2002.12.03
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.Good note about why we shouldn't fret so much.
Tech Art of the Moment
Wow...a tattooing robot! -- and it looks like a PalmPilot is part of the control system. Now, I love my PalmPilot, but I'm not sure if I trust it quite that much...
Bad News of the Moment
The other day, I kisrael'd a Salon piece on the danger of shoulder launched missiles against commercial aircraft. And last week in Kenya, it happened, though it was a miss. (One question is, did the airplane use electronic defense measures or was it just dumb luck?) Anyway, this Slate article argues that in terms of the future of airline travel, Nov 28 will be a bigger deal than 9-11.
Linguistics of the Moment
I've always been interested in the difference between English here and in the UK, here are the differences in the first Harry Potter book and the second. The biggest thing was changing "Philosopher's Stone", which was a cool legendary alchemy reference into the much more pedestrian "Sorcerer's Stone".
Geek Link of the Moment
The 2002 Perl Advent Calendar has a tasty tidbit (for the computer language Perl) every day for the holiday season. Already I've seen some cool modules I should have been using, rather than doing it from scratch. You can see last year's and the first year's as well (though that first year was just links into previously existing Perl documentation.)