ghosts in the machine

Jason Salvon - The Late Night Triad

Manhattanhenge

Manhattanhenge Sunset - 42nd St Image via jonbell has no h's Flickr.

May 31st is a little arbitrary, but so what. Given L'Enfant's Freemasonish layout of the District of Columbia, there must be a thousand and one numerology/alignment possibilities. I feel slightly inclined to investigate, and if you don't hear from me again, speculate wildly on what I must have found.

Happy Mother's Day Mom

Happy Mother's Day! Coincidentally enough, I was born on a Mother's Day a few years ago, and I'm glad of it!

Donnie Darko was unavailable for comment

Engine falls off plane

New google?

Googleplex? The next generation of search engines could rank web pages by "talent"

How will the next generation of search engines outperform Google’s all-conquering Pagerank algorithm?

One route might be to hire Vwani Roychowdhury at the University of California, Los Angeles and his buddies who have found a fascinating new way to tackle the problem of website rankings.

Their breakthrough is to have found that the structure of the web is determined by three factors: the number of inbound links to a page, the rate at which pages are created and deleted and the likelihood that somebody visiting a page will link to it.

Slip-sliding away

The San Andreas Fault runs through a orchard, creating a slip-dislocation.

From 5 enormous cracks.

And, no, plumbers are not involved. [via]

Where's WALL-E

Pixar's in-jokes and self-references.

When I was a kid, I wanted to build exactly this. I'm not kidding. I drew up plans and everything. Except that it was the USS Arizona, I guess dorks think alike.

PS. " While William Terra cruise the lakes of Maine he enjoy listen to Wagner." Of course!

"...We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine"

Regarding the Daimler-Chrysler split:

Daimler pays to dump Chrysler
German automaker will end up actually paying $650 million to unload Chrysler to end its exposure to billions in ongoing losses, health care costs.
By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer

Is it me, or is this exactly the same as the Simpson's episode were Mr. Burns sells the power plant to Germans only to buy it back for a tiny fraction of what they paid once they discover all the flaws and environmental violations in the plant? Because it's not me, and this is exactly what it is. Consider the parallels:

• Lee Iaccoca* :: Mr. Burns
  
• Dieter "Dr. Z" Zetsche :: New Friendly German Plant Owners
  
• UAW Teamsters :: Homer Simpson
• Germany :: Magical Land of Chocolate
  
• Leaking Nuclear Waste :: Pension Plans

Et cetera and so forth.

*I know Iaccoca wasn't the CEO of Chrysler then, or at least I don't think he was, but whatever. He's funniest, unless you want to put Kirk Kirkorean there, who really does look like Mr. Burns, and although he did put in a bid, he mainly was going after GM and didn't buy them either. Apparently, when you own a good chunk of Las Vegas, you know a bad bet when you see one.

Dopplegangers

A website devoted to unrelated look-alikes: I'm Not a Look Alike. My cousin said his interpreter in Iraq looked just like me, which is weird. I'll have to ask for a photo of him someday, and then I could join in.