• Geek Out! - SABRE2th Tigress: Book 'em, Dano.

    Gov Now Wants More Air Flyer Data, Redux | Threat Level from Wired.com

    A couple of years ago, blog posts like this: Gov Now Wants More Air Flyer Data, Redux | Threat Level from Wired.com and this: Practical Nomad: January 2004 archive on passenger name records and US/Canadian security surveillance went by my eye, more or less under the radar. So noted, but not really impacting my daily working life. But today I somehow got my reservation computer (SABRE) to cough up the following in response to a normal request for “direct connect” availability for a specific light out on United (UA) that somebody was trying to change. This was while there was…

  • Episcopal - Good and Joyful Things

    Sir Ian McKellen: Gandalf In An Emphatically Pointed Hat

    Yes, I’m a major Tolkien fan. Yes, I’m a liberrrl Anglo-Cat’lick Episcopalian. Yes, I cried when I read this. I make no apologies. Sir Ian McKellen becomes bishop for a day – Telegraph Never one to shy away from controversy, Sir Ian McKellen is secretly plotting to launch a campaign to shame the Anglican Church over its refusal to give equal rights to homosexual clergy. In an act of solidarity with the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, the Church’s first openly homosexual bishop, the celebrated actor intends to read out a sermon written by the prelate, who has been barred from…

  • Geek Out! - Hot Off The Presses

    Solar Systems look-alike found: Planet Ogle-Blog

    BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Solar Systems look-alike found The newfound planetary system, which orbits the star OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, is more compact than our own and is about five thousand light-years away. The Ogle-Blogarians are a species of compulsive documenters. Every aspect of their lives, every passing interest, every offbeat opinion, every odd theory gets placed on their planetary net. They are extremely interested in their own doings and thus are both happy and agitated that other beings have also taken an interest. Pro- and anti- observationists are even now gearing for the inevitable protests, net-wide opinion surveys, and arts/music/Blogarian introspection…

  • Blogs Wot I Read - Geek Out!

    Time Team’s Coming To America

    Archaeology in Europe: 04/01/2008 – 05/01/2008 Popular British archeology series Time Team is coming to America, as a joint production with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Cool! I’ve been envious of the reports about Time Team digs and episodes ever since I’ve been reading Archeology in Europe, which is written by the partner of a dear college friend of mine. The first series will cover six episodes, with the team of experts on Time Team, USA (working title) exploring some of America’s most intriguing archaeological sites, with locations under consideration including the pre-historic Mounds of Mississippi, earth pyramids outside St. Louis, Missouri…

  • Geek Out! - The Never-Ending Bloga

    New and Improved, or New and Unproved?

    Because I had a positive experience playing around with WordPress 2.5 on Rileycat’s blog, I asked David to go ahead and upgrade me here. Some of the new features replace various plugins I was using before (Image Manager, and ST Visualize Advanced Features ). I’ll be using a new plugin – my husband David wrote a simple one for converting WP tags to Technorati tags, so I’m going to give that one a whirl. Whee! I will say that I like one feature; the edit window has a visual editor tab and an HTML editor tab, and previously, it would…

  • Blogs Wot I Read - Hot Off The Presses - Politics, Schmolitics

    Drop a Dime: Countdown To Reality

    Daily Kos: State of the Nation The United States got itself in to a strange situation with Musharraf, in which the structure of its aid to the Pakistan government essentially incented the government not to find Bin Laden because if they found him they had reason to fear that the US would end this flow of more than $10 billion that it was providing directly to the army. The democratic government came to power arguing to Washington that constitutional democracy was a better counterterrorism strategy than reliance on an authoritarian military leader. So, I think they understand, if they can…

  • Connections - Hot Off The Presses

    A Painting With a Nazi Past

    Wow! A friend of mine has a connection with this story, which I had scanned briefly via RSS/newsfeed a few days ago. Thus when she mentioned it, I recognized the painting immediately. Just as an aside, I love the hat. Every naked lady should wear one. A Painting With a Nazi Past Britain’s National Gallery announced Thursday that new research has disclosed that a painting in its collection, “Cupid Complaining to Venus,” by the German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, was once part of Hitler’s private collection. “We’ve never had anything like this before,” said museum spokesman Thomas Almeroth-Williams.…