Personal Dork Assistant

Dog Bites Man

And in other news, Pack of Chihuahuas attack Fremont cop.

The officer suffered bite wounds to his ankles, was treated at Washington Hospital and returned to work within two hours, Fremont police Detective Bill Veteran said.

Well, so long as nobody was seriously hurt.

Unhappy New Years

More evidence that America is turning to shit since I've been gone.

Imagine an Arbor Day with no trees. Or Valentine's Day without the color red. Or Easter without Jesus. That's the feeling that most Americans will have this Sunday -- the first New Year's Day in recent memory with no college football.

It was bad enough when they moved the BCS bowls away from New Year's Day, but at least there would still be a Gator or a Cotton bowl on the traditional schedule. I guess the only tradition that matters is Thou Shall Not Interfere With The NFL. Unless it's figure skating, then it's okay.

好好好， 聖誕快樂！

Sorry, "Ho" just doesn't transliterate well into Mandarin.

Apparently Santas do translate across cultures and languages, in Mandarin and Cantonese. And I guess the jolly white elderly gentleman with a long beard is the one type of worker that China just can't quite take away.

Happy Holidays, everyone. Have a card.

Blogospherical

Sam's got a blog now. The sidebar with the Recent Procedures is a nice touch. Although the geeky side thinks that it should be implemented as an headline syndication script to auto-generate the headlines from a sub-blog rather than having to edit the template by hand. Too bad BlogSpot's picture-hosting doesn't allow picture-linking from outside sites. I could use some more content for the photo-log.

They block BlogSpot sites in China. Who knew? Although TypePad comes through okay. Hey censor dudes, get with the program already.

Year End

With Christmas and New Year coming up, it's time for the annual lists. Lists of cool stuff are old-hat now, with sites like Engadget and Uncrate to keep you updated on all the latest gadgets year-round. But the New York Times breaks the mold with the high-brow Year In Ideas, covering things, memes, and happenings.

Some mysteries, of course, still remain. For instance, we do not yet have an entirely satisfying explanation for how Mark Cuban, the outspoken Internet mogul and N.B.A. owner, came to be connected with three of the year's most notable ideas ("Collapsing the Distribution Window," "Scientific Free-Throw Distraction" and "Splogs").

Okay, so maybe it's not that high-brow. My personal pick for the Idea Of The Year? Gotta be Cartoon Empathy.

Then without warning a group of warplanes arrives and starts carpet-bombing. As the Smurfs scatter, their mushroom village goes up in flames. After the last bomb falls, amid the burning rubble and surrounded by dead Smurfs, Baby Smurf sits alone, wailing.

Massacred Smurfs? Hell yeah. Watch that while eating In Vitro Meat for the goodness.

Lion in Winter

Interview with Lee Kuan Yew in Time Asia. Nice for once to see a world leader with a clue. The enlightened dictator can be surprisingly effective, and it's been the ideal governing philosophy in the Confucian tradition. Human rights are overrated anyway. Plus, anyone who can talk smack to Deng Xiao Ping (and live to tell about it) is the Real Deal in my book.

I said, "You spent all this time to convince me why we should fight the Russian bear. Let me tell you that my neighbors want me to join them to fight you, you're the man who's giving us trouble. All this communist insurgency and your broadcasts urging them on and so on." He screwed up his eyes, peered at me, and asked, "What do you want me to do?" I said, "Stop it." One young man telling one old grizzly, guerrilla fighter: "Stop it." He said, "Give me time." Eighteen months later he stopped it.

Pretty brave stuff for 1978.