Whipped Cream Difficulties

Terrorism isn’t funny. But I do wonder how much of a sense of humor the FBI Counter Terrorism Task Force has.

Sitting in a car a safe distance from the skyscraper, Smadi, 19, allegedly dialed the cell phone number he thought would trigger the explosion. It was instead a law enforcement number. He was then arrested on terrorism charges, officials say.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Sprint PCS voice mail of The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Please place both hands above your head and refrain from any sudden movements.”

By way of Jimbo, David Brancaccio in the Santa Fe Reporter:

The bigger TV you have, the dumber you are. Smart people have TVs, often—but not very big ones.

Oh, yeah, Mister Smarty Smart Guy? What if I have a 56″ TV, but I only use it to watch my collection of classic films on DVD and Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection? Who’s the dummy now, eh?

(For the record, especially since I’m expecting an influx of folks from Glen’s site; my TV is a 36″ tube TV that my great and good friend Andrew gave me for free. I haven’t even connected the converter box to it yet. I don’t, and won’t, have cable; if I had cable, I’d spend all my time watching it, especially the Things That Go Fast And Explode Channel. And that would interfere with other more worthwhile activities, like school, hacking, drinking seasonal microbrews, and arguing about Proust. I don’t watch Fox News, or any TV news except under very rare circumstances. Most of my TV watching these days is with an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid on the MacBook, or DVDs. I do confess to being a sucker for Cops, watching America’s Most Wanted, and anything on PBS that catches my attention; mostly Nova, and the occassional Frontline, Secrets of the Dead, or American Experience. And I keep football games on as background noise during the season while I work on other projects.)

“It’s official. Microsoft has no shame. None. They should just stop paying rent on that storage unit where they keep their shame because they, as I said, have none.”

—Dan Neil in the LAT

When you have to explain that your humor columnist’s column is supposed to be funny, you’ve pretty much lost the battle already.

The University of Texas has decided to end participation in the National Merit Scholarship Program. This saddens me, as I was one of those folks who benefited from the program when I was attending UT.

Starting next fall, the university will begin channeling that money into need-based aid instead.

I’m a little shocked that there hasn’t been more attention to this NYT article about Memorial Medical Center in the wake of Katrina.

It is now evident that more medical professionals were involved in the decision to inject patients — and far more patients were injected — than was previously understood. When the names on toxicology reports and autopsies are matched with recollections and documentation from the days after Katrina, it appears that at least 17 patients were injected with morphine or the sedative midazolam, or both, after a long-awaited rescue effort was at last emptying the hospital. A number of these patients were extremely ill and might not have survived the evacuation. Several were almost certainly not near death when they were injected, according to medical professionals who treated them at Memorial and an internist’s review of their charts and autopsies that was commissioned by investigators but never made public.

Linking to this Fast Company article about fonts that make people mad (thanks to Radley Balko) gives me an excuse to link to one of my favorite Achewoods.

Someone thinks it is a good idea to cancel their morning local news program and replace it with a televised radio show. Yeah. I don’t see this ending well. Televised radio works very well; if your name is “Howard Stern”.

This is already on FARK, but I couldn’t let it pass; last week they linked to a NY Daily News story about a former rapper who got Warner Music to pay for her Ph.D in psychology. Great story; persecuted artist sticks it to the evil record company execs, right? Except the story was a complete fabrication.