Cox Crow

Domino + RSS

Someone remarked a short while ago — so short a while that I cannot remember who — that, now that there is a Domino blogger, wouldn't it be nice if a Domino database could produce an RSS feed?

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Google knows.

9:21:06 PM # Google It!
categories: Writing Online

Old news is fish-wrap

I haven't heard back from NPR yet, except for an automated response letter that didn't apply to my request.

4:48:31 PM # Google It!
categories: Media

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch

Can you do the Can Can?

4:25:55 PM # Google It!
categories: Media

Guess Who

In Amazon's quote of Booklist's review of Harry Turtledove's upcoming book, American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold, we're offered a trivia question:

He also shows Sylvia unable to take her ghostwriter, Ernie, as a lover because of his war wound (the culturally literate only need one chance to correctly guess Ernie's last name).

That would be "What is 'The Attorney,' Alex."

3:56:53 PM # Google It!
categories: Writing Online

Wide Load

I always wondered why the larger folks don't pay for two seats; they're sitting in both of them. Apparently Southwest Airlines realized they weren't charging per seat.

3:50:49 PM # Google It!

Stupid is as stupid does

Robert Shaw writes:

Showing that the populist view often does not bear scrutiny, in this posting back in March 2000 on the Cybertelecom-L mailing list (no archives), Fred Goldstein takes the opposite view and argues convincingly, that on the contrary, "The telephone network has even more content-neutrality than the Internet, because as a circuit-switched network, it has zero visibility of the bearer channels. Once the call's set up, bits is bits. No firewalls, censorware, caches, or other content-invasive intermediaries a la the Internet as people tend to see it nowadays. Thus the amount of intelligence in the Internet's switches (routers) is many orders of magnitude above what goes into a telephone switch, even a huge one."

Interesting. I've some thoughts on this, as far as design, implementation, and the carrier's attitude towards its role, but I need to flesh them out some more.

3:15:55 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Layer 8

Here be Dragons

I consider links to be another form of citation, allowing one to precisely attribute a source. It's also a pointer, a signpost, in the map of my words.

When writing a history, you draw on the the words, the pictures, the deeds of others. If you are unable to direct readers to those others, then how are your readers to build any trust that what you say is so? When all you are doing is weaving many threads into a tapestry, you cannot, godlike, call it forth: fiat lux.

Unknown regions, places we've never been or cannot go, are wastelands, filled only with dragons.

12:15:29 PM # Google It!
categories: Language, Law, Media

Sigh

I found some interesting things to link to on NPR, and then I found that they would appreciate that I fill out a longish form before I do so.

I asked. It was only polite. Let's see how long it takes before they get back to me.

11:32:39 AM # Google It!
categories: Media

Pusherman

I don't want to see a single patient coming off Neurontin until they've been up to 48 mg per day.
— a Parke-Davis executive, as quoted on All Things Considered, June 18, 2000, National Public Radio

Oddly enough, there's a lawsuit, Franklin v. Pfizer, over Parke-Davis Warner-Lambert Pfizer's practice of treating doctors to nice gifts, if they prescribed enough Neurontin. While the doctors did nothing illegal, apparently, I would hope that the AMA would have something to say about their ethics. The British reprimanded Pfizer.

11:10:41 AM # Google It!
categories: Law