Saturday, August 24, 2002

My attempt to have my RSS feed just feature the first 80 characters from my item and then ... didn't work - it showed up in my news aggregator and looked like crap. I'm trying string.firstSentence now instead - we'll see how that works out. If it doesn't look good, I may have to make something up on my own... edit: I don't think I like the firstSentence thing after all.
8:23:19 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I just realized - today is this blog's one month anniversary... I've been doing this for a month now. Huh - feels longer. I've posted 303 items - this'll be 304. Have I really had this much to say in a month? Watching the Little League World Series...Worcester, MA - the first Massachusetts baseball team to beat a New York (Harlem) baseball team in a long time - is in the US finals. The Worcester pitcher is 12 years old, 5'9", 200+ pounds... he's HUGE. He throws a 76 mph fastball - AT 12!!! He's significantly bigger than I am, and he's half my age. I feel very small right now.

8:13:47 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I'm fiddling with how my RSS feed gets put together - I've decided to change it to grabbing the first 80 characters of each new item and no more. Less aggravation in someone's news aggregator...let me know if you have an opinion on this...
7:41:13 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

US condemns Georgia air attack [BBC World] My roommate says that Russia and Israel still have a lot to learn from the US's war on terrorism - if you really want to get stuff done and not get people so angry, you should be bombing more weddings. Of course, my roommate's lying. =)
7:29:53 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

On NPR's news quiz show, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, they have a bit where each of their three panelists read a strange news story, and the contestant guesses which of the three is true. Today, the final one (read by Paula Poundstone, I think, though it might have been P.J. O'Rourke) was the Kashmir/Cadbury story I talked about a while ago. For once, I was sure which one was the true story... =)
4:09:26 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Beer boss in studio as shock DJs aired racy show. Boston Herald Aug 24 2002 1:16AM ET [Moreover - Boston news] So, the company that makes Sam Adams beer sponsored the 'have sex in public' contest that led to Opie and Anthony, shitty shock jocks extraordinaire, getting fired. In an attempt to rebrand Sam Adams as a 'party beer', Boston Beer is trying naughty ads, introducing a light version, and, well, sponsored a couple having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Well, hey, it led to O+A getting fired, which should mean more music on WBCN during the afternoons, so I say, good for you, Boston Beer!

11:24:06 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

A Big Game [New York Times: International News] In the Arctic Canadian territory of Nunavut, the Inuit are allotted a certain number of walruses to hunt each year. These walruses represent history and tradition to the Inuit, whose ancestors have been hunting the walrus for five thousand years. They also represent a valuable food source - there's a LOT of meat on a walrus. Recently, a small number of the annual walrus quota has been shared between the Inuit and big game hunters, with the approval of the Canadian government. The Inuit still get all the meat, and the big game hunters get to kill one of the most significant big-game animals in the Western Hemisphere, one that they'd otherwise have no legal way to bag. For this privelage, they fork over in the vicinity of $6,000, 2/3 of which makes it to into Inuit hands. In other words, the Inuit have found a way to profit off their cultural legacy. I can understand anti-hunting advocates having a problem with this, at least at first glance. I myself am opposed to pleasure hunting, as opposed to sustenance hunting, but this seems to combine the two. After all, the main purpose of the Inuit walrus quota is to provide the Inuit with supplies - they're a poor people, by and large, with a $12,000 median income in Nunavut. If the Inuit end up with the walrus' meat and they all feel comfortable with sharing their traditional hunt with others, I can't see a problem with making a nice chunk of change off it. BTW, here's the author's explanation of why it normally takes a day of hunting to take a trophy male: "It is an achievement that is not surprising, considering that walrus hunting, under Inuit supervision, is the approximate equivalent of a long boat ride to shoot a very large beanbag chair."

11:17:17 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

For Young Fans, the Name Of the Video Game Is Gore [Washington Post: Front Page] What, GTA3 is still news to some people? The game's been out for almost a year. It's sold 7 million copies. Yeah, people like Lieberman and Herb Kohl are still bugging the retailers to not sell games like GTA3 to kids. And Crazy Joe Baca, Congressman from California, "introduced a bill that would create penalties for selling to a minor video games that depict mutilation, killing of humans with a lethal weapon, rape, carjacking and aggravated assault, among other felonies," in May. (which more or less is an attempt to ban selling GTA3 to kids...could it be more blatant?) But they won't get anywhere - too much money to be made, no good reason to stop. Nor should the retailers and game developers bow to this pressure...it's mainly just conservative Democrats posturing on the right, like they've been doing since the days of Tipper Gore and parental warning labels.

10:51:36 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I'm in a mood tonight. Not a very specific mood - a kind of random one. I want to write poetry or something right now, but it's not getting anywhere. My roommate is revelling in his addiction to '80s music...we have digital cable and he puts one of two music channels on in the background whe he doesn't have anything else to watch - New Wave or '80s. Hence the new description - not inspired by Culture Club, but by hearing the Live at Budokan original. God, I'm incoherent. I'm giving up - whatever it is that I want to say, it can wait.

12:07:13 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []