Events

Someday, I may got on a total vacation, a trip during which I completely disconnect from all that matters in the world. This may be saudade[1], or possibly outright delusion. In any event, this week, I'm still reading the news before breakfast. Here's Krugman this morning (last night? It's dinner time Saturday in Princeton): [T}he notion that denying health care to the near-poor is a serious deficit-reduction policy, but raising taxes on the very rich is not, is not something you can justify at all on...

I failed at both tasks last night. I didn't find sushi (at least, not for less than ¥1,000 per piece), so I had—wait for it—Lebanese. After dinner I came back to the hotel room and managed to read until about 8:30, before I could no longer remember the last sentence I read. It's just 7am now, and I feel like I've had the best sleep in weeks. Good morning Japan: After I get showered and caffeinated, I plan to wander around Tokyo randomly, and find sub-$12 sushi. Then I will read the instruction manual...

I've arrived in Tokyo, not sure if it's Friday night or Saturday night. This is a known hazard of flying across the International Date Line, one I get to experience in reverse in a few days. For now, I'm just looking for sushi. Must...stay...awake...until...9...

I'm 10,500 m over the Yukon on a Japan Air Lines 777-300.[1] In the last couple of hours, I have started to understand, rather than just "know," that Japan is the most technologically advanced country in the world. I'm also wondering why my main carrier, American, can't learn how to do some of these things. First, the plane is spotless inside and out. I mean, immaculate. I mean, if you wanted to give visitors a good feeling about your country, you would start by making your airplanes really attractive...

I've long advocated doing things when no one else seems to be doing them. In furtherance of this philosophy, I'm starting a vacation today. The two days following Thanksgiving are truly a delight at O'Hare (despite a bit of amateur hour at the security checkpoint when the woman in front of me emptied her entire purse into an x-ray bin), and on the highways around Chicago. Yesterday it took me an hour to get from my house to the intersection of the Kennedy and I-294, which is about 3 km from the O'Hare...

The new feature I mentioned this morning is done. Now, in addition to the "where was this posted" button on the footer, you will notice the entry's time zone. Each entry can have its own time zone—in addition to the site-wide default. I still have to fix a couple of things related to this change, like the fact that the date headers ("Thursday 24 November 2011," just above this entry) are on UTC rather than local time. But going forward (and going backward if I ever get supremely bored), you can now see...

I'm rushing to get a major change to the resurrected dasBlog code done before I leave tomorrow (because I don't want to push code from anywhere I can't recover). Meanwhile, here's a timely NSFW comic for your holiday.

Via the Chicago Tribune, NASA launched a new weather satellite in October that provides incredible high-resolution images of the planet: VIIRS will collect radiometric imagery in visible and infrared wavelengths of the Earth's land, atmosphere, and oceans. By far the largest instrument onboard NPP, VIIRS weighs about 556 pounds (252 kilograms). Its data, collected from 22 channels across the electromagnetic spectrum, will be used to observe the Earth's surface including fires, ice, ocean color...

A cop in Tuscaloosa, Ala., arrested a suspicious foreigner under the state's xenophobia laws, with predictable results: A German manager with Mercedes-Benz is free after being arrested for not having a driver's license with him under Alabama's new law targeting illegal immigrants, authorities said Friday, in an otherwise routine case that drew the attention of Gov. Robert Bentley. Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson told The Associated Press an officer stopped a rental vehicle for not having a tag...

A week ago Sunday I mentioned that I'd forked this blog engine so I could add features. I've added the first one, and everything seems to be working just fine. The Daily Parker has used GeoRSS for a long time. All of the entries since March 2010 are geo-coded, which you would only know by looking at the RSS feed. Well, now you can see the geographic information on the blog entries themselves. See the little globe icon next to the time and date at the bottom of the entry? Go ahead, click on it. For more...