Tech history in a meaningless-but-fun ranking

The Atlantic has a good article up on the 50 greatest breakthroughs since the wheel. Much fun.

Dear Salon.com....

You win. You've made it clear that it's impossible to view your site without getting bombarded with ads for the "American Blackout" special tomorrow night. They must have paid a lot for that kind of marketing.

I hope it's enough to offset the readers you're losing.

I usually hit your site a couple of times a day. I'll be back next week.

My final experience with Time Warner

What does it say about a company that by far the most friendly, courteous, and efficient interaction I had with it...was when I went to their location to return my equipment and cancel my account? Seriously, if the rest of their operation was as professional as well-run as the person I dealt with this morning, I might still be a customer.

But it isn't. So I'm not.

...And this, apparently, is the 500th post of this blog. Well, that's something.

My Personal Hero For Today

...is Rebecca Vitsmun of Moore, OK. Anyone who puts Wolf Blitzer on the spot, and graciously identifies herself as an atheist, at a time of great personal stress, is worth celebrating.

No, it is not necessary to thank the Lord, in order to be happy (and yes, grateful) that one's family is OK.

h/t: article at Salon

UPDATE: Roger Ebert is STILL Dead!

And it's the weekend, so it's time for Salon to recycle Roger Ebert's article.... because pageviews.

Roger Ebert, dead for months, still does not fear death

Shortly after his diagnosis, Roger Ebert wrote an essay for Salon.com entitled "I do not fear death." As essays go, it wasn't bad. Thought provoking. The comments thread degenerated into a bible-beater vs militant atheist snarkfest, but Ebert can't be blamed for that.

The week he died, the article was pulled back onto the front.

And the week after that.

And the week after that.

And about every two weeks since. It wasn't there yesterday, but it's back up today.

I get that it's a good essay... but why is it still being dragged to the front page months after he died? Salon's published better essays than this. They've published more important essays than this.

What demented click-whoring algorithm keeps dragging up this out of date essay? We may never know.

Today's dose of pretension

Do high end headphones really matter? 

Quote of the day

"Not much shocks you on the gay scene. But seeing Helen Mirren dressed as the Queen cussing and swearing and making you stop your parade - that's a new one."

--Mark McKenzie, 

pride parade organizer, on being told off by Dame Helen Mirren, 

who was performing in a nearby  theater

Quote of the day

I am undefeated in single combat—though only because I have never been in a fight and flee anytime I see anyone who looks even vaguely threatening. 

--Graeme Wood, The Atlantic

Words to live by, indeed. 

A mess all the way around

The controversy at PyCon about possibly-sexist jokes and the reaction to them triggers a few thoughts...and since the title of the blog is "Random Musings," here are some random musings....

• That such jokes were being made would not be a surprise to anyone who knows geeks. 
• Yes, they were out of line. "It's part of geek culture" is no excuse, and we can't ignore that kind of thing and then wonder why so few girls are interested in entering the field when they grow up. 
• That said, it's not clear that asking for the guys to be ejected over a passing joke was the optimum response. Would a withering glare and a "that's not funny" have been impossible? 
• From there, it's a spiraling tale of corporate cowardice, of firing anyone who's come to the public attention, and bad internet behavior. (Death threats and hacking attacks? Over a misunderstanding over a joke? Everyone take a deep breath and grow up. If the people who got fired aren't making such threats or attacks, I don't see how anyone else has the right to.) 

Though I'm looking forward to the next python meetup get-together, so I can talk with some people who were at the conference... It's usually a good bet that the more the media has come to a consensus about what happened, the more wrong that consensus is. 

Mashup/redub of the day

Twitter-menace, or threat?

From the world of bad beer....

So there's a lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch alleging that they've been watering down their beer....

How could they tell?

Glitch strikes again...

This is getting to be kind of fun....

Amusing Glitch Update

So I've got some sort of odd glitch in my web browser. On certain blogs that I visit fairly often, it sometimes happens that when I first visit the site after starting the browser, there's an off-by-one error on video embeds; the video shown in a post is actually the correct video for the story before it. Reloading the page clears the problem.

But occasionally it's just amusing enough to be worth doing a screengrab first: