Two big stories in the news today, one horrible and one inspiring.

After playing with my Nomad II MP3 player for a few days, I’ve written out some of the things I like and don’t like about it. (I guess you could call it a review…)

Why have I not seen these three Nike TV commercials before? They’re absolute genius… pure genius.

Factovision, a site I discovered yesterday in a fit of post-Harry Potter websurfing, gives a nod to the great Cecil Adams column recounting Indiana’s attempt to pass a law rounding the value of pi. I particularly love the response letter, calling Cecil a heathen for not recognizing the Biblical reasons why pi equals exactly 3.

OK, Nikolai, I’ll play along… but does your link here officially break your promise (made on a #blogirc session a few months back) to never, ever link to a Manila site?

Two good Dubya perspectives comin’ atcha. First, William Saletan:

“A true man of purpose does not speak constantly of having a purpose — much less a series of purposes. “Purpose,” like “dignity” or “confidence,” is a word invoked compulsively by those who lack it. They know they’re supposed to have it, but they don’t quite know what it is. They don’t understand that mouthing the word is not the same as having the thing to which it refers. Nor do they realize that the more promiscuously they assert it, the less it means.”

Next, Paul Chaplin:

When I started writing, this is where I was headed: “I don’t believe W has ever had a serious political thought in his life. The practical result of his Jesus-renovated heart is that it gave him a renewed determination to pursue life exactly as prescribed by his background — namely, to more effectively and proudly and smirkingly use all the prestige with which he was born to procure as much money as possible as effortlessly as possible. For W, becoming president would mean that his life is not a wasted one. Rather, W is close to matching Dad as the Most Successful Yale Man ever.”

Cintra Wilson has a hilarious recap (made up, I think?) of the Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston wedding ceremony. “I was one of the first in on the orgy; Salma Hayek and I spilled hot wine all over each other and allowed it to be licked off by several Dalmatian dogs.”

I hope that Dave’s statements about Jakob Nielsen’s lack of permalinks isn’t an insult, but instead is a mild poke to get Jakob to add the feature to his site; after all, it took a similar poke by this site before Dave added the feature to Manila and Scripting News.