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April 30, 2002
School Days
The best school that turned you down is a better predictor of your
future income than the school you actually attended. It's the person,
not the place, that matters: students who apply to schools for the
ambitious are ambitious enough to do well just about anywhere.
Posted by dc at 08:56 PM | Comments (5)
April 22, 2002
Short, shameful
I was in Home Depot today.
By the entrance, there's a poster listing some wares
and prices. I took a gander and thought I saw
some fine deals.
Alas, that poster was not the sale, but was the errata:
all prices were too good to be true.
Posted by dc at 11:28 PM | Comments (4)
Colours
Does colour matter ?[NYT].
Posted by dc at 10:36 PM | Comments (4)
April 20, 2002
pun du jour
Research into vehicle emissions not exhaustive -- headline.
Posted by dc at 11:02 AM | Comments (2)
April 19, 2002
CFO in the know
Not all chief financial officers fit the bill when it comes to playing
the corporate conscience. "There's two types of C.F.O.'s that
are out there: those C.F.O.'s that are focused on making the
business better, and those C.F.O.'s that are trained to make
the business look as good as it can look,"
-- Robert M. Calderoni, a former chief financial officer,
later president and chief executive of Ariba.
Posted by dc at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2002
Google Spelling test
Google Spelling test:
Belle de Jour vs Belle du Jour.
Posted by dc at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
Don't call it a comeback.
Meme du jour:
Don't call it a comeback.
Call it a relapse.
Posted by dc at 09:23 AM | Comments (1)
April 13, 2002
Sprint PCS texting
Why I can't manage my mobile phone contacts from the web ?
And look at SprintPCS's website. Tell me how many ways
there are to receive text messages on my mobile phone.
It's still a mystery to me whether I'm dealing with wireless or
wireless-web or messaging or SMS or something else.
Posted by dc at 12:34 PM | Comments (10)
Old cars
The SCCA did not have to worry about how to classify
old cars, for they fell apart faster than they wore out
their tires.
"Generally odd little British cottage industry products made
in hobby quantities that were so unavailable that they
were not deemed a big problem. Cars that self detructed
faster than they wore out their tires. The idea seemed to
be these things would all go away if just left to their
own devices. It mostly worked that way.
King Midgets, twin cam Escorts, Morgans, TVRs, Griffiths,
Berkeleys, Meyers Manx, and microcars have all largely
disappeared without remorse or pain or autocross
classing debates." -- Dennis Hale.
Posted by dc at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
STL, what to drive
Coming from the SF Bay to STL, I've always
wondered who drives Buicks and Cavaliers [NYT]
and other obscure autos I didn't see in SF.
Posted by dc at 09:13 AM | Comments (28)
April 12, 2002
A picture is worth a thousand words.
The men's magazines that continue to storm the
newsstand — Maxim, Stuff and FHM
(and Loaded, Ralph)— are unapologetically
formatted for people who do not read.
Publications that exalt the visual have always done well.
But the vast middles of many magazines — the feature wells,
where the reading matter used to be found — have
morphed into annotated photo magazines.
In this world, everything can be objectified and rendered
desirable. A $2,200 faucet gets the kind of lavish lighting
and styling treatment that used to be reserved for skinny
17-year-old models.
--deep captioning in postliterate publishing,[NYT]
Update. (2002 July 30)
Posted by dc at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
Papers. Get your papers.
"If you want to sell papers, make it a paper people have to
open every morning to find out what's been done to them."
-- J. J. Goldberg, editor of the Jewish weekly newspaper
The Forward.
Posted by dc at 07:34 PM | Comments (2)
April 03, 2002
How to argue, (part one of many)
The Facts:
A bill passed by the Senate that would have stripped the
Northern Mariana Islands of their exemption from the United States
minimum wage and immigration laws.
The main industry in the Marianas is textiles. Inexpensive clothes
are made there, mostly by immigrant Chinese women who work
for low wages in substandard conditions, and the garments are
shipped duty-free to the United States with a "Made in the U.S.A."
label.
Pro:
With Mr. DeLay's help, Mr. Abramoff managed to get the legislation
defeated in the House, using the argument that the Marianas
represented low taxes and free enterprise and should be left alone.
Con:
Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who sponsored
the legislation in the House, is still furious about Mr. Abramoff's
action. In a recent interview, Mr. Miller said, "He spent a lot of
time, effort and money to protect a system that was a growth
industry for sex shops, prostitution, abuse of women, slavery,
illegal immigration, worker exploitation and narcotics, and he did
it all in the name of freedom."
Rebuttal:
Mr. Abramoff replied: "Congressman Miller has an agenda, and
he wants the facts to fit his thesis. No lobbyist could have
convinced Congress to support the system he describes."
[NYT].
Posted by dc at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2002
STL, urban ?
"Location, the condition of the building -- Edison Brothers
kept the property in excellent shape. They liked the
flexibility; we have 300 suites in the first phase and
can get to 480 suites. That includes 63 condos on
three floors and four floors of indoor parking,".
Posted by dc at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)
How much ya bench ?
Mr. Bush seems determined to be the poster president for working out.
His personal best is a 6:45 mile for three , a record he set last
Thanksgiving at Camp David. He runs four to five days a week, uses
an elliptical trainer about twice a week and lifts weights at least
twice a week. He can bench press 185 pounds, for five repetitions.
Mr. Bush had lost weight as well, down to 189 pounds from the
194 pounds he had carried on his six-foot frame on the campaign
trail. His body fat had declined, to 14.5 percent from 19.94 percent.
Posted by dc at 05:58 PM | Comments (2)