Happy President Washington Lincoln's birthday

Jon Carroll on the life and times of President Washington Lincoln:

Known for emancipating his country, President Washington Lincoln was often called "The Father of the Slaves." His mutable birthday, based on a lunar calendar, is but one remarkable feature of this remarkable man.

It was more than 200 years ago on this day, which was then called "Feb. 21, " that the future president was born in a log cabin near the Potomac. As a child, he chopped down a cherry tree in order to build a split-rail fence. Later, he walked 12 miles across the Potomac to throw a silver dollar.

"I regret," he is supposed to have said, "that I have but one dollar to throw into a river."

Slowly freezing to death update

We still have no heat. We do have an additional electric heater that our landlord brought up last night, so akawil and ladymondegreen could have some heat in their room, like I do in mine.

Today the extra heater is in the dining room, with the laptops. This worked fine, till Wil started making popcorn. Turns out the outlet over the kitchen counter is on the same circuit as the one the microwave is plugged into. (The bathroom’s on it too, but the fridge isn’t.) I found out about it when Wil came up to my room to get at the curcuit breaker switches. That didn’t help — we wound up having to call the landlord, and he switched on the switch in the basement, which fixed things. Shades of my old apartment, but at least it didn’t take the whole place’s power out.

He also said that the oil guys were working on the furnace, but it’s over an hour later now and we still don’t have heat.

Stuff from around the web

If I were to make a regular habit of this, I might call it link head cheese (Wasn’t he the captain on “Pigs In Space”?), in tribute to almeda.

Best correction ever: Via Atrios’s blog (but Atrios’s archives aren’t working correctly, so here’s a link to a Daypop search), I find that The New York Times screwed up last Thursday. Friday’s correction is either a case of them realizing that nothing they can do will fix it, or a middle finger extended at the Bush administration. Probably the former.

Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about diplomatic developments in the Iraq crisis misidentified the Bush administration official who said about the weapons inspectors in Iraq, "At some point it will become obvious that it's time for them to go." It was an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity, not Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser.

Jurgen online: Via Long walk, short pier, I find that the full text (and cover scans) of James Branch Cabell’s best and most famous book, Jurgen, is online:

"None the less," observes Jurgen, "it does not behoove God-fearing persons to speak with disrespect of the divinely appointed Prince of Darkness. To your further confusion, consider this monarch's industry! day and night you may detect him toiling at the task Heaven set him. That is a thing can be said of few communicants and of no monks. Think, too, of his fine artistry, as evidenced in all the perilous and lovely snares of this world, which it is your business to combat, and mine to lend money upon. Why, but for him we would both be vocationless! [...]

Disk drive cases made of legos: Brad DeLong attended a talk given by Google founder Larry Paige, and took notes:

Google has been profitable since the first quarter of 2001. Why did we make becoming profitable such a priority? It's good that we did, because we might well be gone if we hadn't. The real reason is that we became profitable in the first quarter of 2001 because Sergey Brin made it a priority. You see, Sergey would try to go out on dates. He would call up women. And to impress them he would say, 'I'm the president of a money-losing dot-com.' But in Palo Alto in 2000, a huge number of people were presidents of money-losing dot-coms. And so they would not call him back. And he thought, 'If only I were president of a money-making dot-com, things would be very different...'"

Mac Hall: I keep forgetting to add Mac Hall to my list of regularly-checked web comics. (Thanks to kuronekogirl for recommending it to me, all those months ago.) It’s intermittantly funny, above average for a web comic. I like the art a whole lot. Matt Boyd is making really good use of Photoshop to push it in directions that printed art just doesn’t go. Sometmes needlessly — I don’t think the blurred backgrounds always improve the strip — but check out these gorgeous nighttime trafic scenes.

Heat! We have heat again! The apartment’s still damn frigid, but it’ll warm up eventually.