Christmas in July and lost bungee cords
I have two weird and useless anecdotes to share. One is about the United States Postal Service’s lock box and one concerns finding lost bungees on U.S. highways. Christmas presents in July The first anecdote is how the U.S. Postal Service just delivered a couple of packages containing Christmas presents to us – like, last […]
Miniature disasters and the Democratic nomination
Today this blog turned six years old. I’ll take a cake with marzipan icing, please (but hold the marzipan babies). Mmm . . . sugar-almond paste. Yesterday was a weird day of accidents in Corvallis. Driving to work in the morning, I was forced to stop because the westbound lanes of Philomath Boulevard had been […]
Oregon primary election and random links
Oregon’s vote in the primary elections almost mattered this year! Barack Obama won easily, as expected. The Oregon primary election, held yesterday, was apparently the “most exciting Oregon primary in 40 years.” With the party nominations usually wrapped up well in advance of May, it’s not often that Oregon gets to be marginally relevant in […]
USO All-Stars and Chuck Norris in Iraq
I flipped through a friend’s April issue of Maxim magazine the other day and found that Scarlett Johansson has taken it upon herself to battle al-Qaeda! Well, actually, it was more like she did a five-day United Service Organizations (USO) tour of Kuwait, but whatever. There wasn’t much to the article, really, but it did […]
Linus Pauling postage stamp, Max Headroom, Al Gore?
On Thursday, March 6, Oregon State University celebrated its most internationally recognized alumnus, Linus Pauling, as one of four American Scientists being honored on U.S. postage stamps this year. At noon in the Memorial Union Ballroom there was a First Day of Sale celebration. A special commemorative postmark was designed for the occasion as well. […]
Super Bowl Sunday, Super Tuesday, YahooSoft?
Somehow the New England Patriots were upset by the New York Giants 17-14 today in Super Bowl XLII. Turns out that Plaxico Burress wasn’t too far off with his 23-17 score prediction. I guess a 19-0 season was impossible. I knew it was over for New England when, on the final Giants drive, on third […]
Barack Obama, Bill Gates retires, habanero salsa
On the heels of Hillary Clinton’s huge comeback win in the New Hampshire primary over Barack Obama, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons reports that he is “leaning toward voting for the Clintons (and really, they’re a package deal)” for the following three reasons: They’ve been in the office before and made all their mistakes the first […]
Happy New Year: On dying consumer technologies
A few thoughts on dying consumer technologies for 2008: Copy-protected music is almost dead. The demise of copy-protection software has finally almost arrived. Warner is the third of the four major music corporations to move away from digital rights management (DRM) software. In large thanks to the influences of Amazon MP3 and Radiohead this year. […]
Imagination, How It All Ends, Google wireless, Muse
I have six things to mention today: 1. I will soon be reviewing the independent film Imagination by Eric and Jeffrey Leiser for Filmometer.com. They’ve let me know that a DVD screener of their three-year effort is in the mail. After invitations to a number of film festivals in 2007, additional theatrical openings of Imagination […]
Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Maynard’s Puscifer
There has been a lot of interesting music news in the past few days. I’m just going to mention two things. One is really good news and the other is . . . I was going to say “bad” but it’s more like . . . WTF news. The good news is: The new Radiohead […]