A new record!

'X-Men' storms to record opening weekend

"X-Men: The Last Stand" stormed to an estimated $107 million three-day opening, the largest ever for Memorial Day weekend and the fourth-biggest in box office history.

I don't think "largest opening ever for Memorial Day weekend" is much of a record. It's also the largest opening ever for a movie whose title starts with X!

Hope springs eternal

I know that in the last couple of weeks, I haven't been contributing a lot of my own ideas here -- mainly just pasting in occasional clippings that I find interesting. Things have been a little bit more hectic than usual. I'm chasing down the last few weeks of a death march software development project at work, and also making plans to attend a conference in Las Vegas later in June (perhaps I'll talk more about that here in a few weeks.) In other words, the situation is about normal for someone in my line of work, but I am hoping for things to let up soon.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be Blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rest and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heav'n.

- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Not a moment too soon

A pesky, century-old tax on your phone bill is finally being put to rest.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that it will no longer collect a 3% federal excise tax on long-distance calls and would refund about $15 billion to taxpayers.

The tax was imposed in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War. It was designed as a tax on wealthy Americans, back when phone service was considered a luxury.

"It's not often you get to kill a tax, particularly one that goes back so far in history," Treasury Secretary John Snow said.

Headline of the Day

Some Mexican migrants turning to bicycles

And here I've never heard of a Ford Ghia

The latest in the long series of eBay auctions where it looks like the seller's about to lose it. (from The Register)

Gigantic Undertaking

LIBBY PRISON Has Been Purchased by a Western Syndicate. TO CHICAGO IT GOES. It Will be Pulled Down and Re-erected in the Lake City. GIGANTIC UNDERTAKING. To Carry It Out $200,000 to be Subscribed. A FAMOUS BUILDING. Interesting Historical Incidents in Connection With It. ESCAPE OF COLONEL STREIGHT’S PARTY. Removal of the Prisoners at the Time of the Evacuation, &c., &c., &c.

Tasty

From Palo Alto Weekly:

It's well-known that goats will eat just about anything, but they do have preferences. Charlotte Lewis of Living Systems said the goats will go for many of the invasive species — such [as] star thistle and poison oak — before they will eat native grasses. The reason? Invasive species taste better.

Deeply mysterious

Google is indeed deeply mysterious to deal with (I have personally experienced this.)  Opinions from Don Dodge on this subject here.

Start your own version of Google

If you're trying to use AJAX to start your own version of Google, you might find this of interest.  This is the coolest way I have seen to do this so far, since I don't like rolling my own xmlHttpRequests and hacking around in JavaScript code.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/making-ajax-development-easier.html

The software can be downloaded from:

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

Which one is real?

It is I

I can agree with Tertullian, at least partially

"In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator."

Chapter 15, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

Trouble

"If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you."

Calvin Coolidge

His values, maybe

"There's probably no post more important in preserving our security and our values as people than the CIA," Hayden said.

Bush Turns to Gen. Hayden to Lead CIA

FCC Adopts Order

This is of interest to the members of the Western Syndicate community who are getting into the VoIP business:

FCC ADOPTS ORDER TO ENABLE LAW ENFORCEMENT TO ACCESS CERTAIN BROADBAND AND VoIP PROVIDERS

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-265221A1.pdf

I don't understand

... why they're sending him to the supermarket?

Moussaoui sent to 'supermax' for six life terms

Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced yesterday to spend the rest of his life in near-solitary confinement as the judge in his case cut short the final diatribe he delivered to a Virginia courtroom, and told him he would never be able to speak out publicly again.

This is how I died

King Amenemhat's instructions to his son Senwosret I. Well OK, he didn't actually write it himself. He describes that you can't trust anyone, and then goes on to describe how he was killed by someone that he knew. Check out the cool hieroglyphs. They are particularly clear on this image (well, I wish the photos were posted with higher resolution, but if I want to see it more clearly I suppose I will have to visit the British Museum.)

Rotating snakes on a blog

I like this optical illusion.

Right lane closed ahead

If you are interested in traffic cones you probably should visit the Cone Epicentre.

It's about time

Got the first bike ride of the spring in today. I needed that -- didn't ride too hard, since I haven't had any exercise in, oh, seven or eight months.

My bike has been out of commission in a comedy of errors that started last September, when I brought it to the bike shop to have it "tuned up", the shop owner broke it, then we couldn't find the replacement part, then after months of looking I bought a spare used bike frame for $140 + $35 shipping containing the replacement part, and finally last weekend brought it to a different shop to have the part installed. (Which they did for only $30, and exactly when they said it would be done, so they're probably going to get all my repair business from now on.)

So if you, umm, need a spare Giant NRS bike frame, minus the rocker arms, let me know. I have one. Real cheap.

Oh, and I never did get the bike tuned up. It's working great now.