“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” – Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)
First of course, is that no matter how many times Republicans are told, they can’t seem to remember that the Democratic party is composed of Democrats. I know that the Republican party is composed of Republicans, and so the fact that a noun and an adjective might vary is hard to comprehend, but there it is.
Second, no it didn’t. The swine flu outbreak in 1976 was under President Ford (R), and it was all gone by the time the Democratic president took office in 1977.
Finally, I find it interesting that space shuttles blow up under Republican presidents. I’m not blaming them on Republicans, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.
Last night, there was much rain and lightning and a bit of hail. When I left for work this morning, there was a surprising sight awaiting me. Some moron had parked behind me. This may not sound unusual if you happen to live in an apartment complex, but I have a driveway. It’s not double-width or anything. I don’t live in a multi-family building. It’s very strange. This car was parallel-parked blocking about half of my driveway, and there were no other cars nearby. How drunk or tired must you be to park across some stranger’s driveway?
The Galileoscope is finally being produced, and it’s a bit later than most people had hoped. When you’re trying to get people into the “International Year of Astronomy” it may be helpful to get the telescopes out before the middle of the year. That being said, it looks like the $15 telescopes are making an impact even before anyone has one – Celestron has brought out a $50 scope that is tied to the IYA and is much better at light-gathering than the Galileoscope, while offering a 75x objective compared to the 50x objective on the Galileoscope. Cool deal, if you can’t wait for June.
I’ve got two Galileoscopes on order, and I’ll definitely have photos of The Boy assembling and using one when they finally show up. Patience…
Surprising many by the late date, Yahoo is finally killing off Geocities. I actually had a Geocities site back in 1994 or so, SiliconValley 7305 as I recall. It’s long gone, part of a purge I suppose. While Geocities was never a high-end site, it did offer an entrance into the world of the vanity web site for many over the years. When Yahoo bought them for nearly three billion dollars, they were obviously hoping to make money off the advertising-filled sites of catlovers and random conspiracy nuts. This apparently didn’t happen, but blogging did. I remember manually updating my “thoughts” page back in the mid-90s – what a difference a good LAMP stack makes.
Anyway, farewell Geocities. Catlovers will just have to make do with Facebook and MySpace and LiveJournal and Flickr and … well, I guess they’ll survive somehow.
Just saw a Citi commercial touting their ability to make wise investment decisions. I beg to differ. They asked the U.S. government for a bailout, if you recall. When any company needs to ask me for money, I question their business acumen.
Happy April Fool’s Day. Today, even more than other days, don’t believe anything on the internet. I saw squeeze bacon and a Tauntaun sleeping bag on Thinkgeek, and a Sony UMPC with mini-CD drive on UMPC Portal. Who knows what we’ll see on Slashdot and others by the time the geeks go to sleep tonight?