I’ve been getting all kinds of strange [tag]errors[/tag] or no connection at all from Bloglines for the past hour or so. What gives? [tag]Web 2.0[/tag] seems to have the same problems as Web 1.0.
Update: It’s back and I’m not the only one who noticed its absence.
[tags]Bloglines[/tags]
I give you the President of the United States. Leader of the free world.
Answering a question: Windows Media or Quicktime.
(I <3 Crooks and Liars )
I was just scanning through the CNN feed as I do most days at some point. I clicked through to a story about the victim’s families testimony at the Moussaoui trial. The last sentence of this quote literally gave me goosebumps after I read it.
The grandfather of the 9/11’s youngest victim, testifying Monday at Zacarias Moussaoui’s sentencing trial, described watching on television as the plane carrying his son and granddaughter hit the World Trade Center.
The grandfather, C. Lee Hanson, said that his son, Peter, called him on the phone that morning.
“As we were talking he said, very softly, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!’,” said Hanson, 73, describing the moment before he watched the plane hit the Twin Towers.
A few minutes earlier, Hanson said, Peter had told him he thought the hijackers were going to crash the plane into a building. “Don’t worry. Dad, if it happens it will be quick,” he quoted his son as saying.Sue and Peter Hanson were on their way from Boston to Los Angeles to visit the grandparents and take their 2-1/2-year-old daughter, Christine, to Disneyland.
We just flew with the kids and my mother to Disneyland last month. As I read that last line, it all flashed through my head. How much fun we had as a family there and how that family had the same intentions and never made it. They had no idea when they got on that plane that it’d end that way.
Nearly five years later and it really hit home for me. It’s a good thing we got the person ultimately responsible for that atrocity. Oh wait…
I was just re-reminded that we’ve made our flickr group public and open to anyone to join and add photos. Photos from the group appear in the Photos section on the right navigation (you know, over there between Archives and Events?) and are archived in the group photo pool. Got some cool photos of Austin? Want to share’em with the Metroblogging universe? Please do!
Last night at 8pm, there was a pillow fight at Auditorium Shores. These have been popping up in other cities over the past year or so. Austinist links to the recap with some cool footage from the Statesman of people smacking each other with pillows backlit by the lightning from the storm that passed through around the same time. Sadly, I had band practice, so I missed out.
P.S. Our own, wae got a shot of the storm.
Austin Style reports that James Brown is coming to Stubb’s on 05.10.2006. Tickets are already on sale and apparently still available at $35 (ouch!).
They also report that Beck is coming to the Backyard on 06.19.2006 and tickets go on sale Saturday for $42 (double ouch!).
UT professor, Eric R. Pianka, and the Texas Academy of Science have apparently become targets of the unhinged.
Pianka was named 2006 Distiguished Scientist by the Academy last month at their annual meeting in Beaumont. He gave a speech as part of that conference, Forrest Mims “reported” parts of the speech, and it’s touched off a frenzy on the Internets. Pianka, as part of his lectures on ecology dating at least as far back as 1998, mentions that people are destroying the earth’s ecology and that a particularly effective solution to this problem might be releasing Ebola Reston to wipe out 90% of the world’s population.
I checked this out yesterday via Armadillo Podcast and blew it off after reading a few links, including this post. Not surprisingly, the poor girl who wrote is has come under attack herself in the comments. DKos reports on some nasty e-mails and death threats going to academy members. The Seguin Gazette has a decent report on the controversy. I’ll note that they had to change the URL to accommodate the number of hits they’re getting. It’s even more interesting that they’ve named the page “drudge”. I’ll assume in reference to Drudge Report.
I’ve got a problem with Mims because he’s the one who set this in motion. He’s claiming to be “reporting” on the speech and yet he’s clearly biased. He refers to e-mail exchanges with Pianka, but doesn’t supply the e-mails.
KXAN has more on the story. It’d be nice to have a transcript of the speech, but it’s clear that this isn’t a new topic for Pianka. It’s just been subjected to wider scrutiny. Do I believe that his ideas are a theoretical exercise taken to the extreme? Yes. Do I think he’s advocating it for real and worry that someone in his lectures may act on it? No. I’m glad to see UT is standing behind him.
Update (5:30PM CDT): This story continues to generate a lot of posting and it all appears to be framing itself out in a creationist vs. evolutionist feud. Sheesh.
Andrew Sullivan weighs in without a leg to stand on and is subsequently corrected. More from here and, of course, Pharyngula is all over it.
Some people got the e-mail earlier today about the $35 Austin City Limits Festival 2006 pre-sale. I didn’t get a damn thing and typically I get two e-mails from them, one to my GMail account and one to my work account. I got two copies of the notice in late February mentioning that the pre-sale was coming, but today? Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Don’t go running over there because they went through 3,000 tickets in 42 minutes. The comments on Austinist indicate not very many people got through. The pre-sale last year was impossible as well. I tried for about 20 minutes and never got far enough to actually order tickets. As of this moment, I still haven’t seen an e-mail from them. Damn.
I registered for the Cingular phone updates in the hopes that their SMS-fu is superior to their e-mail-fu. We’ll see.
I attended an interview with Henry Rollins during SXSW which was mainly to promote his new show on IFC, which starts tomorrow tonight. In that interview, Rollins was asked about the status of his music career. He essentially responded that he still likes music, but it doesn’t like him, ie that he’d love to keep playing, but not enough people show up anymore to make it feasible for him to continue. Well, a Rollins blog entry this week indicates that “he’s puttin’ the band back together, man” and it’s not that crappy deal he had going for the last several years. It’s the Chris Haskett, Sim Cain, Melvin Gibbs version. August tour dates are being thrown around. I’m wondering if there’ll be an album or if it’s a one shot deal. Will I be disappointed? Probably. MTV picked this up as well.
BTW, here’s Rollins’ blog entry from the day he was in Austin which I missed when I wrote my recap. He mentions Waterloo Records, but not Maudie’s.
And speaking of Rollins, Wired pointed me to a rare video of The Monks performing in Germany. I was introduced to The Monks in the early 90’s when Rollins’s short-lived reissue label, Infinite Zero, put out Black Monk Time.
All the national press last week about the TABC crackdown in bars is following the inevitable progression. Of course, the bars, restaurants and tourism boards went running to the Lege as they saw dollars exiting Texas for more permissive pastures. We can’t have any irresponsible drinking in bars unless it affects the tourism dollars and tax base, so I guess it’s ok again. There’s a hearing between TABC and The House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee on April 17th about the issue. The question now is what the TABC will decide to do next with that extra funding and people that it got last summer, but now probably can’t use cracking down on people in bars. I’m sure they’ll find some other parade to rain on.
I didn’t link it last time, but Kelso had a mildly amusing take on the whole thing.