Yearly Archives: 2005
Commuters’ Feathers Ruffled
August 30, 2005 – 3:46 pm
Ostrich takes hike on bridgeThe 6-foot-tall bird, who apparently didn’t feel like hiding its head in the sand, escaped from the back of a cargo van on the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday, stopping evening commute traffic in both directions and sending dozens of tourists racing for their cameras. The ostrich, a female, got loose […]
Opera Giveaway
August 30, 2005 – 1:39 pm
I’m a Firefox man myself, but I respect Opera. Usually you have to pay to register your copy or put up with sidebar ads. But today you can get a free registration code from Opera, as part of its tenth anniversary celebrations. (It’s really that old?)
Daniel Dennett and the God of the Gaps
August 30, 2005 – 12:51 am
In an editorial from Sunday’s New York Times, Daniel Dennett takes aim at “Intelligent Design.” He does make a few cheap shots at the notion, such as this: Since there is no content, there is no “controversy” to teach about in biology class. But here is a good topic for a high school course on […]
Aufheben Bridges
August 29, 2005 – 3:42 pm
Betcha didn’t know that John Roebling, father in the father-son team that designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge, was a student of Hegel’s: (from David McCullough’s The Great Bridge p. 42) In Berlin, [John Roebling] had studied architecture, bridge construction, and hydraulics. He also studied philosophy under Hegel, who, according to one biographical memoir, “avowed […]
Happy Birthday Windows 95
August 24, 2005 – 10:26 pm
Slashdot reminds us that today is the tenth anniversary of the debut of Windows 95: As part of the launch, Microsoft paid $12,000,000 for the rights to use the Rolling Stones’ song “Start Me Up” (containing the prophetic line ‘You make a grown man cry’). “ Nice. But the truth is, despite its problems, Windows […]
Choraling Rutter
August 24, 2005 – 10:25 pm
Kudos to Dan Forrest. I didn’t really know him that well, but we were in at least one music theory class together in college. Apparently he needed the class less than I, because he just beat out John Rutter for first prize in the John Ness Beck award for outstanding selected sacred choral anthem. No […]