August, 2002 full listing

• Wayne Terwilliger is going to be leaving the Saints after this weekend. He's moving to Texas to be near his wife's family, and taking a job working for Marty Scott (and the Fort Worth Cats, I think), who left us last year, and has been tapped to manage Team USA this year. Twig's a good example of a classy baseball guy. And I managed to get my Twig bobble-head autographed last night. We'll miss ya, Twig.

Weather in Minneapolis for August 31, 2002     August 31 in History

• Baseball Talks In Extra Innings and Baseball moving toward settlement. I guess we'll see. I was hoping I'd wake up and they'd have a deal done, but it doesn't look like that's the case, even though I slept late. [strib]
• Looks Like A Deal! Not final yet, but it's encouraging. There'll be a news conference at noon central time to announce the details.
• Well, the news conference is over. Not a lot of details about the agreement they reached, but it sounds like the players made some fairly significant concessions to keep baseball going. It's nice to see that for the first time since 1972, the players and the owners managed to reach an agreement without losing a single game.
• Northlanders can blame weather for bad luck in love. Among other things. Via Layne
• Size Him Up - Penis Size Calculator. It's a British site, so adjust accordingly if you're not in the UK. Whatever the hell that means. [WVSR]
• New vibrating condom unlocks the power of ki. Another fine product from Japan. [fark!]
• A Raymore man says women are all aquiver for his cramp-quelling tampon, the Vipon Vibrating Tampon
• Oh No! Porn on the Internet!?! When did that happen?
• Ten Reasons To Go To Work Naked
• A photo-essay In praise of breasts (not safe for work). What's not to love?

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

• So I realized yesterday that for whatever reason, I'd been a lot more productive this week than I have in a long time. I've been getting a good, solid 6-8 hours of paying work in every day. I'd written a couple essays. I was feeling pretty good about it, but didn't want to jinx it by saying anything. Good thinking. Wednesday comes along, and after ninety minutes of work everything got completely derailed. First there was a tech support call for a friend. Then I needed to go out and get some lunch and groceries. Then I was tired, so I'll take a little nap. A couple hours later, I'm still not up to doing any paying work. And now it's ten in the evening, and other than a far too brief burst of productivity in the morning, all I've discovered is that Minnesota blogger mecawilson writes well, as does Layne in naked girl contemplates dash for newspaper. You can find more blogs from Minnesota over on the right hand side in Scott's Local Interest Section if you need to use up the rest of a day that's not being productive.
• The only thing you find in the middle road is a yellow line and a dead armadillo. -Jim Hightower
  Jim, Barbara Ehrenreich, John Trudell, and the rest of the Rolling Thunder Down Home Democracy Tour are coming to St. Paul on Labor Day. This event includes workshops on Fair Trade, Civil disobedience and many more as well as entertainment (John Trudell alone is well worth the trip). More info available here [Jim]
• Tara Sue's Weblog has moved and been upgraded. [scripting]
• Colleges halt radio broadcasts on Internet. They're starting to fall, but Radio K is still on the net. [some guy]
• Music industry fights back against free music on Web with a few for-pay alternatives. But their catalogs aren't deep, and their prices are high. [strib]
• Why telecoms are on your side, at least in one case. [fark!]
• Baseball talks continue, but deal elusive has a good analysis of the current situation. [strib]

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

• Bracing for the Digital Crackdown [scripting]
• TalkLeft: FBI To Be Sued for $300 million for keeping a guy they knew was innocent in jail for 30 years. [instapundit]
• Bad things happen When Feds attack. There are just so many things wrong with this. Read the article, and ask yourself what the reaction would be if it were KGB agents breaking into a US computer. [instapundit]
• Federal courts dealing blows to Bush's anti-terror tactics showing that the system of checks and balances is working. It's a little discouraging how long it takes cases to work their way through the system, though. [strib]
• One step closer... ...to Lance Bass being summarily ejected from an airlock into the uncaring vacuum of space. [Reed]
• Kitty Litter Cake [popups, noise]. A fine-looking recipe. [boing boing]

• The PeTA gang

  I finally added a picture of the front-view ofthe PeTA gang from the July to-do. Thanks to Al & Marie for providing the picture.
• Fax.com hit with $2.2 trillion lawsuits for sending junk faxes. [fark!]
• Malfunction creates black cloud at U steam plant. Just another miscue from Foster-Wheeler, our bad neighbor on the river. [strib]

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

• The Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway Home Page. describes some of our local bike paths. The ones in North Minneapolis are in pretty rough shape.
• What do you get when you start a fire in zero-gravity? Floating Flame Balls, that's what. [flutterby]
• Sun Country seeks profitability with new planes, schedule. I probably would have booked at least one flight with them for my vacation this fall, except for the fact that the old Sun Country owed AAA money, so AAA won't book flights with the new Sun Country. [strib]
• In a blog rut? Try random blogging philringnalda.com describes novel ways in which you can traverse the blogsphere. [Reed]
• There's been a proliferation of warblogs of late (well, for a while now). A good place to start if you're looking for alternative views is Warblogger watch. [Jim]

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

• Strike threatens Twins in worst way and the labor dispute at a glance [strib]
• On a seasonal (allergy) note: Common Foods Worsen Hayfever Symptoms. The worst? Chamomile tea.
• Bank Robber Meets Corporate Criminal: Keating, Boesky and Milken collectively swindled Wall Street out of more than $500 million. Yet together they served less than 10 years. I know a man serving 20 years for an $800 heist. If the punishment fit the crime, Keating, Boesky and Milken would be locked up until they rotted. [boing boing]
• Judge throws out hyperlink patent lawsuit. [fark!]
• Coble needs to rethink digital vigilante bill is the latest in the back and forth between Ed Cone and Howard Coble. [scripting]
• Dan Gillmor weighs in with Activists take on Hollywood cartel, describing more on the Grubb / Coble election battle, adn the issues behind it. [scripting]
• Dear Congressman is a letter written by Aaron Swartz talking about intellectual property issues and the bad laws that have been passed recently regarding them. You might want to use it as a starting point for your own letter. [scripting]
• John Robb looks at elections of co-sponsors to the Berman-Coble act, figuring which politicians might be vulnerable. [scripting]
• I jotted down some of my own thoughts on intellectual property this morning, too.
• Speaking of music on the 'net, our friend Greg Traxler (aka Little Blinky) has finished his second solo CD "Willow and the Moon". Listen to a couple cuts for free at MP3.com/littleblinky. If you like you can also listen to Greg's partner and the mother of his children - Kari Tauring (Jim)

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

• The first few folks set up

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  The gang

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  Last night was the second (and final) PeTA night of the season. I cooked the trout with herbs that I did sometime last year again, plus some Chinese-style sausage (that I got at Untied Noodle) for hors doovers. It was a big hit. There was quite a bit of meat again (I'll try and come back and put together a list later).

  Hey! We're on TV!

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  Pete 'n' Amelia

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  We're all fat dumb and happy now. The Saints lost, but it was against Fargo, and I was just hoping we could win two of the three (to gain one game on Fargo) in the series. Guess we've just gotta win the next two, eh?
  
  The group photo has a lot fewer players in it than it should, but that's because we took it during the fourth inning of the ballgame. Oops.

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

• Yeah, I know. I said I was going to take weekends off. I lied. But this morning I made an omelette for breakfast, and it got me thinking....
• Yesterday (8/24/02) was the 75th anniversary of the execution of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti for crimes they didn't commit. [Jim]
• Four on the fringe take on parties' picks for governor in MN. Remember, the primaries are September 10 here.
• Speaking of fringe politics, how about Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology? [some guy]
• Tara Sue Grubb is running against Howard Coble in N.C. Coble's the guy who wants to allow record companies to hack your computer if you might have some copyrighted material on it. She's running on the Libertarian ticket. [scripting]
• Howard Coble defends his support of the bill, but not on the web. Ed Cone's got more details. [scripting]
• She Wants P2P for the People - They're already calling her the Weblog Candidate. More on Tara Sue Grubb. [scripting]
• Adoption of Web-Exclusive Features on Campaign Sites Not Yet Widespread. Last year I talked to folks in the MN-DFL and the Minnesota Independence Party about building a template site that could be easily modified for each candidate. The problem was that the people who understood the idea didn't have control of the purse-strings. The people who control the purse-strings still don't understand the web. [scripting]

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

• Brutal evening over at the Saints last night. It was supposed to be a double-header consisting of two seven-inning games, starting at 6pm. Figured that two games at about two hours each, plus a half-hour break in-between, and we'd be home by 11. Nope. First a ten-inning game, and then an eight-inning game (both into extra innings). At least the Saints won both of them.
• Information wave is banning the RIAA from it's network. Turnabout's fair play, eh? [scripting]
• A dose of madness Forty years ago, two psychiatrists adminstered history's largest dose of LSD. Johan Jensen reports on the epoch-defining experiment The dose was 297 mg (yes, milligrams -- one-to-five-hundred micrograms is a typical human dosage) in an elephant. Within a couple hours, the elephant was dead. Harsh! [fark!]
• Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger. Will it work? Well, Nick Denton's trying it out with Gizmodo and I guess we'll see. [nick denton]
• Bathtub Accessories for Satan This is your favorite rubber duckie gone bad! They even have one that glows in the dark. [Reed]
• The Froy Marriage Test tells you whether the gal of your dreams is marriage material. And what the odds are that you'll marry her. [nick denton]
• Patrick Di Justo's T-Shirts are for those who aren't happy the way things are going in America at the moment. [some gal]
• Town struggles with abundance of people with the same name, and it's not Ole or Lena.

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

• The MN State Fair starts today. Minnesota State Fair memories last a lifetime presents a whole slew of fair-related links (along the right side) if you're interested. [strib]
• M. Giant over at Velcrometer (one of the Damn Hell Ass Kings) seems to have the same cold I do. Blegh. [some guy]
• Minnesota issues West Nile advisory, but I don't have the stiff neck, nausea or vomiting, so I've probably just got a cold.
• Vertical Litter You've seen the signs. They're at nearly every street corner these days, asking you to "Work at Home" for big money and known as street spam, bandit, snipe and vertical litter. Various groups are working to purge their environment of this unsightly signage which they say are an eyesore that dilutes legitimate advertisements. One wonders what they think of sectarian memorials to dead drunk drivers. In any case, I think that wheat-pasted Obey Giant posters should be exempt. [Reed]
• Denver Man Gets Check From Telemarketer. Score one for the good guys. [fark!]
• Earthlink Software To Block Pop-Up Ads. It's their first major software upgrade in three years. [fark!]
• The Anti-Spam Haiku sounds like a very clever idea. Possibly too clever.... In fact, Cory responds with Why haiku can't solve the spam problem. [cam and boing boing]

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

• Got rained out at the Saints game last night. At least we managed to finish cooking and eating before the rain got heavy. They'll play two on Thursday, making the game(s) start earlier, which will be a problem, since the folks I was going with have to work real jobs and can't duck out an hour earlier. Oh well, that's part of the fun of outdoor baseball.
• Timothy Lynch Remembers Ruby Ridge. Ten years ago today a federal marshall killed Randy Weaver's dog, then his son, then his wife. And spent the next nine years covering it up and trying to protect one of the murderers. [instapundit]
• Drug raid raises concerns - it seems the police in Howell, MI (which is halfway between Detroit and Lansing) used the USA-PATRIOT act provisions for secret search warrants to search for drugs. Remember, at least one of your senators voted for that law, and both of 'em did if you live anywhere but Wisconsin. [endwar]
• PublicData.Com has an awful lot of data available. Spooky.
• PGP Corporation has been formed to rescue PGP from Network Associates. [some guy]
• NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports. [some gal]
• Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision [registration required, popups]. John Ashcroft is showing his colors as an enemy of liberty. [some guy]

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

• Hey, it's Kevin Sullivan's (pdf) birthday, too. I better remember to save a piece of cake for him for after the game.
• Sudafed 24-Hour Tablets sounded like such a good idea. But apparently noon is the wrong time for me to take them, because the peak effect seemed to hit me about 4am. Wide awake and completely dried out. Bleagh.
• There's a bill coming before Congress to Save Internet Radio. Perhaps you should talk to your representative... or maybe you should just encourage internet radio stations to move offshore, not unlike PIrate Radio. [boing boing and doc]
• Godless Americans March on Washington - November 2, 2002 It's our turn now! Only 75 days until the march!
• What would you say if you could have a Seance where you talked to Jim Morrison? Or Shari Lewis and Lambchop?
• breakfast of UFOlogists: Crop Circle Cereal If possible, actual grain from a certifiably genuine circle formation can be obtained and the cereal could contain a small percentage of this. [Reed, via e-Skeptic Newsletter]
• How to build yourself a Desktop Cell Phone. [cam]

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

• Summer colds just aren't any fun. And somehow I'm lucky enough to have my second cold of the summer at the moment. Sorry for the lax (and late) linkage lately, but that kind of thing's just going to happen sometimes. In fact, I think I'm probably going to take weekends off for a while, even if I'm not sick. Weekends are the slowest times anyhow, so hopefully that won't upset too many of you. I'm also hoping that by taking the weekends off from putting together a bunch of links, I can maybe make some long-needed progress on the software that sits behind the scenes around here.
• Proposal for new baseball leagues The Vodkapundit proposes a competitor to the MLB system with a number of rules that will purportedly balance the existing advantages that major markets have over smaller ones. What he misses of course is that such might be achieved by a clever merging of the Independent leagues. [Reed]
• Baseball Talks Set To Resume, but there have been eight time MLB has negotiated with players since 1972, and eight strikes.
• Vision Quest: A half century of artificial-sight research has succeeded. And now this blind man can see. [boing boing]
• Man splashes office with paint, police say - not just any office, though -- it was the office of direct marketer from hell Advo. Heck, where's my white paint when I need it?
• Are geeks in government a good idea? Or would they be, since there aren't any now? [some guy]
• Have you been Zillafied? The latest update on Davezilla vs. Toho. If you happen to get in a similar sort of situation, The Chilling Effects Clearinhouse may be your friend. [davezilla]
• The Official Car Talk Guide To Civil Driving. [fark!]

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

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

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

• Minnesota DNR closing overnight camping at 24 state parks due to budget shortfalls.
• Hit me with your best shot, says this human target. Not the best job, I'm thinking. Get shot at (with paintball guns) for 8 hours a day? No thanks. [fark!]
• Doggles sunglasses for dogs offer UV protection for dogs eyes. And they look cool. Or dorky. [boing boing]
• Be It Ever So Humble: Trash Home. Earth Ships - an idea for houses built from recycled materials that made some noise in the US in the 70s is now catching on int he rest of the world. [boing boing]
• Beer may be good for you Woo-Hoo! Now I don't have to feel so bad about all those years of havin' one or two (ok ... sometimes 3-4) brewskies each evening. Seems I was just helping my heart out, and warding off going crazy. [some guy]
• * c i r c l e m a k e r s * What with the popularity of the new M. Night Shyamalan movie Signs, it was time to post a crop circle site. This guy is really into them. [some guy]
• Local "News and Art" Weekly City Pages has a pretty good article on Critical Mass. [Jim]
• Teens learn tricks from porn Nearly 70 percent of Chinese teenagers get their information about sex from pornography which worries Chinese officials who think they should be getting it in the locker room instead. [fark!]
• Lawmen keeping county safe from G-string danger. The headline sets a pretty good tone for the article. [fark!]
• G, more strings attached: The popularity of G-strings among women has hit an all-time high, according to underwear experts. The down-side? Well, it seems many of the sales are going to gals who were previously going commando. I'm not so sure it's a net-win situation. [fark!]

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

• Fees Force College Stations to Stop Webcasting, but not all. Some College Stations are Sticking It Out is a very partial list. [doc]
• If you want to support for-fee downloadable music, check out EMusic. For $10 per month (one-year subscription required), you get all the MP3s (few that are currently popular, but they've got a lot of obscure back-catalog stuff) you can eat. [some guy]
• Dan Gillmor weighs in with We must engage in copyright debate. Hurry up and read it quick before it's gone from the web. [some guy]
• LAWYERS, TIGGERS and BEARS, OH MY!, In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Lawyers, and the Stories Begin. Trial starts next March unless they reach a settlement before then, which seems unlikely. [boing boing]
• File-swapping foes exert P2P pressure: Now, however, the entertainment industry is revising its strategy. The new plan appears to extend the target beyond companies with an apparent declaration of legal warfare against individuals who the industry believes are swapping illicit songs or movies through peer-to-peer networks. The outcome could include jail time for those convicted of wrongful file swapping. [scripting]
• Report: Kazaa, Morpheus rave on: The Yankee Group predicts 7.44 billion unlicensed audio files will be swapped in 2005, up from 5.16 billion among consumers aged 14 and older in 2001. After 2005, Yankee predicts free music swapping will begin to decline. Yankee projects 6.33 billion unlicensed audio files will be swapped in 2006. [scripting]
• Hollywood's private war for social control. The Justice Department should focus on protecting intellectual property. Wasn't there a war on terrorism that was supposed to be pretty important, too? [some guy]

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

• Zilla is winning, 11-0 - A followup on the Zilla mark. [davezilla]
• Yesterday, I decided I needed a walk for lunch. I swung by Andrew Presbyterian to take a couple pictures of the big hole in the building

  Church fall down go boom

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  (caused basically by years of deferred maintenance - that church needed work a lot more than the one next to me did), then down to Whitey's for some lunch, Lien's Bookshop to browse a bit and pick up some reading material, then down to the riverfront where rather than reading as I'd planned, I sat and watched this little guy

  Little guy getting lunch

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  chowing down. He'd come up with empty cheeks, and after a minute or two his head would be nearly three times as wide

  That's good food

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  as before, and he'd be back down into the brush along the river.
• Baseball's woes aren't limited to the major leagues, but will hit the Saints as well, or that's what Doug Grow would have us believe. But Marv Goldklang is in town to talk with the city of St. Paul about a new stadium again. For the other side of the story, see Save Midway [strib]
• 15 things to do to save baseball, according to Sports Illustrated. They've got some good suggestions. [fark!]
• Move, hush, and back off - some tips for everyday life. [instapundit]

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

• No update today. Sorry, but I spent the wee hours first listening to my stupid neighbor and his psycho girlfriend fight, and then waiting for the cops to calm things down so I could sleep. Feh.

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

• I realize I've been lax about putting up new recipes, so I typed up the recipe for kedgeree that I cooked at the ballpark a month ago for Sunday breakfast.
• The Perseid Meteor Shower Peak is tonight between 5 and 8 pm (CDT) tonight. Either this morning (I didn't wake up quite early enough) or tomorrow morning are the best viewing from North America. [fark!]
• Tales of the Plush Cthulhu - a band of innocent stuffed animals releases a fearsome force on the universe. [boing boing]
• The War On Drugs Clock tracks the damage done. [instapundit]
• In Goodbye little dragon guy!, Davezilla tells how Toho, the holders of the Godzilla trademark, are threatening him unless he removes the little dragon guy from the top of his blog. [davezilla]
• 81-year-old foils 2 burglars with derringer (warning - popups) - some old guys are not to be trifled with. [fark!]

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

• Plain Layne got a new host (has since Thursday, but I'm slow at getting to things) for her blog.
• It's been almost a month since Dave Ray's last Health Update. There was some good news in July, and hopefully things are heading in the right direction in August.
• Minnesota's close encounter of another kind talks about the first (and so far, only) crop-circles to appear in Minnesota. [strib]
• Before September 11 - The Secret History. A long article about how the White House was thinking about attacking Al Qaeda. [some guy]
• The Evolving Threat From Weapons Of Mass Destruction In The Middle East Spooky shit, kids. [nick denton]

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

• Weapon goes off near Barr: Nobody was in any danger. We were handling it safely, except that it was loaded, Widener said. All Guns Are Loaded is one of the first things they teach you about handling guns. At a bare minimum, Widener is an idiot. Thankfully, Bob Barr, in spite of his many shortcomings (like also not checking to be sure whether the gun was loaded or not), knows which end of a gun to keep pointed away from people.
• 230 Ways to Confuse/Annoy Your Roommate. A long and classic list. [boing boing]
• Poke the Penguin. Heh! [redsugar muse]
• There's Driver fury over Euro cycle laws which would make the driver of a car liable for any damage caused in a car-bicycle collision, no matter whose fault it was.

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

• Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps. -Emo Philips
• Fax.com fined $5.4 million for junk faxes. They think their first amendment rights are being trampled. I think they didn't get fined heavily enough. [strib]
• Edsger Wybe Dijkstra 1930 - 2002. R.I.P. [scripting]
• Phallic, oozing Lollipop gets parents all hot and bothered in Singapore. The Fr-ooze pop comes from the US, but I'd never heard of it here before. If you squeeze it just right and suck on it, it'll spurt in your mouth. Oh baby. [fark!]
• Salon.com's When neighbors attack! (premium content) points out that if you call TIPS to snitch on someone, you actually get an operator from America's Most Wanted. Apparently they already had the infrastructure in place, so.... [boing boing]
• Mark Fiore's Citizen freedom fighters is a flash animation (with sound) commenting on perhaps a better use for the citizen spies created by TIPS (also on Salon). [some gal]
• Labor Union Supports Bush TIPS Plan, and here I thought the Teamsters were a good union (in the kicking the shit out of anyone who gets in the way of Teamsters sense). Guess that'll learn me. [flutterby]
• Apple to Slam Lid on Mac OS 9, probably in January 2003. [some guy]
• Oh, and to the guy (or possibly gal) busy googling.... I still don't have pictures of Julia Roberts' Tits. Sorry, man.

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

• There's a report in The Guardian (among other places) about commercial satellite photos of the recent expansion of a US airbase in Qatar. The actual are available online from Global Security [Jim]
• Hmm. Dave Winer was Singin' in the Rain (the initial post is gone now, but I have a snapshot). I bet he's got a happy feeling going on. But when I see the lyrics, I don't think of Gene Kelly. I think of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, kicking the stuffing out of someone. Not the same feeling at all, is it? [scripting]
• I've tweaked my Archives a bit. Now the monthly view gives you all the days in an expanded form, rather than collapsed. It'll make the monthly views a lot slower to load, but you'll actually be able to see everything. I'm also adding a "last month" link to the bottom of all the monthly archives so you can move back in time more easily. I haven't figured out if I'm going to do "yesterday/tomorrow" links on each day's archive, but it's a possiblity.
• Pirated Sites!! Not just a single page, like happened to me (and still got found fairly quickly), but entire sites. [zeldman]
• Internet attack fizzles after dramatic warning from FBI, but then even looking at their warning, I don't see what the big deal is. People trying to hack websites is a daily thing. [strib]
• The Warholiser, put together by the Modern Tate in London, will give you your fifteen minutes of fame. [zeldman]
• A woman's debit card gets stolen and she ends up a couple hundred pounds richer. The thief bet on the horses with the stolen card and won, and the victim gets to keep the money, which was deposited back to her account. [fark!]
• The North Pole's moving to Russia. It's had it with Canada and has moved something like 500 miles in the past 50 years. [fark!]

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

• Seen on a phone-junction-box

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• Here's another solution to spam: a throwaway domain name where you create a new email address for every company you submit your email to. When one gets spammed (and they will), just set SpamAssassin to flag everything coming to that account as spam. [cam]
• Those Day-Dream Believers, Dave Kopel & Robert Racansky ask What if the government had to obey gun-control laws? [instapundit]
• The fiction behind national security and how it's been quite a while that the federales have bene able to get bookstores' records. But it got a lot worse last year. [some guy]
• Copyright bill will create vigilantes: American movie, recording and software executives could be prohibited from entering Australia or extradited to face criminal charges if a copyright protection bill before the US Congress passes into law. If the Berman Bill passes as it stands, it'll put the US at odds with countries that make hacking into computers that belong to other people illegal. [boing boing]
• Speaking of tourism... Radioactive Site Is Opened To Tourists in Missouri.
• Monitor's Turret raised - this is just cool. [Jim]

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

• Coffman Union: almost done.

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  You can tell lately that school's about to start at the University of Minnesota. All the frats have their signs up for Rush Week, construction projects are nearing completion, and all the lawns on-campus are getting mowed this week. Plus there's a bunch of confused-looking kids running around trying to find things.

  The river flats. The parking lot, used by the construction workers, is grassy again.

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  In just four weeks, they'll all be parking in my neighborhood while they go to class.
• Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuilt Court of Appeals, in Mattel v. MCA (PDF), finishes the opinion with The parties are advised to chill. Found this and a bunch of other fine commentary about trademarks at The Trademark Blog.
• The Principles of Newspeak [Any word] could be negative by adding the affix un-, or could be strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still greater emphasis doubleplus-. Thus, for example, uncold meant warm while pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, very cold and superlatively cold. It's all part of the Newspeak Dictionary.[Reed]
• Quartz anti-aliasing: Jaggies be gone! but at what price? At the price of readability. Blegh. On Mac OS 9, I typically have anti-aliasing set to kick in at about 18 points, if at all. And when CodeWarrior Pro 7 would change the setting every time you ran it, I resorted to hex-editing the binary to fix it. It was that annoying to me. If I wanted blurry text, I wouldn't buy good monitors. [zeldman]
• Tat's the Way Mac Heads Like It. Apple-inspired tattoos people have gotten. He's working from a very small sample, I'm betting. [boing boing]

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

• Janis Ian - fallout from the article I pointed to a while back. [scripting]
• The Other Ones a Grateful Dead cover band of the highest order, and it sounds like the concerts at Alpine Valley went well, which means there will probably be a fall mini-tour.
• The End of Free TV? If widespread use of Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) results in rampant commercial skipping, will it force over-the-air broadcasters to start charging for content? You'd think not, given the spectrum grants to broadcasters. But then again HDTV was supposed to be part of that deal and it hasn't materialized. [And not much of the content is actually worth watching, anyhow. I seldom fill the 14-hour storage capacity of my TiVo in a week, and that's capturing all 5 Miami Vice reruns on cable, plus a 4-5 hour NASCAR race every week. -DaveP] [Reed, via theendoffree.com]
• Julie Meyer's Philosophy - Build counter-cyclically, and don't confuse brains with a bull-market. [nick denton]
• Ars Technica: Wireless Security Blackpaper tells you how you can best secure a wireless network today. IBM's Wireless security in this modern world has some similar information.[some guy]
• Doug Baron's Radio Weblog has a politically incorrect joke... Three men are sittin' on a bench. one's a texan wearing a stetson, one's a muslim wearing a turban, and the last an apache with an eagle feather woven in his hair.... [scripting]

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

• Selig says Twins shining season is 'aberration' and they'll never be profitable without a new stadium. Isn't it funny how the owner of the next-closest major-league team to the Twin Cities keeps trying to kill off the Twins? [strib]
• Dialing 211 for crisis, social services starts today in over half of Minnesota.
• BookCrossing.com lets you play Where's George with books. [some gal]
• Davezilla's Top Twenty Blogger Insults and Anatomical knowledge gleaned from cartoons are both pretty darned funny. [davezilla]
• Chuq von Rospach's Chuqui.com rantings about fan websites has a good perspective on how to keep in the clear of people trying to protect their trademark (like the NY Mets). [scripting]
• Don't Link to Us! lists sites that try to prohibit you from linking to them. Silly people. [scripting]
• BlogTree.com lets you map the genealogy of your blog. [scripting]
• How to Hide CSS from Buggy Browsers so they don't make your pages render funny. [zeldman]

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

• Heartland AIDSRide calls it quits because the number of riders kept decreasing.
• How Gray Is My Valley / Callow youth is out, experience, maturity are in at high-tech firms in Silicon Valley. I know a couple of the folks interviewed for this story, and passed the reporter's name on to them when she initially asked me for an interview. Cool.
• Deadheads trekking to Wisconsin for concert by surviving Grateful Dead members this weekend.
• Surprise! The Italian Police planted molotov cocktails on G8 protesters last year.
• Back in April, when I hurt my knee, I went to the doctor. I thought I'd paid all the bills for the visit a month or so ago, but this month I got two more bills. One from a radiologist for reading the x-rays and second billing for x-rays (at cheaper price than I'd paid to the clinic where they were taken) from my doctor. And it got me thinking about why medicine is so expensive? My conclusion: it's because we're getting routinely screwed. The radiologist who read the x-rays did so after my doctor had already looked at them and decided how we should treat my knee. The second reading changed nothing, and I wasn't informed of the results. At best, it provided my doctor with confirmation of what he saw in the pictures. The second billing for the x-rays was a mistake and was corrected with a phone-call. But what's the cause of the problem? Regulation. There are a ton of regulations, and they're not uniformly enforced. The cost of compliance with all of these regulations makes big corporations better able to compete than individual doctors, so the doctors join a larger clinic or hospital in self-defense. And finally, large corporations with their layers of bureaucracy can double-bill or commit other crimes with a much smaller chance of paying for their misdeeds. Would it have made a difference if I'd had an insurance company on my side? I don't think so. I suspect they'd have just paid the duplicate bills and bumped my premium, rather than checking into it and discovering I was being billed twice for the same services.
• A counter-argument to people who say There oughta be a law.

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

• It's time for Coffee-thon 2002! Caffeine is a good thing, right?
• Boob Licking Scam Busted. Gals who would offer to let you lick their breasts. And then the fun would begin. Good thing I didn't have the opportunity to be tempted by this scam - I'm pretty sure I would have fallen for it. [boing boing]
• Scientists reveal the secret of cuddles and why they feel good. It's got something to do with a Good Touch. [boing boing]
• West Nile Virus Spreading Faster Than Expected and will probably reach California within a couple of years.
• Deaths of 3 men probed for link to deer disease. Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk sure looks like it might be related to BSE. [strib]

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

I was sick in early July, and that led to another bout of movie-watching while I laid around feeling miserable. Here's the reviews:

• Apocalypse Now (1979) - This is a movie I've liked since I first saw it on the big screen at theSkyway Theater in 1982 (before they chopped it into multiple smaller screens). It's a powerful movie, and there's plenty of violence, both implied and explicit. I still like the movie, but watching it on the tube is nothing like watching it on a truly big screen. 8 of 10.
• Big Lebowski, The (1998) - The Coen brothers take on bowling. Er, sorta. Roger Ebert calls it a genial, shambling comedy about a human train wreck. Yeah, maybe it's not quite as good of a movie as Fargo (their previous movie) was, but it's still a damn fine movie. Jeff Bridges does a great job as The Dude. Don't expect a nice linear plot - as with The Dude's day-to-day life, there's not always a clear progression. But as The Dude says, Fortunately, I'm adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug, uh, regimen to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber. 9 of 10.
• Roman Holiday (1953) - It's pretty rare that I'll actually watch a whole movie on cable, rather than on DVD. Saw this on one of the classic movie channels and fell in love with Audrey Hepburn. But I'm not the only one. In this romantic comedy, she's pretty alluring. Gregory Peck does a good job of starting out crusty and falling in love with her. Lovable rogue? Dunno, the guy's got smoove. 9 of 10.
• Single White Female (1992) - It's a disturbing movie about a disturbing chick. It's pretty good as that sort of movie goes, but I guess I'm just not entranced with the "psychological thriller" genre. I was pretty entranced while watching it, and definitely got my money's worth, but I don't know as I'll watch it a second time, so even though it deserves better, it only gets a 6 of 10.
• Entrapment (1999) - Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. They're both fun to watch, and I generally like action-adventure movies. The plot's not so much thin, as implausible, but the action is well-done and as I said, it's fun to watch them on-screen. There's the obligatory hints of romance, too. But it was basically good-looking mind-candy. No real problem with that, but I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough, so it only gets a 5 of 10.
• Magnificent Seven, The (1960) - The Seven Samurai as a western. I'm a sucker for clear-cut good vs. bad movies, and this doesn't dissapoint. But there are some twists to the characters that make it even more enjoyable. 9 of 10.
• Cast Away (2000) - Well, it's pretty much all Tom Hanks, all the time. He's all alone on an island, and if you don't like Tom Hanks, you won't like the movie. But I kinda do like him. The ending was a little off, though. It just squeaks out an 8 of 10.
• Dog Day Afternoon (1975) - I don't remember how old I was when I first saw Dog Day Afternoon. Not much more than 13, I think. The movie's got a few twists, and a lot of compelling scenes from Pacino. The vague memory of those drew me in again, but the bank-robbery gone wrong just didn't seem as powerful this time around. Dunno. 7 of 10.
• Army of Darkness (1993) - I'm a sucker for Bruce Campbell, and this movie is a big part of the reason why. The third movie in the Evil Dead trilogy, it's the first of them that I saw, and I think I like it the best. But that's probably because it's less of a horror movie than a slapstick comedy, and that's what BC is good at. Fantasy-action-adventure-horror-comedy, now there's a genre! 8 of 10.
• Shanghai Noon (2000) - A fine Jackie Chan buddy-movie, this time set in the old west. A fair number of fight scenes, a good quantity of comedy, and a guy goes away happy. Yeah, there's a certain amount of mind-candy to it, but sometimes that's just what a guy needs. I'm giving it a 9 of 10.
• Logan's Run (1976) - A pretty cool science fiction movie for its time. And then along came Star Wars, and Logan's Run has been relegated to the bargain bins at the video store. It's probably got more meat to it than Star Wars, but I can't say that it's as enjoyable. It's still a good movie, but it probably won't see heavy rotation in the DVD player, and that's part of what I'm basing my ratings on. 6 of 10.
• Mad Max (1979) - In the late 90s they finally released the version with the original Australian dialog in the US. Now it's available on DVD. Cool! My biggest gripe with the movie was always the crappy dubbing of American voices on the movie, and that's been fixed. Tons of implied violence, but almost none actually shown. There's a good amount of suspense, too. And some pretty cool auto and motorcycle stunts. 10 of 10.
• The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) - Another master-thief and insurance adjuster movie (like Entrapment), but this time with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Tough call as to which leading couple is better between the two movies. And after having watched both of them, I think Entrapment suffers by comparison. Brosnan gets to do some cool stunts, and Rene Russo plays a good sexy (as opposed to Zeta-Jones' beautiful). Roger Ebert liked Entrapment more, I think I like Crown more, in spite of having seen the chopped-up-for-broadcast version, rather than the real movie. 6 of 10.
• Also see the rest of Dave's Movie Ratings for movies I watched in other months.

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