Tastes Like Chicken |
everyone can use some TLC |
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Thursday, February 20, 2003
_Self-control comes in limited quantities and must be replenished
Right now it is KILLING me to have a bag of chocolate covered pretzels (REAL CHOCOLATE, dammit) sitting in my home while I'm winnowing away a few pounds. KILLING ME, I say! Normally I'd just toss them, but I know I'll want to share them with friends next week. It's going to be a loong week.
_Stripped for parts
Spending the night with a dead man kept breathing so that his organs can be better preserved for transplantation. Rather than extracting this man's vitals right away, the hospital contacts the California Transplant Donor Network, which dispatches a procurement team to begin "donor maintenance": the process of artificially supporting a dead body until recipients are ready. When the parathyroid gland stops regulating calcium, key to keeping the heart pumping, the team sends the proper amount down an intravenous drip. When blood pressure drops, they add vasoconstrictors, which contract the blood vessels. Normally the brain would compensate for a decrease in blood pressure, but with it out of commission, the three-nurse procurement team must take over.The linked story is much more than the excerpts used above.
_High Definition TV has been successfully captured in its native data stream from an over the air broadcast by a software defined radio that is Free and open source from the GNU Software Defined Radio project.
Explanation: What that means is that there is now a free-of-charge and user modifiable software system that can, in combination with hardware built to a freely available specification, use a normal personal computer to recieve and save bit for bit copies of the high definition television signals already being beamed out by broadcasters. That means you can create perfect copies, with color, fidelity and detail that far outstrips what you are used to from standard television or even direct broadcast satellite (like DirecTV), and use them at your convenience and in the full range of uses allowed under fair use, the legal doctrine that gives you considerable freedom to save, copy and even distribute copyrighted materials. This is huge. Deadly serious efforts by the Hollywood studios to keep fair use from carrying forward into the digital television era just got a thousand times harder. Outdamnstanding! Go look at the purty pictures! Sunday, February 16, 2003
_Hey man, nice shot.
Fascinating and moving, this is a "tribute" page devoted to R. Budd Dwyer, whos willfully spectacular flameout provided stomach churning news footage to go with my fifteenth birthday. Was he guilty? I dunno, but the account is moving nonetheless. And no, I'm not interested in seeing the video again. The subdued stills and transcript on the Final Moments page are plenty for me. The intersection of this event with Filter's song is covered pretty well here. Expect pop-ups on some of these links if you're still using Internet Explorer. |