14-page special report on quality control

I subscribe to The Economist. Here's what I got in the mail yesterday:

I'm really quite impressed that the post office delivered it. At first I thought it had gotten mangled in transit, but since my address is printed askew (parallel to the bottom diagonal edge) and there are visible CMYK markers on the top edge of all the pages, it must have left the press this way.

06 July 2008 • 2:25 pm • link

Credit where credit is due

The original inspiration for the chicken paper.

05 October 2007 • 7:36 am • link

WTF?

From cnn.com:

But Dobson and the other signatories of the letter to the National Association of Evangelicals board said evidence supporting global warming was not conclusive and that the organization "lacks the expertise to settle the controversy."

Evangelicals can't support something when the evidence isn't conclusive?!

15 March 2007 • 2:06 am • link

Witticism formulae (one use, two mentions)
"year called, they want their x back" is the new "All your x are belong to us".

05 February 2007 • 7:44 pm • link

Buy this now
I've been listening to this CD obsessively for about a month now: Tehillim / The Desert Music by Steve Reich (performed by Alarm Will Sound and Ossia). I came across it while looking for more things performed by Alarm Will Sound after getting their also excellent (if a little uneven) acoustic covers of Aphex Twin songs album.

Usually when I get a CD and like it on the first listen, it's an infatuation that soon fades. Conversely, the ones that endure as my long-term favorites are frequently ones that I didn't like at first, but grew on me after I listened to them enough. It's rare to have an immediate and sustained love for an album. The other night on the elliptical trainer at the gym I ended up not even opening my book because I was enjoying concentrating on The Desert Music so much; no further distraction was required.

18 January 2007 • 11:05 am • link

This post is 39 words, followed by 31 words, after which it ends.

From an Amazon gift certificate: "This gift certificate is valid for 18 months, followed by a 6-month grace period, after which it will expire." Why make the distinction? Why not just "This gift certificate is valid for two years."?

I was going to add "Amazon doesn't price things like 'This CD is $10.50, plus $4.45, which you should also pay.'" but then it occurred to me that actually they do.

11 December 2006 • 6:09 pm • link

A surfeit of trivets
So I'm moving from my apartment to a house (hurray!). I boxed up most of the stuff in my kitchen this evening. I'm a single person who almost never cooks anything, and yet I apparently own:

• 3 broiling pans — this is probably equal to the number of times I've broiled anything, ever
• 6 mixing bowls
• 3 colanders
• 3 skillets
• 4 pots (1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-quart sizes)
• 4 baking dishes
• 4 cheese graters
• a crock-pot

I'm fairly sure most of this stuff hasn't been used since I moved in, three and a half years ago.

06 December 2006 • 1:50 am • link

Donald Knuth designed it.
Why does this font (apparently) lack the cents character but have not a subset of?

27 November 2006 • 1:13 am • link

Hello, world.
I have been spurred by Mr Thingo to put somethere here other than lorem ipsum. We'll see how long this lasts.

26 November 2006 • 11:01 pm • link