Regular readers please forgive me as I use this space to promote one of my few fanaticisms.

I wish that I could buy the entire series of Northern Exposure on DVD (or at all). A few select episodes are available on VHS, but nothing close to the complete series sets available for other shows (The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Sex and the City, Star Trek TNG, X-Files, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer!).

The customer base is certainly there (unless I have the economics of DVD production completely wrong). We will buy it!

So, I would like to start a petition to Universal Playback:

We, the undersigned, kindly request the release of a complete Northern Exposure series DVD box set. Thanks.

View the current signatures and Sign up (way at the bottom of this page).

Update: The petition is closed – thanks for all of the signatures. I don’t think it had anything to do with us, but there is news that NX may eventually be released on DVD.

Five long years after the release of Netscape 4, it has finally arrived: Mozilla 1.0.

A few videos of Triumph the insult comic dog from Conan O’Brien found on MetaFilter:

• Triumph on Hollywood Squares
• New Jersey Fans of Bon Jovi Mocked by Triumph the Sock Dog
• Truimp mocks Star Wars fans

Some people might find these somewhat offensive, but they are remarkably funny.

In the last month, I’ve seen both Cuba and Iraq criticised on American television news for their state-sponsored celebrations of their government and leaders. The term state-sponsored is used as an insult – you know, those backwards countries where the government throws parties for themselves?

Then, this week, the CBC is all over the Golden Jubilee, which is, as far as I can gather, a state-sponsored celebration of the Queen in England. Every country does this.

I realize there is a big difference between England’s celebrations and those in Cuba and Iraq (and I’m not suggesting that Cuba and Iraq are similar either – except maybe in the eyes of the U.S. administration). The most obvious example of this difference is that those who criticise the British Monarchy aren’t thrown in jail. Also, there is a fundamental difference when a democratic government celebrates itself – since a democratic government represents the people, in theory, the people are then celebrating their own government.

Still, I find it remarkable how we in the west (and I include myself in this) are able to hold such obvious double standards.

Thank you for reading my amateurish political opinions.

As I was poking around the Apple History, trying to sponge up as much of my new heritage as possible before my iBook arrives, I stumbled across an anecdote concerning Apple’s 20th Anniversery Macintosh. It was a pricey beast at around 10,000$ but somebody wrote in with this bit, making it all seem worthwhile:

… it started at a retail of $10 K. But what this included was that a limo would deliver the Mac to your house, and a man in a Tuxedo would set it up for you… Not bad for $10 K.

Don’t they do stuff like that at Saturn?

Netscape 7 has materialized. I watched somebody try to install it, and it crashed after trying to force support of AOL’s ART format and RealPlayer onto him. Bad first impressions.

I asked Google’s new Glossary for the definition of god (an appropriate question). The first response:

Obviously, this is an impossible word to define. After all, to “define” a thing means putting boundaries around it, and God is Infinity, the very absence of boundaries.

See other cool rumblings at Google Labs.

Sooner or later somebody’s bound to win this. It has snowballed up to an estimated 34 million dollars now, and I have a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of winning a slice of 60% of it. I bought two instant picks with Tag.

The last largest Jackpot ever awarded was to a 21 year old in Ontario back in 1997. That one was a pot of 21 million dollars. This one should beat it. The big ones only ever seem to be won by one person. $16.6 million was awarded to a single person too, back in 1996.

So, I am a person. I am nearly 21. I think I’ve got this one in the bag. I guess my point is, if I win, you’re all getting coffee mugs.

I suffer from a condition that makes me sneeze when exposed to grow-lamps or the sun. For years people tried to tell us sun-sneezers that we were allergic to pollen and it was a coincidence that we sneezed outside. But we all knew that the sneeze started in the eyes somehow, we felt the sneeze trigger in our eyes.

I did a little research into this, and some scientists gave it an official name: Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst Syndrome. I can put that on my resume.

Apparently one in four people are affected by ADCHOO (get it?). I’ve only ever met like 3 people with it. Steven claims to sneeze when he combs his hair.