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I wanna go on the Katie diet.
August 2006 Archives
So, apparently people are blaming the dip in SAT scores on the fact that it’s now four three-and-three-quarter hours long.
I respectfully disagree. First, if you want a long exam, try my six-hour Property exam which I could have easily spent an extra hour writing.
Second, the real reason for the dip is that this was the first go at the new test, and the test prep companies (i.e. Kaplan & Princeton Review) simply haven’t caught up to the new exam. Wait two years and scores will be right back to where they normally are.
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Morimoto talks Tokyo. (via Meg)
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The Omni Group talks about what software they like.
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Title says it all.
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Unfortunately, the actual column is hidden behind a paywall.
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“The world must demand democracy not only for the United States but for the world. We want transition to democracy in the United States.”
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On foreign languages in law school.
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Clotilde tackles Osso Bucco. Yummmmmmmy.
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Google not only wants your data, it wants to run your domain for you. It’s pretty cool, though I’m not sure that I’d want, say, my organization’s email hosted off-site by a third-party provider for free. Still, it’s incredibly powerful.
This one’s for everyone who’s ever gotten an email from me with the body text consisting solely of “See subject. ;-)”
Or, in other words, pretty much everyone who’s ever gotten an email from me.
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Bill Gates’ farewell video from Microsoft.
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The headline alone is worth the price of admission.
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Mmmmmm…… Mussels. I could eat these forever.
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Unsurprisingly, it looks like the ribbon was not met with universal applause.
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The Simpsons theme, as played by classical guitar quartet.
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The one trumpet player who could play higher than you could hear has passed on to that great marching band in the sky. It should be noted, of course, that he used a specialized mouthpiece to get up that high.
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Nettwork Music is trying to re-invent the record label, and, quiet frankly, they’re 1,000 miles ahead of the competition. Even if it doesn’t work completely, at least they’re reacting to changes in the market, unlike everyone else…
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Nine inches long, 85 tools? Are you happy to see me or is that a swiss army knife in your pocket?
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Another casualty of the Bush administration.
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Tony Pierce on gentrification in Los Angeles: “Not everything whitey does is bad.”
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Danny Silverman collects mandatory arrest warnings from around the world
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Riding the entirety of the New York City subway system in 24 hours (plus two minutes).
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Enfunny your day. (via lia)
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Steingarten on fois gras. An absolute must-read.
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“Bumping” — a lock-picking technique that’ll make you want to change your locks.
Now that gels and liquids are banned from airplanes, a Nova Scotia lobster company has resorted to using frozen vegetables to keep the live lobsters they sell cold.
Weird Al’s We Are The World-style anti-downloading anthem: Don’t Download This Song:
You don’t want to mess with the RIAA
They’ll sue you if you burn that CD-R
Doesn’t matter if you’re a grandma or a seven-year-old-girl
They’ll treat you like the evil hard-bitten criminal scum you are
It is, of course, available as a free download from Weird Al’s site.
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So long, Tower Records. Just a victim of trends far outside its control. I see “Tower Boutiques” inside other stores, but… I wonder who’ll take over the big store on 66th St?
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Yes, this is the bread box for me. [evil cackling]
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Salon on the glorious rise of long-form television entertainment. I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see the 22-episode network season be a casualty—it’s hard to maintain that kind of quality over 22 episodes.
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It’s the US Patent Code, in verse (quatrains, I believe).
So apparently the US Government has started to re-classify information that’s been in the public domain for decades.
In this specific case, they’re classifying information about the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal during the Cold War… and this is information that’s never been stamped secret. In fact, some of the information that they’re trying to hide were actually in public annual reports issued by the Secretary of Defense.
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Clotide dines at El Bulli, “the best restaurant in the world.” Best? Well, read on and find out.
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Looks like Google is muscling in on the last.fm/pandora market.
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Pretty much the title says it all. Flash required.
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The Onion takes on the uncomfortable truth behind history.
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Best Review of Snakes On A Plane, hands down, no questions asked
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Cute and horrifying at the same time.
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Weinberger waxes poetic on Snakes.
So, President Bush has some words to say about the NSA wiretapping decision:
Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.
Actually, Mr. President, it seems to me that you simply do not understand the nature of rule of law.
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Beyond cool: run screensavers as your desktop pattern.
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Matt Millen is a genius. No, seriously, he is.
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BA managed to lose 20,000 pieces of luggage during the recent security kerfluffle.
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Beyond brilliant.
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A wonderful collection of syllabuses (syllabi?—the dictionary says both are acceptable) of assorted cyberlaw courses.
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This is a fantastic resource on what seafood to buy and what seafood to avoid—both for environmental and health reasons.
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More on “Beautiful Cooking,” now with pictures of the contestants struggling with live octopi!
This is a wonderful article on how whales evolved to what they are today.
And really, when you think about it—animals that not only evolved to breath air and walk on land but be warm-blooded at that returning to the sea and losing their teeth in the process—it really is an amazing evolutionary story.
If I were ever to be reincarnated as an animal, I think that I’d like to come back as a humpback whale.
Google’s municipal WiFi in Mountain View has finally gone live. Note that, at least according to this map, they’re covering virtually the entire city of Mountain View, not just the CBD or popular tourist areas (does Mountain View have a tourist area?).
Here’s a report from a beta tester.
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Depending on the kind of cheese, it might have been classified as a WMD.
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Pictures at an Exhibition: The Metropolitan Opera has commissioned a number of contemporary artists to make paintings based on various operas, to be displayed during the upcoming season.
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Calvin & Hobbes meets Fight Club.
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How fast is your Internet connection?
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God wins in a landslide. It’s not even close.
Twelve-year-old boy gets on airplane, despite lacking either a passport or a ticket.
Oh, and this happened at a London airport.
UPDATE: here’s a story with more details.
Amy Langfield is, bit by bit, blogging about trying to get back to the US from London in these illiquid times.
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“Trimalchio in West Egg,” “Tote the Weary Load,” “Catch-18”
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To Kill a Mockingbird Hunting Supplies
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Clever, yet simple trick. The best tricks are the simplest, I think…
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Of course, the NYC subways stops look nothing like this at all.
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Flying V warp nacelles.
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“This being Cantonese cooking, the [mystery] ingredient has tended to be seafood… live seafood. The contestants have to pick up their mystery ingredient … and kill it and prepare some dish. I’m not sure what American audiences would think of the beaut
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Vampire Sea Spiders From The Deep! With Legs That Extend up To 27 inches! And Amazing Color Photography!
Jon Carroll on Joementum:
Also, Lieberman comes across as one of the most oleaginous, self- satisfied politicians in the nation, and that is a very vigorous competition.
FWIW: I don’t have tags visible right now, but this post is tagged “sore loser”.
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Jimbo Wales at home.
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Yeah, the title pretty much says it all.
Note that this is not regular mayo with bits of bacon mixed in, as awesome as that combination would be; oh no, this is mayonnaise made with bacon fat as the lipid in emulsion.
I understand that the AMA recommends that a cardiologist be on site if you choose to make this dangerous foodstuff.
…when your NY->Boston bus, which is already at least half-an-hour behind schedule, manages to lose its transmission just outside of Framingham.
And then, the bus company, rather than sending a bus from Boston to pick you up, instead makes you wait for the bus behind you…
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The last cat launch of an F-14 off of a carrier. End of an era
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Yummy sushi food photography. This picture makes me hungry.
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Pogue tries to get to the bottom of inexplicable spam bots.
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The return of some old friends. Note that what was once “Turbo Pascal” is now “Turbo Delphi”. I like the fact that they’re giving them away free. I learned how to program in Pascal using Turbo Pascal 4.0.
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Ihnatko speculates about what in Leopard stayed behind the curtain.
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For future reference.
Heather Champ on what she learned at BlogHer and the surprising power of adolescent cruelty.
The server switchover seems pretty much complete—I guess there are still a few corners of the Interweb where the DNS hasn’t fully propagated to yet, but that should solve itself in a day or two.
The hardest parts of the whole switchover were
- setting up a mirror installation on my home computer
- trying to get FastCGI working in conjunction with MT on my new host (didn’t happen, so I just went back to regular old CGI).
I would, at some point in the future, get FastCGI working, so if anyone has any ideas (I’m on Dreamhost, if that makes a difference), drop me a line. Having said that, I’m pretty tired of geeky tinkering at the moment, so I may just let sleeping dogs lie.
Feel free to kick the tires, look for busted links, make sure that comments work, etc.
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Apparently an adult day pass at Walt Disney World now costs $67. Whatever happened to the days when park admission was affordable, and Disney would make their money selling you $12 hamburgers?
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A refrigerator manufacturer is putting together a blog of wine tips from experts. None of the entries so far have mentioned the sponsor; unfortunately, the entries so far have tended to the very short.
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Stockholm institutes temporary congestion tax; works far better than anyone expected. It gets turned off; there are massive traffic jams the very next day.
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Cricket for
idiotsAmericans. Via Ezuck. -
Lesley Visser is going to be inducted in to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Received in email today:
Dear Friend
I need a partner for $14 million deal,
for more details please contact me immediately .
Thanks
[generic name redacted]
And apparently, some random stranger on the Internet is just the partner this guy is looking for!
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Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and ketchup.
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Actually, there’s some excellent wine that comes in non-traditional form factors. The truth is that the classic bottle-cork solution was the best technology that the 18th century could come up with, but can’t the 21st do better?
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Zittrain tries to explain what Generativity is in in FAQ format, Fascinating reading, I think.
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I wonder if he did the survey in the summer or the winter?
I’ve recently been playing with Vox, the new blogging/social networking product from Six Apart. I have to say that I’m very impressed with it—it’s blogging for people who don’t blog. It’s very easy to post an entry, and the integrated multi-media tools are dead simple to use.
If anyone wants an invite, drop a line in the comments.
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Aaron Haspel is back blogging again.
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Movies and the like that are now in the public domain, free for the taking.