dsandler.org/wp

Last link for the morning, I swear: another
Times article, this time based on the thesis that a Bush-instigated
attack on Iraq won’t just distract from the country’s
economic problems, it will actually exacerbate them.
“Eleven years ago, the Persian Gulf war … cost the United States
and its allies $60 billion and helped set off an economic recession
caused in part by a spike in oil prices. For that war, the allies
picked up almost 80 percent of the bill. Today, however, as the Bush
administration works on plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the United
States is confronting the likelihood that this time around it would have
to pick up the tab largely by itself …”

This NY
Times article describes the discovery of these
mathematicians that elliptic-curve math could be used to generate a
rigorous mathematical model for what M. C. Escher intuitively designed
in his self-repeating
“Print Gallery” drawing. Using a mathematical reconstruction of the
original work, the mathematicians were able to complete
the drawing where Escher left the original blank (either for
artistic or computational reasons).

It’s too bad I don’t have my camera. On the office junk pile (Motto:
“Have some junk? Leave some junk. Need some junk? Take some junk.”)
there can be found:

1. One bag with a couple of hundred stylus tips;
2. One bag with a similar number of stylus ends (complete with
   pointy reset poker);

3. A stack of trays, each tray containing 8 or so grooves, each
   groove containing 10 so stylus barrels, laid end-to-end.

They seem to be raw stylus parts for the Palm V. I guess some
oldtimer’s cleaning out his/her cubicle in preparation for the move.

Hmm. A highly-entertaining collection of anecdotes from a girl
taking a $6.50/hr job in a bad economy, True
Porn Clerk Stories is not exactly safe for work. (You’d think this
would have been apparent to me by the title alone). [from mike via wendy]

In case you missed it: Erin has posted her
synopsis of last night’s episode of Sex and the
City.

Playing
To Win: if your goal is to play Street Fighter “fairly”, you’ll lose
every time.

An unidentified flying object was observed Friday night in Washington,
D.C, pursued
by two Air Force F-16 fighters.