The teapot is truly ingenius. You heat the water in it in the microwave (or use a kettle and pour it in, although that kind of defeats the purpose), then put loose tealeaves in the pot and let them steep. Then you sit the pot on top of your cup, and the tea pours down into it, leaving the leaves in the pot, which you just dump out.

And the tea was wonderful, too. I'm used to teabags, of course, but one cup of their Earl Grey convinced me that there's a HUGE difference. Or maybe it's just that I didn't know how much to use, and probably used WAY too much. I'm going to go bounce off the walls now . . .

I had wanted to see the movie on the strength of a preview that I saw, but after I found out how it ends, I no longer want to see it. It isn't because I disagree with what is presented, but because I don't wish to put myself through the emotional trauma. I don't think it matters at all whether I agree or disagree with it. (I'm being intentionally vague here, obviously.)

What I do think matters is that people realize that this is a movie. Anyone with enough money is free to make a movie about anything they like. They can espouse any agenda that they wish, put forward any political stance, in short, do whatever they like as long as they can pay for it.

Why should Clint Eastwood care what anybody thinks, except to care whether they want to see his movie or not? And maybe not that, even.

It just seems crazy to me that anyone would think it's legitimate to say, "How dare he make a movie like that?"

I hate to say that I'm smarter than the average bear, because I'm really not, but I do think that I may have a more balanced view of the world than a lot of people. Maybe people do think that if someone wealthy and famous makes a movie, that anything they say is right, and good, and we should all change our opinions to conform to theirs.

Like the huge controversies over The DaVinci Code--I've said before that I thought the book, although not a very good book, was, at least, somewhat suspenseful and had some intriguing ideas. But it's fiction! It wasn't written as fact, and even if some of the things in it were true, that doesn't mean that it should be read as gospel. So to speak.

The world is a big place. There are a lot of people in it. And face it, most of them are going to have different opinions from you. And that's okay, it really is.

If you need to put music onto your iPod using a computer that doesn't have iTunes on it (which is 9,999 PC's out of 10,000) well then, tough.

Well, no. It's a piece of hardware that needs a piece of software like many other pieces of hardware do. You just install iTunes, which comes on the CD with the iPod, or you download it for free. It's like saying, "If you need to burn a CD with your CD burner using a computer that doesn't have CD burning software on it, well then, tough." Which is just silly.

There are a lot of other silly things in there, but I try not to get worked up over people's opinions of things. Obviously this person's opinions aren't going to affect anyone who owns, or who wants to own, an iPod.

Oh, well, okay, just one more.

If my music player dies because I plug it into cellular phone charger by mistake I can restore it from my backup in minutes. I can, that is, unless I own an iPod.

I'm not sure what he's saying here because if your iPod gets wiped for whatever reason, you just plug it into your computer and sync it again, and it's just like it was before. But there again, it's just someone speaking from ignorance of the subject, with no firsthand knowledge.

Link from Lileks.com.

A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of 'web log.') Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.

. . .

It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.

Library Journal - Revenge of the Blog People!

Link from Neil Gaiman.

Researchers then tracked the women down and found that those who had smiled most happily at college overwhelmingly tended to have had the happiest lives since they had graduated. “It’s a virtuous circle,” Keltner concluded. “Happy smiley people cheer others up around them, which in turn makes them more stable and less prone to depression or divorce than those who faked it in their yearbooks.”

Madame Tussaud's has apparently had to perform a separation operation on the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston display.

It involved quite a lot of work, because they were entwined and had their arms around each other," said museum spokeswoman Diane Moon Monday. . . .

The procedure, which involved remolding their arms, cost around 10,000 pounds, or the equivalent of $19,000, and the separated figures have been put back on display with their backs to each other.

CNN.com - Pitt and Aniston not 'model' couple - Feb 21, 2005

"The Crackers" is as much a public happening as it is a tasty snack, defying the domino theory. Peanut butter or cheddar cheese. They poured their hearts and souls into the project for over 26 minutes. It required three dozen crackers and spanned over nearly 23 inches along a footbridge in the park at a cost (borne exclusively by the artists) of $2.50. Is it art? You decide. The installation was completed with no permits or bureaucracy, and fed to the ducks after about a half hour. "The Crackers" is entirely for profit.

Link from Boing Boing

He had picked out a bunch of tracks in iTunes one night this week, and before I burned a CD for him, I asked him if he was interested in any of my music. He said he doubted it, but we went through a lot of it, playing snippets, to see if there was anything he liked. He picked out a few, but it made me very aware that most of my musical selections are sad--lost love, people dying, sadness, depression . . .