Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to randwolf!! Have a great one!

You can all be shocked now

I finally found a Microsoft product I liked well enough to buy at Fry's today. One of the best in its class, actually.

( It turns out they make really good backpacks )

PJ gets her XO

From Technoshaman we get a link to this post on groklaw where PJ describes her first encounter with her very own OLPC XO. It was given to her in a restaurant...

A younger guy sitting at a nearby table then piped up, "Just use Google Docs if you need Word documents." My brain about exploded. Of course! What can't you do that a businessman might typically want to do that he can't do on Google Docs? Note to countries thinking about whether or not to get the OLPC laptop and worrying about Word and Excel and all that: not only does the OLPC have equivalents, but if you want the kids to be able to function in a Microsoft environment, let them go to Google Docs and they can even share the work. An entire class and the teacher can all work on a project together. Here's how some others in the world are already using Google Docs.

"Nobody needs a hard drive any more," the young guy said. And you know what? It's true. So down topples another piece of anti-OLPC FUD.

But here's the best part. After we talked a while, I see a mom with her son, about 7 or 8 walking toward us. He's pulling on her hand, and from across the room, I can see the boy's eyes are fixed on the laptop and he is grinning from ear to ear. He looked like he'd just seen a dear friend. He walked right up to the table, and I immediately turned it his way so he could play, which he did without hesitation, without a word, still grinning.

His mother was nervous, thinking maybe he'd break it, or was being rude to butt in, but I told her I wanted him to play with it, so I could see what he did. He had absolutely NO difficulty at all, asked no one any questions, ignored us all totally, and played and played and played, grinning from ear to ear the entire time.

It's a kid magnet.

He wasn't intimidated by the laptop at all. It was like it was his, that it naturally belonged to him to play with. It was so cute. They have designed something so adorable that children, I saw, are drawn to it.

Kids just get it without a manual, but we, the adults, didn't.

I can't wait to get my hot little hands on mine... It's coming. Real Soon Now.

Maybe I should order another one?

Beware of strong drink

The Recipe For mdlbear

3 parts Imagination 2 parts Aspiration 1 part Mania Splash of Superiority Limit yourself to one serving. This cocktail is strong!

What's the Recipe for Your Personality?

Tatiana[6]: pictures

It took a while for it to show up on the web, but the Merc this morning had a dimensioned drawing of Tatiana's enclosure in an article titled "Wall of tiger's S.F. Zoo pen too short". added 11:03 They also have a very good article written this afternoon, with a lot of detail about what actually went on.

The Wikipedia article now has a particularly nice picture (on the left, linked to larger version).

There's the usual collection of newspaper articles: TheStar [Toronto Zoo officials say their fence is higher] ABC News ["Natural Born Killers"] Herald Sun San Francisco Chronicle [there was an "Emergency Procedures" manual -- guess what didn't happen in all the confusion], the Merc ["A San Francisco Zoo employee who called 911 during the Christmas Day tiger attack told a dispatcher that a very agitated male was claiming to have been bitten by an animal, but the employee initially didn't believe him, according to communication police released this afternoon."] Not surprising, really.

This Associated Press article concentrates on the possible financial liability. This Reuters article quotes the person responsible for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' 16 foot height recommendation: "I've seen tigers, big male tigers, reach up to 12 feet high," said Tilson, also the Minnesota Zoo's conservation director. (added 11:33pm Here's an article on Tilson in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.) There are a few more details on the victims and the sequence of events at CTV.ca. The brothers Dhaliwal should be out of the hospital in time for their court date on charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest. The dead teen, Carlos Sousa Jr., was apparently trying to distract Tatiana from her initial attack on the older brother. He succeeded, but...

And just before posting, The Times has an article about the shoe print found on the fence. It may be a few more days before we learn the results of the "forensic analysis".

Twilight of the books?

From this post by technoshaman comes a link to a New Yorker article titled "Twilight of the Books" that asks "What will life be like if people stop reading?"

Like technoshaman and unlike Caleb Crain, the article's author, I'm rather more optimistic. I think that, with the rise of the web, we're well on our way out of the decline of literacy caused by television. Of course Crain's measure of literacy, reading "a work of creative literature", may well continue to decline. I know I don't read nearly as many novels as I once did. But I think nothing of devouring a 100-page legal document over on Groklaw -- it doesn't look nearly that big when it's all in one big, scrollable, HTML page. And my kids happily spend their bookstore gift cards on rollplaying game books. And read them.