as many when I saw the Gillette Fusion razor ad during the SuperBowl: to wit, “five razors? Oh, come on. This is just a gimmick.” And: “Does anybody really believe that adding another razor will actually help?” And, in my defense, the ad was stupid. I mean, really. Helicopters? Someone should fire that ad agency.

But since then, I’ve seen a few objective reviews of the razor, for the most part positive, to the effect that, yes, the extra blade does indeed make for a smoother shave. Now, according to Shaverama, I learn that bloggers are the only ones who actually tried the product and reviewed it objectively. The MSM, apparently, saw it as easy target practice and wrote mostly snarky articles about the thing—not that I can really blame them in this case. And it is a powerful temptation, but taken along with the press’ (generally) extraordinarily poor execution of its duties within the past few years, their giving into the temptation is a symptom of a larger problem. But I digress.

My razor of choice is the Gillette Mach 3^*. If it weren’t for that exorbitant $10 price tag, I would go try the Fusion myself. And maybe someday I will. (Via InstaPundit)

^* Not, mind you, the Venus, the razor “specially designed” for women. I find that the Mach 3 does a better job; the Venus is poorly suited for frequent shaving. What’s that about?

that the MSM has dropped the ball, again:

There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.

The mass media that backed the plaintiffs in these cases understood that not only did a free press have a right to report on critical issues and people of the day but that citizens had a right to know about those issues and people. The mass media understood another thing: They had more than a right; they had a duty to report.

We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities.

You know the drill: read the whole thing. (Via InstaPundit)

I’m normally not a huge fan of these, but if you know me, you know I can’t resist the chance to show off (if only to myself) my vast (I am not kidding) store of trivial knowledge. Unfortunately, this vast store of trivia has made little room in my brain for anything actually useful. Sigh. Such is life. Anyway, to get on with the show:

• Fun with Movies – Try and guess the name of the movie from the single still shown.
• Fun with Movies, part 2 – Same as above, but supposed to be harder. I say “supposed to be” because I did better on this one than the first.
• 80s’ music lyric quiz – This one’s tough!
• Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? – You’ve probably seen this one around recently. The Moya from Farscape and the Nebuchadnezzar from The Matrix were tied for first for me. My lowest affinity? The Bebop (as in Cowboy Bebop). I was very sad to see that, but I know why; it was my neutral response to “You could see yourself as a bounty hunter.” Spike! I would love to be on a crew with Spike. And Ed! Sigh.

Hat tips: FreshArrival for the movie quizzes, InstaPundit for the sci-fi one, and my friend Lori for the 80s’ lyrics one.

It took me forever, but I got those new pictures edited and uploaded to Flickr. Check ‘em out!

a few weeks: I bought my copy of TextMate this morning. It’s not that SEE is bad at all, it’s just that TextMate has a vast array of tools for the programmer; everything, in fact, that I am looking for in a text editor.

• Block editing
• A file tree to enable you to switch quickly between multiple files
• Files can be opened either in tabs or new windows
• Search and replace across multiple files
• Intelligent, customizable syntax highlighting
• Line numbering
• Capability to collapse blocks
• Popup symbol menu to quickly navigate between functions in a large file
• Bracket and quote auto-pairing
• Columnar selection

This is kind of a big thing for me; I have never before found a text editor that didn’t have at least one thing I didn’t like about it or thought was missing. Really. Those guys did a great job.

It can’t be good for the bladder health of the general population. Check out today’s Penny Arcade. Ha HA!

a rock and a hard place:

A state-run newspaper reported Tuesday that Google Inc. is under investigation for operating without a proper license in China and quoted an unnamed government official as saying the Internet giant needs to cooperate further with the authorities in blocking “harmful information” from its search results.

The report, in the Beijing News, was published the same day that another state newspaper ran a harshly worded editorial about Google. The paper accused the firm of sneaking into China like an “uninvited guest” and then making a fuss about being required to follow Chinese law and cooperate in censoring search results such as pornography.

The unusually bold attacks in the state media suggest that the Chinese government is unhappy with Google’s efforts thus far to filter politically sensitive results from its popular search engine in China, and that its ability to do business in the country may be in jeopardy.

The Chinese propaganda machine is jumping on the “condemn Google” bandwagon, probably in hopes that it can score some easy political points. Which it won’t; I don’t know who they think they’re fooling.

I’ve said before that I didn’t approve of Google’s decision to agree to censor search results, but I also said that it wasn’t the end of the world that they had. With the resulting firestorm, you really have to feel bad for those guys. Assailed on one side by election-year posturing from US politicians, and the same old posturing by their Chinese counterparts on the other, it seems like Google can’t catch a break. What a PR nightmare.

A way to install Typo, the Rails-based blogging software, as an engine or plugin. This could be pretty tough to pull off, though, because currently Typo is packaged as a standalone Rails app. But wouldn’t it be cool to build a Rails app and be able to drop in full, Rails-integrated blog functionality with only a little effort?

an interesting and informative post about the latest Mac security flaw at his blog today:

Until Apple issues a patch, here’s what you can do:

• If you use Safari, immediately disable the “Open safe files after downloading” option in its general preferences.
• Never open the contents of a suspicious ZIP file, even if they seem like normal documents.
• Use the Finder’s “Get Info” command to double-check that a file’s application association has not been tampered with.

You can also try this harmless proof-of-concept to see if your system is vulnerable.

Read the whole thing.

Update 2006/02/22 16:04: For those who want the gory details, here’s another, more technical treatment of the same topic from Daring Fireball, and commentary by Leander Kahney to the effect that all this is “a storm in a teacup”.

That the scaffold generator would pick up on table relationships and data requirements from the database schema, like Django does.