June, 2002 full listing

• Yesterday was my 20th Reunion at SJP. There's pictures. I caught a cold and feel lousy now. Hope I didn't give it to everyone else, but I fear I did.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 30, 2002     June 30 in History

• Had the first evening of my 20th high-school reunion tonight. A bunch of us gathered at a local watering hole. It was actually more fun than I expected. Folks have gotten older, but the inner personalities don't seem to have changed a lot, and the gals who showed up (our class was 40 guys and 8 gals - two from the class were there) looked pretty darned good. And we only spent a little time talking about monks sexually abusing students.
• SF Gate: The Campus Files. A Chronicle Special is an expose on the FBI, Berkeley in the 50's and 60's, and Ronald Reagan. It shows how the FBI (often illegally) spied on campus activists, worked to undermine a college president (who was no friend of the activists) and helped create the politcal career of Ronald Reagan. Your tax dollars at play. [Jim]
• Tim Penny To Run For Governor and Penny jumps into race for governor. Another race where the DFL and IR presented two candidates I couldn't stomach. Tim Penny's no Jesse, but it's nice to see the Independence Party field a credible candidate. And Jack Uldrich, who's the party chair, is a classmate from high-school. We only talked a little bit of politics last night, but it was still interesting (to me). [strib]
• Senate race: Coleman, Wellstone remain nearly tied. I still don't know who I'm going to vote for in this one. Wellstone promised to limit himself to two terms, and seems to have succombed to insiders' disease in Washington. On top of that, he voted for USA-PATRIOT, which disqualifies him in my eyes (I'd actually read a good portion of it before the vote came up. Wellstone didn't, and seemed surprised when I called him a fascist for voting for it). As for the IR candidate, I found Norm Coleman so repulsive when I met him in person that after shaking hands with him, I washed my hands before I peed. Maybe I'll end up voting for Ed McGaa as a protest vote, but this is a case where I'd really like to see None of the Above on the ballot. [strib]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 29, 2002     June 29 in History

• This just in: Who bassist John Entwistle dead. [Jim]
• Special Guest Rant by Jim:
  I spent a little time reading the coverage on the Pledge of Allegiance and I have a question (well, several) that no one seems to be asking.
  
  Why is Congress in the business of writing loyalty oaths?
  
  The original pledge was written by a socialist minister. Under God was added by Congress in 1954 at the urging of people who felt that they needed a phrase so that Communists (being athiests) wouldn't be able to say. That reasoning is equally silly, but that's also beside the point.
  
  Why is Congress in the business of writing loyalty oaths?
  
  Also, why do we want school children to recite loyalty oaths by rote?
  
  At least there isn't any important news that this is superceding. I mean, it's not like the biggest white collar crime in history is being buried to cover a silly court case in California.
  Blegh. I'm much more appaled by the Senate's reaction than by the ruling.
• Speaking of silly things in California... S.F. abuzz over Hello Kitty... toy. It was designed as a personal muscle massager. [fark!]
• Out of curiosity Jim was looking at the "Last 10 Referrers" on Dave's Picks. Imagine his surprise when he found Yahoo! Search Results for pictures of women having sex with dogs - Dave! Your content has changed. [Jim]
• Syracuse Man Admits He Masturbated Into The Coffee Cups Of Female Co-Workers. Maybe he was just trying to keep them from being depressed?
• When Sub-Pop Meets Porn. Punk, raver, goth, and geek porn-sites. And they all seem to be drawing many more women than "traditional" porn sites. [boing boing]
• Careful, you'll go blind flogging the rubber goat.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 28, 2002     June 28 in History

• Lileks bleats about customer service, and how some companies just don't get it. Like the L.A. Times. Or like yahoo now.
• Big name webcasters pull the plug because of the webcasting fees. Expect more to fall.
• Sue a spammer today. More on taking spammers to small-claims court. [boing boing]
• On A List Apart, The Pickle Jar Theory of Time Management. It's something I know, but find hard to practice. There are just too many days when I don't feel like working on rocks.
• Bee Aware of Your Honey lists contaminants routinely found in honey. That's a little worrisome, since I use so much honey in making mead and the Inside Scoop on Maple Syrup lists chemicals found in another favorite ingredient.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 27, 2002     June 27 in History

• Most Americans Support Individuals' Right to Own Guns, which is nice, but it doesn't really matter. You see, even if people don't like the fact that we have the right to keep and bear arms, that doesn't change the fact that it's a right, not a privilege. [fark!]
• Security bill bars blowing whistle in the Department of Homeland Defense it seeks to create. Oh, and it would not be required to release information under the Freedom of Information Act. What the hell? Why not just call it the Secret Police? [instapundit]
• Trigger Unhappy talks about the growing realization in the U.K. that their gun ban might be making things worse. [instapundit]
• Get your Bill of Rights - Security Edition. It's a metal plate, printed with the Bill of Rights. Why would you want such a thing? The next time you travel by air, take the Security Edition of the Bill of Rights along with you. When asked to empty your pockets, proudly toss the Bill of Rights in the plastic bin.
  You need to get used to offering up the bill of rights for inspection and government workers need to get used to deciding if you'll be allowed to keep the Bill of Rights with you when you travel. [boing boing]
• Head of Sept. 11 Probe Allegedly Obstructed Danforth's Waco Inquiry. No way! The same Justice Department that shot Vicky Weaver, burned up 80 or so people in Waco (more than ten times the number killed by "mass-murderer" Charles Manson). And now we're supposed to trust them to protect us from terrorists? [daypop]
• FBI checking out Americans' reading habits -- Bookstores, libraries can't do much to fend off search warrants. How can you challenge a law when you can't even know that they've used it to search records about you? [daypop]
• I haven't had a lot of links from Bill's End The War on Freedom page lately, but he's still doing good stuff. If this sort of tghing interests you, check him out.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 26, 2002     June 26 in History

• VerisignOff.org :: Take back your name gives directions on how to recover the domain name that verisign has tricked you into registering with them. [boing boing]
• Minnesota Brewing closes its doors. Sadness. No more Pig's Eye. The closing of Minnesota Brewing marks the end of an era. This was the last of the regional breweries in the area. They've all been buried by the mediocre products from Budmillcoors. At least Summit Brewing and The Schell Brewing Co. are still doing okay (as far as I know).
• State is on receiving end of the soggy side of the weather system. Okay, the weather's officially abnormal here. Soggy soggy soggy. [strib]
• Minneapolis ready to evict Saks property borrower. Good. Development companies need to learn that they can't just take money from the City and never pay it back. [strib]
• Penny leaning toward a run for governor. I sure hope he does run. The other current choices leave a lot to be desired. [strib]
• President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership in a speech that got cut off halfway through by the BBC. It's a pretty simple message: quit encouraging terrorism, elect a real government, and we'll help make sure you can have a state. [instapundit]
• James Lileks offered a paean to dogs. [lileks]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 25, 2002     June 25 in History

• Update: 9:15 AM: Well, the power's back again. It was out for 75 minutes, and I was surprised it was such a short outage. The lightning was still striking nearby when the first crew started to work on the power lines. But I'm much closer to having a server offsite which will stay up even during local power outages, and each time I lose power at home, it raises the priority just that much more. Morning storms -- again -- in Twin Cities; commuters slowed is the Strib's take on the weather. They say it wasn't much of a storm, but there were frequent (every couple minutes) lightning strikes within a mile of me for almost an hour this morning. [strib]

• Playing Hammerschlager

  2048x1536(722k)

  I've known this guy for fifteen years

  2048x1536(584k)

  Sunday was the second day game at the Saint Paul Saints in a single week (after Wednesday's play-hookie day). And for the second time in the week, the forecast was for scattered thundershowers and mostly cloudy.

  More Hammerschlager

  2048x1536(633k)

  Hey-Oh!

  1024x1280(242k)

  But the sun was shining through enough (again, for the second time in the week) that there were plenty of sunburns (including mine) before the day was done. In spite of a couple sore spots (how the heck did I sunburn the back of my calf?), it feels pretty nice to come home from a day spent in the hot (and humid) sun, perhaps with a beer or two in the system, and take a long nap in front of the air conditioner.
  
  But waking up from that nap just after midnight leaves me feeling that I've made a mess of my sleep-schedule.
• Asteroid the size of a soccer field narrowly missed Earth back on June 14th. They figured it out on the 17th. It was a Tunguska-sized rock. [strib]
• Sky and Telescope - A Close Asteroid Fly-By has more on the rock. [nick denton]
• Amateurs to Make a Stab at Space With Rocket before June is over. The exact launch date is secret (per the FAA), but one could camp out in the black rock desert for a week.... [flutterby]
• I went to the link to How C-4 Works from fark. And then the banner ad popped up trying to sell me airline tickets instead. Is this more or less funny after September 11? [fark!]
• Federal Reserve plans for redesigned currency notes. The next generation of money's going to have more colors. Huh! [fark!]
• U.S. House of Representatives Says Alexander Graham Bell Did Not Invent the Telephone. Okay, fine. Someone else did. But why did the House spend 40 minutes deciding it? This is our government in action? Oh well, at least they weren't passing any bad laws during that time. [some guy]
• The Barton Indictment. They left out taking the chance of burning up Reed.
• And finally, for Jim: Referee row boils over as World Cup shocks go on. Apparently the Korean officials may not be officiating fairly when the Korean team is playing. [empty bottle]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 24, 2002     June 24 in History

• Minneapolis drops requirement that bicycles be registered - Now that it's no longer protection money to assure that the police don't steal my bike I think I'll go register it. [Jim]
• Minneapolis repeals mandatory bike registration (You have to scroll down to the third story). Chalk up one victory for Minnesota Critical Mass. [Jim]
• Registration is the first step on the way to confiscation. as they say in the 2nd amendment fanatic camp (which I'm part of).
• Speaking of which.... Triggering new debate over guns: The Founding Fathers' ideas would group them today with the National Rifle Association's most militant members. It's a good editorial, and here's what the Seattle P-I has to say about the author: Don B. Kates of Battle Ground is a retired constitutional law professor. He wrote the leading law review article on the Second Amendment and the treatise on it in the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. Apparently he knows something about the constitution. [instapundit]
• 'Combatants' Lack Rights, U.S. Argues. I haven't linked to anything about this earlier because I've been too stunned to know what to say. If he's fighting the U.S., that may be a case of treason, but as a citizen, he still has constitutionally guaranteed rights. Any government that attempts to trample them had best remember there's a second amendment, too. [daypop]
• Armed citizens can defuse terrorist threat talks about Jews in NYC who are participating in armed patrols. And Armed Man Shoots Three in Manhattan talks about a couple women who attacked an armed nut, saving 40 people or so. [instapundit]
• Some of the family and friends of victims of 9/11 have Unanswered Questions. Well worth reading. [Jim]
• This diagram explains it all. How blind we've been!
• The Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel have issued a big Fuck You to internet radio. Expect most internet radio stations to go off the air as soon as they realize how much they owe. Sigh.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 23, 2002     June 23 in History

• Microsoft at Heart of Calls for Software Liability People are calling for Microsoft to be held liable for their broken software. Dangerous precendent, methinks. Probably for the best in the long-term, but it won't just be MSFT who gets hurt in the short-term. [fark!]
• A great new use of the Google API and SOAP by Dave Sifry. It takes the title of a blog entry, asks google for 10 related pages out there and then puts the links at the end of the entry.
• Yoz Grahame gives us Perl is Internet Yiddish. A nice comparison. [boing boing]
• A dent in Microsoft's armor? OpenOffice, an open source office suite, is released at Openoffice.org
• Simson Says: An End to Spam With SpamAssassin. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'll end up dumping spamcop when I run out of "fuel" (which could be anytime, since the new system doesn't seem to have any way for me to check how much is remaining). It's a pretty decent spam-filter, but customer service stinks [update, I just ran out of "fuel" this month]. And I'll have my own Unix server on which to run spam assassin, so I think it'll be worth investigating. [boing boing]
• Installing Spam Assassin on Mac OS X [boing boing]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 22, 2002     June 22 in History

• Got a bunch of pictures from the parking lot after last night's Saints game (where we had pork chops with Rhubarb Sauce for dinner, which were pronounced "yummy"). It was a pretty good night. Ex-Saints Coach Ray Korn is in town visiting, and he sat in the stands. It was good having him there to talk baseball. Also, Scott and Becca came to the game and had a good time. The only problem was that Becca couldn't keep her eyes open for a picture, until I took one (with the red-eye reduction turned off). Pete was mugging it up with Amelia, too. If I could hold a camera steady, it'd be a better picture.
• The bike I couldn't remember the name of a few days back was a "Pea Picker". Just making sure the record is complete.
• Earlier this month, I got paid for writing for the first time in a few years. That was kinda cool.
• Fast Food sends Japanese schoolgirls into sexual feeding frenzy. So, off to Japan to buy some Happy Meals. Or perhaps not. [fark!]
• When Sex Doesn't Sell. Apparently sexual (and violent) content in TV shows makes people forget the commercials. Think next season's shows will be less risque? I guess time will tell.[fark!]
• Men Do Talk About Relationships, you just have to know how to listen. Satire? I'm not so sure.[evhead]
• Can semen cure the blues? According to at least one report, it could help make depressed women feel less depressed: The women who rejected rubbers were significantly happier than those using them and those having no sex at all. What's more, those who had been getting regular injections of semen from their boyfriends felt worse the longer it had been since they stopped having sex. The same was not true of women who used condoms. [instapundit]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 21, 2002     June 21 in History

• So I had a power outage for a few hours yesterday. If you were wondering why you couldn't read Dave's Picks, that was the reason.
• Ventura: I am not seeking reelection. Bummage. [strib]
• State biologists burn down forest in Alaska by throwing firecrackers at a moose. Perhaps they need some lessons in fire safety. [fark!]
• Hero motive probed in Hayman blaze - maybe she lit the fire so she could look like a fire by putting it out. And then it got out of hand.
• Coffee And Al Qaeda further explores the relationship that Lileks pointed out last week. [instapundit]
• MacHack 2002 started last night. First time I haven't been there in a few years. Sigh. Well, at least I'm getting some emailed reports from the floor, as it were.
• I just discovered that I've been an idiot. I was thinking that my high-school reunion up at St. John's was this weekend. Turns out, it's next weekend, and I could have gone to MacHack after all. But I'd pencilled the reunion in on the wrong week of the calendar when I got the first notice sometime back in March, and paid none of the subsequent letters enough attention to notice that I had the wrong weekend blocked out. Arrgh.
• The Irish Times reports 100,000 football fans greeting the Irish team on their return from the World Cup. Jim wonders if there are 100,000 football (soccer) fans here in the US, but the 1:30 am games have been the highest rated show ever in the wee hours (1am to 6am) with an estimated 1.98 million households for the game against Mexico, and an average of just under 3/4 million for all the games. [Jim]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 20, 2002     June 20 in History

• Two updates after last night's Saints game. First, Charlie Kelly pointed out some inaccuracies in my comments about the bike yesterday. I said it was a StingRay, when in fact it was one of the follow-ons named by color (and I don't remember the name for the green bike). He also pointed out that the front brake was a drum, not a disc. I would have noticed that if I'd been paying attention, I'd think. But Charlie seems pretty cool. Heck, he knew about the Schwinns, and he's even interviewed Bob Weir about mountain biking.
• Second, Scott McGerik was at the game last night and saw the bike guy, too. Scott and I didn't see each other at the game (probably next time), but he's another blogger in town who's joined the Minneapolis Meetup list (which is up to 10 people as I write this). Maybe we'll have to schedule the event for Midway Stadium.
• Soccer -- US vs Germans -- where have we seen this before? Why it's the 1981 movie Victory starring Michael Caine, Sly Stallone and Pelé as Allied POWs who agree to compete against an all-star Nazi soccer squad. (It's no Great Escape but it ain't bad.) One suspects the networks will be scrambling to air this film the night before Friday's World Cup match. [Reed]
• Forest ranger charged in Colorado wildfire. She burned a letter from her ex and didn't make sure it was out. Sheesh. She coulda burned up Reed if the wind had been different, and that wouldn't be right. [google news]
• NIP: Smallpox/home page. Many people my age and older would be vulnerable to smallpox, apparently. Our vaccines have worn off. Except I had a booster later in life, so maybe I'm still okay.
• The Junkscience.com DDT FAQ says that DDT might not be so bad, but banning it in 1972 may have had the effect of drastically slowing third-world population growth, since 40% of the children died from malaria that could have been prevented by DDT use. [instapundit]
• Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics reviews common physics mistakes made in movies. There's way too many. [fark!]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 19, 2002     June 19 in History

• Okay, so I did the update before midnight. Sorry, but I needed to get it done so I could sleep easier knowing you'd have fresh picks in the morning.
• McAfee Manufactures Virus Threat, Slashdot debunks. [fark!]
• Patently Absurd and The Smother of Invention. Two good articles from Forbes about the mess that is the patent office. Too many patents are just as bad for society as too few. [cam]
• We're Broke: The Economics of a Web Community - Rusty talks about how K5 is running out of money. And people suggest a lot of ways he could raise some cash, but few seem very viable in the real world.
• Counterpane's Crypto-Gram for June 2002 has some good reading. But it also has Schneier saying that people shouldn't be bashing Verisign. Which is interesting, since just about everything Verisign has done lately is bashworthy. And then later in the newsletter, I see the Counterpane Distribution Agreement with Verisign which leads me to wonder about Bruce's motives. But not very hard.
• Bigger twin more coy about stadium. There's a reason St. Paul may well end up with the new Twins stadium. And all of the costs and benefits associated with it. Minneapolis just isn't that interested, having been there, done that. It's a pretty good article analysing the current stadium situation in town. No mention of the Saints, but they don't really figure into any talks about a major league park.
• Last night before the Saints game, Tony the Bike Guy was riding a sweet Schwinn Stingray around the lot (it's green, even though the cheap digital camera doesn't capture that color so well). He stopped long enough for me to snarf a couple pictures. Apparently the bike (which was under $100 when I was a kid) is now worth over $2500. Notice the disc-brake, 5-speed shift lever, and shocks.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 18, 2002     June 18 in History

• Well. That was disturbing. I booted my computer this morning and was going to do the daily picks, when suddenly my system folder became un-blessed. I still don't know what happened, but I did discover that without a button to open the CD-drive, it's pretty tough to get a CD into the machine to boot from. And yes, there's an eject button on Apple keyboards, but I'm not using an Apple keyboard because it feels like typing in Jell-O. I think I'm going to have to send off an email.
• On Sunday, Steph, Tim, Mara and I went to the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts and then walked back along the front of St. Anthony Main. There are three large sewing machines there that looked like much better things to take pictures of than any of the crafts that were for sale at the fair.
• So that's why there were no new posts on scripting.com this weekend. Best wishes to Dave Winer.
• New bridge throws Minneapolis a curve -- and succeeds. The Marshall Field's Frank Lloyd Wright Bridge across I-94. I suppose I should go look at it some time. [strib]
• CNN.com - Spam-tastic! Honoring America's mystery meat. Even though it opened last September, they finally had the grand opening of the Spam museum in Austin last Saturday. [google news]
• AOpen Inc. announced that it is introducing the world's first vacuum tube motherboard aimed at extreme audiophiles and gamerz. No really. Go read the press release. [boing boing]
• Reed has updated his Celebrity Atheist List.
• Scenes From a 'Weird' Tech Fest is Wired's take on The Festival of Inappropriate Technology. [fark!]
• Brits Going Mobile With Parties, using the phones and text-messaging to give people who have expressed interest in the party clues on how to find it. [some guy]
• MS distributes Nimda to Korean .NET developers. Trustworthy computing, all right. [google news]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 17, 2002     June 17 in History

• Blog Tool Feature Comparison Table. Useful. [boing boing]
• Everyone seemed to be all abuzz about A Rift Among Bloggers last week. Doc deconstructs it particularly well. For what it's worth, I read both the old-school and some of the newer bloggers. There are days when it could be said that I have a warblog. There are days when you could say I have a tech-blog. The same seems to be true about just about everyone writing on the web. But that doesn't make a very interesting story that thousands of people will link to, now does it? [doc]
• A new free weblog commenting system pointed themselves out to me. But I'd really rather have any comments right here on my own server.
• blog.meetup.com has some software to help meet other bloggers in your area. Looks kinda cool. You can use meetup for other groups too, but they'll get more traffic trying to get bloggers to meet up. [cam]
• Bloggus Caesari - a weblog by Julius Caesar Tune into the journal of your favorite Emperor. Take for example the entry from 07-Nov-2001: Foolishly, the Veneti had concentrated all their ships, and all their men of military age, into this one force. Thus they surrendered to me, and the war is over. I have decided to make an example of them, as I tire of the constant uprisings. The members of the government are to be executed. The civilian population will be sold as slaves. The archives show that this blog started way back on 19-May-2001 and continues to this day. [Reed]
• Megnut's What We're Doing When We Blog talks about how blogs work in general. Jonathon Delacour's Changing of the guards has a good discussion of Meg's article, and What I really meant to say was... is the Wonder Chicken's followup. [empty bottle and instapundit]
• dive into mark/30 days to a more accessible weblog. Follow along, perhaps?
• The Web Standards Project is back. They've moderated their message a bit. [flutterby]
• Google offers searches in many languages, including Elmer Fudd!

Weather in Minneapolis for June 16, 2002     June 16 in History

• It seems that four hours in a couple bars, plus playing frisbee in a parking lot until the cops tell us to go home is a good way to ensure I sleep until noon. Who'd a thunk?
• It also seems that the background color I put on links you're hovering over screws up IE 6/Win. Blegh. So now it's gone.
• After 11 years, jury vindicates Earth First pair / FBI, Oakland officers must pay 4.4 million for civil rights abuses. The FBI is likely to appeal. The Judi Bari Website has more. [google news]
• EPA to relax air pollution rules for utilities, allowing old coal plants on which the utilities have been deferring maintenance to increase the amount of pollution they emit. Feh. [strib]
• Software End User License Agreement Upheld In Court in spite of the fact that few (if any) people ever read the damned things. [fark!]
• cellphones useful for clandestine bugging and tracking Use a cellphone as an inexpensive debugging device: turn off ringtones and attach an external microphone. Plant it in your boss' office and call in when he shuts his office door. It can also be used as a tracking device -- 911 regulations require that a cellphone broadcast its position, so that with suitable equipment, a phone placed in a trunk can serve as a means to track a vehicle. [Reed, via Dave Farber's List]
• Consumers Face Wiretapping Fees to pay for changes mandated under a 1994 law. It's things like this that make me think that having None of the Above on ballots would be a good thing. A further good thing would be that the seat stays empty if NOTA wins. That government is best which governs least, and it's hard to govern less than an empty chair. [librarian]
• America, broken as deisgned attempts to compare the design docs, implementation docs, and implementation for the US to see how the project went. Hopefully it's not a post-mortem, eh? [endwar]
• US invasion proposal shocks MPs: The Dutch parliament was shocked by a US legislative proposal giving an official green light to a US invasion of the Netherlands should it be deemed necessary to free US citizens from the International Criminal Court in The Hague. [boing boing]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 15, 2002     June 15 in History

• www.stjohnsabuse.com is dedicated to the victims of abuse at St. John's University and St. John's Prep School. It's got a good article archive, plus more information that I've seen about the issue in any one place.
• Nick Denton comments on The Myth of American Efficiency. Most of the "service" industries in the U.S. are anything but efficient at everything but emptying their customers' pockets of money.
• Web site owner slammed with higher fees, hassles. Network Solutions / Verisign is evil and needs a serious legal slapping around. [some guy]
• In The Bleat for 13 June, 2002, James Lileks looks at Caribou Coffee and discovers some interesting things about the corporation behind his local coffeeshop. [lileks]
• David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur. I got quite a way into the 90's before I started thinking, Well, if you want an audience, David, you may want to consider putting some songs into your sets that they've actually heard. Yes, I know, I went back on my word completely and absolutely. Bowie predicts the death of the current record labels within the decade, and figures that artists will only be able to make money by touring. Sounds like something the Grateful Dead figured out back in the 70s. Studio albums drew folks to the shows, where they earned the real money. He compares his latest album, Heathen to Low. Might be interesting. [doc]
• Panel Denies License for Dead Reunion in East Troy. A snag in the plans for the show at Alpine Valley. [google news]
• ClearChannelSucks.org asks How many ways has Clear Channel sucked today? Their server may be overloaded, so if you don't get through at first, try again at a different time of day. And yeah, it's Clear Channel who's selling the tickets for the Grateful Dead show in Alpine without having secured the permits first. I don't really understand why the Dead are with Clear Channel, but I don't think it was a good choice.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 14, 2002     June 14 in History

• Woo! The tuckpointing at the church next door is done! They finished up about 2pm yesterday, and today they're only supposed to be here to do some final clean-up. No more six hour stints of the sound of the dentist's drill!
• The Ultimate and Authoritative Guide to Life in Korea, as Gleaned from About a Dozen Recent Popular Movies. [empty bottle]
• I Sing The Body Electric from Stavros the Wonder Chicken. An unrepentant paean to booze, glorious booze. Cheers! [empty bottle]
• Speaking of booze, Bourbon, Straight. Mmmmmmmm. There's a lot of info in this article on bourbon. Good stuff! [fark!]
• Kevin Guilfoile asks Harvard researchers What Are You, Drunk? Studies of college drinking are making much of very little. What they call "binge drinking" I call "a good start". And people who drink in college have "unplanned sexual activity." Wasn't just about all sex in college "unplanned"? Bleh. The problem isn't drinking. The problem is that there's no law preventing assholes from drinking, and they just turn into bigger assholes when drunk. [empty bottle]
• Women Are From the Forebrain, Men Are From the Medulla Oblongata is a good essay from DaveRT, who's the most recent addition to the list of blogs by daves. [some guy]
• Orgasm boost from wonder patch for post-menopausal women. With that plus viagra, just imagine all the senior-sex. Sorry. Maybe you shouldn't imagine that. [fark!]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 13, 2002     June 13 in History

• Sorry the updates have been spotty lately. If it's any comfort, I'm behind on everything else, too.
• Congress Spends, Future Generations Pay the Bills. Sneaky how they avoided going on record to raise the national debt limit. [endwar]
• In Greens to Liberals: Drop Dead! Harold Meyerson says that the Green Party is gunning for the Democrats. He seems to think that's a bad thing, but I don't quite understand why. [karl]
• NM concealed weapons law ruled unconstitutional, because it allows cities and counties to ban guns. [instapundit]
• ReplayTV Users: "We are not thieves": ReplayTV customers today sued the entertainment industry to protect their rights to skip over commercials and record television programs for later viewing using digital video recorders. [boing boing]
• Irish Times Article - Police recruit survives bomb attack tells the story of the latest bombing in Northern Ireland. Dissident Republicans clearly attacked a CATHOLIC graduate of the Police academy to show their displeasure with the new Police Service of Northern Ireland(PSNI) which is replacing the Royal Ulster Contabulary (RUC). [Jim]
• Wireless safe for now The petition to the FCC filed by the satellite radio provider Sirius has been withdrawn. It asked the FCC to limit 'out-of-band' transmissions from 802.11 wireless devices. If pursued it may have resulted in the hobbling of wireless range. No word yet on why the petition was withdrawn.
• 2 Tinkerers Say They've Found a Cheap Way to Broadband using off-the-shelf 802.11b hardware with some software tweaks.
• There's a Big Threat to 802.11b Networking, Yet Nobody Seems to Care -- Here's Why points out that even though Fusion Lighting would be clobbering the fastest 802.11b links (11Mb), it doesn't really matter because nobody's using that bandwidth today, and soon we'll be moving to 802.11a.
• Lots more news about 802.11b (and a and g) at 802.11b/WiFi News. It's geeky enough for me to cover, but besides doing isbn.nu, Glenn does a bang-up job covering wireless stuff, too. Read him regularly if you want your fix of wireless news.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 12, 2002     June 12 in History

• Nothing yet. I'll try to have an update this evening.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 11, 2002     June 11 in History

• Note to callers: when you dial the wrong number at 3:30 AM, hitting redial to try it again probably won't win you a lot of friends.
• They're still working on the church next door to me. Last Thursday, the process of cutting out the old mortar had moved to right next to my bedroom window. Last Friday, they started working at 6:15 am. They've still got the top 5 feet of the church to do, but apparently are stuck waiting for someone to move the power lines out of their way. I wouldn't be too sad if they never got to it, since when they're working, I need to seal all the windows up tight to keep the dust out, and that makes the temp inside my apartment skyrocket (that dark wall on the left is my outside wall, and gets full sunshine from about 9:30AM to 5PM). There's also the noise. Think back to the sound of a dentist drilling one of your teeth. Imagine that sound going, non-stop, for six hours.
• Between the noise from the construction next door, and a very busy schedule lately, I was just exhausted yesterday. Add the opressive heat and humidity, and the onset of seasonal allergies, and I just took some anti-histamines and slept. Didn't even go to the Saints game. At least I was reasonably caught up on sleep when I got my 3:30 wakeup call this morning.
• Pressure builds for bishops to pass tough abuse policy: Watch them at the press conferences. It will be good news if the bishops look like deer caught in the headlights. The arrogance of the church leadership has definitely been a problem. [strib]
• Whoops! Chinese newspaper mistakenly believes, publishes American satire article on move of U.S. Capitol [steph]
• Dogs may sniff out some cancers. So a dog sniffing your butt might be a replacement for a prostate exam. Send in the dogs! [boing boing]
• The Terminator on Werewolf vs. the Vampire Mr. Schwarzenegger fields an odd question from a reader. His answer is best read out loud with an Austrian accent. Note that all answers from Arnold seem to contain the phrase not unlike becoming a champion bodybuilder [Reed, via Fark]
• While participating in a UK bulletin board recently I had to ask the meaning of "gobsmacked". I was referred to the Dictionary of English slang and colloquialisms of the UK for a full definition. [Jim]
• James Lileks liked Attack of the Clones. Huh. Maybe I'll have to see it after all. [lileks]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 10, 2002     June 10 in History

• Nothing yet. Maybe nothing all day. I'm tired.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 9, 2002     June 9 in History

• Did MS Pay for Open-Source Scare? Apparently they haven't encountered OpenBSD Five years without a remote hole in the default install! [cam]
• Larry Wall's Apocalypse 5 covers perl's regexen. I like reading stuff Larry writes. Except for his perl code. [flutterby]
• One way to security is Security through obsolescence. That's part of why I've had a Mac as my mailserver for so long....
• Tim O'Reilly's WWDC Keynote Manuscript. Hadn't had a chance to read it before. [doc]
• Cascading Style Sheets, Promise vs. Reality, and a Look to the Future. Not much I wasn't already aware of in the article, but it was a good review. [daypop]
• Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of: Mark my words, this (Berkeley class) is going to be the Altamont of the blogging movement. Or maybe all the hype about it is the Altamont.... [daypop]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 8, 2002     June 8 in History

• In a mid-morning update, there are the following stories of sexual abuse at St. John's:
  • St. John's lawsuit widens claims of clergy abuse. My friend Bill is finally suing. Lawsuit pins sexual abuse on 2 priests has more on Bill's suit from the St. Cloud Times. Good luck, Bill.
  • St. John's Abbey restricts 14th monk and St. John's Abbey restricts another monk, but isn't naming names.
  • Abuse victims sue to void secrecy provisions of settlements with church. Perhaps more light will shine in on the abuse at St. John's over the years. [strib]
• Dee Dee Ramone Found Dead in L.A.. Maybe Joey's putting together a reunion tour? [instapundit]
• Puppetry of the Penis: Tackle Happy. The fine art of organ origami. Um. Ouch?
• A Demimonde in Twilight talks about the death of the porn-magazine industry. It's a sad thing, but there's too much free porn on the 'net for some of the more specialized magazines to stay alive. Penthouse may be among the fallen.
• In praise of String Bikinis. Indeed.
• Did I link to the SIRC Guide to flirting before? I don't remember. But it seems vaguely useful. Some men also blow their chances by carrying on a conversation with a woman's breasts, rather than looking at her face. Especially if she's wearing a string bikini.
• People would rather die than be seen naked by friends and co-workers. That seems a bit extreme. I could understand it if they'd rather die than see some of their co-workers naked, but I'm pretty sure if there was anthrax all over my clothes, I'd be nekkid in a flash, as it were. And that's probably a mental picture you don't want to draw. [fark!]
• Mike's Field Guide to Tough Chicks No girly-girls here. These broads don't need your help changing a tire and can drink you under the table. Gotta love them. [Reed]
• Ten Things You Should Never Say To A Korean Girl. Heh. I think I avoided them all when I was in Korea, but given that I didn't really have much time to play, it wouldn't have mattered much, I think.
• Amorous dolphin targeting swimmers [via daypop]. Perhaps he's been reading Sex Guides: Dolphins: FAQ on Mating by Anonymous [fark!]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 7, 2002     June 7 in History

• Yesterday I biked (triked) to my current client's office for the first time. 14.83 miles each direction. Took 1.5 hours each way, but I made it without having to call for a sag-wagon, which felt pretty good. Plus there was about 15 minutes of cool-down on each end. I think I'll be doing it again. On an evening when traffic sucks (which is pretty often lately), it takes almost that long to drive the 18 miles home by car.
• Speaking of which: As commuting times grow in Twin Cities, cars still reign. Maybe bike commuting will work well for me getting out to the suburbs when I have to. We'll see how it goes over time, I guess. [strib]
• Cops Harrass Bicyclists an article originally printed in The Pulse was reprinted on Indymedia. Bad Cop! No Donut! [Jim]
• Big Louisville Slugger benched for refinishing. That's one big bat. [some guy]
• The F-15 Eagle used for crowd control: F-15s inadvertently save the day. [fark!]
• Mysteries Under Moscow and the diggers who uncover them. [boing boing]
• Macworld tells you how to Turn Your LPs or Cassettes into CDs. They don't mention that you should allocate at least 3 times the running time of the initial source to the process. I've been set up to do this for over a year, but I've only pulled in a handful of things from the original analog because for the time involved, it's cheaper for me to find even an expensive import CD on the web than to spend the time sucking in analog. All the things I've imported are ones that won't ever be on CD.
• This morning, about 7:30, they started grinding out the old mortar on the church wall about 12 feet from my computer. I only hope the fact that they've gotten so close to my window means they're almost done.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 6, 2002     June 6 in History

• Derek Powazek's required osx shareware. Sounds like a useful list. I also discovered that his initials are dmp, too.
• Why BSD is superior to Linux. 'nuf said. [flutterby]
• The zhrodague wifi mapserver is pretty darned cool. Connect a GPS, some wardriving software, and bits from them, and you can build your own maps. [boing boing]
• USS Clueless tells about the latest in Viral advertising. I haven't noticed it here yet, but if the referrer list goes away, that'll probably be the reason why. I also noticed today that enough people seem to have put up referrer lists that Userland's Subhonker made it into the Daypop Top 40 the other day.
• Who are the people in your neighborhood? on the web? [scripting]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 5, 2002     June 5 in History

• Slow to adapt, FBI stumbles in war against terror: ...one of the bureau's great weaknesses is its failure to properly analyze the immense amount of information that it collects and to share it among its field offices. They don't need to collect more information (and trample our rights along the way), but rather they need to work better with the information they're already collecting. [strib]
• New FBI powers go too far, congressman says. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis countered that there was no need to throw respect for civil liberties into the trash heap in order to improve the FBI's ability to fight terrorism. [strib]
• Today we find that the CIA Gave FBI Warning On Hijacker. So the FBI had the data it needed. It just couldn't put the pieces of the puzzle together. Explain to me again why they need more power to violate our rights to gather information. [instapundit]
• French Intellectuals to be Deployed in Afghanistan To Convince Taleban of Non-Existence of God. Ouch. It hurts from laughing. [some guy]
• Coffee targeted as Seattle tax source. What next? An air tax? [fark!]
• A revelation to our president - there are blacks in Brazil! Who'da thunk it. Next they'll be telling him that since Stevie Wonder's blind it does no good to wave. Oddly enough, gwbush.com is making fun of him for this. [Jim]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 4, 2002     June 4 in History

• I finally took a picture for the Mirror Project after noticing that Davezilla had done a gallery of Daves and that my computer was shiny.
• So you want to own a rock 'n' roll bar? A good story on the local music bars from a couple years back. As far as I know, they're all still open and haven't changed format since the article was written.
• From the University of Minnesota Alumni Association:
  October 23, 1926: "The future of auto parking on the University campus will be a serious one," an article stated, as the three biggest lots were about to be used for buildings and 60 percent of students lived in Minneapolis and St. Paul and drove home every day. "The problem is one for future study by transportation experts," the article concluded.
• Blues legend ailing. Dave Snaker Ray has been diagnosed with lung cancer that's spread to his brain. No further word yet.
• On a lighter note, Misfortune cookies from David Grenier. It is to laugh.
• The Beer Games sound like good fun. Set your VCR. [strib]
• House Hearing on Home Recording of Copyrighted Works - Jack Valenti's testimony about how VCRs were going to kill the movie industry. A lot of it is very similar to what he's saying about the internet today, so I guess VCRs weren't so bad after all. Maybe he's wrong about the 'net, too? Naw. Inconceivable! [boing boing]
• Music Industry Unveils Piracy-Proof Format: A Black, Plastic Disc With Grooves On It. Heh! [instapundit]
• On a personal note, I think I'm going to be switching to doing Dave's Picks in the evening this week. Don't panic if you get to work in the morning and I haven't posted for the day yet sometime this week. I've just got a lot of work things I need to deal with in the mornings.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 3, 2002     June 3 in History

• Well, the weather yesterday wasn't as bad as promised. Only got to 87, rather than hitting 90 as they'd predicted. And while 3 degrees doesn't sound like a lot, it made a big difference in how it felt. I stopped by Greyfest to see some dogs and find out about adopting an ex-racing-dog. Not sure if I'm going to actually get one or not, but it was nice to meet a bunch of new dogs and sniff some butts. The characterization of greyhounds as 40mph couch-potatoes seemed accurate, but given the heat, I can understand most of them being pretty lazy. Heck, when I got home, I ended up taking a huge nap myself.
• U.S. Backs District Gun Law In Court. Apparently the justice department's still waffling more than a little. But Glenn had a fine quote: Apparently Ashcroft's view of the right to arms is like the beer in a beer commercial: you can pour it, show it brilliantly illuminated, talk about how good it is -- in fact, do absolutely anything except actually drink it. (See D.C. Handgun Ban Challenged in Court for the back-story). If the NRA were serious about protecting gun-rights, they'd be all over this. Are they? It sure doesn't look like it. Then again, neither the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, nor the Gun Owners of America seem to have picked up on it, either. [instapundit]
• A few tips on how the experts spot a terrorist: An Israeli security expert says: The United States does not have a security system, it has a system for bothering people. The difference between the Israeli and American systems is that we are looking for the terrorist, while the Americans look for the weapons. And yeah, airport security, even before the terrorism of last September, was mostly an exercise in harassing people. [instapundit]
• Bike culture meets cop culture in a Critical Massacre - from August, 2001. According to Brian, this month's ride went pretty well. If the MPD follow their usual three-month cycle, it'll be the ride at the end of June that will be the next time there will be headlines about them beating up bicyclists.
• I also met Jodi last night. She's the gal who's covered in the story: Customer turns owner to rescue Rendezview Video (from September 2000). Last July, the dream was over: Rendezview Video to close after repeated robberies (the date on the Daily article is wrong for some reason). She wasn't very happy about her treatment at the hands of the MPD. No real surprise there -- it's a shitty thing that happened to her.
• I will never do business with Expedia again says Cory. What took you so long? thinks I. Cory vs. Expedia? It gets worse. (The anchors don't seem to be working right for me, so you might have to page down a bit) [boing boing]
• Whose side is TiVo on? by Doc. I don't really expect TiVo to be looking out for my best interests. Then again, as David Coursey points out in TiVo: Why I hate the company--but love the product, it's a cool enough product that it's worth putting up with some of the hassles. If they ever become too much, I can always just unplug the phoneline from the TiVo and program it the hard way. But a lot of people seem to be confused by the fact that businesses are out to make money. That's the nature of most corporations. I may not like it, but I've come to accept it. I see two possible solutions. One is to not buy things from businesses who behave badly. The other would be to quit treating corporations as people. The latter is the more revolutionary idea. [doc]

Weather in Minneapolis for June 2, 2002     June 2 in History

• The weather lately's been very unseasonable. Highs in the 90s (yeah, we had that in April, but we also had snow). Today was supposed to be a nice day, but we're looking at another day in the 90s before the heat-wave breaks. I think I've had enough global-warming for now. I went from being too cold to ride my trike, to too broken (all May, pretty much) to too damned hot. Blegh. Oh well, here in Minnesota, we have weather. In California, they have climate, and May reminded me of that.
• Sticking points remain in settling Twins lawsuit, one of which is the confidentiality of MLB's documents. There's a lot there they don't want people to know. On the other hand, there's a lot in MLB's finances that a lot of people would like to know.
• Bentrideronline has a review of the Burley Canto - the bike Jim bought (they give it a thumbs up!). [Jim]
• TinyURL.com - where tiny is better!. Useful! [boing boing]
• Meta Linker lets you hang a little widget after a link that will take people to a list of other bloggers who've linked to the same thing. [Empty Bottle]
• Blogs of the City of New York arranged on its Subway Map. Also, a page for 9/11 blog articles. [Michael Chaplin]
• NO! Well, maybe we can hope for a Challenger like disaster. Or a one-way ticket. [Jim]
• Speaking of space... Star Wars 1 & 2 fail for lacking a skeptic, an everyman, a Hans Solo An insightful observation from Ebert reader:I realized after seeing 'Episode I' what was wrong with this new "Star Wars" series, despite its visual wonders: No Han Solo. The new series has no everyman, no skeptic. Who am I to relate to? Where am I up on that screen?
  
  We viewed the action in the first Star Wars trilogy through the eyes of the guy who didn't fit in, who was only in it for the money and wasn't too sure about this 'Force' stuff. This new trilogy leaves a lot of viewers at the station.

Weather in Minneapolis for June 1, 2002     June 1 in History