MemeMachineGo!

=v= I avoid Microsoft as much as humanly possible, but like many I have to deal with it at work, and to many friends and family I'm their go-to guy (considered harmful?), even for systems that I've exuded much disdain for. So, on the second Sunday in March, I got to help a whole bunch of people grapple with Daylight Saving Time on their Windows boxes. This involved two updates, one for their OS and another for their mailer app, and naturally these didn't work consistently for any two people. And the next day, many of us arrived at work on Monday morning to grapple with it all over again.

Last Sunday was the originally-scheduled DST switchover date, so of course a bunch of systems readjusted their clocks; and on Monday, many of us had to hassle with them again. Monday is also the day that Microsoft rolled out its lavish new ad campaign:

Day 1. The next 8 hours will be very, very different.

Yes. Yes they were. Though it's not clear whether it was 8, 7, or 9 hours, depending.

You may recall that after Hurricane Katrina the Gretna, Louisiana police blockaded a bridge, and forced back people trying to walk out of New Orleans.

There’s long-standing precedent interpreting the Privileges and Immunity Clause of the Constiution to guarantee U.S. citizens a right to interstate travel. But a U.S. District Court has ruled (in a suit against Jefferson Parish by two of the people turned back) that no civil right to travel had been violated in the incident, as the Supreme Court has never ruled that there is any right to intrastate travel.

The issues of whether the police used excessive force, or that freedom of assembly or equal protection rights were violated, await trial later this year.

It’s seeming like there are plenty of tool-using animals.

Russell Balda has documented an apparent case of weapon use by not just one, but two species of birds — a Steller’s jay and an American crow. […]

So Balda, on an April morning three years ago, is in his office outside which is a meter-square feeding platform. A crow is on the platform eating sunflower seeds. Two jays—maybe a pair; it’s hard to tell with jays—land in a nearby mountain mahogany bush. The jays seem annoyed by the crow’s presence. One flies to the platform and scolds the larger bird, which fails to react. The jay feints toward the crow with its bill; the crow feints back. The jay flies up to the roof of the building, then divebombs the crow. The crow keeps eating. End of Round One.

Then the jay does something remarkable. It goes back to the mountain mahogany and breaks off a twig from a dead branch. Holding the twig in its beak, pointed end forward, it returns to the feeding platform and lunges at the crow. It’s a near miss. The crow lunges in its turn, startling the jay, which flies up and drops the twig onto the platform.

And the crow picks it up, again pointed end forward, and thrusts it at the jay. Whereupon the jay on the platform and its partner in the bush both fly off, pursued by the twig-carrying crow.

Previously: This bird-brain is pretty smart.

Pocahontas and I have a GreenCine subscription — DVD rental by mail, like Netflix. While we’re waiting for Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Disc 1 to finally be available when they owe us a DVD, a steady stream of the things we don’t want as much flow in.

So I recently saw “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

I loved the Narnia books as a boy. I read the whole series several times. Once I read them by order of internal chronology instead of the usual series ordering.

The whole Christian allegory thing? I didn’t have a clue. It was a surprise when I first heard of it.

Now, almost three decades later, it becomes very hard to miss. My recollection of the book is sufficiently old and indisctinct that I don’t know whether the movie is more heavy-handed, but I felt beaten about the head by the lectures on faith.

I liked the story better when I didn’t understand it.

The entry title owes to Lazy Sunday, the SNL video about two milquetoast white boys rapping about their badass selves that was blogged pretty much everywhere when it was new. You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re droppin’ Hamiltons!