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In an experiment to determine which weapons a bullet proof vest would repel, a Colorado man inadvertently stabbed his vest wearing nephew in the heart, killing him. The two had been drinking beers, wiskey, and smoking a little weed.
This photo was taken early Monday evening at Salem and Prince Streets, in the North End. Right next to the best sandwich shop in town, Dino’s.
It looks like it's worse than was thought. With a recall threatening the Governor and a budget held together by borrowing, the state will stop paying it's bills at midnight if a budget is not agreed upon.
The Republicans in the legislature, facing a $38 billion deficit and a faltering ecomomy, have decided to say no to more borrowing and higher taxes. Democrats are accusing Republicans of political manuvering to boost efforts to recall Democratic Governor Gray Davis. Observers think a compromise is unlikely.
And some hope that Arnold, who's watching closely from the sidelines, might step in and save the day, just like in a movie.
Is Dennis Miller a conservative or is he a liberal. This National Review article suggests that he's neither. Or both.
UPDATE: Maybe more conservative than not, as he is now fundraising for Bush.
At Fenway Park this afternoon, Trot Nixon hit a single to center field allowing David Ortiz to score. Final: Sox 11, Marlins, 7. Photo taken from high up in left field.
Today’s Globe ran a story in the Ideas section on smart people who do stupid things. Yale psychology professor Robert Sternberg is at the center of understanding stupidity. He and others find that being an idiot has nothing to do with intelligence. And, he suggests, there may be a cure.
Sternberg is not without hope concerning the war on stupidity: Psychologists can identify people who are susceptible to making ''stupid'' mistakes, and some of the unhelpful patterns of thinking can be modified through teaching. Sternberg and his colleagues are even crafting standardized-test questions that measure ''wisdom.'' But he knows he's swimming against an exam and college-admissions culture that upholds the traditional view of intelligence while allowing dangerous levels of idiocy to go undetected.
At the same time, the World Stupidity Awards are out (via Jeff Jarvis). I would have written in Arafat, or maybe Mugabe instead of Bush. Come to think of it, these awards are stupid.
And here's a stupid, but funny article on irony from yesterday's Guardian.
This is a fable about how winning the lottery can ruin your life. Then again, this guy, who moved into a double wide trailer after winning his jackpot, probably isn't your typical winner.
Sign in a window, Washington Street, in the South End. He probably is a very good lawyer.
Is Jamie Fox the Greg Packer of crime stories? Here's what he told the Globe for a story about a recent series of homicides in Boston where some fear it could be a violent summer.
Nearly 20 percent of the 480,000 homicides in the United States from 1976 to 2001 occurred in July and August, Fox said. ''It may be more of an issue of lifestyle than of temperature,'' he said. ''The heat can create tensions, but the warm weather creates more interactions between neighbors and strangers.''
So nearly 20% of murders in a twelve month period occur in two months. I looked at the numbers for 94-98 (a smaller sampling than Fox uses) and the homicide average for July was 8.9%. August was 9.2%. That works out to about 18.1%. Those two months contain 17% of the days of the year.
Is 18 nearly 20 when you start at 17? I guess it all depends on the message you want to convey. In any case, saying that murders for the coming long hot summer, might normally be expected to be only about one percentage point over the average isn't exactly the stuff of compelling news stories.
Bryan Murley reviews Richard Thomson’s latest CD, The Old Kit Bag, over at BlogCritics.
There's also a review of Punch Drunk Love. It's short but right on.
The heat is supposed to break this evening. Thunderclouds were just starting to form as the sun was setting. This view is from Columbus Ave, looking west.
InfoTrends is predicting the death of film by 2008, at least for consumer use. (via PhotographyBlog.)
Violent crime stats in Boston are not too bad. But there is a perception that property crime is on the rise. Street robberies are up and burglaries seem to be too, although the stats show a slight decrease.
Part of the problem may be the release of some of the criminals from the 90s who are wrapping up their sentences. And the contraction of the drug markets, especially for crack, may be forcing some of these people to find other ways to sustain themselves economically.
Jay Fitzgerald notes that this is not good news for the city. He, and others are looking to the suburbs for these reasons.
With Summer effectivly about 48 hours old, and the cold miserable spring a fading memory, I guess now it's OK to complain about the heat. Here's the first open hydrant of the season tonight on Tonawanda Street in Dorchester.
Google is branching out with advertising. If you run a web site, Google will supply text ads that match the nature of your site. Try it here if you're interested.
I plugged in Jay Fitzgerald's Hubblog and this is what came up. Interesting. Lileks' Bleat also turned up surprising results. Guardroom, obviously produced LE ads.
The EU is considering a ban on certain behavior and images in the European media. The commission for social affairs proposes to outlaw…
TV programmes that stereotyped women - or men - and… advertising that did not "respect human dignity".
Advertising that does not respect human dignity?
This Wired story looks at the problem with public wi-fi pricing models that I mentioned below. Apparently I’m not alone in shying away from the high price, low speed, mostly novelty connections that companies like T-Mobile are currently offering. To be competitive with free services, pay services have to be faster, wider and easier to use. Mostly I’ve seen the opposite. (A good example is the free, fast wide coverage in Bryant Park, compared with expensive and spotty coverage in the averge small Starbucks.)
I think that when college students, using laptops with wi-fi cards purchased for use on school and dorm networks start venturing out to businesses that offer free access, the competitive advantage will spur other businesses to offer free access. That’s the way this will spread, not through a business-user pay as you go model.
Nick Denton gives Oddpost mail filtering high marks...
Oddpost picks up email from your normal accounts, filters it, and delivers largely spam-free email to your inbox. So far, Oddpost hasn't held any email I wanted to receive. And the system should get better over time, as it learns the phrases that denote spam.
It’s a Hotmail-like (but not free) mail service that uses Bayesian analysis for spam filtering. I think that means it works really good.
Here’s the sneak preview of Panther, the next upgrade to OS X.
On the first real day of summer in the Boston area, the sunset is reflected off Fort Hill Tower in Roxbury.
Apple cooking the books on computer speed figures? I'm shocked.
In his Globe column, Hiawatha Bray looks into the practical aspects and implications of remote computer destruction, the kind suggested by Orin Hatch.
Baltimore has about fifty thousand more people than Boston - but, it’s population density is significantly lower. Boston has about 12,000 people per square mile, whereas Baltimore has about 8000. (Here are the exact figures)
So far this year, Baltimore has had 138 murders while Boston has had less than 20.
Which seems to lead here: since 1990, Boston has increased it’s population by about 15,000 while Baltimore lost about 80,000 residents, (not all of whom, I assume, were the victim of homicides.)
The good news is that Springsteen will be allowed to play Fenway Park this summer. The sad news is that the reason that neighborhood groups and licensing authorities allowed the show to go on is that everyone thinks Springsteen fans are too old and decrepit to cause any real trouble.
Dunkin Donuts in Eddie Everett Square is sparky central. There was a group hanging in the lot tonight, counting out the alarms as their scanners blared fire calls.
I really enjoyed traveling in Spain earlier this year. The people were great, the country was beautiful, the food, the wine... everything was top notch. Did I mention the wine?
Barcelona was our last stop, and I expected that it would be the highlight. I was wrong, it was the low point. The city seemed dirty, and seedy, and there was a sense that you'd better watch your back. It occurred to me that I could have been misreading the atmosphere, but here’s what a resident says about crime in the city. From Iberian Notes…
The Barcelona city government is negligent in not clarifying the risks that a visit to Barcelona incurs. Barcelona is safe enough if you behave yourself as if you were in a dodgy part of Chicago or New York. If you do not take precautions, YOU WILL BE A VICTIM. One of these days those damned kids are going to kill a tourist from one of those luxury cruise ships and then the shit is going to hit the fan.
…The Barcelonese themselves don't really give a shit. You'll get sympathy, but you'll also get "well, everyone knows that's a bad part of town" and "well, you shouldn't have had your wallet in your back pocket" and "we're sorry but there's nothing we can do." They don't particularly care because they themselves are rarely victims and you are just another tourist.
I’d say, stick with Madrid, or Bilbao or Granada, or Lerma. Leave Barcelona to the French tourists.
Artificially inhibiting some normal brain functions may produce savant behavior in the average person. This NYT Sunday Magazine article raises some interesting questions.
Researchers scouring the bottom of the Tasman Sea have dredged up some pretty ugly fish.
One creature, the fangtooth, has teeth longer than its head. To avoid piercing its own brain when it shuts its mouth, the teeth fit into opposing sockets. The viperfish has a hinged head so it can cram in food, and the jowl-cheeked coffinfish has a glowing lure on its head to attract prey.
The critters pictured above look like extras from Starwars and Alien to me.
I'm about halfway through reworking this page. I went over the CSS and changed a few things to format across browsers: Explorer for Windows seems to display the page best, but I think I've brought it into line in Safari, Exp 5 for the Mac and Mozilla for Win. Please let me know if the page doesn't render well in your browser.
I also tweaked the design and formatting and now I'm in the middle of updating and organizing the links and the oversized blog roll. I should have it all done by the middle of the week.
This BBC story a reports that scientists believe that an afternoon nap – one in which REM is reached – can be as beneficial as a full night’s sleep.
The Harvard research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, compared the learning and memory skills of two groups of people during a single day, and again the following morning.
One group was told not to sleep at all during the day, and, as expected, their performance tailed off into the afternoon and evening.
However, the other volunteers were allowed to have an hour or 90 minutes nap at 2pm.
The researchers wrote: "From the perspective of behavioural improvement, a nap is as good as a night of sleep for learning on this perceptual task."
The implication is that a night of sleep is important for physical rejuvenation, and an afternoon nap effects mental awareness. Sounds like an opportunity for self experimentation.
I've decided that, for a non-business user, T-Mobile wireless access is a ripoff. Paying $50 for 300 minutes (the minimum) is bad enough when each login, no matter how long in duration, takes at least ten minutes from the bank. I could live with that except for the fact that if you don't use those minutes within 120 days, you lose them. This reminds me of why I don't use prepaid phone cards.
Based on the apparent bandwidth I've experienced, a single DSL line should be able to handle the load in the average Starbucks, more so if people aren?t staying on line longer than they need to, so they won't lose their minutes. It doesn't make sense to price airtime as if it were a resource on a scalable network when there are only so many seats in the coffee shop.
I would be willing to pay for more T-Mobile minutes if it lasted, say, a year. But I don't use the service enough, and when I do, it seems that my time just expired. So in practice it costs more like $50 for two or three sessions. That's not a reasonable price point for casual use. Especially when the coffee shop across the street has free wi-fi hotspots.
Two Miami morning zoo DJs have had some luck getting connected to heads of state for on-air prank calls. First they got Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the line, by telling him it was Fidel calling. Most recently, they pulled the reverse trick and got Castro on the line, using the Chavez tape.
These guys should call Al Jazeera next, claiming to be Saddam Hussein.
Here's the link to Hitchen's review of Blumenthal's book.
Lawrence Simon is on the case of a possible software pirate. He's warned Mr. Hatch now, once. Twice more and he gets to trash his computer.
I'm not a trekkie, but I remember seeing characters on the show type what seemed to be elaborate messages on four or five key computer touchpads, apparently by using a set of different key combinations or shortcuts.
Well, here's an indication that the concept was ahead of it's time.
As more sophisticated medical scanning devices become available, scientists are beginning to realize that some forms of personality scanning are not far off. This article addresses some of the ethical issues involved.
Are America's views towards France having an economic impact? A March French trade surplus with the US of 97 million Euros became an April deficit of 202 million Euros. (France increased it's overall trade surplus during that period, but in comparison with last year, it's surplus is down almost a billion Euros. The rise of the Euro against the dollar had some effect on the numbers. Also in April, more bad news as France's industrial output dropped almost a full percentage point.)
As Steve DenBeste notes, the drop in trade between the US and France can't be all wine and cheese, that something bigger is going on.
Tourism is hurting as well with incidents of anti-Americanism towards US tourists becoming more common. Some estimates show France lost $500 million in tourism trade since the recent disagreements.
So to generate some warm feelings towards France in the US, the French Government Tourist Office has hired Woody Allen. Allen, who has first hand, and a not completely successful experience in rehabilitating reputations, notably his own, asks Americans not to be "petty" in dealing with the French. Maybe we could hire Jerry Lewis to do the same for the French.
First those strange lights over the desert in Area 51. Then the mysterious carvings seen from the air over Peruvian mountains. A few years later, a rash of crop circles begins. And now this.
The Inside Track girls report that a mad crapper is on the loose in Brookline.
Instapundit has lots of information about the missing 727. The bottom line is that it probably could not make it across the Atlantic ocean, but Israel and London are certainly within range if it's based somewhere in the Sahara as is expected. And, it may have been outfitted as a fuel tanker.
Here's another use for iPods.
Microsoft announced that it is halting work on Mac based browsers. IE5 will be the last version for the Mac the company said.
The move was sparked because Apple began offering it's own browser, Safari, and Explorer for the Mac was at a disadvantage to it because the Apple developers had hooks into the Mac OS, something Microsoft didn't have. Does that sounds vaguely familiar?
This could be the beginning of a new battle between MS and Apple. Or it could just be part of the move by Microsoft to integrate Explorer into the OS. Apparently there will be no more stand alone versions of Explorer for any OS.
Upgraded the MT version. Screwed it up at first but now it seems to be working.
The red light panhandlers at Mass Ave and Melnea Cass are now harranging motorists to buckle thier seatbelts. That should be worth a buck, at least.
I'm blogging from Newbury Street, courtesy of the Newbury Open-Net. The coverage was a little spotty outside at Starbucks (considering it's free access, it's still a good deal for the money) but down closer to Hereford St, its pretty solid. .
Now that Hillary is making the TV interview rounds, and her book is flying off the shelf, all the old arguments about Monica, Juanita, Paula, etc. are being revived. Talk radio and the internet are covering that old ground once again.
But the best revival of the Clinton era wars isn't in response to Hillary's book (although this one comes close.) Its in the long review in the latest Atlantic Monthly (no link yet, you'll have to buy the magazine) of Sidney Blumenthal's new book The review is by Christopher Hitchens.
Hitchens settles some old scores with his ex-friend and goes after Clinton who he calls the "Nixon of liberals." There's not much book in the review, but that?s besides the point. Who's going to read it anyway. It can't be more entertaining, or better written than this review.
Turbo 10 is a new meta search site for deep search, non-page ranked results.
Here's a link to Buisness Week's Special Report on The Social Web.
Here's what Peggy Noonan says about the disagreement over WTC memorials.
...And there is the declaration of the organizations of World Trade Center families-of-victims that there should not be a statue of the firemen at the WTC memorial site. Three hundred forty-three of them died that day, but to commemorate their sacrifice would be "hierarchical." They want it clear that no one was better than anyone else, that all alike were helpless, victims.
But that is not true; it is the opposite of the truth. The men and women working in the towers were there that morning, and died. The firemen and rescue workers--they weren't there, they went there. They didn't run from the fire, they ran into the fire. They didn't run down the staircase, they ran up the staircase. They didn't lose their lives, they gave them.
It's a good column, read the whole thing.
I’m not very good at these things. But if you are, here’s a four dimension Rubic’s cube applet. And here’s more information on the solution and some other apps for download.
A British scientist (who, by the way, is promoting his book on the end of the world) has given the odds of an apocalyptical disaster as 50/50. Martin Rees says that the volatility of nanotechnology, terrorists, meteors, designer viruses, and even particle accelerator accidents all contribute to the increase in the odds of a disaster.
About the only thing Rees wasn't worried about was an invasion by aliens.
Things don’t look very good in LA according to this column by the NYT’s Bob Herbert.
It is estimated that over the past 20 years some 10,000 young people have died in L.A.'s violence-ridden neighborhoods. Residents who are convinced that no one in those neighborhoods is safe point to the murder on May 28, 2000, of a 20-year-old woman named Lori Gonzalez. She was a bystander who was shot in the chest and head when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. Ms. Gonzalez was the granddaughter of the Los Angeles police chief at that time, Bernard C. Parks.
"The young people have more of a chance of dying here in South Central than in a military combat zone," said the Rev. Leonard Jackson, the president of the Los Angeles Council of Churches. "To say that there's a climate of fear is understating it."
Even if his budget wasn't being cut back, Bratton would have his work cut out for him.
Paul Boutin explains how to configure wi-fi transmitters for the best coverage in the average home. If you want to extend the network out to the pool or patio, he tells you how to do that too.