March 2008
69 posts
Faith the Two-Legged Dog Comes to Washington →
Faith, a chow mix, was born without front legs and has learned to walk upright. She travels the country, serving as an inspiration for overcoming adversity. This visit is her first to the Washington…
Spooky: Earliest Audio Recording Resurrected,... →
Short documentary on Rev. Moon →
God bless "unpatriotic muckrakers" →
Japanese judges have thrown out a libel case against Nobel prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, who was accused of lying about the country’s war time past.
“The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more...”
– U.S. Energy Department, in a 2005 report on “Peaking of World Oil Production,” as reported by Joseph Romm on Salon.
“I don’t know what it feels like to wear a thong. But I imagine it feels...”
– Kobe Bryant, after wearing retro short shorts in a basketball game, as reported by Anna Jane Grossman, bidding farewell to once-common things that are now obsolete.
mp3 or Not? →
Can you hear the diference between a 128 and 320 kbps mp3?
'The Connection Has Been Reset' →
Think again of the real importance of the Great Firewall of China. Does the Chinese government really care if a citizen can look up the Tiananmen Square entry on Wikipedia? Of course not. What the…
The Secret to Twitter →
What Scoble says about Twitter probably applies to all social networking online — ‘friending’ as a way to filter content.
“It’s funny — even if I write a generally positive piece about Apple,...”
– Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal tech columnist, as reported by Farhad Manjoo for Salon (excerpted from Manjoo’s book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society).
4 tags
On Capitol Hill, Back Taxes Lead to Caffeine... →
Murky Coffee on Capitol Hill is closed permanently due to shoddy finances, including unpaid back taxes and failure to pay rent to landlords, reports the Washington Post. Murky owner Nick Cho posts his apology and some Q&As about the fiasco on the coffeeshop’s website. The location in Arlington is a separate company and will continue operating, according to Cho.
“He’s tried to give voters the impression that he transcends partisan...”
– Alex Conant, an RNC spokesman, as reported by Mike Madden for Salon.
“But some users are starting to feel ‘too’ connected, as they grapple...”
– Andrew Lavallee, reporting on Twitter one year ago for the Wall Street Journal.
Google Code University →
This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.
WatchBarack Obama gives his speech on race in America, also reported by William Branigin for the Washington Post, March 18 (or 19 on A1), 2008.
Apple unleashes new version of Safari web browser →
Apple has released Safari 3.1 (for Macs and Windows), which is totally faster and better than previous Safaris and the competition, according to Apple. The notched up web browser now supports the new video and audio tags in HTML 5, CSS Animations, and CSS Web Fonts.
Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE... →
The upcoming Firefox 3 release promises a smaller memory footprint, improved user interface, new themes that increase visual platform integration, a completely revamped bookmark and history system that uses an SQLite database, a Cairo-based rendering backend, full-page zoom, support for JavaScript 1.8, and other new features.
Recognize Internet addiction as a mental illness,... →
Compulsive e-mailing and text messaging could soon become classified as an official brain illness.
“In my experience, I cannot think, off the top of my head, of a snap decision...”
– Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state and national security adviser, as reported by Michael Abramowitz in “Late Calls Rarely Merit Snap Decisions,” Washington Post, March 16, 2008: A1.
“A key piece of evidence comes from a 1994 e-mail from outgoing Microsoft...”
– Eric Bangeman in “WordPerfect antitrust case greenlighted by the Supreme Court,” Ars Technica, March 17, 2008.
D.C. Tax Office Q&As on Murky Demise →
A District of Columbia tax official answered questions to the Washington City Paper about the ongoing tax issue that abruptly shut down Murky Coffee’s doors in Capitol Hill last month. Murky owner Nick Cho responds on his coffeeshop’s website.
Obama and Clinton plan to cool it →
Earth, that is. Salon’s energy expert cracks open the Democratic candidates’ proposals on global warming.
“Like me, he noticed a shift in what readers were asking in the past year or so....”
– Regina Lynn, “Sex Drive” columnist for Wired: “Unzip American Sexuality and What Do You Find? Tech,” March 14, 2008.
When Girls Will Be Boys →
At the nation’s elite women’s colleges, there is a new kind of gender trouble: students who enter as one sex and become another.
“We’re talking about 33 million Americans who are fluent in texting,...”
– Amy Goldwasser in “What’s the matter with kids today?” Salon, March 14, 2008.
The next bubble: Priming the markets for... →
A layman’s primer on the genesis and future of today’s economic troubles, at Harper’s Magazine.
“I love the incredibly careful parsing of words in describing the beauty of these...”
– Amelie Gillette in “Women Are Funny (More Importantly, They’re Pretty!)” on the Onion’s A.V. Club, March 3, 2008.
“The Clinton campaign would prefer that superdelegates use the popular vote as a...”
– John Dickerson in “Obama Won Texas: Winning doesn’t mean exactly what it used to,” Slate, March 12, 2008.
The bowel movement →
What is your poo telling you about your health? It’s the burning question that has everybody’s head in the toilet these days.
Watch‘High Tea in Cubicle Land’: Chowhound suggests some methods for brewing tea at work, but not to the satisfaction of some tea snobs who protest the captivity of leaf midbrew.
It's on the Tip of Your Tongue: You've Always... →
If only there were simple means to solve every tip of the tongue experience.
Transportation Projects Hit Roadblock in Virginia:... →
The federal government’s hesitation on Dulles rail, a state Supreme Court decision killing a huge source of transportation money and the economic downturn have the Commonwealth’s transportation plans in tatters.
How Good Are Experienced Presidents? →
“I’m in ur aortas, reducing your stress. K thnx bai.
so i really can has...”
– Slashdot users, commenting on a story that cat ownership correlates with heart health.
The Profit in Decay: Landlords Who Empty Buildings... →
Landlords determined to cash in on a lucrative real estate market pushed thousands of tenants out of apartments across the District in recent years and then reaped more than $328 million by converting the buildings into condominiums.
“As the newly urbanized and newly affluent seek more protein and more calories, a...”
– David Streitfeld in “A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill,” New York Times, March 9, 2008.
“I think the message of lobbyists and the training of lobbyists is essential....”
– Lawrence Lessig, speaking with the National Review Online.