Yesterday, I spent most of the evening watering various sections of my lawn and garden that were dried out from the lack of rain around here. Almost as if I’d planned it, we got hit by a thunderstorm this morning (about 5:30) which gave most of the ground more water than it could handle. Except for the areas I’d watered yesterday, where the lawn had gone from feeling like astroturf on concrete to actually feeling like something living again. Those areas were able to absorb most of the pounding rain this morning, while the areas that didn’t get watered mostly shed the rain. Judging by the size of the river in my alley, most of my neighbors lawns had the rain run off them, too.
Beyond that, it warmed up enough again yesterday that the air-conditioning is running again, and probably will be for the forseeable future. Forecast highs are in the high 80s or 90s again through the weekend, and that’s just too warm for either me or my computer to be comfortable. But on the plus side, I got enough sleep last night, even with the thunderstorm waking me up at 5:30 this morning, that I have stuff for you to read.
- Since it’s the anniversary of the first manned moon-landing, Google is celebrating with Google Moon, which shows the Lunar Landing Sites. Cool. And there’s a spiffy easter-egg if you zoom in all the way (which is explained in the faq). [scottk]
- Speaking of Google, here’s a nice story of How Google Maps Got Me Out Of A Traffic Ticket from a guy in NYC. He could have done the same by bringing in a street map, but the tech-angle is reasonably cool. No word on whether he’ll be charged with stealing the open WiFi he used. [boing boing]
- The NRA has said Goodbye, Columbus, deciding not to hold its 2007 annual meeting there, since the Columbus City Council has banned scary-looking semi-automatic firearms. Good for the NRA. [war on guns]
- Now that they’ve almost settled the strike The NHL wants you... please? Well, my take is that I haven’t been much of an NHL fan since the North Stars left, and since MLB’s 1994 strike, I’ve been to maybe a couple dozen games, mostly out of town, when I want to see a new park in a city I’m visiting. Plus, most of the “innovations” MLB has tried (wild cards, realignment, and inter-league play) to draw fans back make me grumpy. I have no idea what the NHL will try to court their fans, but since I wasn’t much of a fan in the first place, I probably don’t matter to them. [press-patch]
- A new Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq, saying that many of the foreigners who’ve travelled to Iraq to blow up innocents are not rabid al-Qaeda members, but rather
young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet.
Yeah. They’re not radicalized, butLast October, 26 clerics in Saudi Arabia said it was the duty of every Muslim to go and fight in Iraq.
The war is also blamed onthe centuries-old struggle between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.
The article quotes The Global Research in International Affairs Center and the New America Foundation, but I haven’t been able to track down the actual study that’s quoted. [vowe] - Finally, just because I’m not sure that horse is dead, and it probably needs another kick, There Never Were Any Connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Note: your sarcasm detector should be going off now. [mitch]