm

October 30, 2004 Doonesbury Panel Four

I don’t know, I figure with an election right around the corner, newspapers could find something else to complain about.

Via dsandler.

10/16/2004

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

Filed under: Current Events — 1:30 pm

Jon Stewart was on Crossfire yesterday. I simply cannot adequately describe the manner in which he absolutely bitch slapped the show.

Lucky for you, Matt has the show available for download. Go watch.

10/8/2004

Credenza!

Filed under: Current Events — 6:48 pm

Okay, there’s really only one reason I’m linking to this article: Zinni Says U.S. to Be in Iraq for Years.

Here’s why:

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni criticized the Bush administration’s run-up to war but said now that U.S. forces are in Iraq “we can’t afford failure.”

Zinni said in a speech Thursday he expects American troops to be in Iraq for five to 10 years, facing a “witch’s brew” of insurgents, criminals and “al-Qaida wannabes.”

That’s right. He said Witch’s Brew.

9/20/2004

One million and counting

Filed under: Current Events — 9:02 pm

The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the one millionth article in Wikipedia. For more information, see the press release.

I’m glad I was able to help. Boy, do I love wikis. Especially the Homestar Runner Wiki.

9/19/2004

Hubba Hubble

Filed under: Current Events — 3:00 pm

Hubble image

Oooh, a pretty picture. This is an image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula taken recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. If you like, you can check out the fullsize image. And there’s plenty more of other things if nebulas aren’t your thing.

It kind of reminds me of Podz‘s chaos images. Cool stuff.

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