Picture time — the photos from the first few days here in Tampa are up. Making showings are the SI trailer, my convertible rental (very important in Tampa), the stadium, the practice Air Force flybys, and all the people down here.

Eric Raymond has an interesting social experiment going on, one that has the side effect of adding function to the Linux environment. A bit strange.

Our President, eloquent as always:

My pro-life position is I believe there’s life. It’s not necessarily based in religion. I think there’s a life there, therefore the notion of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

MetaFilter is just getting better and better. Between the incredibly well-tempered community and the seemingly-weekly addition of some new feature or shortcut, Matt has created one of the best little corners on the web.

Neale is a funny, funny bastard.

A few legislators in Puerto Rico are trying to pass a law which explicitly prohibits lawmakers from being drunk on the job; if the U.S. would consider passing similar restrictions, I have a feeling that we’d have a lot less stupidity coming out of Washington.

There is hope for me after all!

National Geographic has redrawn its world map; changes include a deeper deepest for the Dead Sea (411 meters), markers for all of the new U.S. national monuments, and reverting to the indigenous name Kolkata for what was previously Calcutta. And, coolest of all, National Geographic runs an Atlas Update site which provides software patches for their products and printable updates for their books. (Here’s the printable Kolkata update.)

The Boy Scouts are taking the first official action in support of its newly-minted ability to expel gays from its ranks — the organization is severing ties with seven Chicago-area troops because their sponsors are explicitly refusing to abide by the exclusionary policy. Sadly, it appears that these troops were all chosen to be the first ones to be expelled because they are in Oak Park, a community which has a long history of supporting gay rights.

It looks like someone’s a little grumpy about logging referrers… (Seen on my referrers page today.)

Apparently, Darva Conger wants to extend her fifteen minutes a little bit…

What a scary, scary town this Tampa is. We went out for a team dinner last night, and the place we went was overrun with middle-aged women in skin-tight, shiny snakeskin catsuits, men in full-on velvety white suits, and huge hair (for the women and men). The later the night got, the older the crowd got — and the more it turned into an out-and-out pickup scene. Scary, I tell you.