This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on December 2, 2008). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.
Sometime between November 26th and December 2nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- change.gov set free: Consistent with the values of any "open government," and with his strong leadership on "free debates" from the very start, the Obama team has modified the copyright notice on change.gov to embrace the freest CC license.
- ’12 Days of Christmas’ items would cost $86,609: That's this year's cost, according to the annual "Christmas Price Index" compiled by PNC Wealth Management, which tallies the single partridge in a pear tree to the 12 drummers drumming, purchased repeatedly as the song suggests. The price is up $8,508 or 10.9 percent, from $78,100 last year.
- Students lie, cheat, steal, but say they’re good: In the past year, 30 percent of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64 percent have cheated on a test, according to a new, large-scale survey suggesting that Americans are too apathetic about ethical standards. One-fifth said they stole something from a friend; 23 percent said they stole something from a parent or other relative. Thirty-six percent said they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment, up from 33 percent in 2004. Despite such responses, 93 percent of the students said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character, and 77 percent affirmed that "when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know." (Prairie and I were talking about this study yesterday. It's like the current generation has grown up so coddled that they've never had to worry about consequences, and now we've raised a generation of psychopaths: they know the difference between right and wrong, they just don't care.)
- Still going: Energizer Bunny enters his 20th year: The pink bunny, always pounding a drum, always wearing sunglasses and flip-flops, made his debut in an October 1989 ad in which he marched off the set as the stage manager implored, "Stop the bunny, please." The bunny soon showed up in a series of parody commercials for products such as wine, coffee and long-distance phone service, always banging the drum into the commercial to interrupt. Two decades later, he is still going strong.
- Mashed in Plastic: The David Lynch mashup album.
- GlimmerBlocker: The problem with other ad-blockers for Safari is that they are implemented as awful hacks: as an InputManager and/or ApplicationEnhancer. This compromises the stability of Safari and very often create problems when Apple releases a new version of Safari. GlimmerBlocker is implemented as an http proxy, so the stability of Safari isn't compromised because it doesn't use any hacks. It is even compatible with all other browsers. You'll always be able to upgrade Safari without breaking GlimmerBlocker (or waiting for a new release); and you'll be able to upgrade GlimmerBlocker without upgrading Safari. This makes it much easier to use the beta versions of Safari and especially the nightly builds of WebKit.