Office 2007 is introducing new fonts that will change the way most documents will look and feel. It’s nice to see that Redmond is starting to focus on design at this level. Poynter Online has an interesting article detailing the fonts to be introduced when Office 2007 debuts.
Found on the Freakonomics blog:
Can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I’m about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: “a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes.”
As of Day 3, tester Adam Scott’s poop smells bad and he’s craving open-faced turkey sandwiches.
Update: Adam Scott’s also got a blog where he has a bit more detail on his monkey chow diet.
There’s a great article in today’s New York Times about a lawsuit between Dale Chihuly and a former employee cum competitor. Chihuly contends that Bryan Rubino is knocking off his glass designs and wants him to stop. It’s an interesting portrayal of Chihuly’s glass empire and contains such interesting bits as this: due to a surfing injury, for the last 27 years Chihuly hasn’t blown any of his own glass creations! I’ve seen a number of Chihuly installations, and really like his work, but I agree with one of the “experts” quoted in the article: Chihuly is bound to come off poorly in this endeavor. I imagine the public feeling a little bit like Dorothy when, after pulling back the curtain, she discovered the Wizard of Oz was someone rather ordinary.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin
In an Op-Ed piece in today’s Boston Globe, Laurence Tribe discusses the Fourth Amendment. Tribe notes that in a 2001 case dealing with a the Fourth Amendment issue, the Supreme Court - in a decision penned by Scalia - invalidated a search that used thermal heat imaging because to do otherwise would leave the people “at the mercy of advancing technology.” As Tribe points out:
the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment shield for ”the right of the people to be secure” from ”unreasonable searches” is a shield for all seasons, one that a lawless president, a spineless Congress, and a complacent majority of citizens — who are conditioned to a government operating under a shroud of secrecy while individuals live out their lives in fishbowls — cannot be permitted to destroy, for the rest of us and our children.
It’s amazing what almost six years in office can do to a President. Clinton had an affair, and Bush has discovered nuance! If you look for it, it’s everywhere. “No, the government is not eavesdropping on phone calls of innocent Americans,” he says. Of course this does not answer the charge that the NSA is scouring everyone’s phone records and then conducting warrantless wiretaps of those the government deems non-innocent. Or how about on immigration? How does a President satisfy the rabid zenophobes of his party, and at the same time provide cover for the big-business wing of the party who wants greater access to cheap immigrant labor? Why you use a litte nuance, of course! You send troops to the border to crack down on illegal immigration and agree to build a bad-ass wall to keep Mexicans out. At the same time you support legislation that would give illegal immigrants already in the country a path to citizenship. And to think Bush used to treat nuance like it was a dirty word!
Media Matters (see sidebar) has a great article running down the loose ends of another warrantless NSA spying program that was disclosed this week in USA Today. The USA Today article reported that the NSA has been collecting telephone records from phone companies without a search warrant. The Media Matters article also shows how this new program is tied in with the earlier-reported warrantless domestic eavesdropping program also conducted by NSA. Evidently, the practice has been to cull through the telephone records to determine which specific phone should be tapped without a warrant. Pure Orwell if you ask me.
Bigger news than today’s NSA spy poll is this: Ex-Teen Idol Leif Garrett Gets Jail Time! And boy did he not age well.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin
An unbelievable poll today shows that most Americans support NSA’s program to collect information on domestic phone calls. It appears that even if most Americans do not approve of President Bush’s job performance, they have adopted the administration’s assertion that we are in a state of perpetual war against terrorism. If Americans continue to accept that assertion, there will be no end to the curtailment of Liberty sought by Bush and company. How far are Americans willing to go?
Another comparison today between Bush and Clinton. In my mind, one of Clinton’s more annoying traits was his constant focus on his legacy - at least prior to the Lewinsky debacle. I think Clinton’s focus on his legacy may have been a case of narcissism blended with excessivie introspection. On the other hand, George Bush can not be said to suffer from excessive introspection. In fact, I think he spends very little time thinking big thoughts about anything. It is nonetheless surprising that he thinks the best moment of his presidency was “when [he] caught a seven-and-a-half pound large mouth bass on my lake.”
The Carpetbagger Report puts it well:
Oddly enough, this was a softball question. It was a slow, hanging curve, giving Bush a chance to highlight anything he wanted — his joy at watching the Saddam statue fall, signing one of his tax-cut measures into law, one of his inaugural addresses, a productive meeting with Tony Blair or another head of state, something of substance. Instead, the moment that comes to mind is a 7 1/2-pound largemouth bass.
The Washington Post runs an article today breaking down the gender and racial makeup of his appointees. The result: overwhelmingly white male. Eighty-seven percent of Bush’s appointees are white and 63 percent are male. By way of contrast, Bill Clinton pledged to have an administration that looked like America, meaning that the administration’s makeup would reflect the country’s diversity. The result: 47 percent women, 24 percent minorities.
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