Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times: Bush Vs. Women. Is the administration’s appalling record of actively trampling efforts to better the condition of women worldwide the result of

• (a) a low prioritization of women’s rights
• (b) a confusion about whether the issue is abortion or survival
• (c) a Talibanesque desire to push women worldwide back into the Stone Age?

Kristof makes an alarming case, based on the administration’s record, that the real story is closer to (c).

Happiness is... dinner on the patio for the first time in a new house. Takeout Thai food, with a chilled Languedoc and an Oregon Pinot Noir, and the company of Lisa’s parents. Music courtesy Frank Sinatra, Wynton Marsalis (Levee Low Moan, one of the few Wynton albums that breaks free of manner and drops down into the blues), and Joe Henderson. Perfect sky, sunlight slowly fading behind the hedges. Good stuff, in other words. Such a pity this only happens for three months a year.

[Originally written 8/10 but never posted due to blog error. Oh well. Never too late to update.]

A couple of quick reading notes, a la the old "Hit and Run" columns that the Suck editors used to do when they couldn't get a full piece out of any of their websurfing fun:

• I'm not the #1 Jarrett on Google, more like the #2 (#3 if you count two links on Dale Jarrett's official website). But I'm pretty far down the list on Google's Microsoft vertical search. Apparently I'm less relevant in the Microsoft world than in the web at large. Which is ironic.
• Sorbet in a ziplock bag. We've been making our own gelato and granita in a Krups countertop ice cream maker, but if you don't have the hardware this is a low cost way to go using just ice, rock salt, Ziplock bags, and juice. Illustrated by a monkey. [Boing Boing]
• The conquest of space, as it should have been. Growing up a NASA brat, I was unaware until my middle school years that all of the wonderful things in these issues of Colliers from the 50s wouldn't ever happen. Fabulous illustrations and great scientific vision. [Boing Boing]
• Vintage beer trays. I want some. [Boing Boing]
• IMbots on the IM patent. About that whole "patenting IM bots" nonsense. I was going to write something about how I had documented IRC bots back in 1993 for a linguistics paper on the Internet, but asking prior art how it feels about being ignored is much funnier. [Boing Boing]
• Ken Bereskin is back, and he brought coupons. The Apple exec's weblog went quiet for a while, but came back online this week. Today he confirmed a rumor that there would be special "family pricing" available for the Jaguar upgrade. Alas, it doesn't help if the family's five Macs are distributed across the country like mine. [Ken Bereskin's Radio Weblog]
• Don't worry about the broken SSL thing? The Register digs deeper behind the recently revealed hole in Windows client cryptography that surfaced as an SSL bug recently. Good article, points out some of the assumptions about security--and computer user intelligence--that have always been at play but that we've comfortably ignored, until now. [The Register]

Phew! Looking over this, I see it's high time I blogrolled Boing Boing. (Is that sentence English?)

Doc Searls had his Airport Base Station stolen at the LinuxWorld convention. Cory Doctorow at Boing-Boing suggests we all flow Doc a buck (to borrow a Tony Pierce-ism) using PayPal so that he can buy a new station. I've contributed, won't you? Let's show that Blogistan's generosity isn't a one-time event.

This morning I was finishing my tea and getting ready to head to work when the phone rang. It was Larry Mueller, who will be in Seattle for his grandmother's 100th birthday and wanted to catch up with us? Maybe we could do lunch? Or maybe dinner and we could put him up?

Yeah, I think we could manage that. We haven't seen Larry in a few years--since I went to b-school at MIT instead of Virginia, where Larry is director of financial aid at Darden--and I was beginning to despair of catching up with him again. Besides, we owe him. Shortly after he moved into his new home, he did us the favor of letting us stay with him before he had curtains. Well, Larry, most of our windows don't have curtains yet either, but you're welcome to stay as long as you'd like.

It's been a day of remembering why friends are important. We were unable to go rafting with Michele this weekend, much to our chagrin, and I was feeling bad that we were letting the friendship down. After all, we haven't been able to hang with Shel for a few years while on different coasts, and now we can't make it work on the same coast.

But when I got home last night there was a package from Amazon. Was it the new AV cable I ordered? No, it was addressed to Tim and Lisa. Inside was a pasta roller attachment for our Kitchenaid mixer. The note said something about "in case we ran out of the dried stuff," and was signed by our friends Charlie and Carie Page.

Of course this is the point. Friendships that are built through a long period of relationships aren't destroyed by one missed weekend. But it's a good idea not to take them for granted anyway.