I'm glad to see that Bird on a Wire is back, and with its own domain now, too. I liked the link to the Shoe Fitting X-Ray Device. I remember those things. I used to rush up to them in the shoe store and watch the bones of my toes wiggle. My mom kept pulling me away. I seemed to have survived thus far with no harm, but it is amazing in retrospect that they allowed this. They used to treat acne sufferers with a full blast of the fluoroscope, too. I think it was just regarded as a kind of especially bright light. I wonder what things are allowed today, that the future will regard with horror? All those herbal remedies, prepared without any regulation, seem like a good possibility.

Ever wonder about those little icons that some sites display when you make them a favorite in IE? It turns out that all you have to do is place a 16x16 16-color icon named favicon.ico in the same directory as your html files. I tried fooling with this and found a tutorial on favicon.ico that makes sense to me. Many websites (like Yahoo!) have a favicon with a background that's transparent. How do they do that? With IconEdit, you just leave the pixels you want transparent alone and don't color them.

The Chryalis Guitar is an inflatable acoustic-electric guitar. It can be deflated and stored in an attache case, so you can thus carry on to an airplane a full size acoustic guitar. The sound is reportedly like a jazz guitar, mostly mids and trebles. It looks nifty, too bad they don't mention the price on their website.

I had my third Rolfing session yesterday. This one did hurt some, especially my neck and collarbone area. But all feels well now, and I sense that I'm standing a little taller. The idea with Rolfing is that we all hold our bodies in funny ways, perhaps as a reaction to stress or trauma, and that by manipulating the fascia, tension is released, and crookedness is straightened.

In Tallahassee, about 200 to 300 people, most of them students, staged a silent sit-down protest in the seat of the state government over what they called voting irregularities. "It's a silent protest to represent the voters not heard across the state of Florida,'' said Brad Francis, an 18-year-old Florida A&M University student. "We will stay until we are heard.''

Say what? (via rec.humor.funny)

Interesting article in the Seattle Times about groove music. Something in the spirit of the Grateful Dead's lengthy and free-form songs, these bands have no vocalist. Hanuman seems pretty folky, and they are playing the Tractor Dec. 8th. Perhaps I will go, though I doubt Shelly would like this sort of music.

Great news for girl watchers: Ogling over women's breasts is good for a man's health and can add years to his life, medical experts have discovered. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, "Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out" declared gerontologist Dr. Karen Weatherby.
Alas, it's not true. It's just another urban legend.

Life on the Eastside -

• Near the Issaquah Barnes & Nobles, I saw a BMW with a WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) sign. Apparently He would drive a Beemer.
• I saw a play at Bellevue Community College called "How I Learned to Drive" by Paula Vogel. It's about incest. The play and the performance were first rate. And admission was free.
• My favorite politician, Laura Ruderman, won re-election to the state legislature. She's the only Democrat representing the Eastside. I know her from when we worked together at Microsoft.

I had my second Rolfing session yesterday. This one concentrates on the feet and lower legs. I find myself walking differently now, more of a rolling motion (like skating). It's certainly an interesting process. I think I'm standing a little straighter, too.

Yet Another Digital Tradition Page gives you not only the lyrics, but also the tunes, as GIFs or PostScript, or even in mountain dulcimer notation, or for a pennywhistle. A great collection of mostly folk songs, for the musically inclined.

The Cosmo Sutra recommends a new sex position every week. This week: the Couch Canoodle. Next week: the Sofa Snuggle. Then, the Davenport Diddle. As Uncle Duke said in Doonesbury, "I'm steam cleaning all the couches in the White House when I move in. Twice."

Uh oh! It doesn't look good for the stock market, as the NASDAQ composite falls through 3,000. The market held at this level back in May, but couldn't hold it today. We may be entering a bear market for common stocks.

The problems with this election resemble a bad computer program. Those Palm Beach ballots exhibit a poor user interface - they should have been usability tested. And the obscure clauses of the Constitution that may kick in remind me of error handling code, which may never get tested because the conditions that invoke it are so obscure. Most laws are like buggy programs - the legislators leave it to the justice system to sort out all the problems. CPUs are not so forgiving.

I started my ten Rolfing sessions yesterday. Rolfing is a kind of deep-tissue massage that helps you to hold your body in a straighter and more natural way. I've always had poor posture and so I'm giving it a try. This kind of bodywork can be uncomfortable at times, but it's not painful, I've found. UPDATE: That night, I found it harder to sleep, because I couldn't get in the same sleep positions that I'm used to. Interesting! Something is happening. I can sleep now, fortunately.

While we were down in L.A. for a few days, I popped over to McCabe's in Santa Monica, and had the chance to play a Tacoma acoustic bass guitar. Now this baby is nice! It has the biggest sound of any acoustic bass I have tried. Of course, it's big itself, but I definitely like it. It's an improvement over my previous fave, the Fender acoustic bass.