Category Archives: Living Room Times

United Breaks Guitars

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A lesson in Bad publicity 101 for United Airlines: Chorus: United, United You broke my Taylor guitar United, United Some big help you are You broke it, you should fix it You’re liable just admit it I should have flown with someone else or gone by car ‘Cause United breaks guitars Heh. (Hat tip: Short Form Blog, via Andrew Sullivan.)

The de-evolution of the Right

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I missed blogging during my seven-month absence, but one reason I didn’t miss it as much as I otherwise might have is because of a sentiment perfectly summed up yesterday by an Andrew Sullivan reader: During the months that have passed since John McCain “tapped” Sarah Palin to be his running mate, I’ve had more and more trouble reconciling the… Read more »

Peggy gets it

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Peggy Noonan has an unfortunate and well-documented history of doubletalk when it comes to Sarah Palin, but as last fall’s campaign wore on, the scales ultimately fell decisively from her eyes. Now, in her column today, she produces what I believe may be the seminal diss of Palin, explaining precisely and devastatingly why the unthoughtful, frivolous soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska “was… Read more »

A nerdy interlude: reflections on The Fellowship of the Ring

As a Tolkien nut, but a relative non-“purist” when it comes to Peter Jackson’s brilliant movies, I’ve always felt that The Fellowship of the Ring is the best adaptation out of the three films, whereas The Return of the King is the best movie on its own merits. And to that I hold. But, re-watching the first half of Fellowship… Read more »

You got your Google in my OS!

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When it comes to buying a computer today, you pretty much have two choices for the Operating System (OS): the heavyweight champ Microsoft’s Windows, or the scrappy underdog Apple’s MacOS X.  (Some people will try and tell you there is a third option called Linux; ignore them. They are nerds and for the most part they are wrong.) Well, that… Read more »

Blurry ISS

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Tonight’s directly-overhead flyover by the International Space Station was as spectacular as promised. That thing is really bright now! Unfortunately, my efforts to photograph it were somewhat less spectacular. My SLR’s shutter problem has now evolved into a focus problem — it can fill the frame again, but autofocus is completely busted — and my hasty efforts at manually focusing… Read more »

Fun with consecutive integers!

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If you’re like me, and you missed 12:34:56 7/8/09 in your time zone, here’s your chance to catch it again… in the Pacific Time Zone: UPDATE: Clock removed, because the hour has now passed. Here’s a screenshot for posterity:

It’s a bird, it’s a plane…

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There is a veritable marathon of flyovers by the International Space Station — brighter than ever, thanks to new solar panels added earlier this year — happening over the continental United States during the next several days. Definitely worth checking out. For local flyby times and magnitudes (lower numbers are brighter), check out SpaceWeather.com’s Simple Satellite Tracker, or for more… Read more »