dangerousmeta > Archives

sat 13 oct 01

went down to the albuquerque balloon festival to see the 'balloon glow', but the winds were too high. over at the amusement park, this mural made me smile:

jester and friends.

okay, that's it. i'm declaring this weekend "kill FUD for america" weekend. another relative just sent me a copy of that 'avoid malls on halloween' hoax. good grief. i just sent a mass email off to all my relatives and friends, pointing to the urban legends hoax page. i recommend, as an inoculation against FUD, that you all do it as well. let's not let bin laden and other idiots scare america to death. i should probably add a good anthrax/smallpox info page, as well.

and that makes me even more curious now. i wonder what percentage of our population buys books, and what education level those individuals are. even, what books are they buying (serial romances vs. fiction vs. non-fiction, etc. etc.). i'm sure craig may be able to help me out, when he has time ...

the more i talk to other natives of santa fe, the more i find that bush's press conference connected with the 'average' american. what's an average american? only 26% of all americans have a bachelor's degree or better. 81% of four-year institutions offer remedial courses in reading, writing and/or mathematics. no wonder we're seeing a 'talking down' and 'tabloid' effect in our national media and politics.

al has the dope on anthrax ...

xmlhack: w3c patent policy working group.

pits of parnassus: form.py, twisted matrix.

o'reilly: filesystem layout.

freshmeat: log4py, pandora, sqlite, photogen.

zdnet: msn and yahoo fight over search numbers game. wouldn't surprise me. every time i misspell a domain name, explorer takes me to the msn search engine. i then cancel, and retype ... or, if i'm searching, go over to google.

good thing the ghurkas are on our side ...

santa fe new mexican: no anthrax panic in new mexico. we're pretty much on heightened alert for biologicals because of our summer incidence of hantavirus and bubonic plague (from rodents). there are *no* runs on cipro or other antibiotics here. once again, keep in mind, the panic is an urban phenom, since that is where all major news agencies are.

a reader suggests that mozillaquest is a bit misleading, in reference to my mozilla 0.9.5 link yesterday. go see mozillazine instead. mozilla is getting more stable, in spite of counting 'open issues' as 'bugs'.

times of india: taliban dig in to prepare for u.s. ground troops.

international herald tribune: it will take a new cold war to defeat terrorism.

international herald tribune: by limiting targets, u.s. may have foiled bin laden plot.

ny times op-ed: alan dershowitz, why fear national id cards?

ny times arts: the deep intellectual roots of islamic terror.

ny times: anthrax news brings a boom for marketing. indiscriminate use of antibiotics will do more damage than the anthrax scares themselves. remember, these fundamentalists want to break our modern western way of life, and return us to the middle ages. take away antibiotic efficacy, and they will win.

30 degrees this morning, by my amazingly-inaccurate back-portale thermometer. cold, in other words. bright blue skies.