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Thursday, April 3, 2003 |
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An Ionospheric Miracle Tonight, coming home from choir rehearsal, I searched the AM dial for the Orioles game, hoping to catch the last of the game as I drove back from Falls Church along a darkened Lee Highway. My usual station, SportsTalk 980 was broadcasting a basketball game, so I searched using the manual controls on my radio, the automatic controls being worth less than nothing this evening, and I could find no baseball. Stopped at the Texaco for some gas, I fiddled with the dial searching and searching for a baseball game, that telltale crowd noise in the background and the dulcet tones of the play-by-play man. It came in slowly, as I pulled back onto the road, I could hear it just a little, I pulled into the left lane, hoping to escape the hum of the powerlines over my head. There it was, baseball on the radio, I could hear them talking about a breaking ball and the 1-2 count. Suddenly it was crystal clear, almost like FM radio, the static all gone as I crossed over Harrison just a mile from home. It wasn't the O's game. It wasn't the Pirates game, that we get every now and again off a lucky bounce of the radio waves. It was instead WSB AM 750, as I heard the station identification call, which is the Atlanta Braves home station in Atlanta some 650 miles to my southeast. A miracle of that blessed radio-reflecting layer of our atmosphere known as the Ionosphere. A crystal clear night here in Washington, with clear, cloudless, moonless skies, the announcers came in clear from a good long ways away. When I heard them talking of Frank Robinson, I was afraid I'd slipped into some time warp where he was still playing for the Reds, hitting .323 the year they went to the Series in '61. Playing at old Crosley Field, a minute ballpark by today's standards, holding just 30,000 fans at capacity.
I hoped, dreamed that I was listening to the Reds in '61, for in that ballpark, or on the end of the radio somewhere out there, was someone I never met, and someone I know quite well. |
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The Bin ...Brad Christensen has compiled a list of a lot of really quite funny email exchanges he's had with Nigerian 4-1-9 scammers. The Dr. Elvis one is hilarious. ...Tiffany (vice her brother) sent me this review of the Persian Gulf Conflict reviewed as a videogame. ...Charlie wins for best phrase of the day: "Sorry if I sound bitter, but I've just been writing up the MPAA's current scheme to get firewalls criminalized in the individual United States, and my tolerance for living on the same planet as these goat-blowing extortion monkeys is currently very limited." ...Steven Frank is talking up an amazing idea, one that I want to see happen. Mmmmmm iPod core tablet...
...jkrank of Sofia Side Show republishes an email from John Cleese. Correction: it's not John Cleese, Snopes says it's SatireWire instead. Thanks Robert! I laughed my ass off. In addition, someone fisks Terry Jones. |
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The Recycle Bin The Register has today earned my respect with a fantastic article on the use of language amongst political movements for political purposes in American thought. The rise of the term "the second superpower" referring to popular opinion (specifically in the US of A, but also spread around the world ) and the use of the phrase Emergent Democracy, seems not to be the original use of the term. But you sure could fool Google with that fact. Says the Register: "Moore's essay is right there at the top. And not just first, but it already occupies all but three of the first thirty spots. Now, I don't know about you, but I think this could be an interesting weapon for language in the future. I wrote a few articles for this blog on the Dell Interns, and why I specifically dislike their brand of advertising. Because I'd gotten a few links from other popular places around that same time, If you search for Dell Interns, I am currently #9 in the Google rankings. Should I be allowed to hijack their brand identity so easily? It gets better, the more people that link to my blog for other stuff, the more I'm elevated in search results. So as more people link to me, Google assumes that I am either right or intelligent, or popular and thuse I am an instant authority. Am I? Hell no. I'm just another technologist with a blog. I know much more detailed things about baseball than I do about the Dell Interns. My viewpoints are rarely more than my opinions, scripted out in digita before you. They are not deeply researched, they are occasionally outright wrong. I hate to admit that, but it's true, so why the hell am I #9 in Google's Eyes? Should Google rethink its pagerank policy? I'm not sure, but perhaps that's what the Blogger/Google deal was all about, sorting out who's got a real opinion worth ranking, and who's just linked to by important people because they happen to share a cause. Do I believe that the Blog Community is capable of being a second superpower? Yes, but only if more than 4% of the US gets their news from blogs. And while the bloggers did claim credit for Trent Lott's demise as Majority leader, they were remarkably unable to mobilize enough popular opinion to stop the war in Iraq. Much remains to be seen. The subject though, is worth a lot more dialogue than I have to offer at the moment.
In the meantime, click the pretty links below and tell me I'm a dumbass, or tell me I'm right. |
Spring in Washington. The weather in DC has made a drastic shift for the better. It was 80 degrees yesterday, which was such a nice change over the 37 of Monday, and it was just so nice outside. You could smell the magnolias and the flowers blooming, the pollen count from the trees that line Vermont Ave was meteoric, and yet, I was not sniffling and wishing for sweet, sweet death. Leaving work a little after 5:30, I was treated to the opportunity to roll down all the windows, open the moonroof on Tis and enjoy the weather is it deserves to be enjoyed, at 40mph headed up the road.
Spring in Washington is really a wonderful time. The weather is mild, the sun is warming, the people are happy, the short skirts are plentiful, and the flowers are blooming. You can walk down the wide sidewalks with a great deal of leisure. The restaurants put out their tables on the walk, mixing good food with good weather. This was the weather that hooked me in March of 2000 when I came to visit Chris Thompson from WeAlumni. The prospect of that weather lured me here, and then the winters trapped me and reeled me in for gutting. It's 79 as I write this, shortly after 12:30, in my windowless office. I think I want a window more than I want a raise.
In the meantime, I've rethemed the Baseball Category of my blog. |
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Some musings... So, for those of you who've read Pattern Recognition, you are intimately familiar with Cayce's Jacket, a Buzz Rickson's. Turns out, they actually exist. I'm a bit bummed they only size up to 46, I wear a 48 or 50 in coats. $420 isn't all bad, though. Glad to see Dan Wood of Karelia (makers of Watson) join the blogging crowd with his The Karelia Weblog. Very nifty stuff, and we're glad to have it! All sorts of change notes and such. Ken Bereskin is back! Calloo Callay! Hip Hip Hooray! Well, okay, that's a bit far, but he's back, and I'll bet he'll be telling us all about Panther, or Tabby or Siamese or whichever cat is next in the OS X cat family. Bring it on! Several people, notably Brent, seem to have received entries in their referrer logs from a suspicious address that could be construed as homeland security. I hope this is a prank. MS wants to take on Google. And this would be far more cool if it happened in congress. Shame those stuffed suits in Congress can't get the handle on how it's supposed to work.
Oh, and just a side thought. You may ignore this if the thought of oral sex and premarital sex offends you. In Virginia, giving or receiving a blowjob is a Class 6 Felony. Yes, a felony. No voting rights, if convicted. Fornication is a Class 4 misdemeanor. It is no wonder that students are jumping right into sex, after all, it's not punishable by five years in prison. |
Last update: 6/28/03; 9:53:33 PM .
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