America's anti-alcohol movement is composed of dozens of overlapping community groups, research institutions, and advocacy organizations, but they are brought together and given direction by one entity: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Based in Princeton, New Jersey, the RWJF has spent more than $265 million between 1997 and 2002 to tax, vilify, and restrict access to alcoholic beverages. Nearly every study disparaging alcohol in the mass media, every legislative push to limit marketing or increase taxes, and every supposedly 'grassroots' anti-alcohol movement was conceived and coordinated at the RWJF's headquarters. Thanks to this one foundation, the U.S. anti-alcohol movement speaks with one voice.

I don't know much about either group, but the assertions made against the neo-prohibitionists do match my own observations of a slow but steady reduction of freedoms regarding alcohol consumption. I wont argue against the merit of some of these restrictions, but I do worry about a continuing effort to push the boundary past what I see a reasonable compromise between safety and freedom.

Full Report

Via The Center For Consumer Freedom

We looked at Java very closely in 1995 when we were starting on a major set of implementations, just because it's a lot of work to do a viable language kernel. The thing we liked least about Java was the way it was implemented. It had this old idea, which has never worked, of having a set of paper specs, having to implement the VM (virtual machine) to the paper specs, and then having benchmarks that try to validate what you've just implemented, and that has never resulted in a completely compatible system.

via acm Queue

I wore the shirt to my friend's son's hockey game yesterday and it was quite the attention getter. A couple of people actually came up to me to ask about it and I caught a lot more people reading it and smiling.

I like wearing the shirt but I may buy a second one just to keep as a souvenir. In ten years or so when Belichick has surpassed Lombardi in everyone's minds as the greatest football coach ever, they could be a real collectors item.

That got me thinking, the folks at Tailgate Outdoorwear should do a green shirt with faded graphics saying "Lombardi for President in 68.". It might not sell in New England but the folks in Wisconsin would eat it up.

As I was surfing the web, looking for references about how late in the year we get snow of at least 5" here in the Boston area, I came across this reference to 5 rattlesnake attacks in the greater Littleton area, since the year 1900. Of course, 5 Being Nomar's number, as well as the number of world championships the Red Sox captured before Babe was sold to the Yankees, is also the optimal number of beers one can consume before worrying about the effects of a potential hangover (From www.amianalcoholic.com)

This actually reminded me of something I had wanted to blog about, Rhododendron nectar. Did you know honey made from Rhododendron nectar can be toxic? I read about this originally while planning a hiking trip in Nepal. The trip fell through, but the esoteric knowledge about Himalayan bees remains. You can read more about this on the web at: Himalayan Honeybees. Is that arcane enough for you Mike?

For fun, I looked around more and found sites for champions and pitch men like George Foreman, Evander Holyfield and perhaps Mike Tyson. There are probably a lot more, I just don't follow boxing much so my knowledge of fighters is limited. It's a shame really that boxing has fallen off the radar screen of an average sports fan like myself. It's such a pure and elegant sport.

If you want to see the entire portolio of Coolidge's dog art follow this link:
C.M. Coolidge (1844-1934) Greatest Artist of the 19th and 20th Centuries

OK, maybe not, but Richard Branson's eyes just look weird in this photo.

An interesting side note to this change is that it may well have been done to make the plane appeal to Chinese flyers who consider the number 8 lucky. China placed the first big order for 60 of these new planes.

Boeing 7E7 to die, but 787 to be born

For a while now, I've had this gut feeling that the move toward service-orientation represented the postmodern evolution of software development, but could never really put my finger on why this was the case until a few minutes ago. It has to do with the idea that the canonical form is just another equivalent representation of an isomorphic system. The fact that the canonical form is canonical doesn't mean it's somehow "better" or "more accurate" than any of its isomorphic brethren - it's not special just because it's canonical. For example, the fact that Big Ben is not the canonical form of a 'timepiece' does not mean that Big Ben is any less of a timepiece than, say, a wristwatch. Specifically (and this is where philosophy comes in), the canonical form is not some neo-Platonic idealized representation of a 'thing' that all the other 'things' are aspiring to be. Its canonical nature arises by convention, not from some inner philosophical superiority. The recognition that the canonical form is on equal footing ontologically with all of its isomorphisms is a rejection of the modern neo-Platonic ideal; hence, the postmodern substitution of 'truth' for the much fuzzier idea of 'constructed convention'. I may be stretching this but it seems to make sense to me

Sorry, that was a bad joke.

The real point of this post is just to point out a couple of blogs I recently found. One is called Luxist and it reports on extreme luxury items. I found Luxist while looking for information on the new smaller siblings to the monster International CXT truck, the RXT and MXT. I didn't learn much about the new truck models but I did get to see pictures of Aston Kutcher's CXT, complete with dumping kit.

The second blog is one called near near future (at we-make-money-not-art.com) and it's focus appears to be art and design. This is where I found the cool mole shoes. Also of interest here was a post about i-Mature, a security company developing age identifying biometric technology.

Thirty years ago the only terms you needed to express a beer's character were 'tastes great' and 'less filling.' The microbrew explosion, however, made it necessary to invent literally hundreds of new adjectives to explain how great or non-filling a beer truly is. Fortunately, you won't have to memorize most of them because most are fake words that drunk beer experts made up on the spot and probably winced at when they saw them in print later. What else can explain why grown men are using terms like Chlorophenolic, Balling Degrees, Sparge and Kräusening to describe something that can be purchased in the form of a Party Ball?

Another thing I learned on my visit to Modern Drunkard was a dirty little secret about Jack Daniels. Did you know that they just dropped the alcohol content from 86 proof down to 80? Is anything sacred anymore?

Damien's recent post about pliers reminded me of one of my favorite tools - the Klein Beverage Tool. You may think I'm joking but I'm not. Sure, it's just a glorified bottle opener but if you could feel its heft, comfortable grip and sturdy construction as it effortlessly peels away the top to one of you're favorite beverages, you would totally understand.

I learned about the Klein Beverage Tool a friend who works as lineman for a local town. He had received his as a gift for placing a large tool order. After opening just one beer with it I had to have my own.

Most great tools are pretty pricey but the Klein Beverage Tool is a steal at just $6.50. If you like to drink beer while you camp or fish or just hang around your garage this is a great tool. I highly recommend it.

Spoof link via Ben Poole

Patriots: 28
Eagles: 17

Another prediction for this years game:
Troy Brown will scores four times: an end zone reception, a returned interception, a punt return for a score and a touchdown pass. Just remember you heard it here first.

With this knowledge in hand, I've decided to change the world and I'm asking for your help. Every time you want to say heterogeneous say heterogenous instead. Say it now: het-e-rog-e-nous. See how it just flows off the tongue. Now say het-e-row-geeeeee-kneeee-ouus. Am I right or am I right?

Please know, you will be corrected when you say this. I can assure you from experience, you will be corrected, but stick to your guns and say it anyway. The world will be a better place.

Note: On the milk issue homogenous in this usage is just a bastardization of homogonized so homogeneous doesn't make much sense.