After the publication and success of Gravity's Rainbow, interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Award ceremony, the president of Viking Press, Tom Guinzberg, arranged for double-talking comedian "Professor" Irwin Corey to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf (Royster 2005). Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was, and, having never seen the author, they assumed that it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage (Corey 1974). Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.

This made me laugh. Is it pointless to blog wiki entries?

Thomas Pynchon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One theory identifies James J. Kilroy, an American shipyard inspector, as the man behind the signature. During World War II he worked at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he claimed to have used the phrase to mark rivets he had checked. The builders, whose rivets J. J. Kilroy was counting, were paid depending on the number of rivets they put in. They found that they could erase the chalk marks J. J. Kilroy made and get paid double. J.J. Kilroy decided to use a yellow crayon instead; being harder to erase, the cheating stopped. At the time, ships were being sent out before they had been painted; so when sealed areas were opened for maintenance, soldiers found an unexplained name scrawled. Thousands of servicemen may have potentially seen his slogan on the outgoing ships and Kilroy's omnipresence and inscrutability sparked the legend. Afterwards, servicemen could have begun placing the slogan on different places and especially in new captured areas or landings. At some later point, the graffiti (Chad) and slogan (Kilroy was here) must have merged.(Michael Quinion. 3 April 1999.[1])

...

There are many legends attached to the Kilroy graffiti. One states that Hitler himself believed that Kilroy was some kind of American super spy because the graffiti kept turning up in secure Nazi installations, presumably having been actually brought on captured Allied military equipment. Another states that Stalin was the first to enter an outhouse especially built for the leaders at the Potsdam conference. Upon exiting, Stalin asked an aide, "Who is this Kilroy?" Another legend states that a German officer, having seen frequent "Kilroys" posted in different cities, told all of his men that if they happened to come across a "Kilroy" he wanted to question him personally.

The graffiti is supposedly located on various significant and/or difficult-to-reach places such as on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, on the Marco Polo Bridge in China, in huts in Polynesia, on a high girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York, at the peak of Mt. Everest, on the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, scribbled in the dust on the moon, inside a restricted outhouse at the Potsdam conference, in WWII pillboxes scattered around Germany, around the sewers of Paris, and, in tribute to its origin, in the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C.

Really interesting wiki article about a popular WWII Graffiti.

Kilroy was here - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Y2K bug. Indonesia (1999)
Note: As the year 2000 approached, it was feared there would be major problems as a result of computer software and hardware that identified the year with only two digits. Indonesia presents this Y2K "bug" in a form similar to an insect.

Y2K Stamp : Computers on Stamps : Wired News

Now Verleger favors what he calls a "prospective gasoline tax," which would allow the country four years to get ready to do the right thing. Congress would enact a stiff tax of $2 per gallon, to take effect in January 2009, with further increases of another dollar in each of the following three years. To cushion the blow, the Treasury would borrow against the expected tax revenue to buy back the public's gas guzzlers (defined as vehicles getting fewer than 25 miles a gallon) at their 2004 value.

Verleger estimates that this program could reduce U.S. oil consumption by almost 2 million barrels per day in the program's first year and as much as 10 million barrels per day by 2020. At a stroke, that would reduce the power of the OPEC cartel and America's vulnerability to turmoil in the Middle East. As a bonus, it would also reduce emissions that contribute to global warming and increase employment in the auto industry as all those gas guzzlers are replaced.

There's one big problem with Verleger's idea. It's too sane. America likes roaring down Thunder Road, playing chicken with the oil cartel.

Why Gas Prices Are Too Low (washingtonpost.com)

The telecommunications company Nokia announced a product yesterday that will come as great news to anybody that has ever received an early morning call from a friend who is under the influence of alcohol.

The "Drunk-Phone" comes with a breathalyzer attached, which determines if the person wishing to operate the phone is sober enough to do so responsibly. If a high enough blood-alcohol level is measured, the phone is rendered useless.

FUCK! Another one!

Nokia Announces Drunk Free Cell Phone

The world’s first sports car phone with alcohol Breathalyzer has gotten tremendous popularity in Korea. The cell phone by LG was a big hit from the beginning mainly because its outward appearance of a sports. Equipped with an alcohol measurement sensor, the LG-SD410, LG-KP4100, and LG-LP4100 have sold over 200,000 in the four months that it has been available, and is still selling around 1500 per day.

Having an alcohol measurement device attached to something like a cell phone is nothing but brilliant, especially among younger crowds who regularly drink after work or school and like to party. To use the sensor an intoxicated individual simply opens the phone and blows on the sensor, the LCD will tell you whether your level of alcohol in your blood is safe to drive.

Bloody Koreans are too smart! I thought of this while drunk dialing last night: a breathalyzer that will not let you talk on the phone if you are drunk: you can only call a taxi, alcoholics anonymous, a suicide hotline, or 911. Everyone thought it was a novel and original idea. But they've alreay done this and its selling like hotcakes.

I think a phone attachment could still work, though, a little thing that goes in the charge plug/data cable jack.

LG Cell Phone with Breathalyzer gaining popularity

FT: Is open source going to be disruptive to Oracle?

Larry Ellison and Oracle No. If an open source product gets good enough, we’ll simply take it. Take [the web server software] Apache: once Apache got better than our own web server, we threw it away and took Apache. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that’s what we’ll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. Keep in mind it’s not that good in most places yet. We’re a big supporter of Linux. At some point we may embed Linux in all of our products and provide support.

Just like software-as-a-service, we have to be good at it. We don’t have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source. At some point we could very well choose to have Linux as part of the Oracle database server. We certify it, we test it. We could have JBoss as part of our middleware. It costs us nothing. We can do that, IBM can do that, HP can do that – anyone with a large support organisation is free to take that intellectual property and embed it in their own products.

Transcript: FT interview with Larry Ellison - FT.com / Home US

Implications of the F Pattern
The F pattern's implications for Web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the Web instead of repurposing print content:

* Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
* The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
* Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Catonic wrote:

Random Guy, I salute you for your daring breach of national security and efforts at exposing a lack of security around critical infrastructure. Also, your message is one of hope for an oppressed and voiceless people everywhere. God Bless You, American!

This guy has balls the size of cantelopes. Jesus H. Christ. They could easily have been shot. So, okay they got away with it? Now... what happens to him now that he has put the video on the web and admitted that he did it? Gitmo? Will he face arrest?

Okay, wait... so its fake... this is a digital composition?

RE: Guy Tags Air Force One

LONGMONT, Colorado (AP) -- A man who said he bought a device that allowed him to change stop lights from red to green received a $50 ticket for suspicion of interfering with a traffic signal.

No green light for driver with traffic signal gadget - Apr 18, 2006 - CNN.com