Aside

NPR did a short item on “Morning Edition” about a post that I wrote for Engadget last week. Or, as Evan Blass of Engadget put it: “hmm, one company cyrus works for is quoting another company cyrus works for. shocking! ;-)”

Foreign Policy; November/December 2006: By Cyrus Farivar For Commander Sid Heal of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, one of the most frightening aspects of responding to a future terrorist attack is knowing how to respond correctly. In an era of increasingly sophisticated terrorist plots, the proper response may require a Ph.D. in chemistry or biology. “We don’t have anyone who is as capable as a chemical or biological engineer,” says Heal. So he teamed up with British Columbia-based Argon…

When I lived in New York, I was invited to get cheap drinks and attend some great live music once a week at The Underground Lounge by my good buddy and Columbia cohort Jennifer Weiss. She had a regular gig rockin’ the back room on piano and killer vocals. Jen and I also shared a radio class together at Columbia, and after having been exposed to various musical performances at the Underground, and in dire need of a subject for…

I just made my first fire in my fireplace of late 2006. I’ve been wearing more and more long sleeve t-shirts as of late (still with the sandals, though), have been throwing more blankets on my bed at night, have worn my beanie a few times during the day. It’s down to the 50s in Oakland these days — although my weather forecast predicts a mid-70s day later this week. Still, it’s that time of year when life just feels…

The Associated Press; October 12, 2006: By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 8:09 p.m. ET TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — A teenager who put her bra on a car antenna before it flew off and led to a highway accident will be charged with littering, a prosecutor said. Emily Davis, 17, of Bowling Green, told investigators she took her bra off while her friend was driving on Interstate 75. James Campbell, who was driving behind the girls, said he swerved to…

I can’t think of anyone more deserving of this prize. As he wrote in the International Herald Tribune earlier this year: It is because all writers have a deep desire to be authentic that even after all these years I still love to be asked for whom I write. But while a writer’s authenticity does depend on his ability to open his heart to the world in which he lives, it depends just as much on his ability to understand…

New York; October 16, 2006: Colbert in person is one of those rare comedians who like to dissect comedy, especially his own comedy, and especially what makes his own comedy funny. This is owed in part to the nature of his show—he plays an abrasive character who is, on the surface, designed to be repellent but is actually meant to entertain—which means he’s spent a lot of time thinking about how exactly to pull off this trick. When he was…

This may be old news to some, but I just discovererd that Belkin, maker of all sorts of gadgets, was founded and still thrives in Compton, California. Inc. wrote about the rise of the business in this ill-fated city back in 2003. It’s not too much of a stretch to compare Belkin to its inner-city surroundings in Compton, Calif.: neither possesses the kind of buzz-generating, love-at-first-sight glitz that inspires devotion. Pipkin balked, in fact, when his real estate agent first…

Best part of the game: within two minutes of the final out, the folks in the right field bleachers (where my brother and I were sitting) started chanting: Yankees suck! Yankees suck! I can’t wait for the ALCS.

It’s been a little while since I last blogged about Nauru, a tiny island in the South Pacific (Population: 13,000) that entered into a Faustian tale of strip mining itself into oblivion during the bulk of the 20th century. It’s latest industry is running Australia’s awful offshore detention facility for refugees. This past week, The Age ran a story about Mohammed Sagar, a 30-year-old Iraqi refugee who has been held on the island for the last five years. His companion,…