Paul Ford: I …

Paul Ford: I am of the belief that if Paul Ford were to write a novel or try to write a book of short stories or essays, he would be an instant hit. I’ve been reading his stuff for a few years now and every once in a while, something he writes just blows me away. His most recent essay called “Cleaning My Room” is witty, funny, and struck home for me since I spent most of the weekend cleaning, vacuuming, and scrubbing my apartment from top to bottom in anticipation of a friend visiting from out of town. Paul doesn’t live that far from where I live in Brooklyn and we both ride the F train on a regular basis, yet I have never met him outide of the occasional email.

Geek Gifts: I finally broke down and created an Amazon wishlist, mostly so I can keep track of what DVDs I still want to buy. It will also work well this Christmas, since I can just tell my family to buy me something off the wishlist. Last year, I got some really lame joke t-shirt from my older brother Craig, since he had no idea what to buy me. That’s OK, Damien got this one. Oh yeah, I am sending in the t-shirt order for CamWorld t-shirts this week. I’ve decided to use Brunetto T-shirts, who did an amazing job with the Red Robot World Domination shirts.

Thinking about that, you know how you always see lists like “Christmas Gifts for Geeks” and “What to Buy Your Geek.” Well, those are fine and all, but what we really need, I think, are lists like “What Not to Buy Your Geek” and “Gifts that You May Find Funny But Geeks Won’t.” If you’re really stuck just buy us some more RAM or a bigger hard drive. No more t-shirts!

Da Yankees: Yankees win! lose!

Crap, I made the mistake of watching the local news for five minutes after the game. It’s anthrax this, anthrax that, blah blah anthrax. Um, let’s stop the scare-mongering. That goes for the Bush administration, too, with its “High Alert” announcements (Aren’t we all already more alert than normal?). I’m very suspicious that the Bush administration wants the American people to be really scared. The only reason I can think of is that it allows them to continue to pass all kinds of silly laws without a huge public outcry.

Religion-Free Country: Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents. Wow, this is interesting. No wonder that we’re constantly seeing religion so intermingled with the governments of the world. Part of me wishes there were a country somewhere that had the Western ideals/environment but had no religion or religious-infested government whatosever. I think that 14% of the world’s population would agree. Somehow though, I don’t think we’ll all fit on Havenco’s Sealand. [via Captain Cursor via Metafilter]

Bill Clinton: “We must understand exactly what the First Amendment does: It protects freedom of religion by allowing students to pray, and it protects freedom of religion by preventing schools from telling students how and when and what to pray.” – July 12, 1995

I find it very interesting that when searching Google for the phrases “religion-free country” and “religious-free country” the only links I’m coming up with are speeches and press briefings from Bill Clinton.

Google Races: I was joking around with Anil last night on IM. After racing him to find the link to Sealand above, I won the Google race and proclaimed “All Hail Google!” I then mentioned that if I had a religion, then Google would be my religion. That would make me a Googlian? A Googlologist? A Googlarian? I then had an idea that I like to call Google Races. Set up a site with a list of topics that all have very specific matching URLs. Put a form field next to each one. Using some javascript to do the timing, you can then have your racers compete against each other, using nothing but Google, to see how fast they can complete the page by pasting in matching URLs. Kind of like a speed treasure hunt on the Web.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at November 5, 2001 09:57 PM

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