All thoughts slip and fade, overtaken by the fog of fear. The Watcher/Seeker sees and in so doing, blinds.

Everyone always wants to find him, but only now has someone finally asked and answered a different question: How’s Waldo?

In remembrance of Fred Rogers, who passed away 9 years ago today, here is a link to a simply wonderful piece on the man.

Once upon a time, Mister Rogers went to New York City and got caught in the rain. He didn’t have an umbrella, and he couldn’t find a taxi, either, so he ducked with a friend into the subway and got on one of the trains. It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. Though of all races, the schoolchildren were mostly black and Latino, and they didn’t even approach Mister Rogers and ask him for his autograph. They just sang. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and turned the clattering train into a single soft, runaway choir.

Update (March 1st, 2013): As I went to re-read this piece, I discovered the archive of it was currently down. It can be found via the Wayback Machine, or purchased in this Esquire collection. It’s well worth your $4.

Update (December 22nd, 2014): You can tell I’m devoted to this piece because I keep updating this post. Junod’s full piece is currently available on Esquire. I’ve updated the links to point there.

The completely-independent-and-legally-prohibited-from-working-with-Mitt-Romney’s-campaign Super PAC Restore Our Future has flagrantly stolen a Mitt Romney ad from 2008, and re-used it for their own purposes. Surely the Romney campaign will now sue Restore Our Future for copyright infringement!

Do you remember the finding late last year of a faster-than-light particle? Scientists were at a loss to explain this Einstein-defying phenomenon, and the whole of existence may well have been in jeopardy¹. Well fret not, for it was apparently just a bad cable.

According to sources familiar with the experiment, the 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos’ flight and an electronic card in a computer.

That’s long been my first rule of tech support: Always, always check the cables!

Footnotes:

1. Not really. ↩︎

After Joseph Bray forgot his wife’s birthday, their argument escalated to the point of a domestic violence charge, landing the man in front of a judge. At Bray’s sentencing, however, he wound up with a rather strange form of justice: he’s been ordered to take his wife out on a date, with flowers, a stop at Red Lobster, and bowling.

There’s been some push back on this ruling, as being too lenient. That may be so, but this ruling also seems like a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment. Sentencing someone to dinner at Red Lobster? That’s cruel and unusual punishment.

Adrian Hon has a modest proposal for reforming copyright – make it eternal.

Indeed, by what right do Disney and the BBC get to adapt Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, and Sherlock without paying the descendants of Lewis Carroll, the Brothers Grimm, and Arthur Conan Doyle?

A man in Sweden may have survived almost two months trapped in his car, buried in deep snow, with little to no food. How did he do it?

One doctor, Stefan Branth, said Skyllberg may have survived by going into hibernation mode. “A bit like a bear that hibernates. Humans can do that. He probably had a body temperature of around 31C which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature, not much energy was used up.”

I’m…not sure that’s true.

Like many other companies, Target has been data mining for years, using information about customers to gain competitive advantages. Apparently, they’re getting pretty damned good at it.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

The entire New York Times article is fascinating.

Apparently, it’s possible to lose the right to the truth by signing the wrong contract, or at least losing the wrong lawsuit.

Marvel has won a lawsuit that forces Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich to stop identifying himself as “Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich,” simply because he is the creator of Ghost Rider.

The A.V. Club referred to this decision as “oddly existentialist”, and that seems quite apt.