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February 01, 2000
All The Buzz
History. This is Black History Month. And on this day, in 1960, four Black students sat down at a Greensboro, N. Carolina lunch counter for a cup of coffee. It is a sad commentary that, that event was worthy of a making the news. See the New York Times (you have to register first) article about that day here.
ET, Call Home. Well, you didn't think I was going to ignore this story did you? Evidence is growing that the Mars lander is at least alive, if not well. Stanford University announced picking up a very faint signal last week. This week, observatories in England, Italy, and the Netherlands join the hunt. However, NASA is saying that even if contact is made, it is doubtful that any meaningful experiments could be conducted at this point. See the story here (this is also from the NY Times so you need to register).
Hollywood Buzz II. First it was the movie "Pearl Harbor" coming in April to spend $130 million USD to film. Next up is "Windtalkers." This one stars Nicolas Cage and is about the how the US, in WWII, used Navajo Indians to send messages coded in their language. A language, that they say, was known only by the Navajo and a handful of others. The locations here will be used to stand in for Saipan. It is amazing that Hawai'i has enough different environments to stand in for everything from Africa (see "Mighty Joe Young") to South America (see "Raiders of the Lost Ark") to Jurassic Park.
Emergency Yikes! All systems stop! Full emergency reverse! What a way to wake up in the morning! My friend Bo Leuf got my heart jump started this morning with his comments about my note on the Illinois moratorium on executions yesterday (see above). Let me clarify by copying my email to him this morning:
From: Dan Seto
To: Bo Leuf
Subject: Illinois
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 08:01:18 -1000"Yes indeed, when a state executes 25 convicts and later finds 13 of these executions "in error", some form of Quality Control in the judicial process seems highly overdue."
Yikes! Actually, what I was saying (I think) was that of the last 25 people sentenced to die, over half had their convictions overturned before the sentence was carried out. Slightly different meaning from having them dead, then finding out, oops, sorry - made a slight mistake. So sorry. Carry on then.
Sorry for any confusion on my part!
***** Noon Update *****
Back-Channel Backed-Up. I think I need to get some industrial strength drain cleaner and apply it liberally to both the Daynotes mail server and my host site. I tried sending an email this morning to the gang and had it bounced back:
Return-Path: [postmaster@itool.com]
Delivered-To: pop1642544@mail-10
Received: from 207.113.118.44 (mail.itool.com [207.113.118.44])
by mail.9netave.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with SMTP id NAA00140
for [Dan]; Tue, 1 Feb 2000 13:34:37 -0500 (EST)
From: postmaster at someplace called itool.com
Message-Id: [200002011834.NAA00140@mail.9netave.com]
Received: by mx1.itool.com
for [Dan]
id msg_7c71334d-d8cd-11d3-80a8-0090274ea2ee; Tue, 01 Feb 2000 11:29:06 -0700
Received: by mx1.itool.com
for Dan id msg_7c713343-d8cd-11d3-80a8-0090274ea2ee; Tue, 01 Feb 2000 11:28:42 -0700
X-Sender: postmaster at someplace called itool.com
X-Mailer: APPS IToolMail Version 2.0
To: Dan
Subject: Undeliverable Mail Error
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 11:28:42 -0700
Sometimes things work, and sometimes they don't. As I don't have control over either mail server I can say it wasn't me that done it. But then, I can't fix it either. To Tom/Matt: That's why we cc: people. We know the list fails sometimes and sometimes it's probably our own mail servers. Either way, the mail must go through.
Aloha!