Former Mexican President Vicente Fox says President Bush is afraid of horses. What’s interesting about that to me is that when Will Ferrell portrayed President Bush in a campaign video for ACT in 2004, one of the running themes was Bush’s fear of horses. Was it just a guess?
Jason Kottke found what is most likely the first piece of restaurant criticism published in the New York Times, in 1859. Really, truly interesting stuff.
Six Apart (the folks behind Movable Type, TypePad, Vox, and LiveJournal) have announced that they will be opening the “social graph,” the list of people to whom you are connected on their social networks so that you can use it in any way that you choose. They’ll be doing so through open standards, in a manner vastly preferable to giving your account name and password to your online mail service to a social networking service, about which they have this to say: ...
I watched some of the new TV show Kid Nation tonight, and happened to find a gem on the bio page for one of the cast members, Sophia: Who have been some of the worst U.S. presidents, and why? I think George W. Bush takes the cake. The planet is disintegrating, we’re fighting an unnecessary war, millions are without health care, the school system has gone down the toilet, the country is billions of dollars in debt, the world seems to be headed on a path towards destruction, and America’s hypocrisy is mocked by many nations. I think that merits recognition. ...
Today is the 25th birthday of the emoticon. I may mark myself as tragically out of step by saying so, but I have always been a big emoticon fan.
I’ve been following the political problems in Belgium between the Flemings and the Walloons with interest over the past few weeks. The best explanation of I’ve seen of what’s going on was published today at Strange Maps. I had always known that Belgium was home to groups of people who speak different languages, but I had no idea of the degree of separation between the French-speaking Walloons and the Dutch-speaking Flemings. Apparently partition of the country is a real possibility, but Brussels stands in the way: ...
Yesterday I read that on Friday, President Bush sat down with a group of “milbloggers” to discuss how things are going in Iraq, and more importantly, get his version of the truth out to the public without its being filtered by people who give a crap about whether or not what he’s said is true or even makes any sense. Last December, Microsoft flew in a bunch of big name bloggers to sit down with Bill Gates and let him disseminate some truthiness as well. At least Microsoft bothered to invite some independent voices instead of assembling a gaggle of sycophants who were so awestruck that they could barely get down to professing their undiminished love and asking softball questions. ...
Epitaph Records has decided to remove all of its music from eMusic because eMusic refuses to sell its songs at 99 cents a track, like iTunes. That’s a real shame, because Epitaph offered some of the most interesting music on eMusic. In announcing the departure of Epitaph, eMusic CEO David Pakman makes the following point: At a time when the music industry is in such steep decline, our research and experience shows us that consumers are still willing to buy music, provided the value is right. And 99 cents a song is not an acceptable price point for all consumers. That’s one reason why eMusic exists and has been so successful; those consumers who are willing to spend more on music (provided the price is right) do so with us. You spend more than 14 times as much as the average iTunes customer at a time when per capita spending on all music and audio is under $24. You buy twenty times more music than the average iTunes customer. ...
I had the same reaction I’ve seen from many people online to the first pictures I saw of the iPod Nano. It looked like a “fat” Nano, because its aspect ratio is so different from its predecessor’s. Then I saw the Nanos in the Apple Store today and realized they should be called the miniscule Nano. The new Nano is absurdly small and thin. Even more than the iPhone, it feels like it arrived from the future. Given the size of the Nano, I don’t really see there being a market for the iPod Shuffle any more. ...
Here’s the famous jwz’s much-quoted take on regular expressions: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I’ll use regular expressions.’’ Now they have two problems. Here’s Steve Yegge on regular expressions: Regexps are obviously quite useful. If you aren’t extremely proficient with regular expressions right now, then you should drop everything and go become proficient with them. I bet I use regular expressions on 350 days out of every year: in my editor, on the command-line, in my code – anywhere that using one would save me time or make my code clearer. Oh, how it hurts to think about all the so-called “programmers” out there who don’t know how to use regexps. Argh. Let’s just drop it. ...