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December 31, 2005
Never too late
We have a new shipment of The Word Detective in hardback, and have extended (until January 15) our special offer of two free subscriptions to TWD-by-Email with every autographed book ordered.
December 30, 2005
eh?
Invading Canada won't be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn't have a plan.
The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:
First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.
Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.
Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.
At that point, it's only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: "ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL."
December 28, 2005
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December 27, 2005
arguendo
keep it up and you'll be top dog just about the time we run out of electricity
Hitslink, yet another web metrics company, reports that the number of people using Mac OS online topped 4 percent by the end of November. Over the last 12 months the use of the fairer platform has surged from 3.29 to 4.11 percent.Further, preliminary data for December from the company shows that Mac OS usage will post another large jump, as well.
Various flavors of Windows—XP, 2000 and 98, respectively—account for over 90 percent of those measured.
An earlier report from Net Applications also shows 4.11 percent of end users on the web running Mac OS.
"Fairer platform"? How adorably twee. Did you type that in your My Little Pony PJs?
December 26, 2005
a Christmas tale of two trees
Christmas night at TWD World Headquarters, rain and fog.
Yes, it's a weird lookin' tree, but we like it. We bought it as a live Christmas tree about seven years ago. Afterwards we planted it in the front yard, where it just gets weirder by the year.
Speaking of weird trees, we were a bit late in the Christmas tree shopping this year, and learned a lesson with a vengeance: never, ever, buy a tree after dark.
See the nice tree? See the pretty color? Nice tree. But what's it doing lying on the lawn?
It's on its way to a dirt nap, that's what. We bought it in Pickerington on Wednesday night. It seemed very fresh, and the trunk looked straight. But it was, as I said, dark.
When we finally got around to putting it up on Friday night, however, we discovered the trunk to be twisted in a remarkable s-curve, so once in the stand it stood at about a 70 degree angle to the floor. Not good.
Worse was to come. After a few minutes, we also noticed that the tree was exuding an odd aroma, a cross between kerosene and paint, and that the needles not only wouldn't break, but wouldn't even bend. On the other hand, several small branches came off easily and appeared to be very dry. Curioser and curioser.
Finally we took a very close look and discovered that the entire tree had been painted with some awful green goop. Some greedhead had painted an elderly, brown Christmas tree green and sold it to us. For $30. I had even tipped the creep.
We spent a good ninety seconds staring at the Frankentree with our jaws agape, whereupon I grasped the monstrosity by its painted green trunk, marched it to the back door, and flung it across the lawn (screwing up my back in the process, by the way).
So there we were on the day before Christmas Eve with no tree. Fortunately, Kathy did some quick thinking and found a Lowe's about 20 miles away that was giving away its last six trees, so we jumped in the car, roared over there and snagged a nice, unpainted, free tree.
The kittens, of course, are convinced that we got it for them.
December 25, 2005
whatever's going on around here certainly seems to be speeding up
E-tracking, coming to a DMV near you | Perspectives | CNET News.com
The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these "mileage-based road user fees."
Now electronic tracking and taxing may be coming to a DMV near you. The Office of Transportation Policy Studies, part of the Federal Highway Administration, is about to announce another round of grants totaling some $11 million. A spokeswoman on Friday said the office is "shooting for the end of the year" for the announcement, and more money is expected for GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking efforts.
[snip]
Details of the tracking systems vary. But the general idea is that a small GPS device, which knows its location by receiving satellite signals, is placed inside the vehicle.
Some GPS trackers constantly communicate their location back to the state DMV, while others record the location information for later retrieval. (In the Oregon pilot project, it's beamed out wirelessly when the driver pulls into a gas station.)
The problem, though, is that no privacy protections exist. No restrictions prevent police from continually monitoring, without a court order, the whereabouts of every vehicle on the road.
No rule prohibits that massive database of GPS trails from being subpoenaed by curious divorce attorneys, or handed to insurance companies that might raise rates for someone who spent too much time at a neighborhood bar. No policy bans police from automatically sending out speeding tickets based on what the GPS data say.
The Fourth Amendment provides no protection. The U.S. Supreme Court said in two cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they're driving on a public street.
Even more shocking are additional ideas that bureaucrats are hatching. A report prepared by a Transportation Department-funded program in Washington state says the GPS bugs must be made "tamper proof" and the vehicle should be disabled if the bugs are disconnected.
"This can be achieved by building in connections to the vehicle ignition circuit so that failure to receive a moving GPS signal after some default period of vehicle operation indicates attempts to defeat the GPS antenna," the report says.
It doesn't mention the worrisome scenario of someone driving a vehicle with a broken GPS bug--and an engine that suddenly quits half an hour later. But it does outline a public relations strategy (with "press releases and/or editorials" at a "very early stage") to persuade the American public that this kind of contraption would be, contrary to common sense, in their best interest....
December 23, 2005
Miss Phoebe
Miss Phoebe (above, above her brother Gus) took a trip to the vet this week to be spayed. She seems fine, but her surgery, plus Sparky's emergency visit and Fuzzy's neutering, add up to about $400 in vet bills for this month alone. So if you've ever considered clicking on that "Feed the Cats" button over there (top of the sidebar, main page), now would be a good time.
December 22, 2005
Hey, I went to school with a Scurf Pathogen
Globetechnology: Joe Jerk's amazing offer
What amazes me is that people will give their money to patently fictional people with outrageous names. Even the body of the messages is often silly: By the time spammers finish adjusting their strategies to fool the spam filters, their messages are so bent out of shape it's a wonder anyone can possibly take them seriously.I collect these names (it's an eccentricity — leave me alone), and I like to select the best for a year-end wrap-up, with a top-10-names list chosen by one of my (very real) favourite names, Tahirah Shadforth.
For instance, among those offering me Viagra this year were Lengthen Excerpting, Avrom Alias, Eula Shook, Racketeering Motors, Presumably Cahoots, Bunkum Splotched, Scurf Pathogen, Barbered Chapt, Ambrosia Triplett, Pole Suspiciously, Phosphorous Thundercloud and (wow) Joe Jerk. Trustworthy-sounding bunch, no?
This year, the U.S. warned citizens not to buy drugs from on-line Canadian pharmacies because the drugs might not be safe. Spammers leapt into the fray, suggesting people should instead put their trust in names such as Ovaries Secreter, Emm Zcacsog, Bella Pxolc, Candida Outlaw, Capote Dogie, Macon Expel, Exhibitionism Phoneys, Tillman Unscrew, Nuptials Overgenerous, Letdowns Gastritis, Dionysius Swindall, Slugged Shindig, Concessions Burgles, Fikriyya Gurney and Shea Snay.
entire article
get with the program
It has come to my attention, via my vast network of spies, that 74% of you folks visiting this site do so using Microsoft Internet Exploder Explorer, which raises an interesting question:
Whaddayou, nuts?
Seriously, IE is a nightmare: obsolete software that springs a security leak about once a week and functions well only as a target for every virus and trojan writer on the planet. It's ugly, awkward, slow and lacks even the most basic modern browsing features. There no reason to make your life that difficult.
Here's a suggestion: get Firefox. It's free, much faster, far more stable and, because it doesn't rely on bad ideas like Microsoft's Active X technology, far more secure from malicious websites and their evil scripts. There are also literally hundreds of free extensions for Firefox available, little add-ons that do useful things (such as blocking annoying ads). There are also dozens of free themes that let you change the whole look of your browser. And once you try tabbed browsing you'll never go back to that "five copies of IE open and everything moves like molasses" quagmire.
There's also a Google toolbar for Firefox that adds even more functions, including automatically filling out web forms (and spell-checking them), enhanced Google searching, and a display of Google Page Rank, a measurement of how popular a given site is.
Speaking of Page Rank, my Word Detective website has a rank of 7 on a scale of 10, which is considered quite high (it's the same ranking as The Huffington Post, for instance). People take seminars to get their pages up to 5. Seems to me I ought to be at least a little bit rich by now....
[sound of crickets, dog barking in distance]
So, anyway, that brings us to the button below (and at the foot of the sidebar). Click on it. Download and install Firefox with the Google Toolbar. You get a great browser for free and the kittens get a dollar for cat food.
There is nothing to fear. Firefox will import all your IE "favorites" when you install it, and if you ever get homesick for Internet Explorer, there's even a theme you can install to make Firefox look just like IE, albeit a version of IE that actually, you know, works. And you'll still be able to use your moldy old IE on those days when banging your finger with a hammer just isn't painful enough.
Honestly, it'll change your life. And if you don't like it, let me know and I'll send you a free cat.
December 21, 2005
sharp and disturbing
December 20, 2005
more equal time for dogs
An Indian dog holds an umbrella and bag during a performance rehearsal at Asiad Circus. AFP/File Photo
December 19, 2005
'It Can't Happen Here'
If I had to live with walls that color, I'd climb the tree too.
The clock up near the ceiling is a nice touch.
December 18, 2005
name that cat: #1
OK, we're gonna have us a contest!
But seriously, folks, this is becoming untenable. Of the five kittens, only two have names -- Bootsie (the black and white one previously known as Bitey -- there's a name that'll get you adopted real quick) and Inky (the tiny black one).
So here's name-needing cat number one -- literally. At a loss for how to address the little chap and his two equally nameless siblings, I have fallen into calling them Number One, Number Two, and Little Girl Cat. This clearly will not do. It demoralizes the little creatures and, from my standpoint, makes shouting at them when they climb the curtains much more difficult.
Your job is to suggest names in the comments to this post. There is, alas, no prize (except the knowledge that you have made a little kitten happy).
By way of guidance, Number One is a male kitten (at 16 weeks perhaps pushing the envelope of "kitten"), is nicely done up in a lovely gray-and-white-striped coat with white bib and paws, and appears to be wearing eye-liner. Go figure. Another view of the candidate may be found here.
Most of the other animals around here conform to the Cutesy Pet Naming Convention of 1913, i.e., have names ending in an "ee" sound (Brownie, Pokey, Sparky, Fifi, Harry, Phoebe, Kiki, Fuzzy, Bootsie and Inky). Then there's Gus. But it would be nice if Number One had an "ee" name too.
check our weather
National Weather Service radar
We're a few pixels below the "m" in Columbus.
December 17, 2005
feel safer?
December 16, 2005
shows to go ya
I spoke too soon. Our wireless internet connection went down this afternoon for about five hours, as it does every Friday afternoon. Who knows?
We get our net connection via a repeater link on top of the water tower in town about two miles away. As I mentioned a few years ago, the phrase the water tower in town probably strikes some of y'all as charmingly rustic and Green Acre-ish, but, trust me, you don't want to depend on the water tower in town for anything, especially not internet access. The water is horrible too, actually (and besides, we have our own well with our own horrible water).
We could get Verizon DSL, but the phone lines out here are so awful it probably wouldn't be any better than dialup, and the infrastructure is so primitive we can't even get voicemail.
So I paid a visit to dial-up-land and connected at 48k, which is useless. Ugh, feh. Funny thing is that if we could settle for that, it would be free, because AOL gave me a free "media" account ten years ago when I was writing a book about the internet and they forgot to turn it off. Every six months or so I log on, check my non-existent mail, and bask in the warm glow of getting something for free, even if it is only AOL (where it will, apparently, always be 1995 -- those people are scary).
on the fritz
thinking hurts
Language Log: No ideas, please, we're the Plain English Campaign
Well, the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, and you hear the kyouck and gobble of the Plain English Campaign's annual award for gobbledegook.
up for adoption
This made the rounds a few months ago, but whenever these cats start driving me nuts I watch it.
It's a ~2 megabyte .wmv file, so I suggest right-clicking on the link and choosing "save as" or "save target as." I doubt that it will run properly if you just click on it.
Let's just say that Pinkey doesn't like leashes. Or uniforms. Or something.
December 15, 2005
cats in sinks
feed the cats
I added a little PayPal donation button to the sidebar (trying to be tasteful, no screaming MasterCard logo). Twelve cats eat a lot of food, so the cause is legit. Even the cost of kitty litter is becoming significant. We buy the Kroger store brand, which is much better than the Giant Eagle store brand (which has far too much dust), although I can't detect a difference between the Kroger basic litter and their "multiple cats" formula. What we really need is an "out of control" formula.
December 14, 2005
Mail Pouch
Barn advertising, central Ohio, by Ben Shahn, 1938.
I came across this while browsing Documenting America, the parent site of the Library of Congress exhibition mentioned below.
You can still play "Mail Pouch" in Ohio, although the signs are nowhere near as common as they used to be. Basically, all you need is a car full of people driving through the countryside, and the first one to see the sign shouts "Mail Pouch!" That's it. This is, after all, Ohio.
My parents were long-time friends of Ben and Bernarda Shahn (Bernarda died just last year at 101). They were neighbors in Roosevelt, NJ (which has an interesting history) right after WW II.
in living color
Online Exhibition - Bound for Glory: America in Color, 1939-1943 (Library of Congress Exhibition)
Farm Security Administration photographs from the dawn of Kodachrome.
uh oh
If, as looks possible, next week turns into a rerun of last Christmas (ice storm, no power, water or heat, sub-zero temps), we are not taking these cats to a motel again.
out with a whimper
New Scientist Breaking News - Strange new object found at edge of Solar SystemA large object has been found beyond Pluto travelling in an orbit tilted by 47 degrees to most other bodies in the solar system. Astronomers are at a loss to explain why the object's orbit is so off-kilter while being almost circular.
[blah blah astrophysics blah ...]
These traits make the object, nicknamed "Buffy" after the US television series about a vampire slayer, hard to explain. "Maybe Buffy is going to be a bit of a theory slayer," Allen told New Scientist. ...
I'm not saying that they're necessarily coming to eat our brains, but aren't you gonna feel a little silly declaring a global emergency because the Buffyians have invaded?
December 13, 2005
Hint: they're called "copy editors." Hire some.
Regret The Error: Crunks '05: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections
The Learn Your Lesson Award
A correction from the Guardian:In a Comment piece headed, We must not forget how war was won, page 22, May 7, we wrote of "the genocidal destruction of the Jewish and gypsy (sic) populations". Gypsy takes a capital G. The stylebook says so: Gypsies u[pper]c[ase], recognised as an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act, as are Irish Travellers. The point has been made in corrections on the following occasions: December 7 1999; March 3 2000; May 4 2000; March 3 2001; July 25 2001; August 1 2001; September 1 2001; December 14 2001; February 19 2003; September 29 2004; March 3 2005.
welcome to hell, here's your animatronic wi-fi rabbit
My Nabaztag's ears are moving. Virginie has just got to her office in New York. It's a secret code between us. When she moves her Rabbit's ears, the ears on mine move at the very same time.
December 12, 2005
another argument against going outside
n.b. - Granville, home of Denison University, is about ten miles north of us.
Granville man gets pictures of 'big cat'
GRANVILLE -- A year after the Granville Police Department last reported a sighting of a large, lion-like cat near Newark-Granville Road -- another sighting occurred around noon on Saturday.
This time, Rufus Hurst, 57, of Granville, had his camera ready.
"I was in my study working, and my wife and her sister were in the other room, and they called and said, 'Get your camera and come here quick,'" said Hurst, who lives on a one-acre lot on Brennan Drive, a third of which is wooded.
"Then I saw what they were talking about," he said, before snapping several photos from a distance.
Hurst described the cat as jet black, with a long black tail, with a stride measured from its tracks at about 3 feet from front to back paw.
The Hurst family called the Granville Police, who saw the cat before it left the yard. It slinked all the way across the backyard, looking around, before heading south through the woods toward Newark-Granville Road, he said.
Residents in the area have made reports of seeing large cats in the area in the past.
On Nov. 4, 2004, Granville Police mailed a letter to Granville residents about a possible lion sighting in the field across from Fackler County Gardens, also on Newark-Granville Road:
"Two of our officers located a large animal there that they felt could have been a lion," the letter read.
In the 2004 sighting, the officers noted the animal seen was brownish-yellow in color.
Police have not yet made any connections between the two sightings, one officer said, but a game warden from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources did measure footprints, and take cat feces for analysis.
The officer said it was definitely larger than a house cat.
In the 2004 letter, Granville Police noted that if a large cat is in the area, it was probably a pet at one time and could be used to people and could be dangerous.
Anyone with information can contact the Granville Police Department at (740) 587-1234.
You want odd? We've got odd. Boy, do we have odd.
Scientific studies prove that horse milk is far more nutritious than cat or dog milk.
December 11, 2005
I don't know where it is, but I think I've been there
MP disgust at online slur of Worksop folk
BASSETLAW MP John Mann has expressed outrage at entries on an internet dictionary site which defines Worksop as "a horrid town populated by pikeys and losers."Billed as an explanation of slang and urban language, the dictionary goes on to describe the town's centre as "unutterably horrid. Teenage parents abound. If Notts were to be given an enema, guess where the pipe would be put?"
more
December 10, 2005
Bad day for the Sixties
Richard Pryor and Gene McCarthy both died today.
My parents were both fervent McCarthy supporters -- my father actually ran as Vice President on his ticket at the Connecticut state Democratic convention in 1968, and a picture that I took of my mother kissing McCarthy on the cheek hung on our dining room wall for years afterward.
Richard Pryor was a genius and a true pioneer, gone far too soon.
December 9, 2005
That sounds like a can opener!
Vampire mouse at it again
My, Christopher Robin, you've changed - Times OnlinePoor Christopher Robin. For 80 years there has been an enchanted place on the top of the forest where a little boy and his bear would always be playing.
But though Winnie the Pooh became a hugely successful brand, Christopher Robin just wouldn’t sell.
“There’s only one thing to be done,” said the executives at Disney, and replaced him with a six-year-old girl.
December 8, 2005
geography
We seem to be strangely popular in Australia and New Zealand.
A visitor from Greenwich, Connecticut! I grew up in Greenwich.
And it said "Must See TV," so I was legally required to watch.
Video Placebo: Is that Really HDTV You Are Watching?
News of the video bizarre: According to a just-released survey by Scientific-Atlanta, millions of people who have HDTV sets apparently think they are watching high definition television, but aren’t. The survey was spurred by an earlier Forrester Research projection that by the end of the year some 16 million U.S. households will have HDTV sets, but only seven million wll have HDTV reception. The Scientific Atlanta survey found that, yes, some 49 percent of households were not taking advantage of their HD equipment. About a quarter found that their HD set itself provided better reception, without taking the additional steps necessary to view HD. Eighteen percent said they didn’t even know needed additional equipment, such as a set-top box or antenna. A quarter admitted they thought they were watching HD video because, after all, the programs said at the beginning that they were broadcast in HDTV.The survey confirms the long-standing prejudice of many of us non-videophiles that HDTV really isn’t all that impressive. Still, it is milding shocking that so many people plunk down money for an HD set, but never catch on that it isn’t actually turned on.
via techdirt.com
December 7, 2005
Headed for eBay
Rare two-headed kitten. Price on request.
December 6, 2005
New issue of TWD
The December (November being best forgotten) issue of The Word Detective has been posted at www.word-detective.com.
As usual at this time of year, signed copies of the hardback The Word Detective book are available, each with TWO free one-year subscriptions to TWD-by-Email, here. Offer good only until January 1, 2006.
A large portion of all proceeds from sales will be devoured by cats.
December 5, 2005
not quite face down in his cornflakes, but close
Our senior (at age six) cat Sparky was eating his dry food this afternoon while I washed the dishes, when suddenly I heard an odd "clink" from his direction and turned from the sink to find him lying on his side, partially in his overturned bowl. His eyes were glassy and he seemed to be trying to stand up, but his legs apparently weren't working right. I carried him out to the living room, but he still couldn't stand and lay flat on his stomach looking very distressed. So I called the vet clinic, which said to bring him right in. By this time he had improved and was walking around, but still behaving oddly.
One hour, two blood tests, a physical exam and a kitty-cat electrocardiogram later, he was pronounced probably fine. The culprit was most likely a large piece of cat chow that had lodged in his throat, putting pressure on his vagus nerve and causing partial loss of consciousness.
Yes, the same neurological phenomenon that (supposedly) caused Commander Coo-Coo Bananas to keel over and bonk his noggin a couple of years ago.
Total cost, $110. I guess dry food isn't really cheaper.
December 4, 2005
typical
Freezing rain, just what I wanted for my birthday.
late update: I seem to have broken my toe. Google ads for obituaries, nice. I guess they just scan the latest post.
puppies kittens puppies kittens puppies kittens.... lexus iPod Playstation ....
December 3, 2005
progress, or lack thereof, report
Fuzzy-Wuzzy, whose childhood portrait graces the top of this page, took a trip to the vet this week to be neutered, due to his sudden and enthusiastic ambition to mark every room in the house as his territory. He emerged, alas, with an upper respiratory bug that had him wheezing in a most alarming manner, which led, in turn, to us staying up past three am two nights running nursing and petting the poor little fellow. He's on antibiotics now and seems to be improving.
Elsewhere in the news, I spent yesterday afternoon sealing the front door with plastic sheeting in an attempt to cut down on the freezing wind blowing through the house. This house was built circa 1870 and renovated in the 1980s by a certifiable moron who evidently thought the way to keep warm was to rip out any existing insulation and replace it with fake wood paneling. With winds coming straight off the fields to the south at 30 mph for much of the winter, things can get seriously chilly in the living room.
One word of advice for anyone who dreams of living in an old house: don't. Don't even dream of it unless you have pots of money, nerves of steel, and a thirst for endless disasters.
Personally, I'm zero for three in this game.