OK, just first impressions. Kinda ugly, isn’t it?

Recently finished the second and third horsemen of the apocalypse, I mean the second and third novels in the quasi trilogy that follow Elie Wiesel’s Night.
I wonder if Dawn is based on personal experience, or just a short story. It’s the account of a Jewish terrorist who kills an English soldier in cold blood.
The Accident […]

Last night I finished Friedman’s The World is Flat.
It’s a fairly wow big idea book; following are some of my notes and thoughts. This is not a review or anything like that; it’s just things I want to remember from the book.
Ten forces that flattened the world:

Berlin Wall coming down, opening the iron curtain and […]

A couple of days after our women won their second straight gold, Canada’s men’s hockey team is out of the Olympics after an embarrassing 6-game run that included losses to Switzerland (well known hockey power, ahem) and Finland.
Today they were knocked out in the semis by Russia.
I don’t blame the players - I think every […]

Okay, am I the only one who thinks this whole story is just completely bonkers?

A CONVICTED murderer in California was due to be put to death with a new kind of injection in the early hours of this morning after a federal judge ruled for the first time that the usual method may inflict “excessive […]

I happened to see this Moto cell phone about a week back - probably a link off Digg or something like that.

Frankly, the simplicity appeals to me. The feature list is not as long as my arm:
• Built-in FM radio
• WAP 2.0 Browser
• Decent-sized color screen - 128×128 CSTN display
• Messaging services
• Lantern
I haven’t got a clue what lantern means, […]

I watched Allan King’s documentary Memory last night with my daughter. What a heart-wrenching experience.
You are your memory. Lose your memory, and you lose your self. Memory reveals the agony of the dissolution of the identity in residents of a Toronto old age home. I can’t watch this sort of thing without thinking of my […]

Thursday night and Friday last week I was sick. Felt better on Saturday, but yesterday was bad, and today was only slightly better.
Hoping to feel a lot better tomorrow, since I have an important meeting in Seattle. Actually sleeping at night would be an improvement.

Houston police chief Harold Hurrt wants to put surveillance cameras in all kinds of private spaces … including homes.

“I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?” Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at […]

Ethan’s latest Duplo creation …

And a shot with a slightly better view of Ethan himself …

Ethan’s way too old for Duplo now … but since his younger brother Aidan is into it (and always leaves his toys out) Ethan starts messing around with it from time to time.

Errchh.
I’ve finally caught a flu virus that my kids have been passing around like a beach ball. Yesterday was the worst: no energy, head twice normal size, throat raw, always either too hot or too cold.
Much better today - hopefully even better tomorrow.

This is a great quote about the whole Cheney shooting incident:

Dr. David Blanchard, the emergency room chief, estimated that Mr. Whittington had more than 5 but “probably less than 150 to 200″ pellets lodged in his body.

From the New York Times.

This BBC story says that “former senior Communist party officials” have written and published a public letter denouncing at least one form of government censorship in China.
The officials include:

. . . Chairman Mao’s former secretary, Li Rui; the former editor of the Communist party’s own mouthpiece, People’s Daily, Hu Jiwei; and ex-propaganda boss, Zhu […]

I’ve recently been considering re-doing my blog skin, and wondering about all the pieces, chunks, and components of a modern, integrated blog.
There’s a ton, at least on my site. At least 13:

header with “station identification:” name and so on
introduction to the site and author
list of categories
list of recent posts
RSS paraphernalia
[…]

Wow I’ve hit the big time now … A-list here I come!

On Saturday Teresa and I took the kids to Blue Heron Wetlands (we’ve been there before).
This time we went somewhere a little different - a sandbar along the side of the Sumas river. I started hitting some rocks with a stick that I found on the bar, and Aidan wanted to get into the action.
So […]

For over a decade, Teresa and I (mostly Teresa) survived life dryer-less. That sounds shocking to a lot of people, but we just never bought a dryer.
When we were just starting out, we spent $800 on a Maytag washer, and there wasn’t any cash left over - or at least none that we really wanted […]

The National Education Computing Conference NECC 2006 keynote speakers were just annouced.
It hasn’t hit their website yet, but apparently Nicholas Negroponte will be there to give a speech about his one laptop per child project. NECC sent out an email about it this afternoon:

ISTE is pleased to announce that Nicholas Negroponte and Dewitt Jones will […]