Word of the day: Dord

Ghost Word

Claim: For five years, Webster's New International Dictionary mistakenly included an entry for dord, a word which did not exist.

Status: True.

h/t Dinosaur Comics.

Dry Bones: The State Of Palestine Quiz

The State Of Palestine Quiz

This "Palestine Quiz" has been bouncing around the Internet for some time ...it is, of course, a reality-test challenge to anyone who has swallowed the Palestine Myth. I thought it would be fun (and timely) to dress it up as a Dry Bones cartoon.

* * *
If you know someone who actually believes that there was ever a country or state called Palestine, don't argue with them. Just slip 'em a copy of "The Dry Bones State of Palestine Quiz".

I think the text from the original page says it all. Click through to see an image large enough to read and print.

Guy claims pot made him paranoid and violent

AP: Man who ate pot candy must stand trial in killing

DENVER (AP) — A judge ordered a Denver man on Friday to stand trial in the killing of his wife, who told dispatchers moments before her death that he was paranoid and hallucinating after eating marijuana-infused candy.

Defense attorneys for 48-year-old Richard Kirk suggested during a preliminary hearing that he was so impaired by the pot that he may not have intended to kill his wife.

But Judge Elizabeth Starrs said there was enough evidence for a trial on a charge of first-degree murder because Kirk showed he had the wherewithal to remember the code to a locked gun safe and press the weapon to his wife's head nearly 13 minutes into her call with the 911 dispatcher.

I hope this defense fails miserably. I've never consumed pot, but I know enough to know that it doesn't make people paranoid and violent. There are other drugs that can do that, but (as the article says further down), Mr. Kirk had none of those drugs in his system.

This guy planned to murder his wife for the insurance money. He went and ate a bit of pot candy to use it as an excuse. I hope the court throws the book at him. I don't think Colorado has the death penalty, but if they do, he should get it.

Muntins vs. Mullions vs. Astragels

Architect's Glossary: muntin v. mullion

This distinction is often confusing for architects, not to mention contractors and homeowners.

A muntin is a small bar that separates two pieces of glass, aka "glazing bar" or "sash bar

A mullion is a bar or post that separates two window units

To add some confustion and a bit more complication, an astragel is the the same as a mullion except it sits between doors (it is the annoying fixed post you see between some pairs of doors that people often walk in to).

Watching lots of home improvement shows, I've heard these terms thrown about and it's never been quite clear what they mean. Maybe I'm the only non-glazier who cares, but it was bugging me. This article explains the terms very well. Click through to the original article to see a bit more content, including illustrations of each.

AppleInsider: AT&T, Verizon to bump monthly mobile data allotments in ongoing price battle

AT&T, Verizon to bump monthly mobile data allotments in ongoing price battle

America's top two wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon on Friday announced value added changes to their respective mobile data plans, though Verizon is only offering extra data as a limited time promotion.

Here's Verizon's page describing their pricing. Until the promo expires (no date is mentioned at this time), the $80 data plan is increasing from 6GB to 10GB and the $100 data plan is increasing from 10GB to 15GB. This is not just for new customers - current "MORE Everything" customers can also take advantage by simply changing their data plan.

I just did it for my account. I was paying $90/mo for 8GB. With this new pricing, I switched our contract to $80 for 10GB. It isn't every day that you get to pay less and get more data. $80/mo (plus the $120/mo line-access charges) is still a lot to pay, but it's better than paying $10 more for less data. Here's to hoping that the rivalry between Verizon and AT&T continues to drive prices lower.

Algemeiner: Spanish Journalist on Why Hamas Never Photographed in Action: ‘If Ever We Dared Point Our Camera on Them They Would Simply Shoot at Us and Kill Us’

Spanish Journalist on Why Hamas Never Photographed in Action: ‘If Ever We Dared Point Our Camera on Them They Would Simply Shoot at Us and Kill Us’

A Spanish journalist told Israeli filmmaker Michael Grynszpan that the reason television news does not broadcast images of Hamas fighters in action is because of fear of immediate execution.

Grynszpan, who directed the film ‘Forgotten Refugees‘, about the 800,000 to 1 million Jews expelled from their homes in the Arab world in the 1950s, posted his interview with the unnamed Spanish journalist on Facebook on Wednesday.

Just a little something to share with your left-wing friends who believe the Hamas propaganda that the mainstream media reports as fact. Be sure to click through the various links to others who have added commentary of their own.

OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review

OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review

When the book is finally closed on the product line known as OS X, last year’s release of OS X 10.9 Mavericks may end up getting short shrift. Sure, it brought tangible energy saving benefits to Mac laptop owners, but such gains are quickly taken for granted; internal changes and new frameworks are not as memorable to customers as they may be to developers and technophiles. And while Mavericks included many new user-visible features, and even new bundled applications, the cumulative effect was that of a pleasant upgrade, not a blockbuster.

But for all its timidity and awkwardness, Mavericks marked a turning point for OS X—and in more than just naming scheme. It was the first OS X release from the newly unified, post-Forstall Apple. If iOS 7 was the explosive release of Jony Ive’s pent-up software design ethos, then Mavericks was the embodiment of Craig Federighi’s patient engineering discipline. Or maybe Mavericks was just a victim of time constraints and priorities. Either way, in last year’s OS X release, Apple tore down the old. This year, finally, Apple is ready with the new.

Ars Technica has an incredibly detailed (and long - 25 screens) article all about the latest version of Mac OS X. There's lots of interesting information in here for everybody, from system programmers to power users, to Mac afficionados, to people who just like to admire and criticize industrial design.

CVS, Rite-Aid, WalMart and others are all on crack

USA Today: CVS follows Rite-Aid, shuts off Apple Pay

Last Thursday drug store chain Rite Aid Inc. (RAD) reportedly stopped accepting payments made through the just launched Apple Pay system from Apple (AAPL). On Saturday, CVS Health (CVS) was reported to have followed suit at its CVS pharmacy stores.

The issue appears to be a conflict between Apple Pay and a mobile payment system called CurrentC that is being developed by a retailer-owned mobile technology outfit called Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX).

I'm sure you've heard about the above news already. For more information on this, TechCrunch wrote a great article all about CurrentC, how it works and why it even exists.

Gun humor

h/t HappyGoth_Fanboi at The Devil's Panties:

(Click on image to enlarge)

Here's a Wikipedia link in case you don't know what "Mosin Nagant" refers to. I assume "AK" and "AR" will be self-obvious to the reader...

The Digital Reader: Adobe is Spying on Users, Collecting Data on Their eBook Libraries

In the "Gee, I was looking for another reason to continue hating Adobe" department...

Adobe is Spying on Users, Collecting Data on Their eBook Libraries

Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and in what order. All of this data, including the title, publisher, and other metadata for the book is being sent to Adobe's server in clear text.

I am not joking; Adobe is not only logging what users are doing, they’re also sending those logs to their servers in such a way that anyone running one of the servers in between can listen in and know everything,

But wait, there’s more.

Adobe isn’t just tracking what users are doing in DE4; this app was also scanning my computer, gathering the metadata from all of the ebooks sitting on my hard disk, and uploading that data to Adobe’s servers.

In. Plain. Text.

And just to be clear, this includes not just ebooks I opened in DE4, but also ebooks I store in calibre and every Epub ebook I happen to have sitting on my hard disk.

Wow!

I have never installed Digital Editions, but you can be certain I won't ever install it in the future.

Please click through to the article. There are some followup posts. Adobe claims you agreed to all this when you clicked on the license agreement that everybody knows you didn't read. They also claim they are only phoning home about documents opened in Digital Editions, even though it's been demonstrated that such a claim is a lie.