We wake up in caves
and evolve over coffee.

I seem to be in a doggerel mood this week… [Technorati tag: poetry]

1 Comment »

MoveOn.org has announced the winner of its contest to create a Flash animation about W’s [Does anyone call him that any more? Or are we all now clear about which Pres. Bush we’re talking about?] Social Security plan. The winner, by Andy Menconi, is a pleasingly straightforward presentation that claims that there would be no crisis if SS tax weren’t capped at somewhere around $5,500/year.

I have a question: Are benefits also capped?

3 Comments »

On Drinking a Cold One

The coldness you feel in your fingers
is your beer warming up.

Although I wrote that profundity at the little cafe near the end of the walk to the Natural Arch, I promise you that it is not the very very bad poem I mentioned in the previous post. That one has already been buried in a lead-lined container so that its smell won’t fell the local wildlife. [Technorati tags: poem DeepThoughts]

2 Comments »

From an internal from Steve Ballmer:

“I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda”

Posted by Scoble, noted by Salon, saluted by me among many others. Way to go, Microsoft. [Technorati tag: microsoft]

1 Comment »

The court’s decision that the FCC does not have authority to regulate all digital devices is a major victory and a cause for rejoicing. Congratulations to all those who worked so hard to safeguard our Internet from this particular federal agency. (See Susan Crawford…)

3 Comments »

Steve G has a vlog about Steve J’s talk at Harvard last week. I missed the talk (I was on a plane) and I haven’t seen Steve G’s report because I just got off a plane. But I figure it’s a safe bet to recommend it to you…

1 Comment »

Although the Viceversa catalog refers to this as “Voodoo display with 5 kitchen knives,” I prefer to think of it as “Kill Mr. Bill.”

[Thanks to Tim Hiltabiddle for the link.]

1 Comment »

Amazon’s concordance feature is fun and sometimes revelatory. For example, the list of the 100 most frequently used words in my book Small Pieces Loosely Joined begins with “although” and ends with “yet,” which reflects my unfortunate tendency towards mealy-mouthedness. The two most used words in the book are “Web” and “world,” which is another interesting reflection of what the book is about.

You can get to the concordance for any book for which Amazon has the full text by hovering over the cover image and selecting “concordance” from the popup… [Technorati tag: amazon]

4 Comments »

I fly to Italy tomorrow to give a talk in Naples and then to spend a couple of days with an odd grad student offsite meeting being held in Capri, under the tutelage of the international Derrick Dekerckhove.

I have found in mentioning this to people that I get zero travel sympathy, so I have given up trying, although the truth is that I wouldn’t mind a couple of “Oooh, you poor, hard-traveling person! It must be so tiring!” What you don’t understand is that I am totally an indoor Jew. The loveliness of the outdoors is to me as the loveliness of quarks: I’m never going to experience it firsthand or ever actually understand it.

I’ll be back on Sunday. The only tan I get will come from the lovely quarks emitted by my laptop’s screen. That is my pledge to you.

5 Comments »

Oh the pictures you find in the Flickr Iraq feed. Amazing.

3 Comments »