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Happy Bloomsday that is, and at that, I predict that in probably 10 years, humanity has commercialized this particular day. Imagine your grandkids sending eachother Bloomsday cards! Um. No. Please, no.

— But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life. |@|

However, we could always make it a day of tolerance. If you haven’t read Ulysses, now it might be a good time. Pick your edition. Thanks Alf, for opening those eyes back those days.

I was following the game Germany vs. Holland via the BBC’s ClockWatch. I just had to update my browser so once in a while. At work, you don’t want to draw too much network resources. Later I managed to catch the last 10 minutes at home (TSN, yay), however, I apparently just missed the equalizer. Not to mention that TSN’s studio guests always seem to sum up the cliches. We need Cruyff here, commenting on the game. Cruyff for TSN.

Microsoft patents the ‘to-do’ list. Well, not completely, but it looks awfully close to something we see in modern programming IDEs. Borland’s range of IDEs from C++ to Delphi for example.

   method, apparatus, and software are disclosed for assisting a software developer in managing tasks to be completed by providing a task list as a unified location for developers to locate errors and warnings in code, as well as specify user-defined tasks.

It rather surprises me to see the name of Anders Hejlsberg mentioned as one of the inventors of this ‘important and mindbreaking piece of technology’. You know the Anders Hejlsberg. I always wondered what his position was on software patents. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I smell a conspiracy.

So, Ronald Reagan died on the eve of the anniversary of D-Day. Naturally there are a lot of people who praise or just plain ‘footnote’ him, all around the net. And naturally, there is a long discussion over at MetaFilter.

For me, as a European-Canadian, I don’t give a damn. With the rise of Reagan, we saw the start of the ‘It’s all about Image’-politics. A great communicator in front of the TV, but boys-oh-boys, was Reagan bad when he made remarks on AIDS (none), Russia (‘Evil Empire’), South American dictators (Pinochet, Stroessner) and ‘constructive engagement’. Ironic.

But then it was all image that counted and I keep wondering if those terrible Eighties laid the groundwork for today’s obsession with glitter and glamour. Not to mention revisionism.

The new craze in Bloggetry is purple numbers. If it sounds familiar, you’ve probably already read about it. Most likely you have also read about the cons, as Mark Pilgrim so clearly shows in his ‘Pink Numbers’ entry.#

The question is: Why would someone make links available for every each paragraph? Who is going to quote a single paragraph?#

Or, who is going to quote or link to one sentence?#

A couple of words?#

No?#

I see the point creating links to paragraphs if the blog is ‘Scripting News’ style, that is when each paragraph has or discusses a different subject. But for entries like this one?#

It’s going to be a long summer of obnoxious movies. I, Robot (starring Will Smith, for goodness sake!), Vin Diesel’s ‘Chronicles of Riddick‘ (‘He starts to believe’. Where did I hear that line before?) and naturally, ‘Alien vs. Predator’. Each their own.

Apparently the star of the hit-series ‘Scrubs’, Zach Braff, wrote and directed his first movie: Garden State and the teaser/trailer actually looks promising. Indeed something to look forward to.

The president keeps the gun of Saddam Hussein in arm’s reach, according to this Time article:

Sources say that the military had the pistol mounted after the soldiers seized it from Saddam and that it was then presented to the President privately by some of the troops who played a key role in ferreting out the old tyrant.
[cut…]

“He really liked showing it off,” says a recent visitor to the White House who has seen the gun. “He was really proud of it.”

There is more to find in that small room where that pistol is shown:

Another of the room’s mementos: a photograph of special-forces soldiers in Afghanistan praying after burying a piece of the World Trade Center there as a tribute to those who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Evil symbolism.