Heja Sverige, Again

Finland loses a single period of hockey in the entire Olympic Games program (6-1 record), ends up with silver medals.

Crosstown Traffic

To the person in a green Pontiac Bonneville at the intersection of Schofield St. and Keith Ave. this morning around 7:45am:
I understand that you were in a hurry, since you didn't have time to scrape the iced windows of your car. I also appreciate that your ire was not directed at me, but at the driver in front of you, who wouldn't drive through a STOP sign without stopping and yielding for traffic. However, the next time you deem it necessary to open your window and flick your middle finger to someone, please be mindful that you're in a public place, and there may be children watching you. Thank you.
To slow-pokes on I-40 West through the construction zone at West Hills:
If your urge to rubberneck is so irresistable that you can't help slowing down to a halt to gawk at a disabled vehicle on the median at the West Hills exit, please pull over to the median, turn off the engine, get out and take your time. But if you are in such a hurry that you have to drive on the left hand lane, there's no need to park your car in the middle of the interstate with no impeding traffic. Thank you.

Brownie Bag Lunch

A case of sh!t rolling uphill? Ousted FEMA chief Michael Brown is threatening to spill the beans on the White House unless Bush picks up the tab for his lawyer. Our exalted leader has a dilemma: Whether to indemnify Brown and lose a convenient scapegoat, or to hung "Brownie" out to dry and air all the dirty laundry. Paging Karl Rove, pick up the courtesy phone!

Nobody Expects The Danish Inquisition

From Brainsnap:

Amid rumors that the Danish Prime Minister has renamed himself 'Erik the Blood-Axe', experts in Danish history have been called in to advise governments across the globe on the ensuing crisis.

"Listen," says Chair of Danish Studies at Harvard, Sven Huntleigh, "Last time anyone provoked the Danes, the whole lot of them picked up axes, dressed up in bearskins, antlers and horns, then went marching across Europe looting and burning. In short - everybody knows you don't mess with the Danes. They're freakin' crazy!"

Moments That Make It All Worth While

Today, on the way to the daycare, my 4-year-old:
"Daddy, what alligators eat?"
"Umm... fish, I guess."
"Ok... Daddy, what bears eat?"
"Umm... Berries, honey and deer if they can catch them."
"And people!"
"Only if they can't catch any deer."
"Oh, ok... Daddy, cats eat mouses and catfood?"
"Yeah they do, and rats."
"Rats? Ewwww, that's gross!" (A long pause) "Daddy, cows eat milk."
"No, son, cows don't drink milk, they drink water!"
"No, Daddy, they don't, they drink milk!"
"No, they drink water. Milk comes out of cows."
(Silence for a moment, then:) "Cows pee milk?!?"
"No, it comes out of their udders."
"Udders? What's that?"
"Err... it's the cow's privates."
"Ewww!" (Thinks for a while) "Daddy, what moose eats?"
"Um... grass, leaves and berries, I think."
"And muffins!"
"I don't think so."
"In the book they do!"
"Umm, in the book they might, but I don't think there are muffins in the wild forest."
(Ponders for a while about the complexity of the universe, and sighs.)
"Well, I guess so."

Art That Ate Itself

Back in the day, computer programming used to be straightforward, you got bits and you got bytes, and you got a handful of commands to flip bits and move bytes. Then came Dennis Richie, Niklaus Wirth and Bjarne Stroustrup, and things went downhill from there. These days, your average code monkey spends more time reading API manuals than flipping bits. Modern day application development is roughly as difficult as assembling Lego blocks, thanks to a gadzillion application frameworks that hide the heavy lifting, that is, flipping bits, behind a connect-the-dots facade. Benji Smith has written a hilarious analogy about why he hates application frameworks. Word!

Celebrity Deathmatch

Celebrity Deathmatch I'd like to see: Fred Phelps vs. Muslim cartoon protesters. Any bets?

Regulatory Scam Recovery Fee

Before you pay your HellSouth phone bill, you may want to read about the largest fraud case in American history. According to Bruce Kushnik, the author of the book "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", every Baby Bell customer is owed $2000 that local Bell phone companies overcharged on the pretense of promising to build a fiberoptic broadband network that never came to exist.
UPDATE: Not only did Baby Bells fail to provide broadband they promised, they are also hellbent on turning Internet into their own intranet.