Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. Example: When I [Lloyd Grove of the NY Daily News] suggested to Franken that I didn’t believe him [regarding that he had “no comment” about O’Reilly’s recent legal woes] and that he must be having his own little schadenfreude festival he conceded: “Well, if this is true, […]
ADMIRONISHMENT: “No one does weird quite as well as Japanese game designers and animators, who come up with concepts so bizarre that one feels a mix of admiration and astonishment, best expressed as admironishment.” – Charles Herold, author of the Game Theory article “Touches of Weird, Done Best in Japan” SPOOFPROOF: “Nothing is spoofproof,” said […]
I’ve grabbed from Space.com this interview with Burt Rutan, aerospace maverick and winner of the X Prize. He’s been in the papers a lot in recent years (feel free to read the article from Wired back in July, 2003 which is especially good). This new article, basically an interview with Burt, is incrediblity enlightening and […]
For all those who were wondering what Bush was writing down during the second debate last week, wonder no longer. The notes were smuggled out, scanned and put online. You can view them here. Thanks go to Phyllis for sending this to me.
As my wife so acutely pointed out today, the NY Times Real Estate section has been mirroring our life for the past few months. Actually, its consistently about a week or two behind actual events. Here’s how: First, a little background. Jessie and I are currently looking at apartments to buy. When we first started […]
“Folk songs are evasive.” They offer “the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that’s exactly the way we ant it to be.” Their lesson? “If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that’s still well and good. […]
A very important legal motion was made last week. A NY Times reporter was ordered sent to prison in contempt of court because she would not give up a source. This case, and the story behind it, has been in the news for quite some time. The short of it is that Bob Novak outed […]
To honor the life of Jacob Cohen, aka Rodney Dangerfield, I have compiled for your faithful reader some of his best one liners: I come from a stupid family. During the civil war my great uncle fought for the west! My father was stupid. He worked in a bank and they caught him stealing pens. […]
The Bush Administration has passed legislation called the Leave No Child Behind Act which creates federal standards on education policy and results. While good in name, it is in fact leaving more children behind than before it was passed because it has been incredibly and woefully underfunded. Standards are in place that most states of […]
SpaceShipOne soared into space today, the second time in less than a week, and won the X Prize which worth if you were wondering a cool 10 million dollars. Here is how Google honored the winners, who will usher in a new age of space tourism: The ultimate goal of the Burt Ratan crew is […]