The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is the official political committee established by Republican Members of the United States Senate to help Republican candidates develop the campaign resources they need for 2008 so we can capture the majority in the United States Senate.

The Chairman of the NRSC is Senator John Ensign of Nevada.
City: Washington, DC
Country: United States
Website: http://www.nrsc.org

If you'd like to watch the worst attack ads of the season, tune-into the NRSC's youtube feed.

--timball

YouTube - TheNRSC's Channel

In late 2005, cardiac researcher Doris Taylor revived the dead. She rinsed rat hearts with detergent until the cells washed away and all that remained was a skeleton of tissue translucent as wax paper—a ghost heart, as Taylor calls it. She injected the scaffold with fresh heart cells from newborn rats. Then she waited.

What she witnessed four days later, once the cells had a chance to make themselves at home, was astonishing. "We could see these little areas that were beginning to beat," says Taylor, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Cardiovascular Repair. "By eight days, we could see the whole heart beating. The first time that happened, it was like ‘yes!' "

Miracle cure or ZOMBIES?

--timball

Ghost Heart | Popular Science

levity

--timball

the next cover for the economist

In classic congressional fashion, the Senate has decided to use a crisis piece of legislation as a way to push through a massive package of other priorities forcing an inter-chamber factional battle to come to a head. The inclusion of this controversial legislation could also serve as a remedy to the current failure in the House.

Poison pill or appeasing antidote? We’ll wait and see.

read the bill

then tell everyone else to read the bill

--timball

Sunlight Foundation » The Other Provisions in the Senate Bailout Bill

OBAMA I’m not. They pivoted off the argument that I was inexperienced to the criticism that I’m — wait for it — the Messiah, who, by the way, was a community organizer. When I speak I try to lead with inspiration and aptitude. How is that a liability?

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

ha!

--timball

Op-Ed Columnist - Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

A common idiom in UNIX is to create a dir and then cd into it to do something. This is is a ksh compliant function to make a dir and cd into it... note that if you are dumb and give it more than one arguement you'll probably be sad.

To use put this in your .profile or .bashrc or where ever you put your shell tweaks. I've been told that this thing is easier to do in zsh.

--snip--snip--snip--
cdmkdir () {
mkdir "$*";
cd "$*";
}
--snip--snip--snip--

--timball

The BBC is following a shipping container around the world for a year, starting on Monday in Southampton.

Declan Curry explains why such containers are so important in the modern world.

The Beeb is doing a news show about following around a shipping container. it's an ongoing series so be sure to check back for new video content as well as an interactive map of where the container is.

Unfortunately the first shipment of scotch will be headed to asia.

--timball

BBC NEWS | Special Report | The Box

I was browsing my stats today and noticed that six different searches pulled up my blog looking for Tim Lu Hull Ball. I remember Tim! So I dug in to my archives to find my post on him.

Isn’t he just the most stinkin’ adorable young guy you’ve ever seen? I stumbled across this guy and his partner last year at BlogWorld 20007.

consequences of going to blogworld

--timball

Tim Lu Hu Ball, the little hottie « PS Love Blog

For a long time I have had the idea that it would be interesting to be able to "hear" some of the sequences in the
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

The main goal in this project is to discover properties of sequences by listening to them.
If the results are also pleasing to the ear (and sometimes they are), this is an extra bonus.

Of course the idea of converting number sequences to music has a very long history.
The only new idea here is that now we have a large database of sequences to call on.

You can listen to midi-sequences of integers. Now w/ DRUMS!

(1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 ... )

--timball

Listening to sequences in the OEIS

The popular and impressive art of drifting is controlled oversteer for dramatic effect using either rear or four wheel drive cars. There are many different methods of inducing oversteer, your choice depends on the properties of your vehicle. Once oversteer has been invoked, you'll need to control the drift using the throttle and the steering. To maintain an accurate line while going sideways is tricky, and will take lots of practice. Many different drifting track days are emerging such as the annual Autocar 'Sideways Challenge' where you can learn this art.

Drifting is fun for the whole family. Just don't practice on mom's merc

--timball

Drifting