Thinking about contests

I have been thinking of having a "guess how many posts will be made to the Western Syndicate in 2008" contest.

What amuses me about this, of course, is that I have total control over what the final number would be, so you have incentive to bribe me. But I haven't quite figured out what the prize might be if you "guess right".

Reading the news

"Best and Worst of 2008"

Oh no! It's that time of year again!

Happy sky

Great info here at the NASA web site about this photo of the recent appearance of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus in the sky (last week). (You can download a huge version of the photo by clicking here -- great to use as a desktop background.)

F-18 crash

Today's F-18 crash happened a few minutes down the freeway from here -- we're close enough to the Miramar air station to hear the jets flying over frequently but we're not directly in the path to the runway.

Surgery by text message

I am just fascinated by this story. British surgeon tells of how he carried out amputation via text message

Admin

I put the Twitter feed back (now that I've been updating Twitter again) and took away the Amazon ads (which I don't think were doing anyone any good, including me.)

Move away

More of the Desert Fathers.

It was said of Abba Ammoes that when he went to church, he did not allow his disciple to walk beside him but only at a certain distance; and if the latter came to ask him about his thoughts, he would move away from him as soon as he had replied, saying to him, 'It is for fear that, after edifying words, irrelevant conversation should slip in, that I do not keep you with me.'

This is cool

Ned Batchelder sees his oldest code still running. I still run across things I put in the Oracle code from time to time, which as far as I can tell are still happily in service.

One-liners

I just figured it out -- the text analyzer thinks I'm an ESTP because I post lots of one-liners and then don't follow up anymore, I bet.

See? See? It will think the same thing about this posting.

Sea grapes

Fossil tracks on the seabed could be the handiwork of oversized amoebas that roamed the ocean 1.8 billion years ago, if their modern counterpart is anything to go by. (New Scientist, sent to us by Gavin reporting from the Maine office)