Links

Sometime between October 3rd and October 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Meet Your New Governor (Seven Reasons to Fear Dino Rossi): Rossi doesn't just oppose abortion rights. He opposes all reproductive rights—from students' right to learn the facts about pregnancy, STDs, and birth control, to women's right to buy contraceptives with a prescription. Rossi opposes requiring pharmacies to stock emergency contraception, which works by preventing fertilization, because some pharmacists assert, falsely, that it causes abortions. And in the late 1990s, as a state senator, Rossi voted against requiring prescription drug plans to cover regular oral contraceptives.
• Custom My Little Ponies: I'm quite fond of My Little Alien and My Little Edward Scissorhands, myself.
• It’s Official: GOP Ticket Now “Winky and Wrinkly”: Forget the tight stripper skirt, forget the metallic eyeshadow inappropriate for anyone over the age of 40, forget the cloying sitcom delivery, the lies, the cruel and calculated needling of Biden by calling his college professor wife a "school teacher" and saying "she'll get her reward in Heaven" (to a man whose first wife died in a car accident) — she's an idiot.
• Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart: Funny because it's true!
• The First Sound Bites: Whether for profit or prestige, the 1908 campaign was the first in which presidential candidates recorded their own voices for the mass market. “We now have Records by Mr. Bryan and Mr. Taft, so that no matter how the November election may result, we shall have Records by the next President,” an advertisement in the September 1908 Edison Phonograph Monthly exclaimed. “Now, for the first time, one can introduce the rival candidates for the Presidency in one’s own home, can listen to their political views, expressed in their real voices, and make comparisons.” (via Slashdot)

Sometime between October 1st and October 3rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Vice-Presidential Debate – Biden and Palin – Video and Transcript – Election Guide 2008: The NYT has a very nice interactive video and text transcript for the VP debate (and, from the looks of it, the existing and future Presidential debates, campaign speeches, and more). (via Waxy)
• Saturday is voter registration deadline: Would-be voters have until Saturday — 30 days before the November general elections — to register by mail, in person or online. Mail-in registrations must be postmarked by the Oct. 4 cutoff, according to the Washington Secretary of State's office.
• Roger Ebert: You didn’t ask me about the debate, but…: Yes, she wins high marks for emerging from the debate still standing and still smiling. Polls show that she performed better than a great majority of viewers thought she would. My concern here is not with the substance of which either candidate said; that would be political. My concern is with the performances. Watching the debate, I was reminded of a famous observation by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great 18th century English critic, who went to witness with his own eyes a woman giving a sermon in a church. This was unheard of in his day. "A woman's preaching," he told his friend James Boswell, "is like a dog's standing on its hind legs. It is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all."
• Inability to sanitize live carp ends fishy foot treatments: Bui was personally delivered a letter Thursday informing her of the agency's decision, which was based on a state law that all implements used in pedicures had to be "sanitized, disinfected, or disposed of after each service to protect salon customers from the possibility of disease and infections." "You can clean files and other equipment, but there is just no way to sanitize live fish," said Christine Anthony, a spokeswoman for the agency.
• Chinese gymnasts to keep medals: China's gold-medal gymnasts were old enough to compete in the Beijing Olympics, the sport's governing body said Wednesday, though it still had questions about the team that competed at the 2000 Sydney Games.
• Fox News Snags Palin’s First Post-Debate Interview: [Referencing her earlier interviews,] Palin was annoyed that Couric saw that her job was to flush out for the American people more information about the character of a relatively unknown candidate for the vice presidency, and not to provide Palin with a nationally-televised forum for spouting McCain campaign talking points.
• Think about the Supreme Court when you vote for president: Pro-choice groups have been crying wolf for so long that it's hard to believe that the wolf is actually at the door. Or at least the border of South Dakota. There, a full-tilt abortion ban on the November ballot — with high-hurdle exceptions only for rape, incest and the life of a woman — is pointed directly at Roe and targeted to arrive at the Supreme Court in time to greet a new justice. If what happens in South Dakota doesn't stay in South Dakota, a woman's right will depend on whether she has enough gas to drive to the next, or the next, or the next state.
• A fashion designer I don’t know (Michael Kors) draws inspiration for his fall line from a show I’ve never watched (Mad Men), but I love this quote:: Aren’t we ready for that again? For some maturity? I have to tell you, I am sick and tired of hair down to there and crotch-high hemlines. It’s so obvious. For Fall I was really trying to bring back buttoned-up sexy—-think Grace Kelly. So cool, so poised. She never reveals a thing and you can’t take your eyes off of her. I mean, watch “Rear Window.” That’s smart sexy; it’s interesting sexy. And it’s grown-up sexy. You want a tip on looking hot? Wear reading glasses and a fitted dress. Simple. (via Kottke)
• Did inner-tube robber use Craigslist in heist?: Inflation has certainly been good to one crafty robber. Monroe police are searching for a man who robbed an armored-car guard Tuesday morning then fled with the money — down a nearby creek on an inner tube. Police say the robber also may have recruited a host of unwitting decoys through a Craigslist ad.
• Seattle Lands a Women’s Lingerie Football Team: An offshoot of the uber-popular Lingerie Bowl halftime show that's appeared during Super Bowls past, there's now a fledgling league of extraordinary women who will play tackle football against one another in their underwear. Tryouts for the Seattle team, the Mist, are this Friday at Greenlake, although official league play won't start for another year and games will be played indoors, ala arena football. It'll be really interesting to see how this goes over in Seattle. (via 2hrlunch)

Sometime between September 29th and September 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Capitol Hill club files suit to stay open: Neighbours nightclub, a longtime institution in Capitol Hill and Seattle's gay community has filed a lawsuit to keep the music going at the club. In a suit filed in King County Superior Court Sept. 23, the club's attorney said the owner of the building where Neighbours operates is trying to terminate its lease. On Aug. 12, Tim Giacometti, representing the building's owners, wrote the club that it was terminating the lease, alleging a number of violations. (Sigh — while I haven't been in Neighbours proper in a few years, the current incarnation of the old Vogue is at the Neighbours Underground on Saturdays, and it's looking really nice. It would suck if they were forced to try to find a new spot…again.)
• You CAN see Russia from here!: The island is called Little Diomede. It looks like a rock plopped into the Bering Strait. Only about 150 Alaskans live on the whole island. And just about two miles away; in full view of every single house on the island is the nation of Russia. Specifically, it is the Russian Island of Big Diomede which sits about 25 miles from the Russian Siberian mainland (which you can also see from the American island). We were curious if Sarah Palin has ever visited this island. According to the natives, the answer is no. The island’s mayor has heard of her though. No American mayor resides in a city closer to Russia then Andrew Milligrock, and he says being two miles from Russia doesn’t give him any foreign policy expertise.
• John McCain Owns VoteForTheMILF.com?: Apparently my earlier assumption was wrong, and that voteforthemilf.com really is controlled by McCain's campaign. Classy. Really classy.
• Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com: Lest your inner libertarian objects to…interventions, [Heather] Champ is quick to correct the idea that the community would ultimately find its own balance. "The amount of time it would take for the community to self-regulate — I don't think it could sustain itself in the meantime," she says. "Anyway, I can't think of any successful online community where the nice, quiet, reasonable voices defeat the loud, angry ones on their own." (via Waxy)
• FactCheck.org: FactChecking Debate No. 1: McCain and Obama contradicted each other repeatedly during their first debate, and each volunteered some factual misstatements as well. Here’s how we sort them out.

Sometime between September 27th and September 29th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Christopher L. Bennett — Star Trek: Ex Machina Annotations: This document explains the many continuity references, allusions and in-jokes contained in Ex Machina (ExM), as well as the various scientific ideas addressed therein and the reasoning behind many of my conjectures and extrapolations…along with corrections or rationalizations for various errors and continuity glitches. I assume that the reader is familiar with the basic characters and background of the Trek universe. (Saving this for future reading, as I'm reading the novel now, and this document — unsurprisingly — contains a number of spoilers.)
• xkcd: Height: And in-joke heavy logarithmic map of the universe. I thought it was great when I saw it on its own, it's funnier knowing the source inspiration. (second link via Waxy)
• Carrington WordPress Theme: Carrington was built for the entire WordPress community, both developers and end-users alike. Some people will appreciate the unlimited potential the new theme organization offers. Others will love the way AJAX optionally loads the comments right on the homepage. In any case, we’re confident that this new framework is the best thing since the wheel and sliced bread.
• Roger Ebert on McCain’s behavior during Friday night’s debate: What was your problem? Do you hold this man in such contempt that you cannot bear to gaze upon him? Will you not even speak to him directly?
  Do you think he doesn't have the right to be running for President?
  Were you angry because after you said you wouldn't attend the debate, he said a President should be able to concern himself with two things at the same time? He was right. The proof is, you were there. Were you angry with him because he called your bluff?
• Website Grader – SEO Tool – Report For www.michaelhanscom.com: A website grade of 98.4/100 for www.michaelhanscom.com means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 98.4% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others. (The first time I ran this report I scored a 97. A few template tweaks here and there, and I've pushed it up to 98.4. I think that's good enough for now.)

Sometime between 10:12 and 14:47, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Sarah Palin’s Dead Lake: "Sarah's legacy as mayor was big-box stores and runaway growth," said Patty Stoll, a retired Wasilla schoolteacher who once worked in the same school with Palin's parents, Chuck and Sally Heath. "The truth is, Wasilla is just plain ugly, it's not a pleasant place to live. It's not thought out. And that's a shame. Sarah fouled her own nest, and I can't understand why. I hate to think it was simply greed or ambition." (The most common nickname for Wasilla when I was growing up in Alaska was "Wasyphilis", and that was before Palin got her hands on it.) (via Halsted)
• The Wheels Come Off Sarah Palin’s Not So Straight Talk Express: From calls from the National Review for her to drop out of the race (!) to the New York Times saying that she owes voters an explanation on the rape kits issue to news that she accepted $25,000 in gifts from lobbyists as governor to stories about anti-Semitic leanings by her pastor, it's just not turning into a good end of the week for Palin either.
• The Palin interview: The Economist: "…she rambled, she edited her own sentences recursively, she looked away from time to time, and her answers did not make sense—and I don't mean political sense; I mean they made no grammatical or logical sense." Sounds a lot like what I posted a day or two ago. (via gruber)
• Still think your single vote doesn’t matter? Think again.: Statistical analysis shows that in 2004, 57,787 votes would have given us President Kerry; and in 2000, 269 votes would have given us President Gore. In all there have been 12 US Presidential elections that were decided by less than a 1% margin; meaning if less than 1% of the voters in certain states had changed their mind to the other candidate the outcome of the election would have been different. (via Slashdot)
• Cisco home page FAIL: Cisco’s home page this morning: looks like they ran out of their allocation of lowercase letter ‘t’.

Sometime between September 25th and September 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Welcome WaMu: We're proud to welcome you to one of the nation's largest banks; as of September 25, 2008, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has acquired the deposits, loans, and branches of Washington Mutual. Your deposits remain insured by the FDIC and are now also backed by the strength and security of JPMorgan Chase. Our combined company will offer superior banking convenience – over 5,400 branches and 14,000 ATMs in 23 states. Here's what this means for you…
• FDIC: Bank Acquisition Information – Question and Answer Guide for Washington Mutual Bank, Henderson, NV and Washington Mutual Bank FSB, Park City, UT: It boils down to a name change, nothing to worry about, go about your business, nothing to see here.
• Election 2008 | powered by Twitter: Neat real-time stream of election-related tweets. Watch everything, or filter by the four main candidates.
• Palin On Foreign Policy Video: Oh, dear lord. This interview is a trainwreck. Palin's answers could be dropped into a political spoof and fit right in, they're that nonsensical. How anyone can listen to this woman and seriously think that she's capable blows my mind.
• Nina Katchadourian: Sorted Books Project: The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. (via unlibrarian)

Sometime between 06:45 and 12:22, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• McCain cancels Letterman. Letterman rips McCain: It’s one thing to irritate your opponent. It’s another to irritate a newsperson. But when you irritate the guy who’s made a living out of making people laugh for more than 26 years, any criticism may pack more of a punch. So when John McCain cancelled on Letterman – at the last minute – you could hardly expect that the comic would take it easy on him. He didn’t.
• Hack the Debate // Current: Current & Twitter have teamed up for the very first time to integrate real-time Twitter messages (aka "tweets") over major portions of a live television broadcast. Hack the debate by adding your Twitter posts to our live broadcast of the 2008 Presidential Debates. We will broadcast as many of your debate tweets as possible right over Obama & McCain, in real time, on our live broadcast.
• Retro Futurism: Crazy 1980s “New Wave” Princess Leia Poster: Very Nagel, pretty slick!
• Don’t drive iPhone developers away, Apple: If developers are afraid to write programs for the iPhone that aren’t games, to-do lists, and tip calculators, for fear that all their hard work will be wasted by a malicious or capricious Apple rejection notice, they will stop writing programs for the platform. And the well of innovative, interesting iPhone software will dry up. (via Daring Fireball)
• YouTube – David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign: Heh — McCain ticked Letterman off. Letterman spends about six minutes laying into McCain for suspending his campaign and ditching his scheduled guest appearance on Letterman's show…and that's before he finds out that instead of "flying back to Washington" to work on the crisis, McCain's actually live with Katie Couric during the taping of Letterman's show.
• ⌘C ⌘V Character: Simple, fast way to use the most common extended characters (things like © or ½, but also including less common things like ‽, ♀, ☂, or ).

Sometime between September 23rd and September 24th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Tom’s Essay: Suzanne Vega tells the curious legend of “Tom’s Diner” — how an a capella ditty became a hit single and, eventually, a key component in the development of the MP3.
• Ten Ways to Celebrate National Punctuation Day: I'm sure I don't have to tell you that September 24 is National Punctuation Day. For weeks we've been gathering dashes, calling up old commas, and hiding gaily wrapped colons where (we think) the kids can't find them. So now that we've hung all those apostrophes with care, let's kick out the stops and celebrate! (via Seattlest)
• VH1 crowns Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” No. 1 of 100 greatest hip-hop songs: At No. 2 is the Sugar Hill Gang's groundbreaking song, "Rapper's Delight," followed by Dr. Dre's "Nuthin but a 'G' Thang" at No. 3. Run-D.M.C.'s "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five's "The Message" round out the top five.
• Democrats sue to keep Rossi a Republican: Rossi's listing his party as "prefers GOP" instead of "Republican", leading to confusion among voters who don't know the GOP nickname — enough confusion for a six-point jump in polls for "GOP Rossi" over "Republican Rossi". He's a shmuck and a Republican, this is a dirty, underhanded trick, and I hope he doesn't get away with it.
• Fake popup study sadly confirms most users are idiots: …the students seemed to find any dialog box a distraction from their assigned task; nearly half said that all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs. The results suggest that a familiarity with Windows dialogs have bred a degree of contempt and that users simply don't care what the boxes say anymore. (via Slashdot)

Sometime between 10:22 and 15:40, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Seattle collaborates with 22 banks and credit unions to offer services to people who have no bank accounts: The city is collaborating with 22 banks and credit unions to offer services to people who are "unbanked" — those who have no bank accounts and turn to high-cost payday lenders for their financial transactions.
• The World, Justified: It shows the world we live in as only one of four possibilities, the others being a left-aligned, centred and right-aligned world. Our world is a justified one, i.e. aligned with both left and right margins. (via Daring Fireball)
• Drobo Data Robot: Planning ahead. Much as we love 'em, my G5 and Prairie's iMac (iLamp) will need to be replaced someday. I'm thinking that with BluRay software support strongly rumored for OS X 10.5.6, and with the 24" iMac already sporting a full HD resolution screen, there's a strong chance that the next iMac revision will include BluRay drives. Pick up new iMacs then, transfer the two SATA drives in my G5 to a Drobo, and add the DroboShare to allow both machines to use the Drobo with TimeMachine.
• Adventures in Flickr biking: I need to try to remember this idea. I'm planning on picking up a bike next spring/summer, and I'm wondering how easily/inexpensively I could rig up some small camera/GPS combo and mount it to the front of the bike to do something like this. Ooh, wait, the Eye-Fi Explore uses SkyHook's pseudo-GPS functionality. That'd get me pretty close pretty easly (just find a way to mount the camera to the bike). Of course, if Skyhook doesn't speed up making adjustments to their database it won't be very accurate. Still, better than nothing, I suppose.
• New Trailer For Roddenberry’s ‘Trek Nation’ Doc Online: Gene Roddenberry’s son Rod Roddneberry has been working on a documentary about his father and Trek fandom for a few years. Over the summer TrekMovie reported that Roddenberry had hired a new editor (Emmy winner Allan Holzman) who was finally putting it all together and had created a new trailer, which is now online.
• Neighborlogs is for neighborhood blogging: I'm looking for a few more 'some people' types to join the Neighborlogs beta. We're looking for a few good bloggers who either are already writing neighborhood sites and want to take their effort to the next level or bloggers in other fields (animal husbandry, for example) who are crazy enough to give placeblogging a try. If you are interested or know somebody who ought to be, you can register for our beta here. Neighborlogs gives you all the tools you will need to create a great neighborhood site. And it gives you all of that for free. (via Seattle Metblogs)
• iPhone App Store: Let the Market Decide: It's a huge mistake for Apple to appoint themselves arbitrator of what's cool, or to even appear to do so. It's an equally huge mistake for Apple to decide that all innovation must come from Apple. (via Ranchero and Daring Fireball)

Sometime between September 20th and September 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Flickr: Genres: Genre artwork for iTunes or any other use you see fit.
• Custom Genre Artwork for iTunes 8: iTunes 8 ships with a total of 52 genre artwork images, which are plain jpeg files contained in the software's application bundle, and a property list file determines which image is assigned to which genre. Customizing iTunes's genre artwork is as simple as copying an image file into the application bundle and editing the plist file.
• Bartell launches free CFL bulb recycling program: Bartell Drugs is providing free recycling of compact fluorescent light bulbs at its 56 locations in the Northwest. The drugstore chain is working with Seattle-based Total Reclaim to collect and recycle the bulbs, which contain small amounts of mercury. The stores will accept mini-twists, flood, globe, 3-way bulbs and other CFL bulbs. Fluorescent tube lights aren't being accepted.
• MPAA causes ‘Zack and Miri’ Poster to become BETTER: Zack and Miri Make A Porno, the next film to be released by Clerks creator, Kevin Smith, has had some issues in the past with the MPAA, mostly dealing with the final rating of the film.  Now, however, the MPAA has complained about the theatrical poster for the film. The new poster…is Smith’s comeback to their decision to prevent the first poster from being used.
• Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G: After years of "they really should…" conversations, Nikon's finally updating one of their old standard primes with internal autofocus for D40/40x/60 compatibility. Good choice for the first to arrive, too. No word on price yet. Worth noting in the preview image and info: M-M/A switch, metal mounting ring, supplied bayonet-style lens hood, filter ring does not rotate during focus, and it's now a Canon-size 58mm thread (rather than the old standard 52).
• Microsoft’s ‘I’m a PC’ ad images made on Macs: Four of the images that Microsoft made available on its PressPass site today display the designation "Adobe Photoshop C3 Macintosh" when their file properties are examined. The images appear to be frames from the television ads that Microsoft will launch later today. (Yes, this is petty and silly. It's also really amusing.)