Saddam spectacle, fringe economy, apple suits, back taxes

Last post of 2006! Hope you all have a fun and safe New Year's celebration!
A few items to read when you have the day off work tomorrow:

• Saddam execution shown on tv and web (links to a story about this; I'm not linking to any execution footage). I hope I'm not the only one that finds this absolutely horrendous. I will not be looking for this footage. I don't care what you thought of him, I think it is disturbing that anyone would want to watch footage of someone dying. It is vengeful thinking or extreme morbid curiosity. For it to be shown on CNN and Fox is no better, in my opinion, then terrorists floating around videos of killing captives. (And yes, I know those were available on the web too, and that people here would want to watch that makes me sick.) The trial and fact he was executed is certainly news, but that can be covered adequately without showing this footage. I fear it is only a few years before real executions are part of America's reality tv culture. Time to rebuild the Coliseum for gruesome entertainment!
  
• Millions living in America's "fringe economy". Read this if you get a chance, because it was fascinating and sad. It is amazing to think about how much money these people are losing, just in order to survive. It also will further divide the rich from the poor in this country.
• Apple facing more lawsuits: Is iTunes/iPod an illegal monopoly? Does the iBook G4 logic board fail at an unusually high rate? Does the Nike/iPod infringe on patents? Stay tuned in 2007 for the exciting answers!
• Mystery billionaire pays $200M in CA back taxes, almost single-handedly closing their revenue shortfall. That's a lot of tax, and my question is how did the state not know someone owed $200 million?
  

Tough job, expiring leader, apple options

Here's a few more links for you:

• Think your job is bad? This guy was arrested for barring his employees from leaving, under feeding them, and arranging beatings. But what is the health insurance like?
• Saddam to be hanged by Sunday. Or one of his many look-alikes will be hung. Hmmm.
• Questions raised in Apple stock options. But then they gave the investigator iPods and no one cared anymore.
  

Ford, fees, finds, fun, fleece

Happy Holidays! I hope your holidays are going well; mine have been great!
Here's a few quick links for you to browse while finishing off the Christmas cookies:

• President Gerald Ford passed away this week. The link goes to various quotes from the former president.
• Might be a bit late for your holiday travels, but it's worth reviewing the 35 most outrageous fees (and how to avoid them).
• As we reach the close of 2006, what have we learned? 50 things we know now that we didn't know at the same point in 2005.
• At ROXIK, there is a cool interactive drag-and-drop people in the wind thing. (Better to see than to take my feeble description.)
• Lastly, a couple of fun looking projects at Instructables:
• Customizable fleece hats for the cold winters ahead.
• Low cost illuminated signage for your leftover Christmas lights.
  

Eragon

Tonight, I went to the movie Eragon. I've not read the book, but thought it looked to be OK based on the commercials. It is maybe geared for a slightly younger audience (as long as they like a little blood and violence). The effects are alright, but I noticed something early on about the plot.

At this point, I will reveal a lot of spoilers, so stop reading if you don't want to know.

Eragon is Star Wars.
Please see the following plot summary that applies to both movies:

• The knights rule peacefully until one betrays them and ends up wiping them all out.
• A princess steals something that belongs to the head bad guy.
• The thing ends up in the hands of a small town farm boy.
• The farm boy meets up with a mysterious stranger with a noble past.
• The farm boy realizes he might have a destiny.
• The bad guys (technically the ruling empire) kill the farm boy's uncle.
• The farm is burned down.
• The farm boy and the mysterious old, oh let's say knight/wizard, go on the run.
• The knight/wizard helps the farm boy learn to tap into his magical powers.
  
• They are looking to meet up with the rebels.
• They take a detour to save the princess from the bad guys' stronghold.
• The older knight/wizard is fatally wounded and dies during this.
• They are helped by a scoundrel with a shady past, but ultimately a good heart.
• The farm boy, princess, and scoundrel meet up with the rebels.
• The rebels and bad guys fight.
• The farm boy plays the critical role that wins them the fight. This involves fancy flying and trusting in yourself.
  

The evil king lives on for the next movie, and I will cringe if we find out he is the farm boy's real father. Sorry, I suppose I should have also included a Star Wars spoiler warning for you as well.

It wasn't a terrible movie (not nearly as good as when it was Star Wars, of course), but the pacing was bad. Everything happened so fast that you never really cared about any of them, and never felt that it was even remotely believable (for a movie about dragons and magic, that is).

Ageless turtles, coicidence, bad hack, vacuum shoes

Hi, just a few items for you today:

• Turtles may be immortal. Bow before the might of Turtle!
• 15 strange coincidences. Includes that tired Lincoln/Kennedy one. The others are interesting, but I wonder how many are just urban myth or stories.
• Logic bomb backfires on hacker and costs him $23,000. Well thought out, sir.
• Electrolux unveils "vacuum shoes" concept. Great, how am I supposed to walk under the coffee tables?
  

Country quiz, seven wonders, scams, txting

Here's a few items for the day:

• World geography quiz; a cool little test that I unfortunately did not do as well at as I'd hoped.
• The Seven Wonders of every US State, of the ones I looked at there are a lot of not so impressive wonders.
• Keep your eyes open for the top 10 scams of the year. I guess I take for granted that some of these scams would be obviously suspicious to most people, but apparently a lot of money is lost to them.
• Text messaging blamed for bad English. I'm totally fine with texting where appropriate, but I think it is disappointing that people can't write more formally, IMHO.
  

Food safety, nullity, scary mary, scrubs Christmas

Hi, here's some things to look at:

• Nine people get food poisoning at a buffet at a food handling training conference. I suppose that's one way to train. Kind of like letting your kid touch the hot pot on the stove. They won't do it again (and may need medical attention).
• A computer scientist has solved the age old "divide by zero" problem by inventing a new "number" called "nullity". So dividing anything by 0 results in nullity. Wait, how does this solve anything? I agree with one comment poster that divide by zero isn't a computer "problem", it is an exception and the problem is if the programmer didn't handle it correctly. Also, I need more things "in quotes".
  
• I don't browse a lot of YouTube (usually finding things from external links instead), but occasionally there's some good things out there. Like this clever recut of Mary Poppins footage to make it looks like a horror movie "Scary Mary".
• Or, this clip of the Charlie Brown Christmas redubbed by the cast of Scrubs. Ha!

Healthy states, evd, gadget bag, lottery prank, player displays

Hello, new collection of items for you today:

• Hey, I'm in the healthiest state in the union! I'm sure Whitmarshall is greatly influencing that rating.
• Can't decide between Blu-ray and HD-DVD? Just wait for the EVD format when China takes over the world.
• I don't need this at all but thought it was a cool idea: Elekson's keyboard/gadget bag.
• If you were thinking about creating a fake winning lottery ticket as a prank, don't.
• Pitch speed meters, digital line markers, the glowing FOX hockey puck? All ancient technology. What's next? Electroluminescent displays on player uniforms.
  

Trivia, vista, digestion, ps4, riddles, hamster

Hello! Here are a few interesting things to take up your time:

• 50 Things Everyone Should Know (or 50 useless, but mildly interesting facts). It is a nice list of trivia, and since I found it on the Internet, I can only guess that some of it might be true.
• Why Vista might be the last of its kind. An interesting perspective on Microsoft Vista (versus Google tools and such). The thing I found most amazing in the article was that it took Microsoft 10,000 employees for 5 years to create Vista! Wow!
• Can't finish that last bit of food? You can put it in the digestive table, which is simultaneously neat and gross.
• I haven't gone for a Sony PS3 yet, but why bother now that they've announced the PS4 will be available shortly (in 2010)?
  

Site of the day:

Weff Riddles - a very fun and challenging web puzzle path. It was refreshing how clever it is even though it is very low-tech.

And just for fun, here's a clever and cute YouTube video of a live action hamster video game:

Seven wonders

Hello!
Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I haven't been really motivated to post due to the extremely low readership of this blog. If you are reading and like it, spread the word!

Anyway today I took a look at the New 7 Wonders site. The idea here is that since only one of the original seven wonders of the world still stands (Great Pyramids), that they are going to vote in seven new wonders. The list is down to 21 candidates, and you can vote via the site or phone until July. I think this is a cool idea, but what I'd really love is if they started rebuilding/restoring the original seven wonders. Who wouldn't want to visit the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? In general, I think the world has a vast shortage of Colossi, as it is.

Tolerance, maps, polls

Happy November to you!

I ran across this interesting site recently, Tolerance.org's Active Hate Groups Map. It lets you see the locations of known hate organizations in the US. Interesting, but sad. It is especially sad to see the sheer number of active groups around. With as much education and information that is out there today, it is still shocking that people here in the US can hold such hateful opinions of other people for cultural, religious, racial, or historical differences.

Regardless of the content, the Hate Group Map is a good use of map technology on the web. A recent Lifehacker post lists the top ten (non-Google) map innovations. While I am not a hardcore map nut, I do like to check out map technologies and mashups occasionally. I also do like the Flickr geotagging feature quite a bit.

And another good map use for the link of the day:

Pollster.com - See the latest political poll results on a map. A great way to see the standing of current races.

Check it out and then remember to vote on November 7th!

Stay the buzzphrase, lottery odds, regifting, elemental

Odds and ends today:

Bush says we've never said 'stay the course' in Iraq, but this blog article lists six other times when he's said exactly that.
I don't care what politician it is, but they all seem to have a very short memory and a completely oblivious attitude to what they've said in the past, even if it has been recorded.

It pays to work for the lottery as Ontario lottery insiders have a unusually high proportion of wins. From the article:

The odds that the 214 insiders who claimed major prizes — $50,000 or more — since 1999 won as a result of pure luck, is one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, said University of Toronto professor Jeffrey Rosenthal, who conducted the analysis.

The City of Chesapeake asks for chesapeake.com domain name for almost ten years. The tech company that owns the domain eventually decides to give it to the city for free. So what does the city do? Sell it to a company for $120,000, of course! That just seems a little inconsiderate, like selling your Christmas gifts for a profit.

For the science fans out there (and who isn't?): the Periodic Table gets a makeover into a new "spiral" design. Gee, I know it will change my life.

Site of the day:

Mrs. Dewey - a prototype search engine/avatar. Not all that practical yet, but I thought this was a neat glimpse at maybe some future search engine possabilities.

Full time, crazy court, crazy defendant

Hello there! A few short news stories:

Ask Yahoo!: How did 40 hours become "full time"? What? 40 hours is full time? I generally work more than that! I know there are a lot of people that gripe if they have to work much more, but when you look back historically to times when 60 or 70 was the norm, we've got it pretty good today.

Briton accused of killing a cabbie has execution delayed in Pakistan due to Prince Charles visit. Here's the part I found scary: the guy was assaulted by the cabbie and killed him in self defense, he was cleared by the courts, but the Islamic Court still imposed a death sentence on him.

Man presents defense in his murder case. The defendant shot a man in the back of the head, torched the body, cut off the head, threw it in a river, burned the man's store, and lied about even being involved. His brilliant plan now? Plead not guilty because it was self-defense. Let's see how well that works for him.

World food

Hello! Been a few days since posts, as I've been having a lot of long nights (and some early mornings) at work lately due to problems and last minute emergencies. Otherwise, I was also out of town this weekend, once again at the World Food Festival in Des Moines, IA. A little chillier than last year, but a good time. There were more vendors there (see the web link for more details) this year, but unfortunately my stomach was smaller than my ambition, so I didn't sample all that much. I did however have:

• Chicken Curry over Steamed Rice, Crab Rangoons - from Cafe Fuzion (Asian non-specific)
• Pork Pupusa with cole slaw - from Pupusas de El Salvador
• (also sampled a Canoa from this same place)
• A sample of hummus - from Saloo's India

All very good, and it makes me wish whitmarshall had a little more variety in restaurants.

Site of the day:

The Pumpkin Lady - a whole bunch of pumpkin patterns for your jack o lanterns.

Vanishing cursive, assaulting language

I didn't write earlier this week as it was a bad one at work. I actually worked through the night Tuesday on an issue we had, then was back around noon Wednesday. Long nights at work is a tiring ordeal, but thankfully it isn't all that frequent for me.
The long work hours seemed even longer since it was early autumn when I started, and we had snow when it ended! We had snow on the ground this morning. I can't believe it is already here.

Some stories for the day:
Cursive writing is being forgotten. 15% of SAT essays were written in cursive handwriting in 2006. A lot of schools are scaling back or dropping instruction in cursive as more and more computer use takes its place.
Quote from one of the teachers in the article:

"I can't think of any other place you need cursive as an adult other than to sign your name," she said. "Cursive -- that is so low on the priority list, we really could care less. We are much more concerned that these kids pass their SOLs [standardized tests], and that doesn't require a bit of cursive."

I think this is sad because it feels like a good skill is vanishing. Cursive writing is faster for note taking (and there will always be times when you don't have a keyboard to write with), and it helps with cognitive development. According to the article, kids instructed in cursive end up better able to express thoughts. So, I certainly hope this trend turns around.

In other news, watch out what you say to VP Cheney! According to this story, this man was arrested for "assault" for calmly telling Cheney "Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible." I would hope that is not true, but it wouldn't be the first report of someone being arrested for a peaceful expression of opinion against the administration.

Nightmare dream homes, monopoly, xbox blogging

It's official. TV Dream Homes are a nightmare. I've read stories about "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" houses where the community has had to pitch in afterwards to help the family pay for the property taxes and such, then the linked article is about an HGTV Dream Home sweepstakes house that is driving the winning family to financial ruin. You watch those shows and are wowwed by the homes and think the people are so lucky, but no one things about the electric/utility costs, the maintenance costs, the property taxes, etc. To be fair, I think the family in this article has a lot to blame on themselves (why keep making payments on the old house, why spend so much on gifts and entertaining, why the heck does a two adult family need seven cars??? It is more of issue with people owning a million dollar house thinking they need to live like millionaires as well.).

Maybe you are better off winning the McDonald's Monopoly game. If that is your plan, here is a guide to the game pieces, including which ones are rare vs common.

My XBox 360 is now writing its own blog. Weird? Yes. But I thought it was a neat little service available from 360Voice. For the most part, you'll be able to read how I'm neglecting my game console.

Link of the day:

10 Reasons People Make Stupid Decisions - a list to reflect on to help you make wise decisions.

A secret letter, war, online communication

Here are a few items for today:
A very candid and interesting Secret Letter from Iraq is circulating, and it gives a great, sometimes moving, perspective of a Marine officer who is there. It is refreshing in that it isn't full of the spin that all of the politicians try to put on this war, and it makes you really feel for the heroes that are putting their lives at risk for our country. It is very much worth your time to read.

In a much more politically charged piece, Keith Olbermann about to be wiretapped and arrested. Okay, I made that headline up, but this is a very critical opinion piece claiming President Bush is focusing more on his enemies the Democrats instead of his enemies the terrorists. I take any commentator's opinion pieces with a grain of salt, but there are some good points in there too.

The Internet is dying! Some youth rethinking online communications. I posted this because 1) good points about the value of online relationships versus face to face, and 2) it is from my alma mater Iowa State University.

And in the ironic story of the day: Veteran actor dies unexpectedly on stage in a play in which he portrays a character that dies unexpectedly. Ironic in the sad sense, I suppose, but at least he went out doing what he loved.

Site of the day:

Make: - it's in my Links section, but in case you missed it there, this is a good site for people that mod, hack, craft, make, and like to know how things work.

Witch infiltration

In a followup to the earlier post about book banning, here's another recent similar story. A Georgia mother wants to ban the Harry Potter books from her childrens' school because the books are evil and encourage children to practice witchcraft and to be Wiccans. I've read the books and I know I've certainly been more encouraged in the black arts! Sheesh. The school's response is that using the criteria to ban the Potter books would also lead them to ban Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland, Chronicles of Narnia, and others. OK, good point. I would say in the Potter books, the lead child characters have a much more active magical life and participation than in many of the others cited.
Again, I think this is a case of making sure that you've helped your kids understand real v. fiction. These books are fun to read and so they encourage reading, and thus they should be encouraged.

Hey, did you watch the 'Lost' season premiere last night? If not, why the heck not?!

Link of the day:

Top 15 Movie Mistakes - I question that some of these qualify as the 'top' mistakes, but a neat list nonetheless. Caution: some pictures from Harry Potter movies!

These are the days of our lives

Who needs daytime soaps? The Rep. Mark Foley scandal has become one, rivaling that of the Anna Nicole Smith soap opera saga. If you're keeping track, Foley sent a bunch of inappropriate emails and instant messages to male teenage pages (all while being co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children), was found out, originally blamed it on a campaign smear, resigned, blamed it on alcoholism, now admits he's gay, and now blames it on being molested by Catholic priests when he was a child, leading to controversy in what Republican leaders knew about it and when, and now leading to some of those leaders suggesting that House Speaker Hastert should resign based on his handling of the scandal.
(take a breath...)
And as for the more tragic, and more unusual Smith case: she marries a 89 year old oil tycoon who dies a year later, is wrapped up in legal wrestling over the estate, has a baby girl, three days later her 20 year old son dies from an accidental lethal combo of medicines, 18 days later she marries her lawyer who says he's the father of the girl, her ex-boyfriend pipes up that he is the father and files a lawsuit for a DNA test and for the baby to be tested for drugs (what the?).
Well. Have you ever watched a movie and been disgusted with the plot because "that's ridiculous, nothing like that could ever happen in real life", "that's just too unbelievable and unrealistic", etc.? I'm probably pretty bad about picking apart movies like this, but current events these days are quickly shattering my ability to do so. If some strange connection between Foley and Smith surfaces in the next few weeks, I'll have to conclude that reality really is much stranger than fiction.

Like of the day:

FactCheck.org - I've posted it before, but with campaign season heating up, I thought I'd list this political fact check site again. Good resource.

Burn that book!

Good day to you!
Parent asking school to ban "Fahrenheit 451" from reading course. He's suggesting replacing it with books about Irony and Not Getting The Point.
OK, I made that last sentence up, but still you have to appreciate the request to remove a book that is about, among other things, a world where reading books is banned and thought is discouraged. Maybe the parent misunderstood and thought they'd be watching "Fahrenheit 911" at school.
I think "Fahrenheit 451" is a great read and gets you thinking about freedom of speech and expression, critical thought, and even technology and apathy. I do understand that it may not be appropriate for any age, but can't see how it would be much of a problem for high school sophomores. They had some religious based complaints as well, but I think that if reading a book will do that much damage to your beliefs, then maybe you don't really understand your own beliefs that well. So, I'm not sure that this was a very enlightened request. Especially considering this quote:

"It's just all kinds of filth," said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read "Fahrenheit 451." "The words don't need to be brought out in class. I want to get the book taken out of the class."

Link of the day:

Better Fonts - 10,000 free fonts. Everyone needs more fonts.