karma's a bitch, but I have pretty eyes

The "Compare people" application reminds via e-mail that it might have been prudent to be nice to people all those years:

Here is what your friends think about...

... your strengths:
most attractive
cutest
person with the prettiest eyes

... your weaknesses:
most adventurous
most likely to succeed

Fun with Urban Dictionary

So the Canadian press (you too will be surprised that you've never heard of such newspapers as "The Star" and "The National Post") has landed on a whopper of a story: whitefolks have been using the word "Canadian" as code for blackfolk.

The evidence? This email from a district attorney in Texas:

"He convicted Mr. Sosa of a double intoxication manslaughter, got a weak jury to give him 12 years in each, and then convinced Judge Wallace to stack the sentences," Harris County assistant district attorney Mike Trent wrote in an office-wide memo. Then came the odd part: "He overcame a subversively good defence by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing."

Then came the headlines:

The new code word for black: 'Canadian'

When is a Canadian not a Canadian?

Racists using code word `Canadian' as substitute for N-word

So, if one is to believe the fourth definition provided on Urban Dictionary, then this really is some racist large-scale phenomena.

The strange thing behind all this, though, is that the DA involved now insists that he would never send out such an epithet to an email list of 200 lawyers. I kind of buy this argument. He insists he thought they were actually Canadian, and is quoted saying (to the Houson Chronicle):

"Do you guys think I'm crazy?" Trent wrote recently in response to a blog post. "Am I insanely stupid enough to send a racial slur to 250 LAWYERS? Litigious, complaint-ready lawyers, some of whom are African-American?? That is just absurd."

Of course, one might argue that it's also absurd to believe Canadians were serving on a Texas jury.

Trent's response: "All that is required to serve on a jury in Harris County is that you have a TDL (Texas Driver's License) and reside in the county."

So my new thought on the matter is that:
1) Racists are using Canadian in other circles
2) The DA is actually making fun of Canadians,vand learned to do so because he has racist friends and he never picked up on the joke

Grandma's taking care of Rapture

(by roz chast, from the new yorker via someone else's blog).

Oh, being a genius, I figured out how to make comments work. So now they work.

And Moby's new album sampler is quite nice. And free.

Date Scientists for the Greater Good?

So there's a whole group of people whose goal in life it is to package science into mass culture. So their endeavors culminate in sometimes mediocre tv shows like "numb3rs" and sometimes into cult icons like Bill Nye. They even paid (via the National Science Foundation) for the back of my head (second post, "0.5 microseconds of baldspot fame") to go to the American Film Institute and learn to stick science into screenplays, a goal that has since waned in awesomeness.

All this comes to mind as I learned that director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Brokeback Mtn) is married to a professor of microbiology in New York Medical College, Jane Lin. And it got me thinking: for all the money it takes to educate screenwriters or teach scientists to write engaging screenplays, one might as well arrange singles night between the two crowds. The reason people don't pursue science is that it's not cool without a moon landing involved. So what I'm thinking is that the solution is to marry it to Jude Law and Brad Pitt.

Of course the obvious flaw to this plan comes from the fact that Ang Lee hasn't made a single science-related film, far from it really. So although a scientist-hollywood pairing makes an excellent New York Times marriage announcement, I suppose it won't advance the cause of humanity.

kibosh

You'd figure the word kibosh would have a rich etymology, culminating in a biblical story where some historic fire was put out with a similarly named device. Instead, the etymology is sadly dissatisfying ("we have no idea").