April 2006 Archives

It’s time for the 2006 NFL Draft All-Name Team!

Starting on offense (two-tight end set, and yeah, one of the guards will have to move to center):

QB: Bruce Gradowski, Toldeo (6th round, Tampa Bay)
RB: Jerious Norwood, Mississippi State (3rd round, Atlanta)
TE: Joe Klopfenstein, Colorado (2nd round, St. Louis)
TE: Quinn Sypniewski, Colorado (5th round, Baltimore)
WR: Ben Obomano, Auburn (7th round, Seattle)
WR: Devin Aromashodu, Auburn (7th round, Miami)
OT: Winston Justice, USC (2nd round, Philadelphia)
OT: Jeremy Trueblood, BC (2nd round, Tampa Bay)
OT: Guy Whimper, East Carolina (4th round, NY Giants)
OG: Quinn Ojennaka, Syracuse (5th round, Atlanta)
OG: Taitusi “Deuce” Lutui, USC (2nd round, Arizona)

Starting on deeefense (we’re using a 4-3):

DE: Elvis Dumervil, Louisville (4th round, Denver)
DE: Frostee Rucker, USC (3rd round, Cincinnati)
DT: Brodrick Bunkley, Florida State (1st round, Philadelphia)
DT:Montavious Stanley, Louisville (6th round, Dallas)
OLB: A.J. Hawk, The Ohio State University (1st round, Green Bay)
OLB: Roger “Rocky” McIntosh, Miami (Fla.) (2nd round, Washington)
ILB: D’Qwell Jackson, Maryland (2nd round, Cleveland)
CB: Ashton Youboty, The Ohio State University (3rd round, Buffalo)
CB: Josh “Bernard” Lay, Pittsburgh (6th round, New Orleans)
SS: Reed Doughty, Northern Colorado (6th round, Washington)
FS: Ko Simpson, South Carolina (4rd round, Buffalo)

Decision of the Day discussing Locurto v. Giuliani, the Broad Channel firefighters-on-a-racist-float case:

Finally, the Court concludes that the City’s interests outweigh the plaintiffs’ “not insubstantial” right to be jackasses.

As we have entered the last two weeks of class already, it is the season for make-up classes… which explains why I have three make-up classes scheduled simultaneously for Wednesday at noon. The way this semester has gone, I wouldn’t expect anything less.

My brother linked to this wonderful-yet-bizarre set of Japanese advertisements built around Rube Goldberg machines (Google Video). Check it out.

Rebecca MacKinnon has some great coverage of the fallout from the near-disasterous White House visit by Hu Jintao.

Dave Hyatt just put up a fascinating post about the future of web design, browsers, and high-DPI displays.

It seems to me (having just spent a large amount of money on a new monitor) that we’ll be seeing much higher resolution displays in the near future. GUI interfaces really only became useable when graphic standards moved to about 72 dpi (which was the resolution of the original Macintosh). Today the average 17” CRT is set to about 100 dpi, and many people use higher resolutions. The advantages are obvious—better anti-aliasing, crisper images, and so on. The technology may even make its way to HDTV sets—the extra pixels could easily make large screen even sharper than they are.

“…And it was a great play on both parts, Jeter and Andy Phillips.”

—Yankees announcers talking about a play where Derek Jeter’s bad throw pulled firstbaseman Andy Phillips off the bag; Phillips was unable to get back and touch the bag before the runner was called safe, resulting in two runs scoring.

Well, at least Michael Kay was able to say “Derek Jeter” without reflexively adding the words “the Yankee captain”. Small victories.

For some unfathomable reason, one of the writers for the Guardian voluntarily listened to the entire Ring Cycle straight through in one go.

While I do like Wagner, that does seem like a bit much.

In case you've ever wondered why juries consist of twelve, and not 11 or 13, the WSJ Law Blog has the answer.

I stumbled across this old “Autism-Spectrum Quotient” on-line test the other day. It’s 50 questions that measure autistic traits (note—not autism itself) in adults. The mean score in the control group was 16.4.

My score is in the comments.

A couple of things to note on the day that Chinese President Hu Jintao visits the White House:

1. My friend and former boss Rebecca MacKinnon has a fantastic Op-Ed in the Washington Post today about China’s habit of ‘arresting’ and holding without charges… well, just about anyone they want to.
2. So Hu is giving Bush a copy of The Art of War. While I hesitate to speculate on Bush’s capacity to comprehend the meaning of the gift, here’s something to consider: last year, Hu told Bush that “domestic problems left China with neither the will nor the means to challenge America’s dominance in world affairs”. Well, of course he’s going to say that. Let’s put it this way: US mismanagement of foreign policy has diminished US influence overseas to the point where China need not challenge America; moreover, one should look at Chinese action—or inaction—in Iran, North Korea, and Sudan to see what their real foreign policy goals are. In addition, the Chinese-lead Shanghai Cooperation Organization is very quietly building a central asian alliance that is simply shutting the US out of influence in that part of the world entirely. In short, the US is losing the Great Game and we’re losing it badly.

Here’s a fascinating article from Fortune about how Ray Ozzie is “webifying” Microsoft.

Of course, Microsoft’s strategy is predicated on the assumption that the pipes will stay open and unencumbered… and the Baby Bells are doing their damnedest to make sure that doesn’t happen (c.f. isenberg).

UK scientists waste grant money determining that attractive women can impair men’s judgment.

In last night’s game between the Red Sox and the Devil Rays, the Devil Rays employed a four-outfielder, three-infielder defensive shift against David Ortiz where all of the infielders were actually standing in short right field.

Ortiz solved the shift by hiitting two doubles off the Green Monster.

Perhaps the most amusing thing to happen on-line this Easter weekend was Nick Denton's decision to turn Gawker over to Jared Paul Stern for the weekend. Stern (who was caught on tape asking billionaire Ron Burkle for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars for favorable coverage) promptly went batshit crazy on the site, using his time to smear Burkle with as wide a brush as humanly possible; he also edited and deleted comments on his posts (not to mention he made the spurious claim that he knew who really posted anonymously, a claim that was promptly rebutted by Denton himself).

Denton, of course, gets coverage and buzz (and perhaps a few more readers) out the deal, while Stern simply looks childish, paranoid, self-important, and petulant (I may have missed a few). Even Gawker's regular editors seem faintly embarrassed by the whole thing.

Gothamist's Garth Johnson ably documented the action in two sidesplittingly hilarious posts; in a way, Gothamist's coverage was better than the real thing.

This is a neat little flash timeline of the history of the universe, starting at the Big Bang and continuing on to today.

• Neil Young has a new album coming out (apparently recorded in only three days). The first single? “It’s called “Impeach the President,” so there can be little question what it is about.”
• Continuing the music news, Bruce Springsteen is working on an album of Pete Seeger covers.
• So seriously, why aren’t more people freaking out over plans to go nuclear over Iran? (via rb via im)
• Inexplicable spam: why on Earth would I ever open a message with the subject “Keep Your Loan Officers BUSY 24 Hours A DAY!” For that matter, why would I ever want loan officers to actually be busy 24 hours a day, subjecting them to sleep deprivation?
• When the money people are saying that software patents are a bad idea…
• “Origami” demo at news conference bombs. The Origami project is an interesting one; it’s Microsoft’s latest attempt to build a keyboardless computer (think Tablet PC but without the keyboard). The repeated attempts to build a computer without a keyboard (e.g. Newton) and the subsequent repeated failures (they’ve only been successful in the PDA market, and quite frankly, the PDA market is being very rapidly eaten by the cellphone market) seem to tell me the following: 1) There is a market for these devices; 2) that market is smaller than you think it is; 3) as a general rule, keyboardless interfaces are great for some things but suck for others; and 4) building a keyboardless interface that doesn’t suck is really, really, really hard.
• John Gruber on why Windows is the New Classic.

It is a clear objective of the neo-conservative cabal that currently runs American foreign policy to restore Imperial America (they ignore, as they do many other inconvenient facts, the fact that the United States has never done imperialism particularly well). The truth, though, is that their actions have only served to diminish America’s stature on the world stage, not enhance it.

Exhibit A: Hu Jintao, the president of China—the country that most observers believe will be the most important country in the world by the year 2100—is making his first visit to the United States. But the first banquet in his honor? Not at the White House… but rather at Bill Gates’ mansion.

I don’t think that the symbolism is accidental.

So, the other night I picked up my copy of The Once And Future King, a book I probably haven’t read since high school, and dove right in (OK, I so skipped The Sword In The Stone).

I’d never realized this before, but it’s actually a very pessimistic book. I somehow missed that the first time through.

EZ has just announced that Global Voices is growing, and then some.

It’s great to see it grow in leaps and bounds like this.

It’s like a paintbrush but for video. Well, that’s not quite it. Oh hell, just go watch the video.

Maciej Ceglowski ‘s absolutely must-read monograph on the culinary culture of Argentina: Argentina On Two Steaks A Day.

After a brief discourse on just how thoroughly beef dominates the food landscape:

As you might expect, vegetarians will have a somewhat rough time here. For most people in Argentina, a vegetarian is something you eat.

Here’s my question: if dinner for most people starts at 11 p.m. and runs to maybe 1 in the morning, what time does the ordinary day start?

Spring break! It’s finally here! 12 days of rest and relaxation! And studying. And writing a 20-page paper. And studying for finals. And writing outlines for all my courses.

Oh, nevermind.

Dell claims that they’re responsible for selecting technologies like 802.11, PCI Express, and 64-bit x86 chips.

Coughbullshitcough.

US News on whether or not law school is ripe for reform. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if it were longer—that way I’d be able to take more of the most interesting courses…

Professor Susan Crawford has a fantastic post up about the nature of privacy on the Internet. Mandatory reading for anyone who is interested in what’s done with their data on-line (which should be just about everyone reading this).

The Rolling Stones finally play China, but the Chinese are somewhat underwhelmed.

So now I’m getting Nigerian scam emails written in French and purporting to be from the Philippines. It’s the international language of scamming, baby.

…well, let’s see if it works when the system is powered down or in sleep mode: it’s a car alarm for your MacBook Pro.

Well, it looks like Apple is now officially supporting booting Windows on the Intel Macs.

Check the sky for airborne swine.

Or, a bunch of random one-liners:

• Daylight Savings Time and International Law.
• I made this (rather juvenile) Chevy Ad. They have a feature on their website that allows anyone to make advertisements. Needless to say, not all the ads have been flattering.
• Jesus Christ — The Musical.
• Measurers of Wood and Bark.
• Neat skyscraper. Too bad the Freedom Tower won’t be nearly as interesting.
• So this survey on sexual attitudes in women in the UK uses a sample size of 46 with a mean age of 48. Ummmm…. non-representative sample, anyone?
• Check out this jaw-dropping, mind-boggling clip of Birgit Nilsson singing channelling Turandot.
• Is the Washington Post a better paper than the New York Times? (via es)
• Choose Your Own Choose Your Own Adventure.
• And finally, a note on public etiquette, addressed mainly to the couple who were standing on the corner of 22nd and 10th, right outside the Empire Diner shortly after one o’clock on Friday afternoon, locked in what they call fervent osculation: public displays of affections are never really attractive, even if the parties involved actually are attractive. But when the parties involved are a seventysomething gentleman with a George Hamilton tan in a suit that cost more than the average Manhattanite pays in rent and a young woman who might have been half his age… well, I know that the turgid blossoming of passion on a glorious spring day is a wonderful thing, but, my god, there are people trying to eat lunch! Please!

Well, it does appear that The New York Times has redesigned, and how! Here’s a neat little behind-the-scenes look at how it was done.

So apparently there is a class of woman in New York who spends $500 a month getting their hair colored. At the same time, there are people who take their children to Jack’s 99-Cent store to buy dinner.