So, we’re driving back from the new Austin Wings n More — I gotta remember to add that place to my restaurant reviews and Episode 3 of WDYLIA — and we catch this soundclip on the radio. As the song fades out, I correctly identify it and my co-worker in the backseat lays into me insisting that not only am I wrong, but that I couldn’t name a song just by hearing the last 7 seconds of it. I take this as a personal challenge, of course, and will be dueling with said unnamed co-worker as soon as I can dig up a copy of Name That Tune on CD-ROM. Until then, I want to drive my point home by making it clear that recognizing this particular clip is not that challenging.

So, BPBers, without cheating Name That Tune! (You can even make it hard on yourself by just playing a snippet of the song, seeing how long a snippet it takes you to guess it.)

So hearing about Becky and Matt really has me jonesing to finish a marathon. Missy and I were on track to do Disney back in 2000, but then Jake happened. I kept training until October/November, got up to about 15 or so miles on a long run. Then cold (we were still up in CT) and sympathy pregnancy (Yes, it really does happen. I’ve got pictures to prove it. Not just of me, but of others, too. SonO would agree) intervened, and I slacked off.

Ah, but after surviving a layoff, move, and soon another mouth to feed, I need a challenge for the summer and fall.

Behind the curve as usual, I have updated us here in the Backporch to Brad Choate’s Textile 2 plugin.

Here’s one more stick to put on my “why not to have a babies” pyre. It turns out that babies are so stupid that it’s not even funny.

Another test, in which the infants were placed on a mound of dirt outdoors during a torrential downpour, produced similarly bleak results.

“The chicken, dog and even worm babies that we submitted to the test as a control group all had enough sense to come in from the rain or, at least, seek shelter under a leafy clump of vegetation or outcropping of rock,” test supervisor Thomas Howell said.

p.s. Is it a blogger’s sin to post Onion articles?

It’s not surprising at all to the Deaniacs or Edwards-iacs (do they have a cute name? no wonder they aren’t winning or losing dramatically!) that GWB and John Kerry are actually cousins according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Bruce and Kristine Harrison, publishers of historical databases, traced back the family histories of Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
…
Well, 16th cousins, three times removed, to be exact. But cousins, nonetheless.

And they are both related to Walt Disney and Marilyn Monroe. The shameless histories of their families are revealed!

Instead of doing funny strips onesy-twosey, I thought I’d wrap ‘em up into one post.

It’s best to get the funny stuff out of the way before I dive into berating jank for his blind faith in anyone wearing an elephany pin on their lapel.

I’ve been seeing a little flack about “The Twenty” — Regal Cinema’s new digitally projected commercial block that starts twenty minutes before the featured presentation — and I have to agree with this group of cinema activists that it seems like a good idea to me. Click through to hear the marketing response to CMPAA‘s letter to Regal Cinema.

We have been running a web site that has called for a re-evaluation of the practices of running TV-like commercials before the start of movies shown by Regal theaters. … The presentation called “The Twenty”, shown twenty minutes before advertised start times with house lights up and at comfortable volumes, seems to be a more acceptable format.

We started to experience “The 2wenty” at a recent viewing of In America which ended abruptly following the Jon Bon Jovi AFL commercial. As the computer running the show rebooted, it flashed a COMPAQ logo on the screen to the boos of audience members. (This is Dell country!) At first I was perturbed, but I quickly resolved my ire by recognizing how many Regal Cinema viewers would have the pleasure of realizing the fallability of COMPAQ computers nation-wide.

p.s. Reviews of In America and The Triplettes of Belleville are forthcoming.

Becky completed her first marathon yesterday (yay!) and the results are in. In her gender/age group (Women 25 to 29) she placed 168 out of 382 (and 926 out of over 2000 timed women runners) with a Chip Time of 4:29:43.2, which paces her at 10:18 per mile. This is an amazing improvment over her 30K pacing of 10:31. Her total time is less than two hours behind another 27 year old runner who won the race, so it should be no time at all before she’s able to win these things! ;0)

Jank’s brother (and BPBer when he has a break from Law School), Matthew “Doc” Jankowski, paced just ahead of Becky. Doc hit 197 out of 303 in his gender/age group (Men 25 to 29) with a total time of 4:22:45.0 and a pace time of 9:50 per mile. His overal ranking in Men was 1801 out of nearly 3000 timed men runners. Go Doc!

File under parinoia.

OK, rephrase that headline – non-US strong encryption schemes have been available for a while, but the Commerce Department has overturned a Clinton-era policy forbidding US companies from exporting encryption schemes stronger than 56-bit keys.

So what does this mean to you and me? Eh, not much, ‘cept maybe an admission that the NSA can now decrypt 128-bit keyed messages. Either that, or the feds have realized that the export restrictions were hobbling US companies, and want to spur tech job growth ahead of the election.

In either case, it’s a sign that the Bush Administration is slightly more tech-savvy than they’re given credit for.

But Ben Cohen, of True Majority has jumped on and begun flogging.

Cohen’s campaign does have an apt name (The Computer Ate My Vote). In 2002 in North Carolina, voting officials discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems & Software had lost 436 absentee votes. State officials only caught the error by luck because the devices had no auditing mechanism. The voters had to cast their ballots again.

As always, when the left and the right concur, there’s apt cause to be worried.