Not that this really has anything to do with school, but…yeah.
I started reading NTSB accident reports about three weeks ago, sort of as an armchair speculator to see how well I could determine a cause from the preliminary report, and partly because as a pilot, I now have a morbid fascination with how (and in what manner) people manage to break airplanes.
A cargo-configured 747-100 wins the Cool Accident of the Month Award for losing an engine over Lake Michigan.
Because if you didn’t, your vote might not count worth beans.
Electronic voting in the United States is one of the scariest things to happen to the world in my lifetime. Let’s hope that it’s the worst that I see.
A fellow Wolverine decided to be an iPod for Halloween. Oh man. Why didn’t I think of that?
(From Slashdot)
I’m fine. I wasn’t in the Cessna 206 that crashed over at Herlong today. You can stop worrying now.
The plane, carrying skydivers for Skydive Jacksonville, crashed shortly after takeoff from Herlong, which is still closed. The runway where the plane crashed will remain closed until the FAA and NTSB finish their investigation of the crash site. One person was killed and five others seriously injured. The NTSB has not yet published a preliminary report, but I’ll link it when they do.
From MacMinute comes this gem:
Guaranteed* Not to Smell Like Feet After Repeated Use™.
*as long as they’re not used as real socks.
Dana has gotten OS X running on a Centris 650.
And before you ask, this falls into the paraphrasing-Sir-Edmund-Hillary category: Because it’s possible.
Or Web pages, or anything else in a non-plain-English language.
Remember, kids, those compiler/interpreter/validator errors are just there to annoy you. Ignore them, and they’ll go away!
Modern Drunkard magazine presents The 86 Rules of Boozing.
Everyone’s up in arms about Kerry’s mention of Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter at the last debate. Stuart James, at the Chattanoogan, got it right. This isn’t some “tawdry political trick,” unless you count the way the Republicans have turned gay marriage into a central campaign issue, in spite of the fact that a majority of Americans think there are far more important issues to be dealt with (the war in Iraq, terrorism, health care). The Little Bushie Brigade is using this to suck up to the Christian Right.
Need I remind anyone that the official site of the Westboro Baptist Church represents what the Christian Right will do if given the chance? (Warning: extremely offensive Web site for the uninitiated.)
Oh man. Last night’s Game 3 of the ALCS between the Yankees and the Red Sox was quite possibly the best baseball game I’ve ever watched on TV.
Let me explain something. I hate watching baseball on TV. I think it’s terribly boring, because most of what you see is a guy standing around waiting for a ball to be thrown his way.
Not last night.
Last night was a hitfest of epic proportions. The two teams combined for 37 hits and 27 runs over a time of 4:20, all three postseason records. Matsui went 5-for-6 with two homers, two doubles, and five RBI, and Sheffield went 4-for-5 with a homer, a double, and four RBI. The Yankees had 13 extra-base hits, and the two teams combined for 20, both also (I think) records.
I feel sorry for the two teams’ pitching staffs. But only a little bit. That was way too fun to watch.
Just saw an absolutely hilarious commercial. The camera is focused on a large mountain several miles away, which suddenly erupts, spewing rock and ash into the air. As large chunks of rock begin to come down near the camera, one of them turns out to be a very muddy Jeep Liberty.
The fine print at the bottom of the screen reads, “Dropping vehicles is only safe in commercials.”
Best. Lawyerspeak. Ever.
For those of you who haven’t noticed, Jon Stewart ripped the guys on CNN’s Crossfire a new one when he was on the show recently.
Kudos to Jon, and jeers to the so-called “mainstream media,” particularly to the so-called “Fair and Balanced”(tm) Fox News Channel, who are becoming less and less “media” and more and more “political entertainment” every day. Shame on them.
Slashdot has a great story on Daniel Horn’s Obfuscated V Contest, inspired by the Internation Obfuscated C Code Contest. The basic premise: write code for an electronic voting machine that intentionally (but not obviously) mis-counts the votes to favour one candidate over another. Bring on the “but Diebold already does this!” jokes.
Google is launching an SMS search service. Too bad this guy took the words right out of my mouth. Although 13375p33k says it should be “900973” instead… ;)
Because I’m such a fan of sites like The Slot and columns like Dave Barry’s Mister Language Person, it should come as no surprise that the current Slashdot poll, “Favorite Fictional Word,” caught my eye. Among the better missing options:
In case you use Adium, which is only the bestest IM client in the history of the world and the universe, and you find occasional bouts of leetspeekiness amusing, you might want to check out the Adium Xtra I just wrote yesterday:
It will make all your conversations sound more, uh, “intelligent.” And AOL kiddies will bow to your power and leetness.
The 2004 Ig Nobel prizes have been announced. Winners include papers covering “The Effect of Country Music on Suicide” and the so-called “five-second rule” covering dropped food, a patent on the comb-over, the Vatican for outsourcing prayers to India, and the inventor of karaoke.
Also covered on Slashdot.