Do yourself a favor: never buy Swheat Scoop cat litter. Some litters absorb pee and make a non-smelly solid lump. Swheat Scoop makes a smelly sticky lump whose consistency resembles that of my oat-cookie dough. It’s a bitch to clean up.

On another hand, World’s Best brand litter (made from maize) is excellent.

Malcolm Gladwell writes:

Jettas are safe because they make their drivers feel unsafe. S.U.V.s are unsafe because they make their drivers feel safe. That feeling of safety isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.

I am reminded of various more politicized debates.

I drive a Camry, by the way, and my brother drives a Jetta. (See the table in the middle of Gladwell’s article.)

how a “home computer” could look like in the year 2004. I wonder what the big wheel is for.

In the first episode of Have Gun Will Travel (1957), Paladin points out that his custom-made revolver has a rifled barrel, “a rarity in a hand weapon.” Say what?!

I hope this yarn is true: one of my favorite MacOS toys was developed clandestinely.

We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security.

(Cited by Travis.)

My One True Ex hears from her mother a rumor of an effort to “put the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress and the British Library on line”, and commands me to ask my Vast Network of Contacts what substance there is to it.

Mike Linksvayer promptly responds:

. . . you probably heard indirectly of [press release] which includes the NYPL and several universities, but not the LoC or British Library AFAIK. The Internet Archive also has several scanning projects involving various universities and grants from the LoC and British National Archives among others, see [press release]. Perhaps a news story mentioned both archive.org and Google.

Matt Smith on confused telecoms policy in San Francisco. So that’s why I so often get bad connections there!