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Malcom Gladwell’s piece in The New Yorker isn’t specifically about Pit Bulls, but my new puppy happens to be a Pit Bull mix, so the article hits home anyway. Actually, she’s a Pit Bull, Rotweiller, German Shepherd mix. Ooooooh Scary! Not.

If thinking about muscular terriers as pit bulls is a generalization, then thinking about dangerous dogs as anything substantially similar to a pit bull is a generalization about a generalization. “The way a lot of these laws are written, pit bulls are whatever they say they are,”

Eighty-four per cent of the pit bulls that have been given the [Temperament] test have passed, which ranks pit bulls ahead of beagles, Airedales, bearded collies, and all but one variety of dachshund.

The junk-yard German shepherdwhich looks as if it would rip your throat outand the German-shepherd guide dog are the same breed.

American Book Review lists their 100 best first lines from novels.

They missed my favorite, from Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins…

“This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper.”

Wait, that was the Preface. This is the actual first line of the book…

“It was a bright, defrosted, pussy-willow day at the onset of spring, and the newlyweds were driving cross-country in a large roast turkey.”

Oh what the hell, here’s a bit more…

This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper. The toadstool motel you once thought a mere folk tale, a corny, obsolete, rural invention. This is the room where your wisest ancestor was born, be you Christian, Arab, or Jew. The linoleum underfoot is sacred linoleum. Please remove your shoes….

What room is this? This is the room where the antler carved the pumpkin. This is the room where the gutter pipes drank the moonlight. This is the room where moss gradually silenced the treasure, rubies being the last to go. Transmissions from insect antennae were monitored in this room. It’s amazing how often their broadcasts referred to the stars.

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While looking for a Greasemonkey script to kill IntelliTXT, I ran into Flickrbox), which uses everyone’s new darling Lightbox.js) to enhance viewing thumbnails on Flickr. It works as advertised and I like it.

There’s an insidious, disturbing form of advertising sneaking its way into way too many of the sites I frequent. It’s called IntelliTXT) and it’s worse than popup ads. Why? Because I can dismiss popup ads. I can ignore banner ads. What IntelliTXT does is put the advertising directly into the content. Publishers, resist the urge!

I love comedians. Probably because they’re funny. I’ve always been more impressed with a good stand-up comic than with, say, a doctor. Becoming a doctor is easy, you just go to school for a long time and pay attention. You can’t learn funny.

Speaking of funny, iTunes now has a sprinkling of Comedy Central “Stand-Up” episodes. Mitch Hedberg was a genius. For example…

I don’t own a cell phone or a pager. I just hang around everyone I know, all the time. If someone needs to get a hold of me, they just say, “Mitch,” and I say, “What?” and turn my head slightly.

My manager told me, “Mitch, don’t use alcohol as a crutch.” I can’t use alcohol as a crutch because a crutch is something that helps me walk. Alcohol severely fucks up the way I walk.

This one time I was in a convenience store, and a guy came up and asked me, “What’s the score?” and I said, “What is the game? If it’s a competition between me and you, and the object is to ask the other guy questions he doesn’t give a shit about, then you are winning, one to nothing.”

I like swiss cheese. It’s the only cheese you can draw with a pencil and identify. You can draw American cheese, but someone will think it’s cheddar. Swiss cheese is the only cheese you can bite and miss. “Hey Mitch - does that sandwich have cheese on it?” “Every now and then!”

I think Pringles’ initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles was a laid-back company. They said “Fuck it. Cut ‘em up!”

I make instant oatmeal in the morning then I don’t do shit for an hour. Makes me wonder why I need the instant oatmeal.

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I’ve been struggling with my G5 iMac at home recently. A number of applications just refused to run and others crashed at strange times. I repaired permissions, trashed prefs, uninstalled “extra” crap, ran AppleJack, but nothing helped. Poking around I found that the ownership on my ~/Library/Application Support/ directory was set incorrectly (501 instead of jbaty (503)). A quick…

find /Library -user 501 -exec chown jbaty:admin {} ;

…did the trick. And to think, I was planning on reinstalling the OS this weekend. Whew! Still can’t figure out why none of the “repair permissions” tools worked properly. I also don’t understand why I’m not user 501, since I’m the first user installed on this machine. Anyway, now I can go back to my usual time-wasting nonsense instead.

For those of us who like wikis and other online documentation/collaboration apps, Stikipad) has launched. It’s a nifty Rails app which is a bit like Backpack from 37 Signals. So far it feels pretty good.

I never noticed, but someone else has: Brad Pitt always morphs into whomever he’s dating at the time. It’s creepy…

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Timesonline’s Jeremy Clarkson goes off on the frivolous over-use of various and sundry super-duper-unnecessary words. And grammer stuff too.

If you send a letter to a client saying “my team and me look forward to meeting with yourself next Wednesday”, be prepared for some disappointment. Because if I were the client Id come to your office all right. Then Id stand on your desk and relieve myself.

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