Heart of Cheapness: "Let's do the math here. An estate tax with an exemption of $5 million would affect only a handful of very wealthy families: in 1999 only 3,300 estates had a taxable value of more than $5 million. The average value of those estates was $16 million. If the excess over $5 million were taxed at pre-2001 rates, the average taxed family would be left with $10 million - which doesn't sound like hardship to me - and the government would collect $20 billion in revenue each year. But no; the whole tax must go" An excellent op-ed.

I redid the blogroll on the left (in the Radio version of this site) based on some new functionality in Radio 8.0.8. Looks good.

'Star Wars' franchise needs helping Han: "I realized after seeing "Episode I" what was wrong with this new "Star Wars" series, despite its visual wonders: No Han Solo. The new series has no everyman, no skeptic. Who am I to relate to? Where am I up on that screen" -- Dave Arnold, Sheriden, OR in a letter to Roger Ebert. I agree completely [Via Andrew Pulrang]

Carnegie Endowment - Power and Weakness: "Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's "Perpetual Peace." The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less."

Scientists Develop the Universe's Baby Pictures. Where can I find these pictures on the web?

Fighting to Live as the Towers Died

New Scientist. A sixty minute "power nap" boosts performance during the day. I've always wanted to do this. Maybe I can talk work into putting in a nap room...

Oh sweet, sweet connectivity. We're back after a multi-day downtime. When I got home around midnight on Friday I found the cable modem not working and called Cox. They couldn't see any problems on their end and scheduled a service call for next Wednesday. Right, like I could last that long. I called again on Saturday and got someone more helpful. He gave me some ideas to try and moved my service call to Tuesday. We got busy yesterday and everyone is sick this morning so it wasn't until tonight that I tried them and, boom, we're back on the air. Looks like either the splitter or the wire from the splitter to my cable modem went bad. When I moved the modem to the Kitchen drop it came up just fine. I'll do a test to see if it's the splitter or the wire and then work on this from there. But I'm getting much better reception in the bedroom with the wireless hub in the kitchen now so it's going to stay there rather than return to the basement.

USATODAY.com - The Mac a business machine? Better believe it!: "So, the next time someone tells you that the Mac is not a serious business computer, just smile and get on with your business. You know better"

DigitalConsumer.org Home Page. Go, lend your support.

I just wrote my review of the season finales so far. There are some spoilers but they are marked. Check it out: Reviewing the Finales

ABCNEWS.com : Researcher Analyzes the Meaning of Meows: "Cornell Researcher Seeks to Prove How Cats Manipulate People" Well, duh. I could have told you all of this. That reminds me... my cat has been in a friend's care for months now. We've moved in and are settled. Time for me get him back.

MATRIX Trailers. Oh so excellent...

Stephen Jay Gould, Biologist and Theorist on Evolution, Dies at 60: "Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary theorist at Harvard University whose research, lectures and prolific output of essays helped to reinvigorate the field of paleontology, died today at his home in Manhattan. He was 60." Back in 1994, I saw Gould speak at a very weird three-day symposium at Dartmouth College. I've already forgotten exactly what the conference was about (the fact that I was all night the night before, uh, starting a new relationship may have had something to do with some gaps in my memory, I was struggling to stay awake that first day) but it featured Paul Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Gould, Roger Penrose, and many other luminaries in modern science, mathematics, and philosophy. Gould and Dennett got into a lively debate. Gould was describing his theory of the evolution of intelligence. He compared intelligence to medieval spandrels in arches. Basically, if you build a room with four arches (instead of four walls) and a dome ceiling, at each corner you will have a large triangle of unused space that's outside the arches and below the dome. Medieval artisans painted scenes in the spandrels. The spandrels were not there for the art, rather an interesting use was made of this extra, leftover space. He feels that intelligence is the same way in our brains. That, for other reasons, our brains grew larger and intelligence was a by-product of this extra space, not the point of it. Dennett flatly disagrees. It would have become a shouting match except neither man wanted to let the other think that he was respected so comments were always cloaked in sad head shaking or derisive laughter. Dennett was sitting in front of me for that particular show and it was hysterical to watch his reactions. Like him or not, Gould was a fantastic writer and a baseball fan as well. I'll miss his wonderful, thought provoking essays and his insightful thoughts.

Doc Searls on Apple: "Here's what I think (at 11am on a Monday in May): Apple is doing a lot of things right (or close enough), and their circle of the development Venn diagram is overlapping hugely with the UNIX community, including committed open source folks, commercial "solutions" developers and all those science types for whom UNIX is simply a universal environment ÷ and they're still highly compatible with Microsoft as a fellow platform vendor. Yes, there's reason to be concerned about Steve Jobs' Hollywood connections (Apple is in the BPDG), he's clearly his own man, and blessedly free of the antitrust lawsuits that have terribly damaged Microsoft's spirit (no matter how much they may deny it). The energy coming off Apple right now is very stong and positive. People there are having fun. They're competitive, but not combative (a critical advantage over Microsft's only serious ÷ but perhaps fatal ÷ character flaw)" [Doc Searls Weblog]

And now I know. :)

Divers Discover Maya Relics in Caves That Became Rivers

It seems that items are not making it over to my blogger-based site. Not sure what's going on but until I figure it out, this is the better site to check. Oh bugger. Now posts aren't even making it to the radio site from my laptop. *sigh*

Walter Lord, Narrative Historian, Dies at 84: "Walter Lord, the narrative historian whose books ÔFD1 most notably "A Night to Remember," a riveting account of the sinking of the Titanic ÔFD1 were characterized by intensive research and exhaustive interviews, died on Sunday at his Manhattan apartment. He was 84." This is a despressing day. I read Walter Lord's book about the Titanic when I was quite young. I was very into the Titanic before it was fashionable to be. I remember the day (September 1983, iirc) when it was found by Ballard and was so thrilled. I am truly saddened by this.

The Mac Observer - One Mac User's (Successful) Effort To Get A Mac In His Windows Run Company. Funny, I just asked when I got hired. Ok, I whined a lot too. But it worked. Of course, I've run into problems too.

• We have a VPN. Only with Windows 2K can I access it. When Jaguar comes out this summer/fall, I'll be OK but until then, I can't access the company file servers from home (and I work from home one day a week).
• Outlook is the tool of choice for email. This isn't an issue because I can do all email via IMAP to our office exchange server. But the company contacts database is in Outlook. Solution? Either use Outlook 2001 under Classic (works, but is a pain) or use Outlook XP under Win2K in VirtualPC (agonizingly slow, but works). Would that Entourage X do Exchange.
• Development: While I am not a developer, I am the CSS/XHTML guy at work. This means that I design the HTML templates for projects and the CSS files to boot. Designing them is snap thanks to BBEdit. But when the developers need me to go in and check their work, I can't actually do so. The development team uses a sandbox model where everyone has their own centrally synchronized Linux box running under VMware under Windows. I can't get it to work under VirtualPC so I can't test code. So, what I do is either pull out the necessary HTML file and the necessary CSS file via MacCVS and then adjust them so I can view them locally (which is a nightmare when the html file relies on back-end processing) or I go down the hall to a Win2K machine which is often not being used.

Aside from those issues, I'm very functional and am quite happy being a Mac guy in a Windows office. Well, I could do with less ribbing. That gets old fast. But I'm mostly used to it. Mostly.

Looks like items are not making it over to this site from the Radio version. For the record, at this point, you are better off reading the Radio version. Soon, I'll probably retire this site and use the Radio one exclusively (though, at this URL). Anyway, check there while I figure this mess out.

What 'Friends' Has That 'X-Files' and 'Ally' Lacked

So, we just finished the X-Files finale. Bullet points:

• "I could smell you coming, Clarice" and "Come here you big, beautiful, bald man" were fantastic. It goes downhill from there. I kept waiting for Mulder to say "I see dead people."
• The trial was an ultra-weak attempt to recap the show. It felt so forced and artificial and absurd and useless.
• Last we saw that prosecutor, he was being shoved into the bathroom of an airplane by Billy Idol while his fiancee, Drew Barrymore, was running off with Adam Sandler.
• Dana is willing to give everything up to follow Mulder to the ends of the Earth. But she is not willing to do that for her own son. He, she gives up for adoption. Why? She could have run with him and protected him. Sure, you could say he is safer with the anonymous couple than he would be with her but I don't buy it.
• So, after all is said and done, we still don't have all the answers. The X-Files are closed, everyone is on the run and in danger, and Mulder is deciding to get religion. Yawn. I'm not going to hold my breath for the movie.

Salon.com on the X-Files: The truth is, um, where, exactly?: "If I wanted to watch people in a poorly lit room hold painfully slow, incoherent conversations, I'd hang out with heroin addicts. "

Lost in Translation is addictive! The first verse of "You are my sunshine" comes out thusly: They are my sun, sun of the mine only. They emit the lucky shutdowns the other way around to me, if the skies ash-gray are leached. They never know, expensive, how much master to him. My sun does not clear to me requests.

Funny Jack Moment: We're reading "Runaway Bunny," his current favorite book, and on every page I ask him to point out the baby and the mamma. Normally, he points at them when I ask and says "baby" and "mamma." It's very, very cute. This last time, we get to the page where the baby is hiding in a flower and the mother is a gardener looking for him. I asked him "Where's the baby" and he pointed to the baby in the flower and said "baby!" and when I asked "where's the mamma?" he pointed at the mother bunny carrying a hoe and said "Ho!" Velvet Johnson would be proud.

apulrang.diary: "In any given group, the Andys are always the most interesting people to talk to." I have to agree. Like this one time? At band camp? ...

New York's Best Espresso? Now I have an intense craving for good espresso. I picked it up on our second trip to Italy in 1999. Prior to that, I only ever had cappuccino which, I later learned, only tourists drink after 11AM. I wonder if I'll have any better luck in Washington, DC... Or the North End of Boston... things to try...

ER Act 4: A cliffhanger? Oh whatever. A kisshanger. Huh. Whatever. I have nothing pithy to say about the show after that. Friends was good, by the way.

ER: Act 3 again: Jerry rocks. That was funny. Otherwise, yawn.

Giant dinosaurs arrived with a bang. A meteorite impact may explain the rapid rise of huge, carnivorous dinosaurs, as well as their demise [New Scientist]

ER: Act 3. Yawn.

I'll tell you this much, have a kid and you will find that sick and dying kids is not entertaining television. At all.

It's ER night on Webcrumbs. Well, ER and "trash talking Bush" night. Who's playing the woman lawyer (the one from the hot coals walking at the start)? Is she one of the mothers on Dharma and Greg? Where do we know her from?

Ah, the Red Sox lost tonight. They just don't do that anymore...

Second act is over. I enjoyed the commercial (Miller beer, guy hitching a ride with a trucker who has a dummy) more than the act. It's getting sensationalist. And they killed a kid off. They love killing off kids. Oh, Andrew, I agree with you about the best episode. But I also thought the Greene episode about the botched childbirth ("Love's Labor Lost") with Bradley Whitford was their best dramatic episode.

More Andrew... Despite all of my instincts, I am watching ER right this minute. I look forward to reading Andrew's deconstruction of this episode. So far, with the first act over, it's actually somewhat gripping. It feels like good old ER. We'll see how things go...

Andrew Pulrang on Cube:: "The problem is that as nasty as Castro's regiem undoubtedly is, it's hard for reasonable people to imagine Cuba as a threat to us. So, what is Cuba? Certainly not an "Evil Empire." How about "The Vaguely Unpleasant Archipelago?""

Photo Op-Portunism: "So now the White House gets caught peddling 9/11 commemorative photos. With all the class of a 1:30 a.m. infomercial for an electronic ab stimulator, the G.O.P. pitched donors, for a bargain price, a pictorial triptych of W.'s "defining moments." " Is there no end? If it seems I've done little but blog op-eds decrying the Bushes lately it's because I stand in utter amazement that he's getting away with all of this. So, Clinton got a blow job and had shaky connections (never proven) to whitewater and he's evil. But this president let his energy policy be written by Enron, exploits 9/11 for both civil-liberties-crushing policies and for his own political gain, an undeclared war (so as to get the spoils of war without the responsibilities of war) on a vague enemy (which he has yet to find), and now this? Wake up America. After this, Clinton is going to go down in history as a President who got caught lying over the least consequential stuff. Oh, I'm sorry. Was my bleeding heart on my sleeve again? I hate when that happens. Laundry bills, you know.

The MCU: Jim's Web Accessibility Weblog

Persons of Density

Jack finally got his hair cut last night. Here he is all freshly cut (and with Gnocchi all over his face).
I don't know what we said. But here is his ticked-off look.
We had an amazing sunset tonight after all the storms today.
Finally, a tree in our back yard bloomed.

The War on Terror Flounders: "Is there any explanation other than inertia to account for the United States' maintaining 47,000 troops in Japan, despite the lack of any threat there except perhaps from extraterrestrials, yet refusing to provide a few thousand troops to keep the swamp drained in Afghanistan?"

Smoking Fat Boy: "what bothers me is the position taken by so many business and political commentators: that the California catastrophe says nothing about the risks of deregulation and the dangers of loving free markets too much. It was California's own fault, they say, for creating a "flawed" system "

Just Some Thoughts... about Baku and Tiblisi. Chris is there now. This means he didn't watch ER. He doesn't anyway. I'm sure he's having a much better time culturally than we are. I hope I get to travel for work soon. So far I've only made to the department of Labor a few times. Not exactly the high life. I may get to go to New York City soon but since I grew up there, it's fun, but not exotic.

I'll say this much for ER, for a show that I profess to not care any longer about, I sure am writing a lot about it this season. OK, so this is the third time or so. But how often have i written about any other show? Anyway, I didn't watch last week. I decided I didn't want to watch the Dr. Greene death marathon and participate in that bit of NBC schlock. And I said I wasn't going to watch tonight. When it started, we were reading the article (below) about the Red Sox/Devil Rays game and laughing our asses off. Yet, every so often, we stopped and paid a little attention to the show. After we finished reading the article, we put the laptop to sleep and just watched. Wow. I have to admit, it was a moving episode and not anywhere near as maudlin as I was worried it would be. I have to keep reminding myself that NBC has a habit of promoting shows in the worst possible way. I mean, come on, all season long we've been subjected to an Enya soundtrack on Friends commercials. Enya? Give me a break. And tonight's ER was supposed to be one to cherish. I don't know about you, but if I find myself cherishing a tv show, it's time for someone to take a two-by-four to my head at high velocity. So, all of that cynical badanage aside, we rather enjoyed the episode. Of course Ann went through a box of tissues. But then again, she goes through at least three tissues whenever a cute baby or puppy appears in a commercial. She just hit me. Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe I should not blog with my wife sitting next to me. But at least she's catching all of my typos and spelling errrors. Except that one. Ha. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. ER good. I'm glad to see they aren't going in for any kind of blatant sensationalism for the season finale next week. No, not at all. Then again, I'm sure it's just how it's being promoted by NBC. At least it's not one to cherish. I can only cherish so many shows. Ouch. That two-by-four hurts.

ESPN.com - Page2 - My dance with the Devil (Rays). This is the funniest (and I mean THE FUNNIEST) thing I have read in a long time. And I'm happy to report that the Sox just swept Oakland. So, they may yet be the real deal. And to all the people who say the Sox fold in the second half of the season, bite me.

Kicking Up Cosmic Dust. Wow. The New York Times completely and utterly skewers Star Wars Episode II. I don't remember the last time I read so bad a review. Then again, this is the New York Times and Star Wars ain't no highbrow entertainment. And I am one of those freaks who actually liked Episode I (I also think Empire Strikes Back is the best of the original trilogy. Come to think of it, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is also a good movie, but that's important right now). So, we'll have to see...

Scientific American: News In Brief: Fossil Whale Ears Indicate Swift Transition from Land to Sea: May 9, 2002

More Guns for Everyone!: " How weird is it that in this post-Sept.-11 atmosphere, when the Justice Department itself is in the forefront of the effort to narrow potential threats to security, the attorney general decides it would be a good idea to throw open the doors to a wholesale increase in gun ownership?" Ashcroft... there are no words. I cannot wait until he is long gone from office.

Busy again at work. I've been updating two papers I re-wrote this fall from papers I wrote last summer. It's a long story. But in the last few days, I've written and edited through about 60 pages total. Phew. I joke that I've been working on my thesis. What is my thesis? Simply put, strict adherence to Section 508 and the WCAG 1.0 leads to inaccessible websites. They may be technically accessible, but they are annoying as all hell in screen readers. The papers are on accessible online education. And they are going to get published. Somewhere. I hope. We'll see.

Schoolhouse Rock on DVD is due out in late August. I know what I'm getting my wife for her birthday now! [Via NowThisLog]

Andrew Pulrang (link at left) quotes on of my favorite comedians, Richard Jeni: "I can see going to war over justice or freedom, or even revenge. But, if you go to war over religion ... now your basically going to war over who has the best imaginary friend." I hadn't heard that before and it all but killed me. Hey, Andrew, if you haven't yet seen Eddie Izzard, do so. Another funny man.

OS X applications ranked by category. Neat list... I agree with most choices. In fact, I'm in the midst of moving all but my work mail from Entourage X over to Apple's Mail client.

NY Times: Access to Free Online Music Is Seen as a Boost to Sales. Disputing the position held by the major record companies, a report issued on Friday found that people who use file-sharing networks to obtain music at no charge over the Internet are more likely to have increased their spending on music than are average online music fans. [Tomalak's Realm] Finally! Ann and I have been saying this all along. In fact, since the demise of Napster, I've hardly bought any CDs.

Tom Waits: A Poet of Outcasts Who's Come Inside "Sunlight wouldn't seem to be Tom Waits's element. His songs tend to take place in rainy nocturnal realms filled with outcasts and freaks, where his slurred gargle of a voice and his junkyard assortment of sounds won't upset passers-by. Yet there Mr. Waits was on a bucolic northern California afternoon a few weeks ago, lunching on minestrone soup in a small-town restaurant near his home, and talking affably about how he has created and maintained his own peculiar zone [~] more like a back room or a bunker full of debris [~] in American music." I've always loved Tom Waits' music. Ann admits she finds it interesting and tolerates the periods, every few months, where I go on a Tom Waits bender and listen to lots of albums over and over again before I move along to something else. Every woman I've dated long enough to live with me through my Waits Phases has tolerated that phase and just smiled and loved that weird part of me. Well, they did at the start of the relationship. I'm sure that as things were winding down it was another nail in the coffin. Rain Dogs helped me get over a particuarly nasty breakup some years ago. I think the album has moments that are so dark and depressing that I, by comparison, was happier and brighter. Either that or the album allowed me to go all of the way down so I could start my journey back up again. It's hard to say. These days, my life has its stresses and strains but I am, on the whole, a happy person. So, Waits' music isn't about happy or sad to me now, they are about mood and melody, tone and timbre. They make me look at the world with my head cocked at a 30 degree angle the way a dog does when you make a funny noise at it. Yeah, that's it. Tom Waits' music is that funny noise that makes me do that. And I love it. Don't tell my wife. But I may have to sneak off and buy a pair of CDs this week.

Is the Pope Catholic?: "Like the Communist Party circa Leonid Brezhnev, the Vatican exists first and foremost to preserve its own power." What an excellent op-ed piece. I find myself in complete agreement with everything he says. I am not Catholic but I married one and I went to a Catholic high school. But my wife and I have talked often about how we want to raise Jack and whether we want to raise him in a given faith (though we've also agreed that we want to develop in him a strong capacity for critical thinking) and we've both shied away from the Catholic church as we disagree with its politics strongly. Personally, I love a good theological debate. I ain't gonna get one there. Not now. Not with the draconian policies they have in place. Remind me to tell you the story about why we had to drop the Catholic priest who was going to marry us a month before our wedding leading us to change the location of the wedding at the 11th hour. I'd say more, but breakfast needs to come out of the oven. Homemade scones. Yum.

Ok, I know it's only the beginning of the season and I realize that we've been playing teams like Baltimore and Tampa Bay (and barely winning the last two against Tampa Bay at that) but it's hard not to get excited about the Red Sox this year. After we finish with Tampa Bay we face the real teams: Seattle and New York. The proof will be in the pudding. But, hey, this is a fun season. So far. Last year we felt this way at this point too. So, let's see how we feel come August...

Ok, I'm a bit behind on pictures. So here are way too many at once! First off, we had some impressive thunder storms in the last week. Here's a rainbow earlier in the week...
And here is a closeup...
New! If you have lawn-pattern-baldness, you can get spray-on-grass for lawns!
We joke about Jack having a girlfriend. She's the only other two-year-old in the neighborhood. Her name is Nimra and she's been letting Jack play with her car. In this series of pictures notice that she tries to give Jack a kiss. Of course, he was completely oblivious...


Finally, Jack had a balloon and then lost it...

This site explains a problem I've been struggling with obsessively for two days now. I checked, double-checked, triple-checked the html and the css and could find no reason for it to be happening on our site. Thankfully, someone on the CSS-D list helped me out and pointed me to that site. I'll spare you my "IE/Windows sucks" rant. If you work with CSS you already know this.

Food Reference Website: Culinary history, quotes, recipes, trivia, humor, poetry, crossword, and more!. I learned that May is National Artisans Gelato Month. Mmmmm.... gelato....