The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Alan Hamilton:

A non-arrival usually means a cancellation. On the 16th and 17th the train ended at Albany due to track work on the Canada side, and it didn't run on the 30th due to a washout between NYC and Albany.

The Adirondack has a cafe car, which has tables that will seat four. I haven't been on that particular train

You're right that the "reserved seat" means you're guaranteed a seat, but not a particular one.

And just a reminder... everyone now needs a passport or passport card to go to/from Canada.

And yes, you'll probably be late. You can see where all the trains are in Amtrak's system and their history here.

Hiro Nakamura will be in heaven.

Yes, the exteriors on Vulcan were based on the Vasquez Rocks, where "Arena" was shot.

Anyway, Trek has dabbled with this level of death before -- just ask the the Malurians.

Way back in the Tom Swift Sr. days he used a gas "much more powerful even than hydrogen".

The CDC also has a Twitter feed.

Yes, probably time to bump this.

The ability to play music is actually built-in to older HP scanners as an Easter egg.

This is probably a good place to mention this. Wow, I can hear Alan Moore's head asplode from here.

Well, if it was real, anyway. He did guest on a Simpsons that featured Watchmen Babies in 'V for Vacation'. (And who knew Art Spiegleman was that buff?)

Never mind that, it got stuck in the inter-tubes.

Dan Penn is associated with all of them?

Arizona was able to turn Renzi's seat blue, but that's about the only good news locally. Gay marriage is now double-illegal, and Shadegg and Arpio were reelected.

The Economist has a global electoral map. McCain is leading in Cuba, Algeria, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Georgia, and Iraq. Everybody else, Obama.

Apropos of <blink>, from back in 1994 here's Top Ten HTML Extensions that Didn't Make it Into Netscape 0.9 (because they ran out of beer)

Woo hoo! I've wanted this for a long time, or at least a way to hide comments. 1500 comments saying "this is fucking gay!!!1!!" doesn't do much for me.

I agree with Gene Spafford:

Using encryption on the Internet is the equivalent of arranging an armored car to deliver credit-card information from someone living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench.

The big compromises have either been via spyware on the client side or intrusions on the server side. Can someone cite some cases where passwords/credit card numbers have been stolen strictly by network sniffing?

Somewhat typographically related: some typo vigilantes corrected a sign they found at the Grand Canyon Watchtower. However, this wasn't a lunchcounter sign for 'Todays "Special"'. It was a historic hand-painted sign by Mary Colter. They used white-out and a black permanent marker to change "womens'" to "women's" and added a comma after "religious crooks and wands". In their blog they complained about "an emense westward view" but didn't try to correct it.

The culprits are banned from National Parks for a year, plus they have to pay the estimated $3,035 to restore the sign.

#46: Because historically, "ballot security" has meant one thing: keeping the "wrong" people from voting. Requiring ID, apart from being a poll tax on people who have to pay to get an ID, will certainly result in certain groups having their ID found insufficient.

#97: No, it's been like that for more than 10 years. It's possible your withholding increased more than the tax increase, but in that case you'll end up with a bigger refund or can increase your exemptions.

The example I quoted was based on the actual 2007 tax tables.

#73: The 16th Amendment didn't legalize the income tax; it just addressed a Supreme Court ruling that taxes on income from property (rents, royalties) were property taxes not income taxes. The 16th enables taxing income from any source. The income tax itself comes from the basic power to lay and collect taxes.

Also, you don't get less take-home pay when you move to a higher tax bracket. You only pay the higher rate on the amount in excess of the bracket level. So if you're single and make $36,000 you pay 10% of $7,825 plus 15% of $24,025 plus 25% of $4,150. You don't pay 25% of $36,000.

Sorry to pick on you, but it seems the biggest proponents of changing the tax system don't understand what they're changing.

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