Posts from — February 2008

Description:

Food Fight is an abridged history of war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict

This video is exceptionally well done and is worth watching. My favorite part is how Arab/Israeli conflict is show with kabobs and bagels.

From Boing Boing TV.

Watching the 2008 presidential campaign, you sometimes get the feeling that the candidates — smart, all of them — must know better. They must know we can’t fix our economy and create jobs by isolating America from global trade. They must know that we can’t fix our immigration problems with border security alone. They must know that we can’t fix our schools without holding teachers, principals and parents accountable for results. They must know that fighting global warming is not a costless challenge. And they must know that we can’t keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals unless we crack down on the black market for them.

Michael Bloomberg (read the whole op-ed)

For you OCR and/or font enthusiasts:

OCR engineers find this hilarious… I was tempted to include a definition of ‘kerning’ for normal people to explain the joke, but it’s really not funny when explained.
(from boing boing)

Mandatory posting:

On Monday, I was walking back from lunch with my team and I noticed that we were all walking in step, so I silently watched it to see how long it would last. It went for about 200 feet.

The Onion AV Club has a taste test of a German canned cheeseburger. Was it any good? “Answer: no. Oh dear sweet shrieking Lord, no.”

From this article in Mother Jones, here’s a selection of music used in American military prisons (from leaked docs and interviews):

Quite a bit of variety! I was hoping Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Torture Me would be on there, but oh well. Which song would break you first?

I was under the impression that Yellow Submarine had been used for similar purposes in South America (Argentina?) decades ago, but I couldn’t find a good source to verify this. If you have any insights, let me know.

So, if you’re the copyright holder on one of these songs, can you ask the military to stop using it, similar to how artists ask political campaigns to stop using their songs?
(via boing boing)

Edit:
The music won’t show up in some RSS readers, so see the original post to see the list and listen.
Also, this post uses the word ‘torture’ casually and isn’t trying to make a point about that.

From a Huffington Post article:

“It would really be wonderful to have two presidents in the same bed,” the Baptist preacher Moderator Williams says by way of introducing Hillary Clinton

Several thoughts come to mind:

1. I wonder if that’s the first time someone has said that sentence.
2. That’s a strange definition of “wonderful”
3. Is “Moderator” a first name, or is it some title I haven’t heard of?

OK, I figured out another reason the location bar in firefox 3 seemed to busy for me. In firefox 2, it only includes URLs that I’ve typed in before, so when I type in ‘reader’ to get to Google Reader, I get one listing:

Now, the firefox 3 location bar searches the titles and URLs of the items in my history, not just things I’ve typed in before, so this includes a variety of URLs that aren’t too useful:

Almost all of these links will send me to the same place. Of course, I can delete all the entries I don’t want (use the arrows to select the entry, then shift+delete), but they’ll just come back after I visit the site again. I really don’t have a good solution to this problem. It isn’t a huge problem, really, as the URL I wanted was still first on the list. I’m tempted to say that it should notice that whenever I type ‘reader’ I’m selecting the first option, and then hide the remaining options behind a “more” button or something, but that sounds a lot like the way MS Office hides menu options: a feature I never liked.

By the way, you can run multiple copies of firefox at once (including different versions) if you launch it correctly. They just can’t use the same profile. Launch the second copy like this:
firefox -no-remote -profilemanager

To run multiple browsers and sync the profile info, you could try Google Browser Sync.

Multiple choice:
How many academy award nominations did Norbit receive?
A. Zero
B. Somehow a number that is not zero.

The answer may surprise you!

I’ve seen none of the Best Picture nominees this year:

• Atonement
• Juno
• Michael Clayton
• No Country for Old Men
• There Will Be Blood

Perhaps I’ll try to see one tomorrow. Any recommendations?

I’ve only seen a few of the movies nominated in other categories, too:

• Ratatouille
• Charlie Wilson’s War
• American Gangster
• Sicko
• Taxi to the Dark Side
• The Bourne Ultimatum