I knew there had to be some perks from living in a town with about 20 horse stables.#

The Kicker points to an interview with Quentin Tarantino about Kill Bill.#

TM: The scene where Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) stabs a guy who approaches her for sex…was this from Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000, Japan)?

QT: I went out to dinner with Kinji Fuaksaku and Kenta (Kinji's son) and I was going "man, I love this movie! It is just so fantastic!" And I said, "I love the scene where the girls are shooting are shooting each other." And then Kenta starts laughing. So I ask, "why are you laughing?" He goes, "the author of the original Battle Royale novel would be very happy to hear that you liked that scene." And I go "why?" And he says, "well, because it's from Reservoir Dogs!" Even when I was watching it I was thinking "God, these 14 year old girls are shooting each other just like in Reservoir Dogs!" And Kenta said, "he took that from Reservoir Dogs, so he'll be very proud that you like that!"

Zane Thomas wonders who cares about operating systems.#

Sure, end-users want cool programs that are pleasing to use (or at least not too annoying). They want their friends to see that they're technologically savvy and can afford the latest toys. And they want to send emails, IMs, surf the web, do homework/workwork, and they want to blog. But do they really care about operating systems? I don't think so.

Any modern operating system provides cpu, memory, and device management — there's nothing special about Windows from that perspective. Most end-users couldn't care less; all they want are nice applications, at a reasonable price, downloaded now.

Ryan Overbey links to a criticism of the beatification of Mother Teresa.#

The article:

It's the sheer tawdriness that strikes the eye first of all. It used to be that a person could not even be nominated for "beatification," the first step to "sainthood," until five years after his or her death. This was to guard against local or popular enthusiasm in the promotion of dubious characters. The pope nominated MT a year after her death in 1997. It also used to be that an apparatus of inquiry was set in train, including the scrutiny of an advocatus diaboli or "devil's advocate," to test any extraordinary claims. The pope has abolished this office and has created more instant saints than all his predecessors combined as far back as the 16th century.

Ryan:

I find it hard to be upset at the beatification of Mother Theresa or the elimination of the advocatus diaboli when I doubt any serious inquisitor could ever have found any evidence for any miracles at any time. It's all a bunch of pink elephants. The standards abolished by the Pope were always smoke and mirrors, designed to lend authenticity to illusion and fraud. Now that they're gone, Hitchens can see the wizard behind the curtain. We all can. But somehow, some way, Hitchens manages to miss the point entirely. Sad sad sad.

Real Live Preacher continues the story.#

This is the story of how ministers find out they're not Jesus. This is the story of hitting bottom.

You start figuring out you're not Jesus when you begin to unravel and lose the details. And if you've fallen into the trap of thinking you're Jesus, there are a lot of details to keep straight.

The Yeti links to You Know You're A Leftist If...#

You believe President Bush is too dumb to be President and Arnold Schwarzenegger is too dumb to be Governor of California, but the Dixie Chicks, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Babs Streisand, Eddie Vedder, and Jeanine Garofalo are foreign policy experts.

The Yeti theorizes on why women are attracted to "assholes."#

Women want a MAN. Someone who makes decisions, follows their own course, isn't afraid to speak his mind, has a purpose in life, protects his family and friends and country, and treats other people with respect when they deserve it. They can not stand a pansy. When confronted with the choice of an asshole or a pansy, they will always go to the asshole because at least they have a shot at tempering his rough edges. It is impossible to install a spine in a pansy

Richard posts his thoughts.

I've been standing up for myself lately, or at least trying to (and lately meaning the past 10 months or so), and that, evidently, has been interpreted as being an asshole. Or, in the immortal words of a friend, "an intolerable jerk". On the outside it looks like I'm grouchy or grumpy, but guess what? I'M LIKE THAT ALL THE TIME ON THE INSIDE! Sorry, that was loud, but yelling can be theraputic sometims. But being an asshole (or the term I prefer, Selfish Pig) has meant being more myself and less someone that I'm not. Being an asshole has not meant that women now prefer me, but being arrogant is definitely easier than being nice.

Something tells me we should ask the girls... or ask the supposed "assholes."

The Daily Report describes a way to make HTML anchors more user friendly.#

Dave Weinberger posts some thoughts on what will happen when blogs get REALLY popular.#

8. The distinction between the big, high-traffic blogs and the rest of the world of blogging will be increasingly sharply etched. The "tail" will gain more and more value as the number of high-traffic blogs necessarily grows much more slowly. At some point, the "A-List" bloggers won't even seem like bloggers because what they're doing is so different from what the rest of us are doing. By analogy, when I receive some massive-circ email newsletter, I don't think of it as being like email I receive from a friend, even though both are using email transport. (This doesn't mean the high-traffic blogs will be of less intrinsic value. It does mean they'll be of less value relative to the increasing cumulative value of the lower-traffic blogs.)

Peter Lindberg picks up the Code is Art meme and makes it fly.#

The question of whether or not programming is an art, or whether or not programmers are artists, is generally about whether or not they work like artists. There's another aspect that is interesting.

Art models the world. Art tries to say things about the world. But it doesn't do that straightforwardly: you need codes to decode works of art. But this makes them more effective. The message gets across with greater effect once you manage decoding it.

Tony Pierce writes about marriage. Marriage is cute.#

if you read my blog long enough you will soon agree that i have the greatest friends in the world. no offense to everyone else and all their friends, but mine rule the galaxy and im so happy to have them and yesterday two of them got married and the weather was perfect and a band was set up on one side of the alter and a bar was on the other and people kissed and danced and ate and drank and theres no way i will do the event any justice, but i will try.