The guy who invented the Zip code just died.

So did the guy who invented the smiley face in the '60s. :)

When I suggested that Bush apologize and then take it back, I didn't think he'd actually do it.

The press's weak grasp of matters espionagic has been ongoing, with none bothering to educate themselves throughout the last week and a half as to what the spy planes were monitoring. Since spy satellites are so much more efficient at most forms of surveillance and sigint, it is clear, as I said before, that the idea is to trigger China's defences (radar, communications, etc) in order to evaluate them. This is why the Chinese are really so pissed off: this form of spying is part of active preparations for warfare.

I haven't given a detailed analysis of the recent recount of the Florida vote, partly because it isn't done yet, and partly because I assume you found decent reports if you wanted to. What's interesting is how often journalists who knew better insisted that it proved that Bush really won the state, when it did no such thing.

The British decennial census is starting, and Star Wars fans are marking down their religion as "Jedi." New Zealanders have already done this, but the count hasn't been finished yet.

Cambridge professors have calculated the kinetic energy, centrifugal force and co-efficient of friction for different kinds of pasta in order to determine scientifically how not to
make a mess.

The team found that the safest method of eating spaghetti is to hold the fork vertically, rather than horizontally, select a few strands and rotate them against the concave part of a spoon which is held parallel to the plate. The fork can then be lifted out and the spaghetti eaten off the spoon.

The laboratory experiments proved that the risk of sauce
splatter is highest as the last 4.3ins of spaghetti are rolled on to the fork: a final flick of the wrist can accelerate the speed of the spaghetti tip to more than nine feet per second, producing enough centrifugal force to make the sauce fly four feet.