NOW They Cut the iPhone Price

iPhone Price Cut less than 2 Months After Purchase.

Gaaaah!

The curse of being an early adopter strikes again.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Apple Cuts iPhone Price Ahead of Holidays SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 — Apple unexpectedly cut the price of its iPhone Wednesday, claiming that it was seeking to broaden the market for the popular but expensive phone for the Christmas season. The iPhone was first sold on June 29. A number of recent analysts’ reports have noted that it is selling well and is, indeed, outselling its smartphone competitors. But Mr. Jobs said that if the company had waited past the Christmas buying season to reduce prices it would have been forced to delay for another year reaching a broader consumer market. “We’re feeling like being more aggressive,” he said. Chetan Sharma, a telecommunications industry analyst based in Issaquah, Wash., said, “They’re trying to get the next demographic to bite into it.” “My suspicion is that they got to 750,000 really quickly, and then it started to slow down,” said Van Baker, an industry analyst at Gartner Group.

Today, at the One Brick picnic, there was a great, only in Silicon Valley moment.

We had "picnic" games like 3 legged race, sack race, hula hoop contest, water gun fights, etc. One of the games was tug-o-war, over a kiddie pool of ice water. After one of the tug-o-war sessions, the losing team all fell or got dragged a few feet on the grass. After everyone got up and went to talk to the other side there were two things left on the losing side. The rope and a Treo.

The organizers spent the next 10 minutes going around the picnic yelling "Who's phone is this? Someone lost their phone at the tug-o-war." Where else on the planet, would someone lose their smartphone, in a tug-o-war competition and not notice for over 10 minutes?

OK, I guess you had to be there. It was funny at the time.

Logical Reason Pretty Boys Look Good

This article talks about how women are programmed or hard wired to consider some men more attractive than others. It's interesting how the theory holds true, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the man.

clipped from news.yahoo.com

Study: Chick Magnets Today Look Like Cavemen

A recent study of the skulls of human ancestors and modern humans finds that women, and thereby, evolution, selected for males with relatively short upper faces. The region between the brow and the upper-lip is scrunched proportionately to the overall size of their heads.

Masculine appeal

"A shorter upper face does serve to exaggerate the size of other face features such as the flare of the cheeks and the size of the jaw, but this might not be why it developed," Weston told LiveScience. "Rather the shorter [and] broader the male face the more ‘masculine’ and the less ‘feminine'—based on biological face changes that take place during growth and development—the individual becomes," she said.

They came up with a list of stars with masculine faces, listing them from most to least masculine according to facial dimensions: Will Smith, Peter Andre, Justin Timberlake, Thierry Henry, Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Johnny Depp and Kanye West.

What's Your Professor Poopypants Name?

Here's my Professor Poopypants name, what's yours?

Library Thing

How Cool is this?

Walk it Out with the Bell Bottom Pastel Ladies

Actually, that's Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse's wife, doing Mexican Breakfast. You can see the original on The Pineapple Princess' blog, unless she yanked it for some reason.

Sometimes, people having too much free time on their hands is a good thing.

The original dance and flutey music. Tell me you aren't impressed with the extensions and spins from this mid-40s lady.

Calligraphy Still Relevant Today

I love this article and it's pictures because it shows how calligraphy is still being used for everyday life, at least in once order of the world.

Seems like the newspaper's system is similar to the scribes in nunneries or monasteries.

clipped from www.wired.com India's News Calligraphers Do It on Deadline

Scott Carney Write to the Author
See related story: A Handwritten Daily Paper in India Faces the Digital Future
07.06.07 | 2:00 AM

The Musalman is possibly the last handwritten newspaper in the world. Four professional calligraphers spend three hours on each page every single day to put out this daily paper.

While it's a Muslim newspaper, it's also a beacon of liberalism in South Asia, employing both women and non-Muslims. Two of the four katibs (calligraphers) are women and the chief reporter is Hindu. Indian royalty and poets often visit the paper to offer content and accolades.

The following images portray The Musalman's modest office as the paper's staff puts together the next day's newspaper.

Left: Every day in Chennai, India, professional calligraphers called katibs handwrite The Musalman newspaper, established in 1927. Each page is written in Urdu, a language spoken by a small minority of the city's population.

Be sure to check out the pictures.

Fairmont High Tea and HSSV Fundraiser

Culo at the San Jose Fairmont Tea and Humane Society Silicon Valley fundraiser. I had high tea and Culo had a walk around downtown San Jose. Since Culo is a HSSV alumni, Class of 1997, we go to a lot of their events.

SJ's Fairmont Hotel Invites Dogs For Pizza, Sushi, Tacos

POSTED: 11:33 am PDT June 20, 2007

UPDATED: 12:01 pm PDT June 20, 2007

Pizza, sushi, tacos and banana biscotti; sounds like a great buffet for humans, but this Saturday's menu is for man's best friend and the Fairmont San Jose Hotel has invited local pooches and their owners to partake.On Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. as a fundraiser for the Santa Clara County Humane Society and as a promotion for the hotel's pet-friendly policies, the Fairmont has invited local dog owners to come on down and enjoy deluxe doggy samples available on the private dining menu for pets.Also available on Saturday are dog walkers, who for $10 will walk visiting dogs while their human companions enjoy tea, lunch and cocktails in the hotel lobby. All proceeds from the dog walkers go to the Humane Society.

The hotel will have items that guest dogs can enjoy during their stay at the upscale downtown San Jose hotel, including beds, water and food dishes, a scooper, a doggy biscuit, a dog walking guide brochure and every dog's favorite: a squeaky toy. Also available to pet owners are digital cameras and printing facilities to snap and print images of their pet living the good life.

One Brick New Orleans Trip

One of my favorite do-gooder organizations, OneBrick, sent a crew down to help out in the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone in New Orleans. Things like this made me glad I joined the volunteer organization. Without a doubt, they are the best run, most volunteer friendly group I've been attached to.

Culo Really likes his new Red Ball

One of my PayPal co-workers, Eve, was nice enough to gift Culo with a new, red, very bouncy Kong Ball. I love the pictures so much, I have to add them to my blog. I don't know the man in the pictures. He was just walking by and started playing ball with Culo.

Pilobolus Dance Theatre Back in The SF Bay Area

Just because I loved watching this troupe so much last year. And now we are MySpace friends. Pilobolus Dance Theatre gives good blog.

If you go, let me know how it was.

You Only Need A Heart Full of Grace - MLK Day

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Today, I hope you have a chance to reflect the positive changes that have taken place in American society because of the sacrifices of those who came before us. We stand on the shoulders of giants. I want to share this sermon and links because they encourage us not to rest, but continue pushing forward.

If you want to be important—-wonderful. If you want to be recognized—-wonderful. If you want to be great—-wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That’s a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. (Amen) You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. (All right) You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. (Amen) You only need a heart full of grace, (Yes, sir, Amen) a soul generated by love. (Yes) And you can be that servant.

Listen to the sermon in King's own voice. From "The Drum Major Instinct” sermon, delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, February 4, 1968

Pimped MySpace

After being embarrassed for so long about having the nerdiest MySpace on the planet, I finally spent some time today to pimp it out a little. I know I'm triple the age of the standard MySpace user, but it's a fun site to hook up with people you see on TV, in the movies or listen to the radio. Especially if they have a blog, you can see the more human side of them. It's like eavesdropping, sometimes, when their friends and family post on their space, but what can you do? When I figure it out, I plan to put my blinged out name at the top of MySpace. Which version do you like better?

Agent Orange

or

MicraDi

Send in your vote and it may make a difference. Just like a real USA election.

By the way, the site that helped me pull my page together and make my name is MyTheme.com. There's a lot of bad sites out there, but this one seemed OK.