Outboard Brains for Mac OS X:

“Before you rush off to find your way to Hogwarts School, take some time to consider some of the brain assistants that already exist. This article is going to take a brief look at some applications designed to be digital brain-dumps; electronic Pensieves into which you can throw any information you want, knowing that it will still be there when you need it later.”

proving that he can deftly manipulate the press to his advantage, arnold announces he’s in the running for governor of california:

“”I decided that California is in a disastrous situation right now,” said Schwarzenegger. “The atmosphere is disastrous. There is a total disconnect between people of California and politicians…. The people are working hard … but the politicians are not doing their jobs. The politicians are fiddiling , fumbling and failing, and the man failing more than anyone is Gray Davis, and this is why I am going to run.””

i have no idea why, but i found cameron’s post on the “bacerial media” to be a fascinating study on the wierd world of the std psas:

“In the case of positive promotion of syphilis awareness, Phil the Syphilis Sore has been in the spotlight. He’s disgusting, hairy and angry-looking, and he conjures a queasy stomach by way of association with the real thing. But despite that he’s been featured in Newsweek, on various talk shows and other media apperances while the Health Penis has been restrained to mostly gay publications and websites.”

i’m almost embarrased to admit that i bought the new janes addiction album [sic] today. o.k. i admit it. i’ve of the age when “nothing’s shocking” was on permanent rotation in my sony walkman when it was originally released 15 years ago. so buying a reunion album is pretty much a blatant attempt to walk down memory lane and relive the salad days of yore.

what’s worse, is i bought it on the recommendation of rolling stone, which if you’re in the demographic of people who had “nothing’s shocking” on permanent rotation in 1988 is sort of like buying an album on the good word of the devil. flipside fanzine good. rolling stone bad. that’s the way it is.

so what brought me to this sorry state of purchasing affairs? a rolling stone review i read via their new rss feeds.

and the funny part? the album is great. it’s big fun to crank up to ’11’ while tooling around in my jetta tdi station wagon. such is life.

so-called “flash mobs” get prominent play today
and the headlines say it all. via the
new york times

we have, ”

What: Mob Scene. Who: Strangers. Point: None.

“, while the
christian science monitor

weighs in with the slightly less judgemental, ”

Synchronized, collective, and so far pointless

“.

fwiw, i can’t help leaning towards feeling that the current
incarnation of “flash mobs” merely prove that there’s a

lemming

born every minute. but that probably only proves that i’m a
stick-in-the-mud.

buried in an enjoyable

new york times profile piece

on
economist steven
levitt

, i find a reference to a new paper he’s working on that discusses
the causual factors related to crime reduction in the 90s.

how timely, i think to myself, since kris and i were debating crime
statistics on sunday prompted by a snarky

george will commentary

on how the new york times keeps printing the same article year
after year in which they repeatedly ask why prison populations are
on the rise
despite

a slight drop in crime. in george’s humble opinion, it’s obvious
that this is liberal mush-mindedness at its best, for any idiot can
plainly see that there is a drop in crime because more criminals
are in prison.

of course, george was really presenting the theory that people who
want to build prisons usually put forth and presenting it as an
undisputed fact that soft minds are incapabale of grasping.
george’s snarkiness aside, me wondered, what was the truth?

well, inasmuch as it may or may not be the truth, via the power of
google

, you can get your own prepublication copy of

“Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that
Explain the Decline and Seven That Do Not”

and discover why george might be right:

“Crime fell sharply and unexpectedly in the United
States in the 1990s. This paper examines the competing explanations
as to why crime fell. I conclude that four factors can collectively
explain the entire drop in crime: increases in the number of
police, increases in the size of the prison population, the waning
of the crack epidemic, and the legalization of abortion in the
1970s. A wide range of other possible explanations do not appear to
have played an important role: the strong economy, changing
demographics, innovative policing strategies, gun control laws,
concealed weapons laws, increased use of capital punishment, and
crime prevention programs. While some future crime reduction
remains a strong possibility, it is unlikely that the impressive
rates of decline of the last decade will continue.”

while i’m a big fan firebird, there’s one default behavior i find annoying. if i open a new an url from a bookmark it will automatically spawn a new window; however the preferred behavior for me is to open it in an existing tab. i don’t see any obvious preference to change, but i’m sure there’s some sort of user.js fiddling i can do. any hints? i don’t see anything obvious if i type about:config in the location bar.