How much to ship…me?

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Okay, so on one level, this article about a man who shipped himself from New York to Texas is kind of amusing. Wanting to save a few bucks, he somehow puts himself in a shipping crate, manages to survive two flights in cargo planes, then pops out of the box once he arrives at his parents house — at which point the surprised delivery man calls the police, who arrest the man on an outstanding warrant.

But, on another level — aren’t we supposed to have more stringent screening of airline flights, and what’s getting shipped around the country? While I’m sure they can’t x-ray or check every box that gets shipped around, it seems to me that this one might have had something about it that might have raised some questions. Apparently the guy had enough room to move in the box to use a prybar to open it when he arrived at his destination — wouldn’t that affect the balance of the box enough to catch someone’s eye while it was being moved around? I don’t know what all else, but it just seems amazing to me that this guy successfully did this, and that he’d have gotten away with it if he hadn’t opened the box while the delivery driver was still there.

Fred Phelps needs help

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Somehow until now Fred Phelps had managed to slip completely under my radar, but from what I’ve seen this evening, this man needs some serious help.

It seems that today was opening day for New York’s Harvey Milk School, a high school for GLBT teens who do not feel safe going to normal public schools. The streets outside the school were filled with demonstrators — primarily many people giving their support to the kids, because Phelps had arranged his own demonstration. Phelps and his small group of “Christians” (and I use the term very loosely here) were protesting the school and its students with signs with such warm, Christian sentiments as “God Hates Fags”, “Fags FDNY”, and “Thank God for Sept. 11” while standing on American flags.

It never ceases to amaze and sadden me the horrible things people will do in the name of Christianity.

(via the go fish)

Updated iPods and iMacs

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Oh, and just in case you’ve been considering upgrading or switching, Apple announced bigger iPods and faster iMacs this morning. The iMac base models are now \$1299 for a 1Ghz G4, and \$1799 for a 1.25Ghz G4. Not bad at all.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for my new G5 to show up — which is okay, since I’m also still scraping together the last little bit of cash I need to finish paying for the fool thing!

The Doctor is in!

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Real life imitates art.

(via Dori Smith — sorry for the word-for-word copy, but with four words to work with, it seemed silly to rework it)

Update:

Of course, the thing about flash mobs (at least originally) is that they were underground, unpublicised, seemingly-spontaneous events. With this particular one originating in a comic strip, being turned into reality, and then posted around the ‘net (here, Dori’s post, Blog for America, The Democratic Primary 2004 Thread, The Mediaburn Radio Weblog, Pacific Views, and probably many others), doesn’t that more or less kill much of the original spirit of the ‘flash mob’ meme?

Or maybe I’m just grumbling again.

Working out the bugs

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I’ve been getting some great feedback on the new design, and it’s very appreciated. The kind words on the new look are always flattering, and pointing out areas that are confusing is wonderfully helpful. Things that make sense to me as I’m putting it all together don’t always fly in the real world, and I’m never upset by constructive criticism!

A ‘home’ link has now been added to the navigation bar for all the sub-pages. While I’d had the ‘eclecticism’ title linked back to the home page, it wasn’t terribly obvious, so this should clear up any confusion there. Besides, a little redundancy never hurt.

I’m going to need to do a little tinkering to the display of the comments. I decided to break with convention a bit and put the byline of each comment above the post, rather than below, which seems to be a tad disorienting. Breaking conventions is all well and good — doing so at the cost of usability isn’t. Fixing that is high on the priority list.

Next on the priority list will be adding a bit more space between individual posts on the main page and comments in the comment threads. I’ll need to figure out the best way to do that — because I’m using a display: inline; declaration for the h3 tags to set the border just around the text rather than across the width of the div, simply adding a margin-top: 10px; argument won’t work. I could simply add one or two p or br tags to add some lines of whitespace, but that introduces some unnecessary (purely presentational) code, which I’m trying to avoid, so I’d like to come up with a better solution than that. We’ll see how that goes.

How this page looks in Safari

Right now, the lowest priority is fighting with the skyline image at the top. If those of you that are seeing problems with the display of the image could let me know what browser/version/OS/resolution you’re using, as well as telling me that it’s ‘off-center’, it’d help greatly. I’m using Safari 1.0 on Mac OS X, at 1024×768, and the header looks fine to me. I also checked it in Camino (which should match with Mozilla or Netscape, as they use the same rendering engine), and it was good there. It was only in IE/Mac OS X that I saw any issues (and I haven’t looked into that yet). Unfortunately, my PC is dead at the moment, so I can’t test the site on PC browsers from home, but I’ll certainly be looking into it from work.

Anyway, I’m quite gratified that the design seems to be fairly well received, and that any bugs that have been mentioned so far are actually fairly minor. It’s about time I started exploring different ideas, and you all are helping me iron things out a lot. I’ll buy you a drink next time you’re in town. :)

Two girls in my bed!

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2003/09/graphics/dawnemilyamy

You will notice, however, that I am not in my bed. ;)

That’s Dawn, Emily, and Amy on the phone, planning the upcoming days as they get ready to fly up to Alaska, then drive from Fairbanks to Tennessee where Emily’s family lives, with stops on the way to return Dawn and Amy to their respective homes.

New Patriotism

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Newsweek asks this week if it may be time for a New Patriotism. I’d say yes.

…Was it patriotic for the White House to instruct the EPA to put out a press release after 9/11 saying the air around Ground Zero was safe when there was no evidence for it? Was it patriotic to invade Iraq when there was no sign of an imminent threat and plenty to suggest that it would seriously detract from the war on Al Qaeda? Was it patriotic for the White House to allow American companies that reap millions in contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to incorporate in Bermuda in order to avoid paying taxes?

Perhaps most important, is it patriotic to define patriotism the old-fashioned way — as a kind of narrow nationalism? That jingoistic definition is carrying a price for the president, who must now go on bended knee to allies he so recently scorned. When you’re spending \$1 billion a week in Iraq, dissing our friends, as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have done consistently, seems to be a tad … counter-productive. Those “freedom fries” in the House cafeteria are burning us now; those gibes that John Kerry “looks French” don’t look so clever.

(via Robert Scoble)

Feedster IM Searching

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Feedster is currently my favorite search engine for finding topical, up-to-the-minute information, and they just released a really nifty new feature today — the Feedbot.

Add ‘feedbot’ to whatever IM client you use, send it a message like ‘find apple imac’, and get the search results IM’d back to you. Very handy!

Fifteen

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In 15 minutes, he attempted to make up for 15 months of misleading the American people and 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction.

— Howard Dean responding to President Bush’s address to the nation, via CNN

100 most challenged books 1990-2000

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The American Library Association’s list of the 100 most challenged books of the last decade. Titles in bold I’ve read:

  1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
  2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
  3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
  5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
  8. Forever by Judy Blume
  9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
  10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
  11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
  12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
  13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
  15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
  16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
  17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
  18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  19. Sex by Madonna
  20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
  21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
  22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
  23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
  24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
  25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
  26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
  27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
  28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
  29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
  30. The Goats by Brock Cole
  31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
  32. Blubber by Judy Blume
  33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
  34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
  35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
  36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
  37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
  39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
  41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
  44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
  45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
  46. Deenie by Judy Blume
  47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
  49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
  50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
  51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
  52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
  54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
  55. Cujo by Stephen King
  56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
  57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
  58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
  59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
  60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
  61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
  62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
  63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
  64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
  65. Fade by Robert Cormier
  66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
  67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
  68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
  69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  71. Native Son by Richard Wright
  72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
  73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
  74. Jack by A.M. Homes
  75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
  76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
  77. Carrie by Stephen King
  78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
  79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
  80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
  81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
  82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
  83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
  84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
  87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
  88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
  89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
  90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
  91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
  92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
  93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
  94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
  95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
  96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
  97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
  98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
  99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
  100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

It’s an interesting, and somewhat sad list. Does Judy Blume get some sort of prize for being on the ‘questioned’ list so many times?