Archive for July, 2007

Plan? Er . . .

Posted July 31, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Back when I was in college, I sometimes lost track of projects or deadlines. I decided to get more organized and follow the example of my boss and picked up a planner with refillable calendar pages. Making To Do lists with the planner was helpful, although I sometimes dropped the habit for lengthy periods of […]

Matters of Trust

Posted July 30, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I’ve been thinking about this reaction piece Josh Marshall wrote at Talking Points Memo over the weekend, focused on the New York Times editorial calling for Alberto Gonzales’s impeachment. Marshall is struck by how unusual the impeachment of a cabinet official is – the only time Marshall knows it’s been done, the official in question […]

Now It’s a Streak

Posted July 29, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I’m now 2-0 on the season watching Phillies games live. I gotta say, I don’t know for sure if Citizens Bank Bark was worth the money the city kicked in for its construction – but it is a fun place to spend an afternoon. And now, I am going to begin a week-long experiment that […]

Tale of the Tape

Posted July 28, 2007 By Dave Thomer

My mother has a crate of old LPs that has she has dutifully kept organized and taken with her as she’s moved. Every so often at a family gathering she asks if anyone wants any of the vinyl albums. I admit I have picked out a couple of records I listened to as a kid, […]

Booming Comic News

Posted July 27, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I was gonna steer clear of Comic-Con news posting here, partially because my shift to graphic novels and trade paperback collections means it might be next year before I see any of the titles being hyped this year and partially because I’m filling in on the news desk at theLogBook while Earl is at Classic […]

52 and Finished

Posted July 26, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Completed the DC weekly series 52 today. By no means was it bad, and there were a number of character threads I liked. But it spectacularly failed at doing what it originally set out to do – explain what happened during the “missing year” in the DC Universe – and it wasn’t able to contain […]

Press Hits the Fans

Posted July 25, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Comic-Con International in San Diego starts tonight with a preview night, and the panels and big events start tomorrow. I was talking with Earl earlier today, wondering when Comic-Con became such a huge event that the TV and film worlds paid so much attention to. If I had been looking for an example, this Reuters […]

Aren’t We Special

Posted July 24, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Special Order Speeches essays from prior incarnations of Not News are now available from the SOS link on the sidebar. This category includes essays that were written for the Humor section of the site when that was its own entity. Transferring them into blog posts reminded me that I enjoy that kind of long-form not-quite-serious […]

Bad Gods, Good Jokes

Posted July 23, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Lore Sjoberg has diversified the content at Bad Gods to include comics strips – including this great strip about a Buddhist RPG – and a collection of limericks based on famous poems. After a day of reading and discussing all the wonderful examples of humanity’s depravity in The Lucifer Effect, I kinda need to unwind […]

Poker AI No Flop

Posted July 22, 2007 By Dave Thomer

The AP has a pretty good article on a humans vs. computer poker match set to start tomorrow at a conference on artificial intelligence in Vancouver. The article does a nice job of explaining exactly why poker is seen as an interesting challenge by artificial intelligence researchers. The game-tree approach doesn’t work in poker because […]