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20 Years Ago Today
Twenty years ago today I was a freshman at Cornell University. I’d only been to NYC once before, during my family’s college tour trip in spring of 2000. I was in class when the attacks happened. Eventually when I got to our creative writing class (or whatever it was called – Cornell made every freshman…
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I love when newspapers predict things that are hilarious in hindsight
I love when newspapers predict things that are hilarious in hindsight:
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Egypt, Israel, and Palestine
With the current revolution in Egypt I’ve been hearing a lot of speculation on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about who will come to power when the current government falls. There’s been a lot of talk about the consequences of a government run by The Muslim Brotherhood. The fact is that some key figured in…
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Review: Inglourious Basterds
It’s been 65 years since World War II ended. We seem to be more obsessed with it than ever. There are two big reasons for this. First, WWII is the last war we unequivocally won and which had a clear, morally reprehensible enemy. Korea was a tie, Vietnam was a loss, and our only other…
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My History with Browsers Part 1: A History Lesson of Sorts
At first I used Internet Explorer because we had a free trial of MSN. Then we switched to MCI, who used Netscape (although you could also use IE) and I mostly used Netscape. I think this was around Netscape 4 or 5. I really liked Netscape A LOT and used it almost to the exclusivity…
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Godwin’s Law
Yet another awesome xkcd comic:
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Gotta use that extra encryption
Another wonderful comic from xkcd:
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Happy Bastille Day!
To any French readers I may have out there, Happy Bastille Day!
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The Constitution!
The other day I decided to read the Constitution of the USA. I don’t know what compelled me to do this, other than the fact that I stumbled upon it online. I don’t have anything specific to say about it except that I’m amazed at how they thought of nearly every contingency. For example, the…
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Shi’ites and Sunni & Protestants and Catholics
For a while I kept wondering what the heck was going on in Iraq. Why were the Shi’ites and Sunni killing each other? Aren’t they both Muslim? What barbaric behaviour to kill your own compatriots, not because they are a different religion, but just a different sect! But then, one night as I lay awake…
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In the front seat on the bus to heaven
Rosa Parks died yesterday of natural causes. As everyone knows, she was one of the most influential and accidental icons of the United States Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. As she herself has told others, she never meant to actually stand up for civil rights. She had just finished a very long and tiring…