Couple of friends have indicted they didn't get my Pi Day post. The second square is black, for "." I think it was inspired by a child who associated numbers with colors.
The situation with North Korea reminds me of Iraq through the 90s. Iraq had no leverage, except to expel the weapons inspectors, and each time they did that, they were depicted as hiding weapons. But that's not the reason they'd typically did it -- it was simply the only way they could be heard. It got to the point where I could predict when they would kick out the inspectors and when they'd let them back in. Like if there was a regional conference that Israel was invited to and they were not, they'd kick out the inspectors to try to spoil/expose the conference -- and then let the inspectors back in before the U.S. attacked them for kicking them out.
(This shouldn't be confused with the fact that Richard Butler was the one -- as U.S. government behest -- who finally killed UNSCOM by withdrawing inspectors just before the Desert Fox bombing campaign.)
On a little road trip this weekend, Emily and I listened to a recent "This American Life" about coincidences. And we had a weird sort of coincidence on the trip. After visiting with some friends (perhaps more on that later), we swung by Grounds for Sculpture, which was founded by and and has lots of pieces by J. Seward Johnson. Now these are really kitchy sculptures which would typically would probably make me hyperventilate But -- by coincidence -- I was playing throughout the trip with panorama shots on my new carcinogenic iphone 17, will hopefully be posting more soon on flickr or tumblr. But the coincidental kicker was coming across "Luncheon of the Boating Party," as the panorama shot allowed us to get multiple Emilys in the shot -- so because I had the new gizmo, I was able to enjoy a piece I'd ordinarily have not. "No coincidence, no story."
Me: "You sell a lot of these?"
Guy behind counter: "At $200 a piece, its been a while."