Links

Sometime between 09:19 and 17:24, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Anne Hathaway in ‘Wonderland’: Hollywood starlet Anne Hathaway is to star in Tim Burton's movie adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland," entertainment industry press reported Tuesday.
• New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret: Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help. When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email.
• John McCain’s racist remark very troubling: On his campaign bus [during his first Presidential run in 2000], Sen. John McCain told reporters, "I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." I'd not seen this before, but it's coming back into prominence apparently thanks to a YouTube video titled "John McCain's Racism and Why It Matters" that I've not watched yet, but is all the rage on Twitter right now.
• Washington breaks voter registration record: Washington has just set a new record for voter registrations, topping the 3.5 million figure set in the hotly competitive 2004 election year. The latest number, reported by the Elections Division of the Secretary of State’s Office on Tuesday, is 3,515,393. The tally will grow each day as crews process registration applications that were submitted by the major deadline last Saturday.
• Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame …: Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000…. Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy." […] Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. […] "Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience. (via Twitter)

Sometime between 09:07 and 18:54, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Weird Al: Forefather of the YouTube Spoof: To make matters more complicated, whereas Yankovic could once mine such inexhaustible icons as Jackson and Nirvana for laughs, he now has to contend with the likes of Jessica Simpson or Kevin Federline—celebrities who are more or less already self-parodies. Being a music satirist in 2008 is a bit like being a political cartoonist after the Harding administration: too many easy targets, too few sacred idols.
• The New Yorker: The Choice: At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.
• Harmony® 510 Advanced Universal Remote: Your coffee table has five remotes. You have a special drawer where you keep them. Wouldn't it be easier to just have one remote? You can. Replace all your remotes with Harmony.
• It’s up to parents to see the writing on the walls: So far there have been 170 graffiti incidents in Kent this year. Wood figures graffiti costs the city more than $50,000 annually. That figure doesn't measure other costs, including the toll it takes on property values, community pride and the community's sense of public safety. "When there's graffiti the perception is there's crime and people feel less safe," Wood says. "We're trying to make people feel safe where they live and do business. There's no area where it's more prevalent. It happens on the East Hill, on the West Hill, downtown." (I wouldn't mind seeing some cleanup under this bridge — Prairie and I walk there pretty frequently, and it's covered in graffiti.)
• Make-Believe Maverick: A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty: This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather. (via Twitter)

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)