Why Paris Hilton Is Famous

• Why Paris Hilton Is Famous (Or Understanding Value In A Post-Madonna World)

  I’m amused by Paris Hilton.

  If Madonna was Marketing 1.0 then Paris Hilton is Marketing 2.0.

  She’s a real life version of what value is and how it is created today.

Why Ban Books About Banning Books When We Can Just Burn Them

• Parent criticizes book ‘Fahrenheit 451’:

  A Caney Creek High School dad is fired up because the Conroe Independent School District uses the book “Fahrenheit 451” as classroom reading material.

  Alton Verm, of Conroe, objects to the language and content in the book. His 15-year-old daughter Diana, a CCHS sophomore, came to him Sept. 21 with her reservations about reading the book because of its language. “The book had a bunch of very bad language in it,” Diana Verm said. “It shouldn’t be in there because it’s offending people. … If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all.”

  Alton Verm filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Materials” Thursday with the district regarding “Fahrenheit 451,” written by Ray Bradbury and published in 1953. He wants the district to remove the book from the curriculum.

  “It’s just all kinds of filth,” said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read “Fahrenheit 451.”

He wants to ban a book about book banning that he hasn’t read during banned book week.

I think my brain just infarcted.

How To Recognize A Stroke

• Always good to know:

  A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim quickly he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed and getting to the patient within 3 hours, which is tough. Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. But doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

  1. Ask the individual to SMILE.
  2. Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
  3. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently, ie: It is sunny out today)

  If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

  Via bb.

CBS To Shoot Pilot Based On Apple's "Genius Bars"

• CBS inspired by “Genius” pilot

  LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - CBS has committed to shoot a comedy pilot called “Genius Bar,” written by two former producers of “That ’70s Show.”

  Based on an idea by consumer marketing expert Krishnan Menon, the project explores the interactions between people who work at a place similar to the Genius Bar at the Apple stores and the cool, hip and beautiful employees at a nearby Abercrombie & Fitch-type store.

Because if there’s two things that go together, it’s “genius” and “former producers of That ’70s Show”.

How To Defeat Internet Explorer

• Dreaming in Browser Swamp

  Why am I talking about them side-by-side with JavaScript? Because the standoff between Microsoft and the Forces of Neutrality (open standards and the like) is the main thing that’s holding JavaScript back. Nobody wants to build an amazingly cool website that only works in FireFox/Opera/(insert your favorite reasonably standards-compliant browser here). Because they’re focused on the short term, not the long term. It would only take one or two really killer apps for Mozilla to take back the market share from Microsoft. That, or a whole army of pretty good ones. People don’t like downloading new stuff (in general), and they also don’t like switching browsers. But they’ll do it if they know they have to in order to use their favorite app.

Daily Briefing: Firefly in HD, Last Croak Of The WB, Crocodile Hunting Stingrays Become The Hunted

• Universal HD airing Firefly in hi-def

  Starting this Sunday (Sept 24) with the two hour first episode. It’s paired with hi-def Battlestar Galactica.

• Florida State University To Phase Out Academic Operations By 2010

  Bowing to pressure from alumni, students, and a majority of teaching professors of Florida State University, athletic director Dave Hart Jr. announced yesterday that FSU would completely phase out all academic operations by the end of the 2010 school year in order to make athletics the school’s No. 1 priority.

• Fears of revenge attacks on stingrays over Irwin death

  At least ten stingrays have been found dead and mutilated on Australia’s eastern coast in the last week in what conservationists believe could be revenge attacks for the death of Steve Irwin, the popular naturalist and television personality.

• The WB airs Buffy, Angel, Dawson, Felicity pilots before going dark

  Night will kick off at 5 p.m. with the J.J. Abrams- and Matt Reeves-created “Felicity,” followed at 6 by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt’s “Angel.” The two-hour pilot to Whedon’s “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” will run in primetime from 7-9 p.m.

  Appropriately, “Dawson’s Creek” — the Kevin Williamson teen sudser that put the WB on the map — will be the final show to air on the Frog, running from 9-10 p.m.

  The WB disappeared a few weeks ago locally, leaving me unable to watch. We had MyNetworkTV telenovela recaps instead (the joy!). Farewell, mysterious talking frog.

• Hotel Minibar Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines

  The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet…

  Using such a standard key doesn’t provide much security, but it does allow Diebold to assert that their design uses a lock and key. Experts will recognize the same problem in Diebold’s use of encryption — they can say they use encryption, but they use it in a way that neutralizes its security benefits.

  Via boing boing.

• Comcast offers hints but no details about upcoming DVR service

  We’re planning to offer 32-35 HD channels (including broadcast) by the third quarter of 2007. (Note: Comcast now has around 20 national and local HD channels, depending upon the market.)

  We have an agreement with Panasonic to produce HD DVRs that will essentially double the amount of current DVR storage space. Those boxes should begin to rollout sometime in 2007. We’re also on track to begin making our co-branded TiVo service available later this year.

Daily Briefing: 2006 Sept 15: Philly Banned From Smoking & Harry Potter Banned From Flying

Philadelphia finally bans smoking in bars and restaurants:

Mayor Street has signed legislation prohibiting smoking from almost all Philadelphia bars and restaurants, ending weeks of speculation about whether the proposed ban would fall victim to City Hall politics.

The ban takes effect immediately. But the city still needs to figure out how to enforce it.

I suggest a strategic combination of me and water guns.

Airport security, the muggliest of muggles, tried to prevent J.K. Rowling from carrying-on her manuscript for the last Harry Potter book

British author J.K. Rowling says she won an argument with airport security officials in New York to carry the manuscript of the final “Harry Potter” book as carryon baggage.

Had security agents not relented, she said on her Web site, she might not have flown, she said in a posting dated Wednesday.

…

“The heightened security restrictions on the airlines made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven.

“A large part of it is handwritten and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the U.S.”

Patrick Smith screeds against the lack of outrage and accountability in air travel security in his latest column:

Be that as it may, why, in light of such startling revelations, have we seen a void of accountability? Why isn’t Chertoff being held accountable for scaring and harassing millions of travelers? Why has the Transportation Security Administration, under his control, been granted carte blanche to proceed with an indefinite set of carry-on luggage prohibitions that experts concede are ineffective? I previously chided both the airlines and a somnambulant traveling public for failing to express outrage over the senseless new luggage rules. That was before considering that the gantlet of prohibitions might have been cooked up in response to something that never really existed in the first place. Perhaps it’s not wholly fair to criticize fliers when, after all, they believed the threat to be genuine and imminent. Assuming it was not, I’ll tender the same basic question put forth in this space a week ago: Where’s the outrage?

Doug Morris, head of Universal, attacked MySpace and YouTube with a vauge threat of impending doom:

“The poster child for (user-generated media) sites are MySpace and YouTube,” said Morris, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters. “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.”

He added, “How we deal with these companies will be revealed shortly.”

It’s entirely possible he’s hooked up with these guys:

Morgan Wilkins, an independent contractor hired by the College Republican National Committee to recruit students to the party, was described as planning events such as “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” and “Fun with Guns Day,” in an article written Tuesday by The Michigan Daily.

“Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” would involve volunteers posing as illegal immigrants and hiding on campus while students try to find them for prizes. For the “Fun with Guns” activity, students would shoot cardboard cutouts of Democratic leaders with BB or paintball guns.

And because you can never Wii too much, a clip from Game Videos featuring many upcoming Wii titles.

Daily Briefing: 2006 Sept 13

It’s a good thing marijuana’s still against the law because otherwise it might be helping people:

Recovering drug addicts who are infected with hepatitis C virus may stick to their medications better if they are allowed to use marijuana, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Smoking or eating cannabis may help them tolerate the side effects of the antivirals, which can clear the virus but often cause fevers, chills, and muscle and joint aches, the researchers said.

Bush to hold talks on Ali G creator after diplomatic row

US President George Bush is to host White House talks on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen, 35, creator of Ali G, has infuriated the Kazakhstan government with his portrayal of Borat, a bumbling Kazakh TV presenter.

And now a movie of Borat’s adventures in the US has caused a diplomatic incident.

The opening scene, which shows Borat lustily kissing his sister goodbye and setting off for America in a car pulled by a horse, had audiences in stitches when it was first shown last week.

Machine-readable data and human-memorable stories:

If newsrooms begin to build up storehouses of structured data, someone’s going to need to look through them for patterns and insights. Why are state corporate tax returns dropping in a booming economy? If twice as many restaurants opened this year as last year, why were there only half as many health citations? Are sunspots governing the fortunes of the local high school football team? (OK, so there’s also room for fun and nonsense.) This is the kind of work newsrooms remain uniquely well-situated to perform.

In other words, there’s still plenty of room for the old-fashioned journalistic roles of fact-finder, truth-teller, story-creator. The quest to make more information more useful to machines isn’t an end in itself; it’s a way-station along the way to telling new kinds of stories — lovingly mined out of machine-organized data and then composed in “big blobs of text” for human consumption.

Daily Briefing: 2006 Sept 12

Olberman, again:

When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11”… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you.

Mike Davidson on the VW Eos:

Starting at $28,000, this is the car I would be buying right now if I drove more than 30 miles a week and was in the market for a car. It’s fast but not too fast. High-end but not so expensive that you’d worry about a door ding here and there. And how can you not love the retractable hard top? I haven’t even driven one yet but if it drives like a typical Volkswagen, it’s probably money on the road.

Son Gets Marijuana for Doing Homework

My reaction from headline to end of the story changed considerably:

A woman admitted to smoking marijuana daily with her 13-year-old son to reward him for completing his homework. Amanda Lynn Livelsberger, 30, pleaded guilty to several charges Monday and will be sentenced Nov. 27.

Not that bad.

The woman also said she also smoked marijuana with two of her son’s friends, ages 17 and 18, police said.

Slightly worse.

The 18-year-old also told investigators he had also bought heroin from Livelsberger.

WTF.

Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 08: Green Day & U2! Apple & Video! Ellen & Oscars! ABC & Lies! Barbie & Dog!

Green Day to record a song with U2:

As promised, we are very proud to unveil the big news we’ve hinted at. In the coming weeks, we’ll be going into the studio with U2 to record a cover of the song “The Saints Are Coming,” which was originally recorded by Scottish punk band, The Skids. We were asked by U2 to record the song with them to benefit Music Rising (www.musicrising.org), an organization that replaces instruments musicians lost in Hurricane Katrina’s wake. One year later, the devastation is still fresh in our minds, and we’d like to keep it in yours. New Orleans has always been a special city to us, being a hotbed of music and creativity, and it’s hard to believe parts of the gulf region still remain devastated. We feel that it’s important to continue to raise awareness.

Everyone expects Apple to announce movie downloads next Tuesday, and Robert X. Cringely bets on Apple also releasing a video version of the Airport Express:

However, the most interesting announcement I am expecting will be the Video Express, which I sure hope is finally here. If you don’t remember, this is a gizmo that plugs into a power outlet just like an AirPort Express, only where the AirPort Express sends WiFi AND audio around your house, the Video Express will send WiFi and audio AND video.

This is key, because what’s been missing throughout this conversion to Internet television has been a way to incorporate our user device of choice — the TV. People don’t really want to watch movies on their computer screens. They’ll do it, some of them, but most people won’t, so for the Internet and downloadable video market to explode the way it is supposed to do, we need an easy way to get the movies out of our computers and onto our TV screens. The Video Express will do this in an elegant and typically-Apple fashion. It’s a simple device with no user interface at all, just ports. You plug it in the wall, it finds your WiFi network and video servers, then makes those servers available to your TV. But of course it is Front Row and iTunes-only, thanks — an iPodlike extension of your hard drive, viewable through your TV. And since the H.264 video decoding takes place in hardware inside the Video Express, your TV doesn’t even have to be a fancy one.

He thought this back January too, so I’m remaining cautiously optimistic, but this would be the Killer Video App. If Apple prices it reasonably ($149), I’ll order one in a hot second, if it does hi-def, they can charge whatever the hell they want.

Next year’s Oscars to be hosted by Ellen DeGeneres:

“Ellen DeGeneres was born to host the Academy Awards,” said producer Laura Ziskin in a statement. “I can already tell she is going to set the bar very high for herself and therefore for all of us involved in putting on the show. Now all we need is a lot of great movies.”

Ellen’s response:

“When Laura Ziskin called, I was thrilled,” said DeGeneres in a statement. “There’s two things I’ve always wanted to do in my life. One is to host the Oscars. The second is to get a call from Laura Ziskin. You can imagine that day’s diary entry.”

ABC, realizing they’re about to ruin that whole liberal media thing, decides to recut parts of The Path to 9/11:

Under growing pressure from Democrats and aides to former President Bill Clinton, ABC is re-evaluating and in some cases re-editing crucial scenes in its new mini-series “The Path to 9/11” to soften its portrait of the Clinton administration’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, according to people involved in the project.

Among the changes, ABC is altering one scene in which an actor playing Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, abruptly hangs up on a C.I.A. officer during a critical moment in a military operation, according to Thomas H. Kean, a consultant on the ABC project and co-chairman of the federal Sept. 11 commission.

And I don’t even know what to say about Barbie’s new dog with mimicked actual dog functions.

Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 07: Of Mice And Vast Right Wing Conspiracies

Because nothing you see on TV is allowed to be true, scientists discovered that mice don’t like cheese:

Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University, backed by the Stilton Cheese Makers’ Association, have found that mice prefer foods with a high sugar content. What will really attract a mouse into the trap is muesli.

Following up the ABC “Path to 9/11” issue, Glenn Greenwald rounds-up some unlikely support, and notes:

Unlike CBS did for the much less consequential The Reagans, Disney/ABC, at least for now, is refusing to refrain from broadcasting this proaganda. C&L has the video (and transcript) of the statement from Disney/ABC here, in which they attack critics of the film by claiming: “No one has seen the final version of the film–because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible.”

That makes no sense. The only reason anyone knows anything about the content of the film is because they sent it around to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt precisely to induce them to comment (favorably) on it. If it’s “premature and irresponsible” to comment on the film because it’s not complete yet, why did they send around screeners to (right-wing) commentators? It only became “irresponsible” once the commentary went from drooling partisan praise to critiques of the film’s fabrications and inaccuracies.

In addition to the obvious inequities, CBS’ quick and complete cave-in to conservative protests over The Regans, set next to ABC’s combative attack on critics of this film, tell you all you need to know about the merits of the incessent, petulant complaints from Bush supporters about the “liberal MSM.”

Scholastic, who prepared a classroom companion for the “docudrama”, pulled their existing guides:

Educational media giant Scholastic, Inc. announced it’s dropping its original classroom companion guides to a controversial new docudrama, and replacing them with materials stressing critical thinking and media literacy.

Instead, new materials will focus on:

1. Media Literacy - what is a docudrama; how does it differ from a documentary; what are the differences between factual reporting and a dramatization?

2. Background to 9/11 - what are some of the causes of unrest in the Middle East and other parts of the world that give rise to attacks on the U.S. and other countries?

3. Geography and Culture — there is a long history of conflict in the Middle East. How well do students understand each of the countries involved and what influences their behavior?

Actual dissemination of complex issues? Like media literacy? That’s just silly.

And from the TV Sometimes Helps department, a nice write-up of Steve Irwin:

A blond surfer-ish conservationist-cum-cable star who mugs for the camera and waxes poetic in the presence of venomous snakes can’t be a major force for good in the worldwide roulette game that is species survival. Or can he?

On the face of it, animals Down Under, especially the scary and uncuddly ones, seem to have had an easier time of it since Irwin went on the air. He strenuously protested wildlife hunts in his home country, and his personal objections to crocodile safaris had a lot to do with the Australian government’s decision to impose a ban.

Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 06: Grab Bag

Facebook gets kind of gay:

Now, every time you do anything on Facebook, you issue a bulletin for all of your friends. Now no one will miss the fact that you think you look horrible in a picture, or that you didn’t accept an invitation to someone’s event, or that you wrote what you considered to be a funny item for your list of activities (“Trying not to incriminate myself on facebook to all my future employers”) and then thought better of it ten minutes later and took it down.

Facebook said the changes were aimed at advancing the core mission of the site, which is to keep people abreast of their friends’ lives. “What we wanted to create is a news ticker, if you will, of the activity of people’s friends in their network,” Facebook’s director of marketing, Melanie Deitch, told CampusProgress.org.

This is why I hate the social networking sites. I don’t care you’re recording every thing I do, but don’t tell everyone about it. And then call it a feature! Violate that veil of privacy and you’re the next Friendster.

More commentary from the ex-sportscaster:

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

Variety reports on the Apple/Amazon movie rumors:

Amazon.com will launch its movie download service later this week, numerous sources confirmed, while Apple will start selling films on Tuesday as part of iTunes.

Though they’re launching near simultaneously, the two movie stores will be different. Amazon.com is believed to have most, and possibly all, of the major studios on board, including Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros., MGM and Lionsgate, according to sources close to the deals.

The only studio that will definitely be part of Apple’s movie store at launch is Disney. Other studios will likely join iTunes in the next year.

If you need something to watch those movies on, I’d get a new iMac with a 24-inch 1920x1200 widescreen LCD at the low cost of $1,999.00. True 1080p display with room left over!

And Most Importantly…

Suri exists!

Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 05: Penn State, Macs, & Wishing Stars

The Quotable Joe Paterno

The raindrops keep falling on Joe Pa’s head:

The 79-year-old coach refuses to wear a hat, insisting he would look ridiculous. Asked if he would wear one if members of the media chipped in to buy him a hat, Paterno said: “Considering what you guys would probably contribute, no.”

And he still likes coaching football:

More than seven decades after the University of Chicago’s retirement guidelines forced him to step down, the legendary coach is remembered as a football Methuselah, a wrinkled, white-haired man who seemingly patrolled the sidelines forever.

Stagg was 70 and had coached 41 seasons when he left after the 1932 season. Surely, sportswriters noted at the time, no one would ever coach so long at one institution again.

But when he runs onto the Beaver Stadium turf this afternoon for Penn State’s season opener against Akron, 79-year-old Joe Paterno will have caught up to the Grand Old Man of the Midway.

Paterno is in his 41st season as the Nittany Lions’ head coach. That’s the same number of years Stagg (1892-1932) served at Chicago.

…

“I just want to get on with this season,” Paterno said. “I wouldn’t know whether I tied Stagg’s record for longevity or not. I hadn’t thought about that. Now that you mentioned it is the first time that I knew about it.”

In Other Penn State News

Penn State hates tailgating:

Hoping to cut down on underage drinking and create a safer postgame environment, Penn State is banning alcohol at parking-lot tailgate parties during football games inside Beaver Stadium.

Imbibing before kickoff and after the final whistle, though? Still OK.

Curbing drinking at a football game is like Paterno wearing a hat: It ain’t happening people.

Macintosh!

Mac Rumors: Adobe To Preview Universal Apps Next Week

A “sneak preview” will be shown of some Universal Binary versions of Adobe’s applications according to our source, however it does not appear as though any formal release is imminent.

Maybe new feature previews? That’d be nice. Last statement on release time indicated springish 2007.

Geek Patrol: Mac Performance: From the G3 to the Xeon

Looks at benchmarks from the different processors. With charts!

Politics!

Glenn Greenwald’s in need of a falling star:

If I had one wish, it would be for journalists everywhere to ingest this one extremely simple, undeniable fact — FISA, as written, allows the President to “listen in when Osama bin Laden is calling.” Under the law as it has existed for 28 years, “if al Qaeda is calling into the United States [the President can] know why they’re calling.” The “Terrorist Surveillance Program” doesn’t give the President the power to listen in on those calls because he already has that power under FISA.

Crocodile Hunter Killed By Not A Crocodile

“Crocodile Hunter” Irwin dies

Steve Irwin, the quirky Australian naturalist who won worldwide acclaim as TV’s khaki-clad “Crocodile Hunter”, was killed by a stingray barb through the heart while filming a new documentary on Monday.

Irwin, 44, tangled with some of the world’s most dangerous animals but he died in an extremely rare attack by a normally placid sea creature while he was diving on a reef off Port Douglas in northern Queensland.

We at The Document are saddened by his death (we’re fans of his movie), and can’t help but think this is an animal conspiracy. An attack by the likes of a crocodile he’d be expecting, the task instead fell to the normally docile stingray. The stingrays undoubtedly were all for it after years of young-child related touching in aquariums everywhere.

Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 03: Bonus Sunday Comic Edition

Originally linked on Boing Boing, xkcd is “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”.

I’ve courteously linked my favorites that I just sat and clicked through. 150 of them. I’m really bored. But they’re really funny. Especially the velociraptor ones.

The Cure

Stacey’s Dad

Curse Levels

Garfield

Velociraptors

Jeremy Irons

Profile Creation Flowchart

Family Circus

Computational Linguists

50 Ways

Blogofractal

Substitute

Delicious

Sandwich

Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 01: Sports & Science Friday

Live Science: 100 Years Ago: Football’s First Forward Pass

They called it the “projectile pass” back then.

On Sept. 5, 1906, Saint Louis University’s Bradbury Robinson tossed a pigskin to teammate Jack Schneider. It was a remarkably creative play for the era, one that ultimately became known as the forward pass.

The game was scoreless. According to SLU archives, head coach Eddie Cochems was frustrated with the team’s inability to move the ball. For weeks, they had been secretly practicing this new art of tossing the ball forward from a starting position behind the ear.

And so the football’s first air attack began.

And it started as you might expect, with an incompletion. Under the rules then, the ball was turned over to the opponent, Carroll College.

Live Science: Anger and Hostility May Damage Your Lungs

Researchers studied 670 men age 45 to 86. Initially, they gauged anger and hostility, ranking each man on a scale of 7 to 37. Then they measured lung function—how much air could be blown out in one second—on three separate occasions over an average of eight years.

Lung function was “significantly poorer” at the outset among those deemed more angry and hostile, and it got worse with these men at each examination. The findings held up after controlling for other factors, such as smoking and education, the researchers reported yesterday in the online version of the journal Thorax.

Naturally, in a study from last year:

Anger is good for you, as long as you keep it below a boil, according to new psychology research based on face reading.

New York Times: Greece Shocks U.S. Basketball Team

Fed up with its recent failures, USA Basketball assembled a new program with a new plan and a new coach in Mike Krzyzewski.

The end result was all too familiar.

Greece used a sizzling stretch of shooting across the middle two quarters to turn a 12-point deficit into a 14-point lead, and beat the Americans 101-95 Friday in the semifinals of the world championships.

”To lose any game is a shock to us,” U.S. star Carmelo Anthony said. ”We came in with the mentality to win the game and the gold medal.”

ESPN: Andre Agassi Still Likes To Win

Agassi was not supposed to have a chance against No. 8 seed Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus. This second-round U.S. Open match was supposed to provide the perfect stage for the graying ghost of tennis’ past to yield to the flesh-and-blood of tennis’ future. The tribute speeches had been delivered and folded back into pockets. Glasses were figuratively raised for the final toast.

Seth Wenig/AP Photo Although he went the distance, Agassi improved to 59-0 at the U.S. Open when winning the first two sets.

But Agassi opted to make the evening a competition rather than a ceremonial transition. He prevailed over Baghdatis in a 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 5-7, 7-5 thriller that surely will take over No. 1 on the list of Rain Delay Replays.

NASA: NASA Chooses Lockheed Martin To Build Orion

NASA chose the prime contractor Thursday for Orion, the shuttle successor that will return astronauts to the Moon.

On Thursday, NASA tapped Lockheed Martin to build its capsule-based Orion vehicle, seen here with circular solar arrays deployed in an artist’s interpretation of a flight to the International Space Station (ISS). Lockheed beat out the joint team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing in the Orion competition.

Like NASA’s current space shuttles, Orion vehicles are expected to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS, but are the core spacecraft for the agency’s Moon goals. The crew capsule will carry four-astronaut teams to launch toward the Moon. A secondary cargo or lunar lander carrier rocket will launch separately for Orion crews to dock with before leaving low-Earth orbit.

And college football kicks into full swing this weekend: Schedule.

In Other News…

Business Week: Nightmare Mortgages

For cash-strapped homeowners, it was a pitch they couldn’t refuse: Refinance your mortgage at a bargain rate and cut your payments in half. New home buyers, stretching to afford something in a super-heated market, didn’t even need to produce documentation, much less a downpayment.

Those who took the bait are in for a nasty surprise. While many Americans have started to worry about falling home prices, borrowers who jumped into so-called option ARM loans have another, more urgent problem: payments that are about to skyrocket.

The option adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) might be the riskiest and most complicated home loan product ever created. With its temptingly low minimum payments, the option ARM brought a whole new group of buyers into the housing market, extending the boom longer than it could have otherwise lasted, especially in the hottest markets. Suddenly, almost anyone could afford a home — or so they thought. The option ARM’s low payments are only temporary. And the less a borrower chooses to pay now, the more is tacked onto the balance.

Quick and the ED: Colleges Giving Even More Financial Aid to Wealthy Students

From 1999 to 2003, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making less than $20,000 per year from $4,027 to $5,240, an increase of $1,213, or 30%.

During the same time period, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making more than $100,000 per year from $3,321 to $4,806, an increase of $1,485, or 45%.

Why Think About Things When You Can Mindlessly Enforce Arbitrary Rules

Malcolm Gladwell, in The New Yorker:

In 1925, a young American physicist wa doing graduate work at Cambridge University in England. He was depressed. He was fightin with his mother and had just broken up with hi girlfriend. His strength was in theoretica physics, but he was being forced to sit in laboratory making thin films of beryllium. I the fall of that year, he dosed an apple wit noxious chemicals from the lab and put it o the desk of his tutor, Patrick Blackett. Blackett luckily, didn’t eat the apple. But schoo officials found out what happened, and arrive at a punishment: the student was to be put o probation and ordered to go to London fo regular sessions with a psychiatrist

Probation? These days, we routinely suspend or expel high-school students for doing infinitely less harmful things, like fighting or drinking or taking drugs—that is, for doing the kinds of things that teen-agers do.

Cell Phones Have Too Many Features Nowadays

Cell phones taking over as timepieces

Ask graphic designer Parker Weintz the time and he doesn’t look to his wrist, he pulls a cell phone out of his pocket — and he’s not alone.

The proliferation of cell phones, with their list of extra features, has had the knock-on effect of eliminating the need to wear a wristwatch unless it is to make a fashion statement.

I went through this phase, but stopped when I realized half the time I was pulling the phone out to check the time just as much to look like I was doing something as much as I was checking the clock.

Snakes On A Plane Is For Reals, Yo

It’s not just a movie:

Monty Coles was 3,000 feet in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane’s instrument panel — a 4 1/2-foot black snake.

The Fourth Wall

Jane Espenson (writer for many things, including Buffy) posts about breaking the fourth wall:

You know what it is, I’m sure, to break the fourth wall. That’s any reference that calls attention to the fictional nature of our enterprise. (Or the fictional nature of The Enterprise if we’re still in Star Trek land.)

Even if the show you’re specing routinely flirts with the fourth wall (as Boston Legal has done throughout this season), I would warn you against it.

I’m concurring (but as a fan, not a writer), and somewhere in me I have a long, well thought-out post about television shows, the fourth wall, and self-referential suicide, but it’s not for today.

Slashdot Almost About To Not Look Not Good

Slashdot posted a preview of their redesign, and it looks nice. Very clean, retaining classic Slashdot elements, while rejecting the classic Slashdot ugly.

Mr. Rogers Is A Better Person Than You

Mr. Rogers before the 1969 Senate hearing for funding of the newly formed Corporation For Public Broadcasting.

Rick Santorum Don't Come Around Here No More

Editorial in 2006 May 26 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about Sen. Rick Santorum’s residency:

Before every election, the Post-Gazette routinely sends letters to the candidates seeking material for the Voters Guide. Back in March, as part of that process for the primary, the newspaper sent a letter to Rick Santorum at his home address, at least the one that he claims. Back from Penn Hills came the letter with a sticker from the U.S. Postal Service checked as “Not Deliverable As Addressed — Unable To Forward.”

That is all you need to know about the nasty dispute between the Republican Sen. Santorum and his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the November election. The whole thing is rooted in one inconvenient fact for Sen. Santorum: He doesn’t live here anymore.

Apple Doesn't Want To Make A Dirt Cheap Computer

Apple Matters conceptualizes a cheap Mac laptop, the MacBook Lame, and ends with:

There are a lot of reasons you won’t be seeing a MacBook Lame tomorrow, but no convincing reasons why you shouldn’t see one someday.

Sure there is: Apple doesn’t give a fuck about making cheap hardware to sell more computers. Market Share != Profit.

Besides, Apple’s current line of laptops are cheap.

Britain To Pay Off Last Of World War Two Debt

The UK is about to pay off the last of its World War II loans from the US. But it hasn’t always been so fastidious.

On 31 December, the UK will make a payment of about $83m (£45.5m) to the US and so discharge the last of its loans from World War II from its transatlantic ally.

It is hard from a modern viewpoint to appreciate the astronomical costs and economic damage caused by this conflict. In 1945, Britain badly needed money to pay for reconstruction and also to import food for a nation worn down after years of rationing.

“In a nutshell, everything we got from America in World War II was free,” says economic historian Professor Mark Harrison, of Warwick University.

Also (regarding debt from the first world war):

During the crisis years of the 1930s, only one nation continued to pay in full - Finland. Perhaps a conscious effort to foster a good reputation with an increasingly influential power, Finland’s actions generated thousands of positive stories in the American media at the time. Nor has it been forgotten; the Finns celebrated this achievement in an exhibition last year.

ProcrastIEnation

Dan Benjamin, in a post concerning the software he uses:

I love Safari. It’s snappy and, unlike Firefox, feels well integrated into the operating system (but not in an overwhelming, locked-in sort of way like IE). Unfortunately, Safari isn’t cross-platform. So even though the web app I’m developing that day looks and works great in Safari, it might render like crap and fail completely in another browser.

So, in general, I code for Firefox first, and 99% of the time, it’ll “just work” in Safari. Later, I can come back and worry about things working in IE.

It's nice when a professional works the same way I do. Just do it, and worry about what Internet Explorer fucked up later.

Via Daring Fireball

Give me a Tab.

"Tab? I can't give you a tab unless you order something."

Via kottke.

Two Screens, Many Colors

A post detailing the many Nintendo DS varients on the British Gaming Blog.

I have an Electric Blue model, but we all know I really want one of the sparkly glittered ones.

Cooler Than Meets The Eye

Read this, "Pretending To Be a Cool Guy For One Day", by Scott Taylor. It's funny.

Excerpt:

I drove to the library, where I had previously arranged to pick up several books about the assassination of William McKinley. The woman at the counter was elderly and reminded me of my ex wife, Dorothy, although this woman had a slightly more impressive Adam’s apple. I approached her as Stanley might approach Dorothy, greeting her with a large hug. She resisted my advances and informed me that only employees of that particular library branch were allowed behind the counter, which sounded racist to me.

I asked for the books in question. I presented my library card and she reluctantly brought me the books. Upon receiving them I called the woman a cracker Autobot. I then begged her to take me back as I ran into the street. I attempted to turn into a jet and fly to Cybertron but fell to the pavement and scraped my knees while some of the books fell into the street.

With His Hands And His Feet

While slightly behind the curve, at least SNL's on the curve at all with this Digital Short, Young Chuck Norris.

And for kicks:

Someone once tried to tell Chuck Norris that roundhouse kicks aren't the best way to kick someone. This has been recorded by historians as the worst mistake anyone has ever made.

Ditka

This may be something to be legitimately worried about.

Mike Ditka and the Grabowskis

Anachrontastic

I love shit like this. Way back when, Mark Simonson wrote an article called "Typecasting" that looked at the correct usage of fonts in films. Like, a film set in 1854 that uses Helvetica, even though Helvetica wasn't created until 1959. He just posted a new one about GANGS OF NEW YORK. Via Kottke.

This is like how I generally get pissed off whenever computer interfaces are shown on screen, because they're designed so poorly and don't resemble any real world interface.

I Think I Love "What Do You Think?"

"Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the federal government's right to ban marijuana use, even in states that allow it for medical reasons. What do you think?"

"The Court made the right decision. Once you legalize the medical use of marijuana, it's only a matter of time before you start seeing medical use of harder narcotics, like morphine."

iLink

Apple Store Of The Future

My favorite: "Just the headphones".

Seen at Dong Resin.

LiveJournal Down

Millions of emotionally retarded teens unsure where to publicly express angst about being all alone.

Might be a good day to avoid Hot Topic.

Colorful Metaphors Fail Me

Thankfully, irony (much like Spock) did not stay dead.

Ah, drugging your wife. I've been there. Careful though, it's a slippery slope. One day it's caffeine, the next you're rooting around the nightstand at two in the morning trying to find an adrenalin shot to counteract a valium overdose.