My second post on this blog, one year and a couple of weeks ago, was about Australia’s new center-left government issuing an official apology to its Aboriginal peoples for a hundred years of mistreatment. A quote from that post:
It’s an important symbolic step that was long overdue, but of course it remains to be seen what happens next.
So what did happen next? Not much.
The inauguration was, to say the least, quite an experience. There was the standing on the mall for 6 hours in subfreezing temperatures with a couple of million of our closest friends… the random appearance of Samuel L. Jackson… the crowd spontaneously breaking out into chants of “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye” when W appeared on the Jumbotron, and the silence followed by cheers as the oath was administered (more or less, courtesy of the Chief Justice). Then came the inaugural ball, with appearances by both the Obamas and the Bidens. And of course, the trusty camera was there for it all.
If you’re looking for something to both occupy your attention and prep you for that stint on Jeopardy!, check out the Amazing Fact Generator… hours of family fun. So far, my personal favorite for some odd reason is this one:
Colonel Sanders’ finger-lickin’ formula is locked away in a bank vault in Louisville, Ky. In fact, the KFC people are so serious about keeping the ingredients under wraps that two separate companies are used to blend the spices, so neither possesses the complete recipe.
This has been studied more extensively elsewhere, but CNN had an article a while back about the personality characteristics and resulting career choices of kids based on their birth order. We only children seem to make out okay.
So the fall turned out to be vastly worse than the summer in terms of busy. At some point I really need to sit down and read the copy of The 4-Hour Workweek that I bought months ago. But in the meantime, I decided to at least make some aesthetic changes to the site, and move to easier-to-manage software to run it. Now if I could just find time someday to add new stuff to it more regularly…
NY Times
