On This Day: Feb 28

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 30 posts previously published on February 28th

  • 2024
    • Year 50 Day 302 Every office should have a T-rex somewhere in it. ➡
    • My New Osborne 1 Though our full-size Osbornes were disposed of years ago, I'm ridiculously pleased to have this lil' guy on my desk now. ➡
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2021.02.27 Unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants, let's-see-what-happens mixing. You never know what might fall into one of these! ➡
    • 📚 11/2011: Dance on Saturday by Elwin Cotman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee 4/6 A really strong collection of short stories and one novella. I really enjoyed the way these slipped between the real and the fantastic, and between mundanity and surreal horror and humor. ➡
  • 2020
    • The Body Shop is adopting “open hiring”: No interviews, no background checks, no drug tests. When there is a job available, just answer three yes-or-no questions and the job is yours. It’s a new philosophy called “open hiring”—and it works. ➡
    • Bookshop: A centralized shopping website for independent bookstores. Start here instead of at Amazon! Discovered through this Forbes article. ➡
    • This moment from Deadline’s Picard podcast made me laugh: in a discussion of how the various Trek governments mapped to real-world governments, Jonathan Frakes ends with, “And now we have a Pakled as a President.” ➡
    • Ranking the Democratic Candidates on Black Issues There you have it. Elizabeth Warren’s 'black agenda' is the blackest of them all. ➡
    • A “live laugh love”-style sign, but using text from the Long-Time Nuclear Waste Warning Messages. I love this. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 28 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 28 ➡
  • 2019
    • 🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E07: Yay! No more Spock-teasing! Space squid are fun, and Tilly gets flustered around causality violations. Glad Pike at least mentioned Ash killing Culber. Still really unsure about Section 31, all the Spock stuff, and now time travel, but holding on. ➡
    • Well, now I know who to blame for my dreary fashion sense: Beau Brummell (well, and discovering the goth community in my youth….). I break out of the drab-ness occasionally (my Pride kilt from Verillas, for example), but…yeah. Maybe I could do more. Need to ruminate on this. ➡
  • 2016
    • Weekends should be longer than two days. (59/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Once again, frozen yogurt for dessert before heading out to a show. :) ➡
  • 2009
    • Dollhouse As evidenced by my recent tweet, I've now given Joss two chances to win me over to Dollhouse, and he's 0 for 2. It just doesn't work for me, and there's a number of smaller reasons that add up to one big fail. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2007
    • The root of the problem… It’s nothing really, but the grammatically preferable version of this phrase is 'for whom I’m supposed to root,' which is the most hilarious collection of words I’ve encountered since 'Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ben Affleck.' ➡
    • Numbers I don't get it: why is the latest Enterprise the NCC-4 8 15 16 23 42? ➡
  • 2006
    • Tuesday Ten (In My Pants) A variation on the 'ten random tracks' music meme, adding in the fortune-cookie game of adding '...in my pants' to the end of the fortune...or in this case, song title. ➡
    • I’m 6.29% Slut Just a cute little bit of web silliness: using the Slut-o-Meter to compute your promiscuity according to Google. According to the Slut-o-meter, I'm 6.29% slut. ➡
  • 2005
    • Keeping New Readers Problogger has a short series of posts with tips on how to keep readers who have stumbled across your site via a search engine hit or some other method. Interesting stuff, though nothing groundbreaking, and as it turns out, I do most of what he recommends already. ➡
  • 2004
  • 2003
    • Search improvements While MovableType does include its own search function, I've chosen not to use it for djwudi.com because I have a number of pages that live outside of my weblog, which MT would not be able to search. However, I'd run into a bit of a problem with the search engine I am using, and I think I've finally got it solved. ➡
  • 2002
    • Where were you? I found an interesting discussion today, and thought it was well worth cribbing to use here on my site. One of the members of the HTF started a thread asking where people were and what they remember about significant dates in history. ➡
    • They fight crime! He's a hate-fuelled misogynist stage actor from the Mississippi delta. She's a transdimensional red-headed nun who hides her beauty behind a pair of thick-framed spectacles. They fight crime! ➡
    • Moving soon I talked to Melvin last night, and got the go-ahead to move into the new apartment, probably starting next week sometime, so that I can be in by the 15th. ➡
  • 2001
    • Shake, rattle and roll I just found out when I got to work that Seattle got quite a bit of a shaker yesterday -- current estimates put the quake that just hit them at 6.8. ➡
    • Radio – and future gigs? My personal moment of triumph was when one person called to tell Nick to quit playing a compilation CD, at which point Nick let him know that it was actually me mixing live. I guess my mixes were going pretty smoothly! ➡
    • Back online Sorry 'bout the recent downtime over the past couple of days...problems with the cable modem. In any case, everything's resolved now, and things are looking good. ➡
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Star Trek: Picard S01E06: Much better than last week. Borg cube action that isn’t just squicky siblings, Soji hits a point of no return, and Picard comes face to face with parts of his past, good and bad. But who gave the Romulans a Lament Configuration? ;)

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Was the Democratic Nomination Rigged? A Reexamination of the Clinton-Sanders Presidential Race by Anthony J. Gaughan: “This article makes three central points. First, it contends that the overwhelming weight of evidence makes clear the 2016 Democratic nomination process was not rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. Second, this article argues that the Democratic Party rules and state election laws actually hurt Clinton and benefited Sanders. Third, the article concludes that the controversy over the Democratic nomination race reflects a broader, bipartisan decline in public confidence in the integrity of American elections.”

On Bernie Bros

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There’s Nothing Revolutionary About Harassing Critics:

Perfect, superhuman leaders do not exist in life. They exist in propaganda, and what toxic Sanders supporters seem most vehemently interested in is not hurting individual people, but creating a state of play in which only propaganda about Sanders can be spoken without reprisal. By doing so, they’re creating the conditions for a president who acts without accountability, a president who gets to create his own truth and use his passionate following to terrorize anyone who contradicts him—a president very much like the one we have now.

Coronavirus: Don’t Panic!

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Liberally adapted from this Washington Post article, a list of best practices for dealing with the coronavirus:

  • Don’t Panic!
  • The basics: Wash your hands regularly. Cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze. And when you’re sick, stay home from work or school and drink lots of fluids.
  • Keep the shopping cart light: Surgical masks? If you’re not sick, you don’t need to wear them. The main point of the mask is to keep someone who is infected with the virus from spreading it to others. If you’re itching to buy something, you can stick to the typical respiratory-virus medicine: decongestants, anti-inflammatory drugs and acetaminophen for fevers.
  • Practice makes permanent: One of the best things you can do to prepare for any emergency, including a coronavirus outbreak, is put together an emergency kit. It’s also important to have plans in place in case the outbreak disrupts your daily routines.
  • Be mindful of where you are: Health officials have stressed keeping your distance from people who are sick, especially when it comes to respiratory viruses. It is worth considering limiting exposure to large groups, especially during flu season. In confined spaces, such as mass transit, it’s important to look around and see what’s going on, see where everyone’s hands are going and make a mental note to wash up later. But awareness cuts both ways—just because someone has the sniffles or has a cough, it doesn’t mean they have the coronavirus.
  • Watch what you read: Hoaxes, lies and junk science about coronavirus have swirled online since the earliest cases were reported, mostly through social media. Look to trustworthy sources, such as the CDC, the World Health Organization and local health departments, to stay informed.
  • Be kind: As coronavirus has spread, so, too, has anti-Asian prejudice. The WHO has urged government agencies to do what they can to prevent discrimination against specific populations, since stigmatization can fuel the spread of the outbreak by driving marginalized individuals to hide infection and avoid seeking treatment. Remember to not let fear override your common humanity about how you treat other people.

On This Day: Feb 27

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 26 posts previously published on February 27th

  • 2024
  • 2020
    • Star Trek: Picard S01E06: Much better than last week. Borg cube action that isn’t just squicky siblings, Soji hits a point of no return, and Picard comes face to face with parts of his past, good and bad. But who gave the Romulans a Lament Configuration? ;) ➡
    • Was the Democratic Nomination Rigged? A Reexamination of the Clinton-Sanders Presidential Race by Anthony J. Gaughan: “This article makes three central points. First, it contends that the overwhelming weight of evidence makes clear the 2016 Democratic nomination process was not rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. Second, this article argues that the Democratic Party rules ... Read more ➡
    • On Bernie Bros Perfect, superhuman leaders do not exist in life. ➡
    • Running A Con, Conference Or Festival In The Age Of A Burgeoning Pandemic!: “Get ahead of this now. Do not make us e-mail you to ask you what’s up. This isn’t about causing panic — it’s about undercutting it. It’s about reassuring us that you have this in your mind, with plans forming.” ➡
    • Coronavirus: Don’t Panic! Liberally adapted from a Washington Post article, a list of best practices for dealing with the coronavirus. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 27 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 27 ➡
  • 2019
  • 2018
    • So this bust of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman is something I brought home from Alaska after Dad died. He had it on his desk for years, and now I have it near mine. I got curious (after watching a little Antiques Roadshow) and did some Googling to see what I could find out about ... Read more ➡
  • 2016
    • I’m sportsing! With the sports and the running and the I have no idea what’s going on! We’re out cheering on one of Prairie’s students at today’s #CWU vs. #OSU rugby match. Go Wildcats! Sports that ball! Woo! #CWUpride (58/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Live long and prosper. _\// ➡
  • 2014
    • I guess I can jump on the #throwbackthursday bandwagon too! Here’s me at around two, looking at a Playboy centerfold with my mom. One of my favorite childhood pictures. :) ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for February 25th through February 27th Sometime between February 25th and February 27th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • The Whedonite's Dilemma • New Frontiers Sweepstakes • Young 'Slumdog' Stars Back in Mumbai Slums • Yoda Is a Muppet • Mermaid Dream Comes True Thanks to Weta ➡
  • 2007
  • 2006
    • BSG on the iTMS followup Just a quick followup to my post comparing Battlestar Galactica downloads via Bittorrent and via the iTMS: according to MacRumors, recent BSG episodes are appearing in an uncropped widescreen ratio. ➡
  • 2005
    • Battlestar Galactica Season 1…done! Up until this week, I never got the whole thing with people downloading and watching shows on their computer. I've got such a low opinion of the majority of TV shows that I just couldn't see spending the time and resources on such a project. Then I got bit by the Battlestar bug. ➡
    • Halle Berry wins Razzie…and respect Halle Berry staged an Oscar-worthy parody of her Academy Awards meltdown at last night's 25th annual Razzie awards in Los Angeles. Breaking with tradition, the Catwoman star showed up in person to collect her award as the worst actress of 2004. ➡
    • Just stop talking Many years ago, I went to a summer camp in which one of the activities was horseback riding. This ended up being a less-than-successful experience for me, though, as as soon as I got up in the saddle the horse reared up, dumping me rather unceremoniously on the ground as I slid off the saddle and over the horse's rear end. ➡
    • MT-Blogroll I've just updated and revised my blogroll over to the right. Instead of relying on an external service to manage my blogroll, I'm now using a new plugin from Arvind Satyanarayan called MT-Blogroll that implements blogroll management directly into the MT interface. ➡
  • 2004
    • Nickels, Sims: Quit yappin’ and start doin’! When I wrote out the list of cities supporting equal marriage rights, it was a little disappointing to not have Seattle in that list, too. Living in the area of Seattle I do, it always seemed to me that Seattle would be a natural for supporting this kind of movement. ➡
  • 2003
    • Dive! Dive! Dive! NASA has had its day. It's given us technological marvels from cell phones to SETI screensavers. But we're not mining the moon. We're not terraforming Mars. And we're certainly not finding any aliens. ➡
  • 2002
    • Enterprise: Fusion Finally...after 16 episodes of interesting but non-typical behavior (as far as we know) from the Vulcans shown on Enterprise, we finally get a show exploring a bit more about Vulcan culture...albeit in an unusual fashion. ➡
    • No more splash page I just nuked the splash page for my site, so now this page should be the first thing you see. I'd been tossing it over in my head for a while, as it really didn't serve a purpose other than making it just a little harder to get to the actual content of my site. ➡
    • Cross-platform 3.0 Just wanted to let you know that you should revise your opinion about OmniWeb. The latest sneaky peek versions have much improved CSS support. The attached screenshot shows your page using the latest sneaky peek version 49 released today. While it's not perfect, you'll surely agree that it's a huge step forward. ➡
    • Enterprise parody season THE TROUBLE WITH TROUSERS: The Enterprise discovers the planet of the Geramines, descendants of radical feminists who fled Earth after the Phallus Wars. As the inhabitants will only speak to women, T'Pol beams down to make First Contact. Disaster ensues when the Geramines take offence to her trousers, a symbol of male patriarchy. ➡

RIP Clive Cussler

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Clive Cussler is dead at 88.

His books weren’t exactly great…

Often compared to the thrillers churned out by Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and Ian Fleming, the Cussler novels featured formulaic plots, one- or two-word titles (“Cyclops,” “Dragon,” “Inca Gold,” “Poseidon’s Arrow”) and frequently a recurring hero, Dirk Pitt, an undersea explorer who cheats death and saves the world as he foils the diabolical plots of megalomaniac villains, while satisfying his taste for exotic cars and lusty women.

Mr. Cussler was hardly a stylist. Critics called his characters wooden, his dialogue leaden and his prose clichéd (“the cold touch of fear,” “a narrow brush with death”), while praising his descriptions of marine hardware, underwater struggles and salvage operations.

…but I’ll admit, they can be fun (when you’re in the mood for that sort of thing), and I’ve read quite a few of them. And whatever you think of his books, the work he did in the real world is pretty impressive.

He first created the National Underwater and Marine Agency as a fictional government organization that employed his hero in the Dirk Pitt books. Then, in 1979, he founded an actual National Underwater and Marine Agency as a private nonprofit group committed to “preserving maritime heritage through the discovery, archaeological survey and conservation of shipwreck artifacts.” It underwrote his maritime ventures.

With Mr. Cussler leading expeditions and joining dives, the organization eventually located some 60 wrecks. Among them were the Cunard steamship Carpathia, first to reach survivors of the lost Titanic on April 15, 1912, then itself sunk by German torpedoes off Ireland in 1918; Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt’s coastal steamer Lexington, which caught fire and went down in Long Island Sound in 1840; and Manassas, the Confederacy’s first Civil War ironclad, sunk in battle in the Lower Mississippi in 1862.

Maybe I’ll toss Sahara on tonight.

On This Day: Feb 26

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 26 posts previously published on February 26th

  • 2024
    • Year 50 Day 300 I had to go out and stand in the snail. ➡
    • These Are Facts 'I want to present a list of items which are very well documented facts, but would’ve been absolutely, patently insane 10 years ago.' ➡
  • 2020
    • RIP Clive Cussler His books weren't exactly great, but I'll admit, they can be fun. And whatever you think of his books, the work he did in the real world is pretty impressive. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 26 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 26 ➡
  • 2019
    • Unsolicited Mac app recommendation: I don’t have to use the command line very often, but when I do, I really enjoy using Cathode, a vintage terminal emulator. Scan lines! Green/amber (or whatever) screens! Curved CRTs! Fading scroll artifacts! It’s ridiculous and a lot of fun. ➡
    • I’ve been thinking about moving away from WordPress for a while now, and I think I may have found my replacement backend: Grav. I’ve got a base install running. Next: play with settings and design, look for WordPress importers, external editor/microblog support options, etc. ➡
    • Book twenty of 2019: Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1946 Retro Hugo Best Novel (for The Mule, part two of this book) 📚 Very much enjoying finally reading these (and surprised that it seems I never had, or had done so so long ago that I’d forgotten). ➡
  • 2018
    • Linkdump for February 26th from 08:00 to 08:06 An automatically generated list of links that caught my eye between 08:00 and 08:06 on February 26th. • The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery • Gun Rights, ‘Positive Good’ and the Evolution of Mutually Assured Massacre • The AR-15 Is Different: What I Learned Treating Parkland Victims • Inside The Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns • Why the Second Amendment does not stymie gun control • Slavery, the Second Amendment, and the Origins of Public-Carry Jurisprudence ➡
    • Linkdump for January 17th through February 26th An automatically generated list of links that caught my eye between January 17th and February 26th. • 4 Laws That Could Stem the Rising Threat of Mass Shootings • How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment • A Gun Ban Is Inevitable. Not just high-capacity assault rifles. ALL the guns. • One Teacher’s Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings • How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment • The Problem with Panic ➡
  • 2016
    • 57° at the end of the workday. I was comfortable without my coat! :) (57/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • A somewhat better view of my one (so far) tattoo than in last night’s shot. Got this a few years before I left Alaska, so…oh, at least 15 years ago now. Someday I’ll get another – I know what and where, I just haven’t done it yet. ➡
  • 2009
    • On the Neverending Story Yes, there's a chance that they're taking a film that's loved by many who were kids when it came out and 'updating' it to be bigger, louder, and _stupider_. However, if we're lucky, this could turn out to be one of those cases where they just might improve on the original. ➡
  • 2005
    • …ask what you can do for your country. One night, George W. Bush is tossing restlessly in his White House bed.  He awakens to see George Washington standing by him.  Bush asks him, 'George, what's the best thing I can do to help the country?' ➡
    • My Movable Type tweaks I got an e-mail from a friend who's in the process of switching over to Movable Type, and he asked if I had any recommendations for plugins or tweaks to the core system. Here's a look at what I'm currently using. ➡
    • C-List Blogging According to Dave Pollard's breakdown, I'm a 'C-List Blogger'. ➡
    • Theatre Plans The Seattle Times has announced the 5th Ave. Theatre's 2005-2006 season. Lots of good stuff coming up, including The King and I, but the one that's really catching my eye is Sweeny Todd. ➡
  • 2004
    • Violence is ( bad | good ) ! Group One blames violence in video games and movies for the behavior of today's youth. Group Two buys out entire theaters for church groups, youth groups and families to see Mel Gibson's 'The Passion'. Any bets on just how separate those two groups really are? ➡
    • An insider’s view of MS Word 6.0 Microsoft Word for the Mac versions 4 and 5 were my introductions to Word, and in the opinion of myself and many other people, were the pinnacle of Microsoft's Mac programming. Then came Word 6. ➡
  • 2003
    • By the infinite dick of God I first found this on the 'net ages ago, and used to have a copy somewhere on my hard drive. I'd forgotten about it for a long time, then the phrase "by the infinite dick of God" popped into my head tonight, and I decided to search this out and... ➡
    • We'll bomb who we want! The Propaganda Remix Project has a book of posters being released in March, complete with forward by Kurt Vonnegut, introduction by Howard Zinn, and commentary by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Looks worth picking up — my copy is on order. ➡
    • New WTC plan chosen Well, it looks like the winning plan for the replacement complex for the WTC has been revealed. While it's not the one I favored, maybe it'll translate better into the real world than the pictures of it I've seen so far. ➡
    • This isn't helping A few days ago, Robert Scoble asked what we think Microsoft should do in the future, both with technology and to improve their public persona. I haven't done much for coming up with a list of what they should do, but here's a hint to Micosoft: this is something you really shouldn't do. ➡
    • Caring for your Introvert The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. We can only dream that someday…it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush." ➡
  • 2002
  • 1995
    • [From Usenet: 2.26.95 0238] Somewhere around a year or more ago, there was an ftp site that had a remix of 'last' by Butch Vig that had been nixed from the 'fixed' ep. As far as I've been able to tell, it's not available anywhere else, and has never been released. ➡