Comedy club, D.C. style
It’s comedy night at the Supreme Court! According to the New York Times:
Of course, what passes for humor at the Supreme Court would probably not kill at the local comedy club. Consider, for instance, the golden opportunity on Halloween this year when a light bulb in the courtroom’s ceiling exploded during an argument.
It takes two justices, it turns out, to screw up a light bulb joke.
“It’s a trick they play on new chief justices all the time,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the court that month, said of the explosion.
“[Laughter.]”
“Happy Halloween,” Justice Scalia retorted.
“[Laughter.]”
And then, the kicker. “We’re even more in the dark now than before,” Chief Justice Roberts said.
“[Laughter.]”
On the other hand, in a January argument in a statute-of-limitations case, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy made an amusing observation about the absurdity of modern life.
“Recently I lost my luggage,” Justice Kennedy said. “I had to go to the lost and found at the airline, and the lady said has my plane landed yet.”
“[Laughter.]“
For more side-splitting mirth, visit the one and only argument transcripts repository of the Supreme Court of the United States.
SBC closed its acquisition of AT&T today, and introduced a new logo for the “new” AT&T.
Welcome to the realm where words no longer carry any meaning as the following re-design rationale proves:
“The revitalized mark symbolizes these attributes — innovation, integrity, quality, reliability and unsurpassed customer care,” Whitacre [chairman and CEO of AT&T] added. “Our customers know that we’re focused on keeping our promises, committed to operating honestly, and dedicated to bringing them new products that make a difference in their lives.”
The new logo reinvigorates the AT&T globe — one of the most recognized corporate symbols in the world. The new globe is three-dimensional, representing the expanding breadth and depth of services that the new AT&T family of companies provides to customers, as well as its global presence.
Transparency was added to the globe to represent clarity and vision. Lowercase type is now used for the “AT&T” characters because it projects a more welcoming and accessible image. The core of the new logo remains blue because both the SBC and AT&T brands are strongly associated with that color. The overall design more accurately represents the company that is leading the industry in delivering best-in-class services to consumers and business professionals.
For comparison, Saul Bass‘ classic 1983 logo — shown below in its 1998 “revitalized” form — is a paragon of good design judgement compared to the “reinvigorated” laundry detergent dispenser ball of a logo of today! And the typography — what font is that anyway, Tahoma?
Jonathan Clarke reviews Stephen Walt’s Taming American Power (2005) in December 2005 issue of The Washington Monthly:
There are no two bricks anywhere in the world, one resting on top of the other, that American cruise missiles cannot knock over, on a 24/7 basis under all weather conditions. But, however impressive this capability is in terms of technology, does it really translate into an ability to impose America’s will? Walt writes of “hubris” and the persistent overestimation of this power capability by the American foreign-policy elite. Somewhere out there (preferably not from one of the usual anti-American suspects), there are fundamental questions to be asked about whether the so-called “revolution in military affairs” — the fusion of information technology and airborne platforms to deliver a global precision strike capability — is anything more than a will-of-the-wisp. This would lead into a discussion of how powerful America really is, power being defined as the ability to secure America’s long-term interests, not just in terms of knocking over buildings.
Read more at “New Balance: What other countries can do about American power”.
Countries I have visited — including airport transits. 
From World66.
Via Tajmall.
UPDATE: A condensed version of this post was published at the Guardian website on 22 December 2005.
– — –
Kudos for the Guardian’s Andrew Brown (”If this suite’s a success, why is it so buggy?”) for pricking a hole or two to the long-running myth of open source software somehow being intrinsically better than commercially-produced applications!
This whole open source mania reminds me of the True Believers of the 1970s and 1980s that refused to acknowledge what was obvious to everybody else: that the Eastern Bloc — or the Second World in general — wasn’t faring very well. But since the zeitgeist was what it was, to say anything contrary to the prevailing ethos would have been tantamount to a treason.
I truly hope the open source advocates would take an impassionate look of the battered battlefield, and recognize the patent truth: it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice, as Deng Xiaoping said on the aftermath the previous True Believers left behind.
The award for best computer-related acronym goes to the Oxford English Dictionary for their new electronic editing system, Pasadena — Perfect All-Singing All-Dancing Editorial and Notation Application. (As reported in the latest issue of the Oxford English Dictionary News.)
And the perennial runner-up lifetime bust is awarded to Macintosh — Most Applications Crash, If Not The Operating System Hangs. (Referring — “mostly” — to the pre–OS X Macs.)
