I think I’ve found a new source for my Windows desktop images — NASA’s Visible Earth. As of now, the site has 23.586 gigabytes worth of images of Earth from space.

Most anyone who works in a big hospital can tell you about the rise of antibiotic-resistant buggies; you waste precious time treating them inadequately while you’re waiting for the cultures to come back, then you throw everything you have at the infection, hoping to control it just enough to let the body’s immune system finish the job, and all the while, you hope to whatever diety you hold dear that other patients on the ward don’t get the resistant bug.

You know those Philip Morris ads trumpeting their donation of millions to social causes? Did you know that they spent $108 million on that advertising campaign? Think about that.

Mickey Kaus looks at the seemingly-meaningless press recount in Lake County, Florida, and finds true meaning — if the numbers extrapolate, it looks like Gore would have won Florida by any standard that you applied to recounting the votes. (Meanwhile, I love the lengths to which the GOP seems willing to go in order to try to stop the press recount of the ballots in Florida.)

Wayne Barrett: The Five Worst Republican Outrages. Details what, in Barrett’s opinion, were the five biggest disingenuous or backhanded moves made by the GOP in Florida during the vote recount saga.

Eric Alterman offered up his Best and Worst of 2000 — damn, it’s a terrific list.

Today, New York Governor George Pataki made an uncharacteristic funny while introducing a new political appointee. The appointee acknowledged that he had a prior DWI conviction as well as a speeding ticket; that’s when Pataki chimed in, “I guess that qualifies you to be President of the United States.” Apparently, the crowd silenced, and there was an uncomfortable pause before things got going again.

Pssst… there’s a nice picture of Meg and Ev in the New York Times today.

This past week, someone (humorously named “I.C. Wiener”) published a program which ostensibly generates security codes via the same algorithm used by SecurID tokens. I’m not sure what this means for the security of the SecurID system.

My favorite Christmas present this year: my new cordless drill.