2002 News

It's been quite a day for the Republican Party. It isn't often that the party of the President can hold on to its House and Senate seats in midterm elections, much less make any gains; yet the GOP has managed to claim majorities in both houses.

I'm particularly excited that our Republican candidate for Senate here in Minnesota, Norm Coleman, edged out former Vice President Walter Mondale in a very tight race. A lot of people thought Mondale made a good showing in the last-minute debate, but I have a feeling that his continued references to "your president" rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Maybe the Democratic message is getting stale. It's rare indeed to hear a Democrat talk about fiscal policy or taxation without continual disparagement of "the wealthy", and Mondale is certainly no exception. He always neglects to mention that he is quite wealthy himself. It's also possible that the Vice President's 18-year absence from the political scene was a major liability. Whatever the reason, it's back out to pasture for Fritz. I wish him the very best in his continuing retirement.

I've made a few additions, mostly on the links page. I now expound on Star Wars, and provide pointers to an education reformer and some funny, terrible opera audition recordings. I've also added some web-authoring "awards" to the author page. The first of the albums is here. Hopefully, an album of pictures from around Germany will be added soon.

Here's a brief addendum to the public service announcement from ebaumsworld.com. Apparently, the auction listing in which this photo originated was actually found on sold.com.au, not Ebay. Also, it appears that the person in question does this sort of thing routinely, as a hobby. Read the whole story at snopes.com.

Urban Legends Reference Pages
Urban Legends Reference Pages - Kettle Photo

The following is a public service announcement.

When adding photographs to your Ebay listings, please take the time to crop your hairy gut out of the picture. Nothing less than the innocence of the world's children is at stake. Thank you.

(See a .pdf file of the original listing and an alt.humor.best-of-usenet posting for more information. Notice the counter on the Ebay listing. I'm forced to wonder how many of the over two thousand hits were generated by potential bidders, and how many were the result of curious gawkers enticed by the USENET post.)

<dead link>alt.humor.best-of-usenet posting on Ebay listing</dead link>

A similar public service announcement appears at ebaumsworld.com.

<dead link>EbaumsWorld Public Service Announcement</dead link>

This site now has a new home, courtesy of the SDF Public Access UNIX System. The SDF is one of the best things I've ever found on the Internet. If a free, full-featured UNIX shell account sounds appealing, the SDF is for you. I made a few minor updates and additions in conjunction with the move.

SDF Public Access Unix System

About a month ago, Melissa and I took a trip to Germany. We came back with literally hundreds of pictures. I'll try to format and sort them for posting sometime soon, but my course load this semester is heavier than usual, so it might be a while.

On Sunday, Melissa and I retured to our alma mater, Iowa State. Melissa was honored in ISU's annual Scholars and Leaders ceremony as the recipient of the Graduating Scholar Award for the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. In short, this means that she had the highest scholastic average of any student who graduated from the college in 2001. As far as I am aware, this is the highest academic honor bestowed upon baccalaureate graduates of Iowa State. How could I be more proud?

We also received word recently that Melissa had been offered a place in the University of Minnesota's combined MD/PhD training program, a position that she has accepted. She hasn't had to decide yet what type of PhD research she'll do, but she's considering biochemistry or immunology.

Numerologically, something interesting will happen tonight. At 8:02 PM, the date and time in "yyyymmddhhmm" format will be 200202202002, a palindrome. This occurs six times per year during years ending in 0, 1, and 2. This time, however, the palindrome consists of only two distinct digits. I don't have any figures yet on how often the two-distinct-digit palindromes occur, but I did write a quick C++ program to search for all the palindromes in this type of date string (by not-quite-brute force). It won't take much effort to make the upgrade, when I get around to it.

Also, I received word yesterday from the State of Iowa Engineering and Land Surveying Examining Board that I passed the Fundamentals of Engineering exam last October. My résumé has been updated accordingly. Only five years to licensure!

Index  2009  2008  2006  2005  2004  2003  2002  2001    Elizabeth Year One  Melissa Links Albums Contact PGP Keys         hersey @ acm.org Ben @ BLHersey.net 54,967 file requests since October 24th, 2001. A.M. D.G.

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