I saw the "podcast" cite at the Mac homepage, which made me smile and smile -- good way to start the day!

NPR makes most of their programs available as podcasts -- I'm subscribed to the Science Friday ones. Listened to a bunch I hadn't gotten around to this past weekend when I was driving to and from NJ....

Quality-wise, a lot of podcasts sound like they were recorded in a metal trash can in someone's basement. But content-wise, there are some good ones out there. And the anarchist in me loves the Pump Up the Volume-ness of podcasts. Subverting The Man. (Er -- sort of. I mean, when they're available on the iTunes website, how subversive can they be? And yet, I maintain that they are, b/c they're commercial-free and the content is dictated only by the podcaster, not any corporation.)

I think I like Allyson's finger-removal suggestion for baby's first Plagiarist. Considering taking the time to spread the rumor she has crabs might affect my productivity adversely. (My words are mine. Anyway the non-derivative ones are.)

Eureka teaser (yousendit link).

TAR: I'm really not happy that the Weavers are in the final three, but seriously the Godlewskis were such a bad team.

Nip/Tuck -- that was a really enjoyable episode. And I totally guessed that Kimber was a hallucination.

Go me!

First, let me say that the one, maybe the only, advantage to be awake at dawn is watching it from the window in my den. Turns out to be a spectacular view. Who knew?

Okay, I'm a big ol' skipper (over 1000 posts) so I'm not going to go back to find out who originally said this but,

My Dean of Students has tried to convince me that students of today don't know they aren't supposed to cut and paste from the Internet, I should feel sorry for the poor ignorant students, and they should be forgiven. I am not a believer.

WTF? Where is this? I mean, it's probably true that they are too self-centered to realize it's plagiarism, but that's why they need to be TAUGHT NOT TO DO IT, not just forgiven. I catch students doing it all the time.

I had to do an above average amount of writing in college (judging from some of my friends' experiences, OMV) and it just never occurred to me to lift someone else's text without clear attribution. It's just something I can't quite wrap my head around. Where's the fun in that? But then, I think finding another way to say something someone else has said is kinda entertaining. I was one of the few students in one of my classes who actually liked doing the one-page synopses of the daily reading assignments. I did get yelled at for blowing out the margins a couple of time. After a few years of artfully padding essays for an annoying teacher in high school, learning to be more concise took some work.

Went to bed early, but didn't sleep well. At one point, the cat was trying to sleep on my head. Not sure if that's a cause or just an observation I was awake to notice.

ita - I noticed that Neil Grayston (Mouthbreather, right?) is in the cast of Eureka.

It was 0 degrees this morning - woo hoo!

ION, it looks like Condi's speeches in Europe aren't going over entirely well.

[link]

"It's clear that the text of the speech was drafted by lawyers with the intention of misleading an audience," Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative member of Parliament, said in an interview. Mr. Tyrie is chairman of a recently formed nonpartisan committee that plans to investigate claims that the British government has tacitly condoned torture by allowing the United States to use its airspace to transport terrorist suspects to countries where they are subsequently tortured.

Parsing through the speech, Mr. Tyrie pointed out example after example where, he said, Ms. Rice was using surgically precise language to obfuscate and distract. By asserting, for instance, that the United States does not send suspects to countries where they "will be" tortured, Ms. Rice is protecting herself, Mr. Tyrie said, leaving open the possibility that they "may be" tortured in those countries.

Maybe Condi's view is that it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is?