Steven Brown's blog

Oh, actually...

I received a call this evening from a upstanding young man who wanted to ask me a few questions about my political views.  

"This will only take a second."

Questions were generic and, to my mind, useless:

"What is the most important issue in this election."

"What party are you closest to?"

"Don't you just wish the Earth would shut up and die already?"

At the end of the surprisingly short set of three questions, as he was trying to get rid of me, I asked, "So, what's the deal with these questions, where are they going?  What are you working on?"

"Oh, actually, I am with the Ron Paul campaign.  We are using these questions to find people that might have similar views to our candidate.  Then we can pull them into the flock and ban together against stuff like the National Endowment for the Arts, stem cell research, and, you know, the Earth."

I might have made that last sentence up.

Is it common for campaigns to ask a lot of questions under the pretext of a survey without explaining why?  It was just all weird and deceptive.  The fact that his response started with "Oh, actually..." made me bristle, as if he was copping to the lie.  And only told me what he was doing because I came out and called him on it.

Here's to the crazy ones...

At long last, I can see what the letter in the TextEdit icon says:

Picture 1

Perhaps I am not the first, but I've always wondered.  Cover Flow and extra ginormous icons FTW!

My New Favorite Plane

Xf-85goblin

McDonell XF-85 Goblin - the Flying Egg

Los Angeles, Google

It'd be great if companies could start buying states. 

Awesome

There is so much goodness packed in here it makes my head hurt.

Check out Tower Bawher over here.

The Interwebs Is My Best Friend, Part 3

google.gov

The US Bureau of Engraving and Printing has a fabulous name--one of the nicest in all the Departments-of and US-This-and-That.  But who on God's green Earth saddled them with this URL?  When you've got a whole top-level domain to yourself, why not go all the way?  google.gov!  Lord knows they print their own money.

UPDATE: I'm getting closer to figuring out who chose that URL--it's the same guy that wrote this craptastic opening:

The Buck starts here at The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where you can broaden your horizons and expand your mind!

UPDATE 2: WTF?  How can you be a money factory and not make coins??  Coins are money.

UPDATE 3: I suppose you could ask why the US Mint doesn't make notes, but that just wouldn't make cents! (thanks, everybody, I'm here all week!)

Apartment in Mall a Hoax?

The web is a-buzz with this story of a dude who built an apartment in the mall.  I think its a cute hoax.

I am no news-at-11-investigative-reporter, but here's my preliminary list of questions.

• in four years they took 6 pictures, but have plenty of video to stock their just-started blog?
• the entrance area is 11 inches wide but can accommodate a tv, couches, a hutch, etc.?
• why are there no pictures of this place in the context of the mall?

I call bullshit.

Black and White, In Color!

A picture from the site "World War 2 Pictures in Color":

Black-and-white-in-color

Strike while the irony is hot.

Burma vs. Myanmar

What's the rule here?  Things seem to go both ways:

Myanmar Anti-Government Protests Turn Deadly

U.N. urges calm amid Myanmar clashes

Burma protesters defy crackdown

UPDATE:  In case you are unsure, use both.

Wikipedia helps:

The name “Myanmar” is derived from the local short-form name Myanma Naingngandaw.^[2] This name was used as early as the 12th century, but its etymology remains unclear.

In 1989, the military junta officially changed the English version of the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar, along with changes to the English versions of many place names in the country, such as its former capital city from Rangoon to Yangon. Note that the official name of the country in the Burmese language, Myanma, did not change. Within the Burmese language, Myanma is the written, literary name of the country, while Bama or Bamar (from which “Burma” derives) is the oral, colloquial name. In spoken Burmese, the distinction is less clear than the English transliteration suggests.

The renaming proved to be politically controversial.^[3] Burmese opposition groups continue to use the name “Burma” since they do not recognise the legitimacy of the ruling military government nor its authority to rename the country. Some western governments, namely those of the United States, Australia, Ireland, and Britain, continue to use “Burma”, while the European Union uses "Burma/Myanmar" as an alternative.^[4] The United Nations uses “Myanmar”.

Use of “Burma” and its adjective, “Burmese”, remains common in the United States and Britain. Some news organisations, such as the BBC and The Financial Times, still use these forms.^[5][6] MSNBC, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and others use “Myanmar” as the country name and “Burmese” as the adjective.