 Light blogging tonight as I am sick as a dog; temp hovering around 101o. Also the coherence of these posts may be even sketchier than usual. I attribute this cold/whatever to the no-sleep-deathmarch of last week, not riding a 200 on Saturday, but perhaps they were both contributing factors. Anyway.
This is the saddest thing: Paul Long, my daughter Alex' English teacher last year, died in the Metrolink computer accident in Chatsworth. Her whole school was closed today and they had a nice funeral service at the Cavalry Community Church. Seems like everyone I know knew someone or knew someone who knew someone; such a tragedy. 
Powerline asks Why Did It Happen? And links this article by Kevin Hassett, which John Hindraker claims is all you need to know. "Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves." Just as I suspected...
Wired News reports McCain affirms support for embryonic stem cell research. Good!
Related: Eric Raymond pens Sarah Palin, American Centerist. "In the fusillade of accusations that has been flung at Sarah Palin since McCain chose her as VP-nominee, there is one thread in common; that Palin is an extreme right-winger. There are several possible reasons for an accuser to take this position, but it occurred to me yesterday that the most important one may be accusers who are honestly confused about where the American center actually is." This is so true! If you only watched television and read newspapers, you would think the Republicans are hopelessly right wing. Then you go into the real world and you discover that the Republicans are in the middle, and the Democrats are way over to the left!
I missed blogging about this when it happened somehow; StackOverflow launched! This fine effort from Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood (two of my favorite "programming" bloggers) is a programming Q&A site. Here's the draw, as described by Joel:
You know what drives me crazy? Programmer Q&A websites. You know what I’m talking about. You type a very specific programming question into Google and you get back:
- A bunch of links to discussion forums where very unknowledgeable people are struggling with the same problem and getting nowhere,
- A link to a Q&A site that purports to have the answer, but when you get there, the answer is all encrypted, and you’re being asked to sign up for a paid subscription plan,
- An old Usenet post with the exact right answer—for Windows 3.1—but it just doesn’t work anymore,
- And something in Japanese.
I do know exactly what he's talking about, this has been my experience, too. But the competition for a dedicated site is... well... Google. 'Cause when I want to find something, I use Google to find it. Anyway we'll see how well this works!
 This is pretty funny; TTAC reviews the Bentley Continental GT Speed. Yes, that's really the name of the car model, and apparently they weren't too impressed. "The Speed’s full leather interior with cross contrasting stitching (a $3300 option) felt coarse and looked putrid in my test car. The Speed has as many electronics as Captain Mike’s AWACS plane, but the gadgets are all several years out of date, anchored by an all-in-one LCD screen for operating the radio, HVAC, and navigation system that was objectively rotten. The grand touring promise that should be inherent in such a titanic coupe is broken by back seats that are too small for adults." Huh, so be it. I have to confess, I used to love the way Bentley's looked, but now they just remind me of a Chrysler 300. There are so many of those blingmobiles on the road, they've swamped the brand association of that look.
 Relative sizes of the planets and various stars. Pretty amazing that there are several orders of magnitude more variation in star sizes than planetary sizes. And wow, are we little!
Distant Replay: a great article about re-watching the 1958 NFL Championship game with 2008 eyes. [ via Daring Fireball ]
Dear Lazyweb: anyone have any experience with Ooma? It is a pretty slick-looking VoIP solution... just curious.
Okay, not bad for a sick guy. Now I am going to bed, taking my fever with me. Keep your fingers crossed!
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