The Early Years (2002-2005)

Why isn’t there a “No to All” option in Windows? That’s one thing that always bugged me. Say when I’m coming all the files from one directory to another, and I never want the new files to overwrite files in the old directory, why should I have to keep clicking ’no’? Am I missing something?

Apparently I was on to something when I wrote about vegetarian shoes - the New York Times has a whole article on the concept, although they refer to “vegan shoes”. I guess it’s one and the same - although perhaps the use of wool in any fashion would be vegetarian but not vegan?

An idle long-term project of mine is to properly catalogue my MP3s - making sure the album name is right, that sort of thing - especially tough since a lot were burnt from vinyl, and the attribution was quite spotty. You would think find the info is easy with the Internet, but there’s a lot of bad info out there. Also, I’m picky: I like my MP3s to reflect the albums the songs were first released on. (Winamp has a media library that helps with attribution, but more often than not it just finds a random compilation instead of the original album.) So I should say that I’ve found two sites invaluable:

Missed this one in the news: apparently being in traffic increases your risk of a heart attack. But not because of stress of driving, as you might think - bus riders are just as equally affected. It’s because of particulate matter in the air caused by vehicle exhausts. Man, I’m sticking with the subway.

You know, I know about Daniel and the lion’s den, but this is just bizarre: Man tries to convert lions to Jesus, gets bitten.

How to get music off your iPod. Don’t you hate it when copy protection makes it hard to do legit things? Like when you can’t play a copy-protected CD on certain players.

To any American reading this: I hope you voted today, regardless of your political affiliation. It’s personally inspiring to read stories of people willing to wait hours in line just to exercise their right to vote.

The Boston Globe has an interesting piece by William V. D’Antonio about the distinction between preaching moral values, and living them: Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.

Actually, I’ve abandoned my de-luxe apartment in the sky. If you don’t know Singapore society, it’s still very rare for someone to move out post-college: not until marriage, really. So it was a big and wonderfully liberating step. But for personal reasons I’m moving back home for a bit. Still miss the place though. Since I was an urban economist by training, I’m struck by how rarely one of the most fundamental tenets of urban economics is followed here compared to the US: people live nowhere near work. So great to be able to walk to work, to live somewhere that was a mix of working, living, and recreational areas. Very Richard Florida.

Flipping through an old GQ today, and found an interview with Keanu Reeves where they described the Matrix’s action as “balletic”. That’s one of the words that’s destined to exist only in print - in speech the pronunciation hardly calls to mind the root word.

They finally charged the heartless guy who tried to shoot a litter of puppies and ended up getting shot by a puppy. And in other dog news, this Rottweiler saved her owner by dialling 911. What I think is amazing is that the dog is trained to “alert her owner to impending seizures before they happen” by sniffing out changes in body chemistry. Didn’t know they could do that.

One of my favourite things to browse through is the Best of Craigslist. (If you don’t know what craigslist is, it’s an online classifieds site, to put it succinctly. I wish there were a craigslist Singapore.) Here’s some of my favourites: nude economic consulting, the Asian woman as the ultimate hipster accessory, entourage seekers.

Newsday has a pic of Renee Zellweger from the premiere of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Always think Zellweger looks better in the Bridget Jones movies - when I watched Chicago I felt like rushing up onto the screen and giving her applesauce to eat or something.

The Order of St Bernard is giving up its St Bernards, because the dogs are “distracting [the monks] from their work of ministering to actual people”. The St Bernard puppy that the NY Times showed is so darned huge but cute:

Hey, how are us political junkies from overseas going to follow the election when people are doing things like this? And aren’t there Americans abroad who want to find out information?

More of Coconut, cutest dog in the world, with a blue pumpkin. It’s coming up to Halloween!

The Boston Red Sox, 2004 World Champions. I’m beyond happy.

Speaking as someone whose mother has kidney failure, I think it’s awesome that Alonzo Mourning is coming back to play basketball after his kidney transplant.

Men talk to Google not girlfriends. “Search services have become so central to our lives that in many cases they’re being treated like trusted friends. Men in particular seem to be turning to them like a mate in the pub to give advice, provide entertainment and even help out in rating potential girlfriends.”

Okay, I admit to being an American political junkie. And I know that Daily Kos and Atrios are going to be hardcore pro-Kerry. But to see that two of the leading neo-con bloggers Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus are endorsing Kerry… ouch. Interesting times we live in, when left/right labels don’t split up so evenly.