Forbes says Heather Armstrong is the 26th most influential woman in the media. OK. But writing about it she proves she is the first most humorous woman in the media.
I know, I know, you all have the good sense to read dooce without my encouragement. Still, whenever I wipe tears of laughter from my eyes, I link.
Besides, the 26th most influential woman in the media puts the whole post in her RSS feed like good bloggers everywhere. And she does rely on ads.
Today only, Carina Software, one of the premier publishers in the field, is giving away Mac, PC, and iPhone versions of their software for next to nothing. It’s in honor of today’s 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On the iPhone, they are free, for the PC and Mac version, US$00.01.
. . .OK, what can you do with this software? Well, just about anything to help you under the stars or to plan a night of observing. The software picks up your location from the GPS, and of course the date and time. It will display more than 300,000 stars and 30,000 deep sky objects (clusters, nebula, galaxies). You can see the night sky from any location on earth, and on any date you choose, even going back or forward centuries.
The software also contains NASA images, and work from other astrophotographers. Amazingly, if you have a computer controlled telescope, like a Meade, Celestron, and some other less well known brands, SkyVoyager will soon be able to wirelessly connect to it and steer to objects you select on the iPhone.
TUAW has more details and the link.
Free is good. Normally it’s $14.95.
This has been posted here before, but what better day to reprise it than July 20th?
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks.
The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: “What are these guys in the big suits doing?” One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.
Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, “Why certainly!” and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder’s comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder’s message to the moon.
Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After she finally stopped laughing, the translator relayed the message: “Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land.”
Debby first sent me this story, but it had been around the Internet since at least 1995. According to the Urban Legends Reference Pages:
Although it might possibly have earlier antecedents as yet unknown to us, the origin of this tale appears to be a joke Johnny Carson included in his Tonight Show monologue on the evening of 22 July 1969, two days after Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the surface of the moon.
There is a reason why nobody takes the Vatican seriously on the issues of poverty, pre-emptive war and the death penalty. It’s because the Vatican never puts any muscle behind its pronouncements on issues like that. The folks in and around the Chair of Peter take out the big hammer on only two general issues — their own power, and where people put their pee-pees and with whom, and what might issue from same. That’s why Catholic bankers can go on merrily charging interest on loans, even though both the Council of Nicaea and the Third Lateran Council — to say nothing of Popes Clement V and Sixtus X — condemned the practice as usury, which has been considered a serious sin for a lot longer than has, say, contraception.
Charles Pierce, excerpted from a slightly longer piece.
A different perspective. Good stuff.
Montoya is a professor of law at the University of New Mexico and 2009 Haywood Burns Chair in Civil Rights at CUNY School of Law.
| It was 40 years ago this evening (U.S. time) that man first walked on the moon, an event that NewMexiKen believes centuries from now will rank as the most historic happening in our lifetimes.
I can remember watching the TV that evening thinking how cool it would be if some creature came crawling over the horizon into the field of view of the live camera. That was crazy, but at the time who really knew? The New York Times has its next day coverage on-line, including the historic front page. As Walter Cronkite said that afternoon when the lunar modular set down, “Oh, boy.” |
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Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy reminisces. More good stuff you must go and read.
Happy anniversary, sweetheart.
Nice. Very nice. Go read.
And Happy Anniversary and Best Wishes to you E & E!
… about my new car. None of you care, I’m sure, but the excitement is still there for me.
It plays my iPod through the radio with controls on the steering wheel; and volume increases in pre-set stages as speed increases (because a roadster can get noisy).
Rain sensitive wipers.
The gas filler and the console lock when the car is locked. They unlock when the car is unlocked.
My iPhone works through the radio. The microphone is on the steering wheel. If the phone is in the car, it all works.
Oh, and my phone directory automatically syncs so I can pick the person to call by scanning the radio readout (using the steering wheel control). Or see who it is (caller ID in a car).
I got 25 miles per gallon on the first 100 miles — mostly around town.
You can make the top go down with the key remote.
The cool BMW logo lights on each side (turn signals).
Oil changes every 15,000 miles.
The speedometer goes up to 160 mph.
Viewers of the CBS Evening News heard Walter Cronkite’s voice-over for final time Friday night. The network opted to retire the familiar intro after Cronkite passed away on Friday. “It just didn’t feel right” to continue with Cronkite’s voice, CBS News president Sean McManus told the New York Times.
It would have felt right with me if they’d kept it.
I posted this video just a year ago, but it deserves a reprise. It was made in 1978 — Belafonte was 51. (I guess he could have been carded; the man looked amazing.) Enjoy.
The Lakota Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull) surrendered to the U.S. Army on this date 128 years ago (1881).
This from a fine, brief biographical essay at AmericanHeritage.com:
On the morning of July 20, in front of American and Canadian soldiers and a Minnesota newspaperman, Sitting Bull had his eight-year-old son, Crow Foot, hand [Major] Brotherton his Winchester rifle. “I surrender this rifle to you through my young son,” said the chief, “whom I [thereby] desire to teach . . . that he has become a friend of the Americans. . . . I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. This boy has given it to you, and he now wants to know how he is going to make a living.”
… was born in Autlan de Navarro, Mexico, 62 years ago today. His family migrated to the U.S. in the 1960s.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduces inductee Santana this way —
Guitarist Carlos Santana is one of rock’s true virtuosos and guiding lights. Since 1966, he has led the group that bears his surname, selling over 30 million albums and performing before 13 million people. Though numerous musicians have passed through Santana’s ranks, the continuing presence of Carlos Santana at the helm has insured high standards. From the earliest days, when Santana first overlaid Afro-Latin rhythms upon a base of driving blues-rock, they have been musical sorcerers. The melodic fluency and kineticism of Santana’s guitar solos and the piercing, sustained tone that is his signature have made him one of rock’s standout instrumentalists. Coupled with the polyrhythmic fury of drums, congas and timbales, the sound of Santana in full flight is singularly exciting. Underlying it all is Santana’s belief that music should “create a bridge so people can have more trust and hope in humanity.”
Sixty-five years ago today, German military officers failed in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb in a briefcase. Four were killed but Hitler, though wounded, was saved by the heavy wooden table on which he was reviewing maps. This from the BBC —
Adolf Hitler has escaped death after a bomb exploded at 1242 local time at his headquarters in Rastenberg, East Prussia.
The German News Agency broke the news from Hitler’s headquarters, known as the “wolf’s lair”, his command post for the Eastern Front.
A senior officer, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, has been blamed for planting the bomb at a meeting at which Hitler and other senior members of the General Staff were present.
Hitler has sustained minor burns and concussion but, according to the news agency, managed to keep his appointment with Italian leader Benito Mussolini.
*****Von Stauffenberg was arrested the same day and shot. The rest of the conspirators were tried and hanged or offered the chance to commit suicide.
Eight of those executed were hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks and their executions filmed and shown to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.
The iPhone has proved to be rather adept at replacing other pieces of hardware. The combination of portability, a big screen that allows it to mimic any interface and an open (ish) App Store means that we are continually surprised at what people can make it do.
Today, it’s the turn of the bicycle. It turns out that many of the geegaws you might buy at the LBS (local bike shop) are already available as downloads from the iTunes Store.
“The wine bottle is late-18th century technology. It’s time to move on.”
Colin Alevras, sommelier at DBGB Kitchen and Bar, a trendy New York restaurant, quoted at Louisville Juice.
I had my ID checked at the ball game the other night to buy a watered-down beer. OK, I’m used to this stupidity by now, checking the ID of obvious AARP members.
But this a-hole vendor insisted I take my license out of the plastic. He gave it a once over, made sure the hologram was there, and so on. Like I was getting on a f***ing airplane bound for Syria. (I will remind you that it became legal for me to buy alcoholic beverages 43 years ago.)
So I took the beer and gave it to a teenager in the crowd.
In response to comments on the previous post, which was just a rant of mine with no particular merit, but anyway:
KathyF, yes the personality of the blog is definitely appreciated more if you browse the site rather than the boring RSS interface. And I agree with you about the ads, though it’s really only fair to click on an ad if one is actually interested. I couldn’t do the kind of blog I do here however, if I had to go to 100+ sites one at a time.
Debby and Mrs. A, you may not know what I was referring to because you don’t so far as I know manage a blog. Many to most web sites have Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Many of us read web sites only through the feeds because we get everything in one place and the feeds cut out all the sidebars and repetitious blog stuff. Feeds usually consist of just the posts.
The problem I was ranting about arises when the blogger chooses to publish a feed with just excerpts of their posts. We who rely on RSS glance at the excerpt and make an instant decision about whether it’s worth clicking and going to the web browser to read the entire post. It seldom is.
Because, simply put, most bloggers are not good enough writers to set the hook in the excerpt. They would be better off if they think they have something to say, to publish the whole post not just the excerpt. Make it easier for your feed readers and they are more likely to be interested in what you have to say — and much, much more likely to write about what you say and link to your blog.
Unless you’re a site that needs page views to sell ads, excerpting your RSS feed rather than publishing the full post is very poor blog etiquette.
After six years and with over 15,000 posts (and more than two million words), I guess I can claim some sort of senior status as a blogger. And I just don’t read blog posts that aren’t published in full in the RSS feeds. Too much trouble. I am not alone.
I make exceptions for people like Krugman. If you get a Nobel Prize I’ll make an exception for you.
But until then, please fix your RSS feed if it truncates.
“How has a 59 year old played 20 holes without urinating yet, thats the most impressive feat.”
I bought a BMW yesterday, so now I have a German car and a Japanese car (a Lexus).
That leaves me with a problem though.
I can’t decide which one to drive to the conference I’m attending on who won World War II.
100º F. at game time, but a chilly 84º by the ninth inning. With the humidity around 10% it was actually quite comfortable.
The New Orleans Zephyrs took an early 2-1 lead, but Closser had a grand slam in the sixth to put the ‘Topes ahead 5-2. The Zephyrs got another, then fell apart in the 7th as the homeboys scored 7 and went on to win 12-3.
The taco won the red-green-salsa-taco race from first to third.
And I took home an Orbit bobblehead.
I honestly think that all around, watching the Isotopes on a great Albuquerque night is equal to anything in the major leagues for its entertainment value.
Bank failures 54 through 57 of 2009 happened yesterday:
First Piedmont Bank, Winder, GA
BankFirst, Sioux Falls, SD
Vineyard Bank, Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Temecula Valley Bank, Temecula, CA
No one in my family was a journalist except Uncle Walter.
Adapted by me from David Kurtz.
I’ve seen a few “celebrities” including politicians, met a couple of former presidents, and seen a few others, talked to Lady Bird Johnson more than once, had a meeting in the West Wing, seen Dylan, and Benny Goodman, and Edward G. Robinson playing cards, attended a reception with Edward Kennedy in the crowd, another with John Glenn mingling, went to a movie premiere with two of the Apollo 13 astronauts.
But I’ve always considered two people I’ve seen in person in a class above all the others.
Earl Warren and Walter Cronkite.