Hey, here's something to do of a weekend: eat at some really nice restaurants!
Two of those "for Dummies" books that, while they sound very similar, may in fact be mutually exclusive:
Dreams for Dummies
Drums for Dummies
(hey! I'm like McSweeney's but much shorter and less funny!)
The most expensive Google Ads words are veeeerry similar to local ads on TV. I'm sure this means something.
As predicted in this space last August, I saw a magazine stand last time I went to Costco. Not quite as cool as Overheard in New York, but I think it's a good reason to look around once in a while.
(I'm not all that good at taking my own advice, having recently walked within fifty feet of a very dear friend who was calling my name without noticing)
Just when I was starting to wonder if maybe my iPod's hard drive is losing its mind, I run across instructions for getting into diagnostics mode.
If Colgate does what it claims it will do with Tom's of Maine, it should mean only that their products will be more widely available. And that's a good thing. It's also a good thing I (mostly) wasn't buying it for the smug satisfaction of supporting a small company.
Do you have a barcode scanner at work? I do! Perhaps you will be entertained by this database of UPC codes! And if you don't have a scanner, perhaps you would like to know what kind of fruit you have.
I've run across a couple different RFID-related items today: first, the RF-blocking wallet (hmm... I do have a birthday coming up); then, news that RFID tags can be used to spread malicious code.
Might have to make a Costco run tonight.
Sarah adds: there's another list here, but it seems fairly generic, since it points out the usefulness of having anti-diarrheal medication, but not that you might need way more TP than you might usually have on hand. Sorry for that mental image. Also, check out lots of books from the library so you always have a good flu amount of entertainment.
Wow, pretty far into March to post this, but there you go.
The perfect medium: photography and the occult
I just got this one for the pictures. It's the catalog of a museum exhibit of photographs of occult phenomena, including ghost photos from the early days of photography and photos of "apports" and other spooky objects appearing during seances. As with the skeptics of the day, I'm struck by how much ectoplasm looks like cheesecloth and the spirits of the dead look like paper cutouts surrounded by cotton wool or more cheesecloth. Three stars for historical strangeness.
Great leader, dear leader: demystifying North Korea under the Kim Clan, Lintner
I read this as a followup to Pyongyang: a journey in North Korea. It does indeed demystify North Korea, though that just leads to astonished headshaking at the goings-on. A stunning read. Four stars.
Pretties, Westerfeld (Y)
Damn that Scott Westerfeld, he's so prolific and so good! Sequel to Uglies, still hard to put down, zippy and thought-provoking, never predictable. Four stars and I'm holding my breath for the third installment.
A Wreath for Emmett Till, Nelson (Y)
A wreath of sonnets in mourning for the lynched Emmett Till. The author cops to using a very structured form to insulate herself from the grief, which unfortunately can insulate the reader as well. Three stars.
Japan 1945: a US Marine's Photographs from Ground Zero, O'Donnell
His duty was to document the destruction of Japanese cities by atomic bombs and conventional firebombing, and he was clearly deeply affected by what he saw. After photographing two people injured by the bombings, he swore to himself that he would never do it again unless he was ordered to. The remaining photos are of ordinary people putting their lives back together in the wreckage. His story and these pictures together are deeply affecting. Four stars.
After Jane pointed her readers at the Jack Benny program scripts on tobaccodocuments.org, I did some browsing. Of many many alarming items, one is a letter from William Randolph Hearst complaining about tobacco companies advertising cigarettes in the comics section of the paper. The tobacco guys assure him that they are advertisting to adults. Who read the funnies.
Also, there was a cigarette brand called "Spud"!
Two especially enjoyable moments from my commute home last night:
1. Just as dusk was falling, a sudden heavy shower starts, but I am warm and dry in my car, with Charles Trenet playing on the car stereo.
2. Driving behind a Subaru Outback with the vanity plate FUBARU
The Grauniad suggests that the use of two stolen satellite phones to run sex and gambling services means that Iraq is on its way to Western-style democracy.
Pretty soon we'll be able to take off the Iraqi people's stabilisers and marvel as the line representing their electoral turnout begins its sharp descent, in exact counterpoint to the line representing the number of Temptation Island reruns being watched in the region.
Here's how many spam attempts we blocked here at fp last week. I don't expect to publish these regularly, but I find the numbers interesting.
Total connection attempts rejected: 1555
Unknown addressees and number of attempts (note that most of the spam we block is, sadly, bound for valid addresses):
00425 1
AA13534 1
aa13534 1
accounting 1
accounts 1
admin 1
administrator 1
advertising 1
billing 1
contact 1
guest 1
help 1
home 1
info 1
johnsmithsvt 5
mail 1
majordomo 1
root 1
sales 2
service 1
support 1
test 1
uucp 1
webmaster 1
Blacklist effectiveness (attempts blocked by each RBL):
dnsbl.jammconsulting.com 55
bl.spamcop.net 2
korea.services.net 2
dnsbl.sorbs.net 5
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org 1329
combined.njabl.org 20
china.blackholes.us 8
France seems to be seriously considering legalizing the peer-to-peer exchange of copyright-protected material. Wow. No doubt the day after it happens, Hollywood and the record labels will close up shop and we'll never have another movie or record again.
I was expecting to see a whole bunch of different bingo options for Sunday night's awards show, but a quick survey reveals only M&Ms and the St Cloud Times have made the effort. I'll be printing the M&Ms versions later this weekend.
A whole bunch of writers miss the point: the problem is not "Islamism"; the problem is religious fundamentalism of any stripe, whether it's bombing abortion clinics, referring to fellow believers as Nazis for having the audacity to pray at a holy site, or rioting because somebody made fun of your prophet. And the problem isn't really even fundamentalism qua fundamentalism; the problem begins when the fundamentalists want anybody outside their clique to have to live by their rules. The Amish, as far as I know, haven't ever taken to the streets busting heads in response to their culture being misrepresented or treated with a lack of respect.