URLs du Jour

2006-09-15

  • Constitution Day is coming up on Monday, September 18 this year. Kip Esquire notes the not particularly subtle irony of the Federal law requiring that
    Every school and college that receives federal money must teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787. [Or, when the 17th is on a weekend, somewhere around then.]
    This is one of those things that you can feed to a Star Trek computer to make it catch on fire. Contradiction! Contradiction! Like Kip, Pun Salad loves the Constitution, but, also like Kip, does not love such Federalism-trashing laws. Here is what UNH did for Constitution Day last year. As near as I can tell, UNH is not doing anything this year, in apparent defiance of the law. This is either a brave act of civil disobedence or (much more likely) someone just forgot.

    The Chronicle of Higher Education provides a Constitution pop quiz; perhaps it's not too late for UNH to print up a few thousand copies and airdrop them over Durham.

    UNH is celebrating International Housekeepers Week, however.

  • Speaking of Star Trek, the digitally-remastered versions of the original series will start running at a TV channel near you this weekend. First up is "Balance of Terror", which Yahoo TV tells me I have the choice of watching at … Sunday morning at 3:05am … or … Monday morning at 2:05am. Hm, how big a geek am I?

  • Janice Brown has dug out a gem, written by a pie-eyed visionary in 1875. Probably would be considered a geek today.
    A hundred years [h]ence! Who that is born to-day will live to see it--a daily balloon to London, an afternoon trip to Florida? Will the docks now echoing to the hiss of steam be filled by strange, unearthly shapes, with wings and fans and g[au]dy bags of gas? Will freight trains, drawn by noiseless power, pass swiftly beneath the sea, and parcels dart like lightning. Stranger things than these have happened in a hundred years, and some may live to see still greater wonders. And yet we cannot change the face of nature.
    "Predictions are difficult, especially about the future."

  • But meanwhile, there are Real Men of Genius in Parsippany, NJ. (Via Club For Growth.)


Last Modified 2012-10-23 6:03 AM EDT