Faced with the growing strength of the Empire and the possible dissolution of the Rebel Alliance, Luke, Leia, and Han set off on their own. After a series of dangerous adventures, they join up with the other Rebel characters we met in the previous movies for a battle royale with the evil Empire. At the [...]
Buddha Paintings Found in Tikal
As far as I could tell, I was channeling Erich von Däniken or something…
February 1997: Lewis Tells UC Loker Will Remain Alcohol-Free:
Lewis cited student wishes for an alcohol-free undergraduate social space, the College's concern over alcohol abuse and proximity to first-year dorms as problems with the proposal.
April 2007: Beer and Undergrads Flow at Pub:
Corker said that while the pub ran out of 1636, Harvard’s own brand of beer, [...]
I have had enough. I am leaving the United States and going to Ghana. I have told people it is just a week's worth of vacation to visit family members, but I actually do not plan on returning.
Nor do I plan to continue updating this website. As computers and the Internet are not going to [...]
Thursday, January 25, 2007
On the Notebooks page of the website of Taiwanese electronics company ASUS, I found several items under the heading "ASUS Exclusive Innovations for Mobile Computing." While several of the items (i.e. power management) are definitely not exclusive to ASUS, the last two items (which you can see to your right) are just not innovative.
I am not sure why the webmaster for the Cambridge music venue T. T. the Bear's Place feels that they are competent to tell me what Internet browser I should be using when they cannot spell, have not realized that using Internet Explorer 5.0 is akin to directly sending all of your banking information to [...]
Walking home from work, I was standing at the intersection waiting for the light to change when the car swerved out of its lane and faced directly toward me, only a few feet away. For a second, I was sure that it was The Car, the one that would jump onto the sidewalk and mow [...]
Saturday, November 25, 2006
I was poking around Gregarius' Trac installation when I ran across the funny screenshot that you can see to your left.
In retrospect, I am not sure what I was worried about in my earlier post about Gregarius development. I have all the time in the world…
Gregarius 0.6.0 - coming out when it is ready.
I know that Symantec does not sell a spell checker in addition to their security products, but this advertisement I found on the Cult of Mac blog is still unprofessional. Then again, perhaps it is not surprising, since Norton Antivirus 2006 is not even available for Mac OS X. For protection against Mac viruses, you [...]
I do not know who designed President Ahmadinejad's blog, but they did not do a good job.
The Good Stuff
Easy to remember URL.
Nice use of AJAX.
The Bad Stuff
Using Visual Studio .NET 7.1 and a table-based design to create the page. Speaking of which, the site should degrade gratefully if JavaScript is disabled.
Spelling errors. While I can [...]
Canada may be a different country, but conservatives are angry everywhere.
The environment of Harvard Summer School is quite different from the regular school year. Instead of the 18-21 year olds that made up the majority of undergraduate students in Harvard College, I am experiencing "people of all ages, from around the United States and more than 90 countries, live and learn together as they satisfy [...]
ReverseIndexLookup.com is a website that purports to let you track people by just a phone number, email address, or drivers' license. Despite the URL and title both referring to ReverseIndexLookup, all of the text and images on the page (as you can see on the left) refer to either ReverseRecords or "Reverse Records Finder." This [...]
On a desk in Lamont Library:
[in pink] You're ugly
[in black] Why is Lamont beautiful and Cabot ugly?
[in different handwriting] One word - modernism. It's an idea where form + function just didn't meld too well.
My personal opinion (which, unfortunately, is not expressed on the walls of Lamont itself) is that Lamont Library was built in [...]
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
A confession: I actually look forward to seeing the movie Snakes on a Plane, but not just because of its title. The movie's premise[1] is so ridiculous that it cannot fail to be campy. I would not be surprised if Snakes on a Plane became some sort of cult classic.
Combine my anticipation with the fact [...]
The image to the left comes from my notes for a Bits problem set. This is my partner's handwriting, although I agree with his sentiment.
I had to brighten the picture using GIMP, so you may want to look at the image's ALT data if you cannot read it. He added "(potentially)" to the end of [...]
From a birthday dinner on Monday night:
Girl: I think CampusTap might really take off. Lots of people are blogging now.
slight pause, during which I am trying not to smile…
Girl: I mean, besides people in the underworld.
I took great effort not to burst out laughing, especially imagining the crazy hijinks that would ensue if I did [...]
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Before Bits last Wednesday, a friends showed me the Crimson. "Look at this ridiculous article," he said, "it's about the weather. Apparently people change their clothes when it gets cold."
Faced with slushy, icy terrain on the Monday morning commute, students broke out bulky jackets and the occasional pair of moon boots. Shorts and flip-flops, which [...]
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Team Zebra's website describes their goals succintly:
TEAM ZEBRA seeks to bring two zebra to Harvard Square to raise money for hurricane / earthquake survivors and triumph in a challenge that will raise even more money for the cause.
My first thought was "This is the most ridiculous idea that I have ever heard." But it [...]
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Do not get me wrong - ForecastFox is a wonderful Firefox extension, and I fully realize that the text from their forecasts comes from AccuWeather. Regardless, seeing "Thundery rains in the p.m." all day for today's forecast has had me shaking my head in amusement all day. It conveys to me nothing that is not [...]
Monday, September 19, 2005
I found this on my desk when I came home from work. Click on the image to enlarge.
Hopefully, a hive restore will do the trick. Regardless, seeing this made me feel as if I was in some kind of simplistic video game, with wave after wave of broken computers attacking or something.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
If only cheerleaders were more like the musk ox.
Source: An Animal Planet show explaining how in recent years, NFL football players have had less broken bones than NFL cheerleaders. The football players have helmets which "reduce the force of tackles" in a fashion analogous to the thick skulls of musk oxen.
If you have been keeping up with the Michael Lynn-ISS-Cisco saga, this Wired interview is a must-read. My favorite part:
Lynn: Yes, they did, actually. And I didn't know what it was, so I didn't thank him properly…. This was a really funny story. (Right after my talk, this) guy walks up with a very, very [...]
When I installed the latest version of 7-Zip (an open-source program for dealing with compressed file formats like ZIP and RAR), I was surprised to find that the default locale was set to Danish! Luckily, fixing it was relatively simple:
Open the Værktøjer (Tools) menu and select Indstillinger (Options).
Select the last tab, entitled Sprog (Language). Change [...]
Kaspersky Lab's virus analysts report that they found a piece of malicious adware that was infected with Parite, another virus. They came to the conclusion that the computer used to make the adware was probably infected with Parite. Unlike most other modern viruses, Parite attaches itself to applications on your computers by appending its code [...]
To celebrate the 36th anniversary of Apollo 11, Google Maps has introduced "Google Moon," which displays the location of the Apollo landings on the moon, thanks to NASA giving them lunar satellite imagery. The funniest part is hinted at in the FAQ:
3. What happens if I try to zoom too close?
Well, you'll have to go [...]
The second result in a Google search for 'gibraltar' is the CIA World Factbook's entry. As you can see, the page's description is "Good summary information, some glaring errors (water supply)." If only Wikipedia entries had such useful descriptions!
Subject: hello
From: Catalina Crain <richtrent@walla.com>
Even before I opened it, I could tell that this message was going to be spam. However, I expected the message it contained to be a generic spam message pimping out email addresses, prescription drugs, or OEM software like the vast majority of spam I receive. I have seen spam that [...]
The London News Review takes a humorous look at Giancarlo Neri's sculpture "The Writer," a 22 foot chair and table set that has been constructed on Hampstead Heath in north London:
Neri has called his table and chair “a monument to the loneliness of writing”. But if this is what it is meant to be, then [...]
From a New York Times article on Christian video games:
"When I became a Christian in 1992, I still wanted to play, but it was hard when the best-quality games out there were Doom, Quake — Satanic stuff, you know? Stuff that if I went to church on Sunday and came home and wanted to play [...]
Both the Marmot's Hole and North Korea Zone reported on the violence that accompanied North Korea's loss to Iran during a World Cup qualifying game earlier this week. However, this quote from KCNA is amazing (emphasis mine):
At the end of the match all the spectators were angered and vigorously protested the wrong refereeing by the [...]
"Bunny Easter" from the Perry Bible Fellowship, a collection of some of the most hilarious and disturbing comics I have ever seen.
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Thursday, January 27, 2005
While the iTunes Music Store recognizes that "Big Pimpin'" is not a track on 2003's The Black Album, but is actually from the 1999 album "Vol. 3: Life and Times of S. Carter", one must wonder where the young Apple employee who made the iTunes screenshot found on the Playlists page went wrong. I suspect [...]
Thursday, December 30, 2004
From the Boston Globe comes an entertaining article about those whose houses are bisected by the municipal border between Cambridge and Somerville. While taxes seem to be determined by what percentage of their land and homes reside in each municipality, voting and public school eligibility seem to be determined by the town in which one [...]
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Joey deVilla has scanned the entire 17-page comic "I am Curious (BLACK)!," which I previously wrote about back in February. This comic is bizarre enough that it is impossible to talk about all of the strange things that happen. Just go read it.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
How does it snow for the first time in Cambridge before it snows in Helsinki?
For those keeping score at home, Helsinki is so cold that its harbour freezes over during the winter.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
I have been waiting for my absentee ballot to come, so I was excited to find it in my mailbox today. I was less excited to find letters from the local party organizations congratulating me on my request for an absentee ballot. The Democratic literature was relatively normal, so I will not spend any time [...]
Slashdot reports on an attempt to convince users of Redhat Linux and Fedora Core to download and execute malicious code disguised as a security update. Like phishing scams, it seems several spam email messages were sent claiming to be from the "Redhat Security Team," and directing users to www.fedora-redhat.com (the real Fedora website is www.fedora.redhat.com) [...]
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Greetings [First_Name],
Thanks for being one of over 5000 youth and students to have signed the Declaration of Independence form Dirty Energy in just 15 days. In less than a month the signatures will be presented to our countries' leaders to tell them that our generation demands a shift to clean, renewable energy. To [...]
Monday, September 13, 2004
…for posting your product manuals online in PDF format, including the one for my roommate's alarm clock [PDF, obvs.], which rings — at least, it used to ring — every night at midnight.
Incidently, I was unable to find a manual for my alarm clock, a Sony Dream Machine (model ICF-C390), online, but I did learn [...]
Sunday, September 5, 2004
Spent entirely too much time this weekend dealing with Linux multimedia troubles. Eventually, after reinstalling xine and installing totem and mplayer, I decided on a whim to install RealPlayer 10. Not surprisingly, it refused to load. I uninstalled it and despondingly clicked on a Quicktime file. To my amazement, it worked. Since RealPlayer is unable [...]
Saturday, August 28, 2004
From Microsoft's Internet Explorer FAQ:
Q. Does Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) include Internet Explorer?
A. Yes. Internet Explorer 6 SP1 is the most recent update to the Internet Explorer technology, and it includes a full installation of Internet Explorer 6. The service pack is the latest update to the Internet Explorer technologies representing general improvements to [...]
The story: Boy sees movie. Boy falls in love with character from movie. Boy buys DVD of Japanese movie that inspired character boy loves. Boy realizes that DVD is Region 3, since there is no Region 1 DVD. Boy gets angry. Boy gets even, by constructing an extremely funny dialog between "DVD Jon" (famous for [...]
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Michelle Malkin complains about an article in the Arizona Daily Star entitled "Border agent fires at SUV as it tries to run him over." She had this to say:
The incident actually involved 12 illegal aliens with two vehicles trying to crash through the U.S.-Mexico border. Not only do the headline and story fail to mention [...]
In the interest of full disclosure, Amazon follows Anarchy, State, & Utopia with three more government books, followed by a lot of random music interspersed with some science fiction and a number of works of French existentialism.
My little sister is complaining that I am spending too much time blogging and not enough talking to her, but after *almost* blogging about the same back-to-school girl appearing on both Dell and Gateway's website, I could not pass this up. I was reading Adam Penenberg's latest Wired article when I came across a link [...]
New York Senator Chuck Schumer on blogging:
ES: What do you think of blogging, and the fact that the Convention offered approximately 35 bloggers credentials?
CS: I think blogging is great. It supports a dialogue that reaches out to everyone, and in our new interconnected, more democratic world, blogging fits the bill. It has its tentacles that [...]
But this is not just any string. This is special string. What makes this string so amazing?
What makes this particular piece of string so special is, in part [emphasis mine], the fact that it has traveled to Israel, to the ancient tomb of Rachel the Matriarch, and returned, imbued with the essence of protection.
I assume [...]
Pandagon reports on Nader's attempts to get press credentials for the ongoing Democratic Convention:
It's quintessential Nader, though - a totally unreasonable demand premised on a horrible argument which, when gone unmet, will totally confirm every unreasonable thing he already thinks. He knew when the convention was. He knew the process to apply for credentials. He's [...]
BoingBoing points to A Softer World. All of the comics are cool, and most of them are quite funny. I like this one, especially. Not because of its political message, but the idea of "Baby Doom."
UPDATE: More Baby Doom!
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Holden on Eschaton posts about an AP article with an obvious grammatical error in its title. I assume that newspapers are not allowed to change the content of the AP articles that they syndicate; the error appears at both the New York Times and the Guardian.
The overflight by Israeli fighter jets is apparently retaliation for [...]
From Eschaton comes this ridiculously funny New Yorker piece about Cheney's use of profanity on the Senate floor:
?Oh, it's like that?? Mr. Cheney queried.
?Whut? Whut?? Mr. Leahy shot back.
?Once again,? Mr. Cheney replied (quite obviously quoting a lyric from Ice Cube's 1990 album, ?AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted?), ?it's on.?
As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the [...]
I was browsing a post on Political Animal which directed me to a fake Bush-Cheney website, which in turn led to the real site. A quick look at the right hand sidebar of thehome page shows the "Bush-Cheney Quick Vote," which at first glance seems like a standard web poll. Select an option besides "All [...]
From an interview at Talking Points Memo:
So if I say, if there's ten people in the room and there's a guy out in the hall screaming and he's bothering us and I say “We ought to stop that guy. We ought to stop that guy.” And everyone says, “Oh no, no. This guy's a bad [...]
The Crimson reports on a mysterious package at the Holyoke Center yesterday. Normally, I would find this a serious event, but the package was opened before the police arrived.
An unidentified male opened the box and removed an object that ?looked like something electrical, like a cell phone or a beeper,? O'Connor said.
O'Connor added she was [...]
That's relative poverty, mind you. From "Crimes of Others Wrecked Enron, Ex-Chief Says:"
The years since the Enron collapse have transformed Mr. Lay. The changes in his financial status are stunning. At the beginning of 2001, Mr. Lay said, he had a net worth in excess of $400 million  almost all of it in Enron [...]
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This is the funniest letter to the New York Times that I have read in a while. Throughout the article "Tyson Looks in the Mirror and Sees a Troubled Man," the boxer repeatedly makes reference to the adventure novel The Count of Monte Cristo. Jay Wolpert wrote in to clarify that one of Tyson's quotes [...]
Engadget points to this Boston Globe editorial about an up and coming feature in cellphones: ringback tones. Although I agree with the writer that personalized ring tones are annoying (having a top 40 single as your ring tone does not automatically make it cool), the article is Luddite in tone. But why does the writer [...]
I think this post by Tom Burka adequately conveys the media's current fascination with Ronald Reagan (You would think that celebrities had stopped dying, or something). Hopefully, by the time next week rolls around, the entire country will be so tired of Reaganmania (a meme in the making) that our current President will be unable [...]
Apparently frivolous lawsuits are not just a feature in America. Guo Yong, a Chinese Bentley owner, is suing the Beijing branch of the popular automobile company after his car went out of control while he was driving it in March 2003. Although nobody was injured, he complains that nobody at the company was willing to [...]
?Work is aggravating me,? she wrote in an April 28 entry on the publicly accessible journal, the contents of which have since been taken offline. ?I am one shade lighter than homicidal today. I am two snotty e-mails from professors away from bombing the entire Harvard campus.?
It's probably not a good idea to make threats [...]
I apologize for going such a long interval without posting. This week was rather busy.
In my defense, I was planning on posting two or three entries yesterday, but was thwarted by a network outage. The worst part was the length (more than twelve hours). The second worst part was the outage the day before. Since [...]
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
I feel obligated to blog about the debate about whether to raise the Activities Fee and make it mandatory. I am personally going to vote 'no' to both questions (although I doubt that my endorsement means anything to those Harvard students reading). The burden of proof is on those who seek to increase [...]
This open letter on craigslist is the funniest thing I have read in a long while. Best part follows:
I am an engineer. Do you ever see me shaking down bums in the Loin for a calculator and sliderule? No, you don't. Because engineering is the main thing I do, I went and bought myself [...]
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The Userland New York Times International RSS Feed: 12 Marines Believed Dead in Fight in Iraqi City, Military Says
The New York Times International Page
Earlier this morning, I was ruminating on the effectiveness of coffee as a stimulant. When I was falling asleep as I was studying for a midterm exam on J. S. Mill's On Liberty (I love the book, but I have read it three times, for three different government classes), a cup of joe perked [...]
From the AP: Ohio Salad Arrives With Piece of a Thumb
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In general, I do not read blogs without RSS (it's annoying to have to keep coming back to the site to see if the blog has been updated). Similarly, I prefer to comment on blogs with Trackback. But Margaret Cho is so funny, I just had to post this quote:
Why is there [...]
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From the older sister comes an article from the Telegraph about giant crabs which are creating environmental havoc off the coasts of Norway. Transplanted to the Barents Sea from the Pacific in the time of Stalin, the crabs began to expand in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Concidence? [...]
Saturday, February 28, 2004
This potentially blasphemous entry from the Commissar was too funny not to link to. Ann Coulter pictures, Messiah-Dean (not Mujahid-Dean!), and gratituous Jackson Family references - what's not to love?
Friday, February 27, 2004
Got this from a Metafilter entry. A review of a Superman comic book where Lois Lane becomes black for 24 hours. Watch as the "twin volcanoes" of Superman's fists help create a message of racial coexistence.
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Friday, February 27, 2004
This Register article talks about the Apple vs Apple case. I personally love this quote:
And the judge, Mr Justice Edward Mann, surprised the assembly by admitting he is an iPod user. He wondered if this disqualified him from judging the case. Lord Grabiner QC, representing Apple Comp., told him he was not. "I'm delighted [...]
I am going to avoid commenting on the content of this site (found on Boing Boing). I am also not going to comment on its shameless attempt to co-opt youth culture through corrupted slang like, "What's the Download" and "There's more to music than meets the ears."
I am not sure whether I would buy this eBay item; the seller just joined eBay yesterday.
Seriously though, I am hoping that the high bids are because the money is going to charity, and not because someone hopes to make a profit when (well, technically if) he becomes president.
Thursday, January 8, 2004
This post is for Greg, who noted I post a lot of New York Times articles. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with the Times, but I want to avoid getting in a situation like that in Sartre's play Dirty Hands, which takes place in World War II Yugoslavia.
Thursday, January 8, 2004
Here at Harvard, majors are called "concentrations." I am in government, the second largest concentration:
Dear government concentrators,
Welcome back!
Just a quick note that our concentration advisors are on a well
deserved break, and will be available [...]
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
Both Le Monde (for the Francophones) and Pravda are reported that tATu (wtf is up with that capitalization? Who do they think they are, KaZaA?), the world's favorite lesbian pop group, wants to run for president of Russia. I am not sure whether the idea that they can avoid the age limitation (35 [...]
This New York Times article, is entitled, "4 Americans Were on Plane That Crashed in the Red Sea." But look at this quote:
The passengers included Edward Zalaznick, a 42-year-old New Yorker who lived in Paris with his wife, Isabelle Fouchard, 43, and their three children, David, 12, Paul, 9, and Thomas, 6. Mr. Zalaznick [...]
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