Unknown: “What if this weren’t a hypothetical question?” [Quotes of the Day]

One of those truth is stranger than fiction things from the NYTimes.

Step Right Up, Live Human Target

By MAREK FUCHS

Aiming a ball at a target to drop a clown into a tub of water is old school at the Coney Island Boardwalk. Now people eagerly shoot the Freak.

The Freak, as signs and the barker say, is a live human target.

Coney Island has seen a lot, from real-life crime to the Painproof Rubber Girl. But even in a place where trouble and cheap spectacle are the norm, “Shoot the Freak” has been turning heads.

Up to six customers at a time can stand on the Boardwalk, a few yards from Stillwell Avenue, and aim their rifles down an alley filled with trash and concrete bits. There, one finds the Freak, darting and dodging.

He is dressed in a combination of hockey, baseball and bicycling protective gear, making him look like a creature of some post-urban nightmare. Periodically, he stands still and takes one in the chest, or the forehead. The customers are firing paint pellets, and as they hit the Freak, there’s a short snapping sound and a small spray of mist. Think of it as a video game come to life.

Prices range from 5 shots for $3 to 75 shots for $20. No stuffed animals — the thrill of the pursuit is the only prize. [New York Times]

Imagine having that as a summer job.

Tom Stoppard: “I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.” [Quotes of the Day]

Gizmodo has a neat post about lightbulbs that glow in the dark. They definitely would have been useful for those folks stuck without power last week. I wonder how bright they are, It would be cool to have ones to use as night-lights.

The other day I saw a post over on Surfin’ Safari that was discussing Safari’s ‘misrendering’ of Chris Lydon’s weblog. This came about because of a post over on Scripting News about Lydon’s blog (I think, it may have actually originated someplace else, but I’m not sure). The end issue was a poor use of CSS and IE being very forgiving of it.

I started wondering why browsers started being forgiving of bad HTML (and CSS) to begin with. It first started with things like not closing table tags correctly, and moved on to all kinds of other things. But why? Why not just refuse to render it correctly from the start. Most people check their site in at least one browser before making stuff live, so why not just eliminate the problem right there. Because now we have this problem where if someone interprets the HTML/CSS the way defined in the spec, it is wrong because IE chooses to just ignore the parts that aren’t right. This further causes problems because it seems that we won’t see an update to IE until Longhorn comes out. So it remains an issue for a considerable length of time.

There’s also second post over on Surfin’ Safari from yesterday that talks about quirks in browsers and rendering that also made my head spin a bit. All of these issues seem to boil down to the same thing, web designers being lazy or not checking their work well enough. It’s like putting together a puzzle, either you put all the pieces together right and you see the picture or you don’t and you see something that doesn’t look right.

Bah. My coffee from Dunkin Donuts has much more than one cream and one sugar. Ick. Way too sweet.

For those of you on Windows, there are some options. Dave is trying Eudora, which I’m iffy on myself. Last time I used it, I found that it became a massive resource hog. The one I’ve tried lately I like is Thunderbird. It is the mail part of Mozilla, split out to its own app. One thing that is cool about it is that it has built in learning spam filtering that is supposed to be great. It’s not even a version 1.0, but the code isn’t anything new so I’d definitely recommend giving it a try. I’ve been playing with it under OS X, but from what I’ve seen there’s little functional difference between platforms. My hope would be that the built in spam filtering could learn to filter off the virus mails and leave the others alone. I haven’t really been hit by the virus, so I’m just guessing though.

Harry S Truman:”It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” [Quotes of the Day]

Computerworld has an interesting article on Mac Myths and IT.

But the truth is that Mac OS has changed quite a bit in the past few years, and today’s Apple systems offer a reasonable alternative to Wintel systems for many mainstream uses and are often best-of-breed tools for tasks such as desktop publishing, multimedia and other content creation. OS X, code-named Jaguar, and the recently announced successor called Panther are rock-solid Unix at the core, with Apple’s elegant user interface on top. But if you plan on deploying them, you’ll need to overcome your preconceptions regarding three myths about the Mac that still linger.[Computerworld]

It really reminded me of how I used to view macs before I got my first TiBook and OS X. Pre-OS X if someone at work someone mentioned a mac they were pretty much laughed at. At the point I was laid off that probably wouldn’t have been as true. The issue is that Apple has a lot of negative inertia to overcome. It still does. I still know lots of people who have never sat down and used OS X who will tell me all kinds of reasons Macs suck. And 95% of the time the things they are saying aren’t even true anymore. Now, if there was just a way to strap them into a chair and make them use one for a week.

I’m sorry, I can’t see spending almost $2/bottle for water for my dog (if I had a dog that is). Even if it is healthy for them.

K9 Water Co., Inc. is proud to offer you Toilet Water, Puddle Water, Hose Water and Gutter Water, the world’s first vitamin fortified bottled water specifically formulated to provide your dog with essential vitamins that contribute to overall good health and
provide the hydration your dog needs.

Our water can be enjoyed in four of the flavors dogs enjoy most: chicken, beef, liver and lamb. Try all four tasty flavors today and your dog will rave that it is Rebarkably Refreshing!

Do we really need to spend money like this on pets?