Category: learning from my mistakes

The best comment thread ever continues as a backchannel on Making Light and the erudite commenters there have been trashing the Flight 93 memorial conspiracy as only they can.

Recalling that the 9/11 hijackers were not Iraqis, were not the Usual Suspects, someone tossed this out in response to a comment about the crescent as identified with Islam.

Making Light: Ain’t misbehavin’:

For what it’s worth, not one of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came from a country with a crescent on its flag.

So with all the talk of Intelligent Design versus evolution — as if the design decisions we all live with show any intelligence at all — why not try your hand at this yourself?

I’d be interesting in reading descriptions of redesigned homo sapiens with the odd bits left out. For instance, the old joke about the Designer being a civil engineer, as who else would route sewage pipes through the pleasure grounds: how would you solve that problem?

I often wonder why the brain is located in a large protuberance at the furthest point from the ground. Why not in the chest somewhere? And those knees . . . what’s that all about?

Daring Fireball: MWSF ’06 Predictions:

New Macs based on Intel processors: I say no. Everyone who’s
calling for this announcement seems to be taking stance that it’d
be cool for everyone involved if Apple has managed to get
Intel-powered machines out the door a few months earlier than
expected. But it wouldn’t be cool for developers who took Apple at
its word at WWDC, when they were told that Intel-based Macs could
be expected in the spring or early summer.

Releasing Intel-based Macs now might be popular with the keynote
crowd and the tech press, but it would come at the expense of a
bit of Apple’s credibility with developers. As late as September
20, Steve Jobs said the following regarding when Intel-based
Macs would ship: “We said we’d be shipping by next June and we are
on track to have that be a true statement,” said Jobs. As was
pointed out recently in MDJ, if Apple were to release Intel-based
Macs now, in January, the next time Apple tells developers they
have a year to get on board with something new, developers will
feel like they’ve got to drop everything and do it immediately.

If I’m wrong, and Intel Macs are announced today, I expect to see
only Mac Minis, not iBooks or PowerBooks.

Result: Wrong. But at least the MacBook Pro has FireWire.

Well, dammit. I was betting the same way and just bought a 17 inch iMac 2.0 GHz. Wouldn’t I like to do that over again.

And I agree: MacBook is the worst product name I have heard in ages.