Update: I’ve migrated from the dedicated blog page to my main page incorporating the blog. However, this morning it appears that Blogger isn’t working nicely with my template, so I’m getting all kinds of screwy layouts. Hopefully this will clear itself up, but in the meantime, things probably look kind of crappy.

John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, was found dead in his Las Vegas hotel room yesterday morning. Initial reports are that he died of a heart attack, somewhat surprising since he was apparently in good health. His death came just a day before The Who launched their national tour in Las Vegas :-(.

Brazil is starting to package medicine as candy so that children that have trouble swallowing pills or are just stubborn will be more likely to take it. I just see this as a gigantic accident waiting to happen; the first time some child OD’s on “candy” we’ll hear about this. In fact, as usual this reminds me of a Simpsons episode: they went to a candy convention and the sign outside read “Welcome Candy Convention Room 1! Also Candy-Shaped Rat Poison Convention Room 11.”

Wired has a cool article on LucasFilm Foley artists that record the sounds for video games using everyday household items, all sorts of hardware, and whatever else their “active ears” can imagine as something else.

Update: I’m working on the layout of the blog and will eventually convert it to my main page rather than have a separate blog page. I’ll try and remember to e-mail my “regular” viewers once I’ve done this, but even if I don’t I’ll leave a placemaker page once I make the move. I’m not sure I like the scheme just yet, and I see some cross-browser issues, so things may be a little out of place until I figure them out. I really hate dealing with Internet Explorer, but web logs show that about 80% of my hits come from IE, so I guess I have to accommodate them. Also, earlier versions of Netscape aren’t working out as well either because of some of the CSS formatting, although I’ve minimized the problem as best as I can for now. For those of you wavering, download Mozilla, the open source browser from Netscape! It has the best HTML and CSS support out of all the browsers out there, and it might just piss Bill Gates off a little.

Anyway, comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated!

Don't tread on me.Follow-up: As I figured, quite a furor was caused by a Federal Appeals Court decision that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are unconstitutional. Bipartisan condemnation of this decision seems to be the trend of the day, ranging from “This is the worst kind of political correctness run amok” (Republican Senator Christopher Bond) to “Just nuts” (Democratic Senator Tom Daschle). However, I do think that it was particularly cheesy to hear that House members gathered on the Capitol steps to recite the Pledge Of Allegiance; that’s almost as bad as their horrible rendition of “God, Bless America” after 9/11.

The Federal Appeals Court basically disagreed with a lower court’s ruling that “the ceremonial reference to God in the pledge does not convey endorsement of particular religious beliefs.” Once again, I agree with this statement and see no reason why it should have been overturned.

On a related topic, a CNN interview with the litigant that brought suit in the first place shows how myopically he views the world. When asked whether “In God we trust” should be removed from all U.S. currency his reply was “Absolutely.” He also admitted his daughter was not ostracized in school for being an atheist or not reciting the Pledge, but that “My daughter is in the lawsuit because you need that for standing.” So the original basis for the suit is not even valid. Hmmm….