The Almost Seven Wonders files
In case you missed it, here’s footage of a pudu-related deer being rescued from an icy doom by force of a helicopter’s wash:
How much do you want to bet that deer was on the very next bus to Florida?
I think this is how teeny Key Deer came into being. They just got down to the islands, got a little sun, went on a diet, and now they’re tiny.
As am I, with a book to finish, so I’ll be offline for a few. Have a great weekend!
When I was a kid, I used to look forward to baseball Opening Day every April as if it were the beginning of life itself.
Now it’s the Super 14 rugby season.
Hard to explain, but here’s one of my favorite plays ever, a dramatic and somewhat lunatic attack (beginning with a near-impossible and even foolish pass — which worked!) from a match between the Blues and Crusaders a few years ago. This beautiful invention came as time was running out, and it was both triggered and finished by my favorite player, a madman named Carlos Spencer, who even has the presence of mind to run out the clock before downing the ball.
From the BBC — the fine print in the new version of Windows grants Microsoft the right to delete whatever it wants to from your computer, and there’s nothing you can do about it:
Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, a security program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software". The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software… even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted…
For those users frustrated by the software’s limitations, Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software"…
Sweet deal. (Disclosure, umpteenth time: I’m an Apple shareholder.)
A friend of mine called from Boston this morning. Says there’s a giant Mooninite billboard not far from where the first device was found. And nobody put it together. Yeesh.
And what’s the deal with the media still calling this a "bomb hoax?" It was nothing of the kind. Ever. According to Google News, over 1300 news stories come up currently apply that phrase to this event. But the guys clearly had no intention of anyone thinking these were bombs, and they certainly never made any such claim. So how do the words "bomb hoax" remotely apply to their actions? Those things were up for weeks before the cops in Boston freaked out. The only "bomb hoax" here is on the part of panicky public officials who scared the bejeebus out of thousands of people with their own pronouncements, which they’re still repeating, as if they’ll magically come true:
These things had been up for three weeks in cities all over the country, and nobody freaked out. Except the officials in Boston. And yet the AG claims there was "clear intent" to scare people? Bullshit. That’s who’s pretending there’s any bomb story here. There’s your bomb hoax right there. Compare and contrast to the rest of the country:
But the bigshots of Boston now have to pretend it’s someone else’s fault — the alternative would be a public admission of their own panicky incompetence, and we sure as hell know that’s not coming. So instead, they’re now gonna waste even more of the public’s time and resources by angrily trying to cover their own asses.
How about trying a mirror?
A fine writer, someone I’ve looked up to for most of my adult life, is gone.
Molly was the first person who would tell you she wasn’t perfect — after all, she only believed in practicing prudence "every two or three years" — but she wrote some of the sharpest lines ever. She was, for example, the one who said Pat Buchanan’s 1992 "culture war" speech "probably sounded better in the original German."
If Molly can’t go to heaven for some reason, maybe her soul will haunt the Texas Legislature forever. That might be close enough to heaven for her.