URLs du Jour

2007-04-30

  • Dafydd notes:
    We live in the Age of Miracles: For the second time in history -- fire has melted steel.
    Rosie O'Donnell was unavailable for comment, as was Professor William Woodward. Mr. Hoy has some questions, though:
    Has anyone even tested for explosive residue? Were there any Halliburton employees in the area at the time? Where was Dick Cheney at 3:45 a.m. this morning?
    He's just kidding though. I think.

  • No doubt you're troubled by asterisked dirty words while casting about the internets—you know, the ones like "bulls**t", "bi**h", and "Hi***ry Cli***n". If you're a Firefox user, fret no more:
    I've created the "Uncensor the Internet" script for Greasemonkey (a Firefox plug-in that lets you add all sorts of useful functionality to your web browser, available here). If you're running Firefox with the Greasemonkey plug-in, just install this script, and see all the foul language that people are pretending they don't use.
    Seriously. Via Liberman at Language Log who has amusing deep thoughts on the matter.

  • I was struck by this bit from an USA Today interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, conducted before an audience at the University of Washington Business School:
    Bill Gates, before we shipped Office, sent the team some mail, "Hey, you know, I really love the user interface in the new Excel, but I didn't know you were going to add so many new features." And he listed a couple things he really liked. And they said, "Bill, those aren't new features." (Laughter.) Bill said, "No, I'm an Excel expert. Those are new features." And they said, "No, they've actually been there for three releases." (Laughter.) So, it had features that even an expert couldn't find, and yet they were very discoverable in the new user interface.
    (Laughter), indeed. In a Biz-school environment, surely there must have been (tears) as well?

  • Shameless self-promotion department: I got a "Thanks to" from James Taranto's Best of the Web Today today for pointing out the "URI Senate Doesn't Vote to Make Club Apologize" headline (discussed here) as a possible "Bottom Story of the Day".