rare bird

Tolkien proved more right every day!

Reformation!

J.R.R. Tolkien did not like it when people tried to find analogies in LOTR or any of his other writings. He wanted people to take his books at face value, not try to read meanings "into" them from the outside. Regardless, many people have found analogies in LOTR, most commonly images of world war. Despite Tolkiens' protestations, this makes sense because he did fight in World War I. After seeing Peter Jacksons' films, particularly the "Council of Elrond" scene in FOTR, a new analogy arose in my mind - that of the Ring as the terrible power of nuclear weapons in our postmodern world. The scene is like a mythological IAEA - all the races of Middle-Earth gather to debate the fate of the Ring, and to decide who will be the Ringbearer. There is a lot of argument and conflict over this issue; jealousy and suspicion abounds; precious unity is sacrificed to the thought of using the Ring as a weapon to defeat Middle-Earth's enemies. In the meantime, the Ring aga...

It's Yahoo's tenth anniversary. Check out their page circa 1995.

Pacifica, CA February 27, 2005--Jef Raskin, a mathematician, orchestral soloist and composer, professor, bicycle racer, model airplane designer, and pioneer in the field of human-computer interactions, died peacefully at home in California on February 26th, 2005 surrounded by his family and loved ones. He had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Raskin continued to work throughout his life - his working project when he became sick was "Archy," a text editor that will embrace many of his principles. This line especially caught my attention: "Archy also replaces mouse movements, which many text editing programs require, with much faster "Leap" keystrokes, reducing the likelihood of carpel tunnel syndrome." This is important to me since I suffer from CTS. Bravo!

Why do people put multiple punctuation marks in their emails? This one is from a customer: "What do you think about that??? Let me know. Thanks!!!!"

This is a fantastic tool. I had forgotten the definitions of the fields on a new report I need to write Help for, and this allowed me to find a cache of the doc from Feb. 11 that has the information I need. It found the cache in my Recycle Bin! Otherwise I would have had to go and bug the developer again to send me the doc. Saved the day. There are concerns about security, since the tool indexes one's hard drive, but for now, I think the risk is worth it.

Google now has a movie search. Enter your ZIP and you can sort alphabetically or by theatre. Very cool! Click on the movie title and you get reviews. Holy crap. Google rules.

On ABC tonight, 7 pm Central. Jennings was on Jon Stewart last night to promote the 'investigation'. One of the interesting things he said was, if there is nothing to these stories, why is the government so paranoid about it? Maybe one of his interviews can tell us what's going on in Iran. ;)

At work I have an 'Acceptance' test. I named it that because if our software passes the test, it should be Acceptable to our users. I'm starting to think it should mean that if the software fails, you will learn to Accept it.

The answer might surprise you.

Michael Osterholm, infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, said on Gary Eichten's "Midday" that another flu pandemic is inevitable: "This is not a matter of if. This is a matter of it will happen. And it's really a situation of planning how we are going to get through it." A caller asked what his chances of living through a pandemic would be. Osterholm said 95%. However, he said that the chances for pregnant women would be 50%, as they have weakened immune systems.

"The Cabir virus mainly targets three mobile operating systems - Symbian, Windows Mobile and a third used by NTT DoCoMo, a mobile phone operator in Japan. It then destroys files and data, dials calls top-rate numbers and emergency services, and drains the battery of the cell phone. Infected mobile phones then scan for other vulnerable phones using Bluetooth wireless connection and send a file that contains the worm to such phones. The latest variants of the virus – Cabir.H and Cabir.I – spread rapidly when new phones come into contact with each other." Now that's [un]wired.

If global warming hits the world full force, it will make the 2004 tsunami look like a baseball game. The best documentary I ever saw on this subject is After The Warming , by James Burke. He projects what the world will go through until 2050, if the warming started in 1998. (The film was made in 1991.) Droughts in America, disasters in the Third World, the rise of Japan and Asia as the pre-eminent superpowers, a global carbon trading system - a revolution in history to rival WW2 and the atomic age. Granted, the changes are coming more slowly than he projected, but given what we know now, this should make prophetic watching.

Get ready for another browser grudge match. MSFT is not going to give up on the browser war just because of Firefox. IE 7.0 is coming, and it will try to compete with Firefox's security features. Will it feature tabbed browsing?

It was my Dad's birthday yesterday. Just for fun I googled him and found these patents in his name from when he worked at 3M. Pretty cool to realize your Dad is an inventor.

It's not an important holiday simply because it happens to be your dating anniversary (Sean) or wedding anniversary (Hamlet). The Teaching Company is giving away a free lecture from their High Middle Ages series about the origins of this holiday and how it became associated with love and courtship. Listen to it with a loved one. Or listen to it alone and laugh at us foolish neo-pagans.

"Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, the U.S. government hired South African mercenaries as bodyguards and police trainers. The contract later proved embarrassing when two of the former bodyguards were arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea."

Niebuhr was one of the most important theologians of the 20th century. As this program demonstrates, his influence only seems to grow with time.

Apparently, this was causing a surge in UFO sightings. The X-Files comes to Iran.