Found out from the Daily Show that Operation: Centaur Rodeo was actually a thing back in Spring 2004 of the Iraq War.
Centaur Rodeo is a righteous name. I can only hope that somewhere a deserving band is considering it as their handle.
Unfortunately, Operation: Centaur Rodeo's track record doesn't look that good on paper: "As of March 30, 2004, coalition forces had seized 3 people and numerous weapons."
I'm no cowboy, but three ponies makes for a pretty sad rodeo.
In this otherwise not particularly funny clip from the Daily Show, Samantha Bee describes Missouri as "an ingrown hair on America's taint."
That stings.
Congrats to the Blogger folks for launching draft.blogger.com. It's supercool that they've got their own place for trying out experimental features. And I love the blueprint-y look to it.
The first big feature is video upload. We'd been talking about doing this for so long I thought I had to capture my reaction at finally seeing it live.
Aaron told me about Colma: The Musical and it looks to be a great time. I have a fondness for Colma, the cemetery-laden town of 1200 just south of SF, as it's home to the Lucky Chances Casino.
I'm not entirely sure why the trailer only plays in IE or Safari, but it's worth the effort.
I'm totally digging on this illustration by Eugene.
Mary, his preggers lady wife, has a blog where she's posting paintings for sale on eBay.
I believe their child is going to pop out with a little placard that reads:
Baby (2007)
Eugene and Mary Flacksmith
20"
baby flesh on muscular-skeletal frame
More good stuff from Anna who's made it to Sarajevo. She and her family got a walking tour of the city from a pair of friendly college students who've got mad love for Tito:
They both said that Bosnia was living proof that socialism works, because the average standard of living was apparently way better in the former Yugoslavia. If econ students who dress in trendy ripoffs of luxury brands thought that, I'm guessing nostalgia for communism runs pretty deep in the Balkans.
The NYT has a story about how the good people of Chattanooga are using goats to control their kudzu. In addition to finding out that kudzu grows at a rate of a foot per day, the article has this bit of perspective:
Chattanooga is not the only city to seek a four-legged alternative to herbicides. For several years, Tallahassee, Fla., fought kudzu with sheep. Spartanburg, S.C., tried using goats, but stopped after they were stolen.Yeah, that would probably put a stop to things.
My friend Anna is traveling abroad this summer and I highly recommend her travel blog. A recent sample:
If you miss breakfast the next morning and try to order some french fries from the hotel kitchen, they'll shout 'Lazy girl! Lazy girl!' over and over at you, even if there are a lot of other people around. And you still won't get any fries.
Google Hot Trends! Google can play with those other kids with their cool data visualizations and neat infoporn.
Except Google's definition of 'play' is to use pretty much the same application template they use for almost everything from Sitemaps to AdSense. Do people want to browse this type of casual information in the same way that they want to track their portfolios? Seems unlikely.
At least Google's conflation of 'simple' and 'staid' results in some unintended humor. The one element that breaks with the standard design is the 'Hotness' meter for each term. Somehow, the Trends folks got away with naming their Hotness levels: Mild, Medium, Spicy, On Fire and Volcanic. Which is pretty out there by Google standards.
Unfortunately, it also results in visuals like the following:
The fact that this is the only playful element on the entire page, makes the labeling seem that much more absurd.
