Chelsea Clinton is settling in at Oxford. Her father accompanied her and, it appears, stayed away from the cameras during her photo ops.

In an interesting sidenote from the World Trade Center rescue operations, New York City officials requested that Metricom turn their Ricochet wireless service back on so that rescue workers have access to email and other online services. Metricom had turned off their service in August. A Metricom employee is monitoring the network from San Jose, and volunteers, including former employees, are helping to keep the network up and running. If Ricochet never does go operational again, I’d say this is a noble way for them to go out.

Oh the terrible food pun. We’re making buffalo meatloaf for dinner today and since it’s also the season premiere of Buffy, we’re calling it a “buffyloaf”. OK, I shouldn’t say “we”. I got a kind of eye-rolling reaction when I made the leap from “buffaloaf” to “buffyloaf”. Buffalo meat is lower in cholesterol and fat than chicken, fish, or turkey.

Search requests for “marshal” have supplanted “girl” as referrers to this website. In fact, my page views have just about tripled, as far as I can tell, only because of my discussions of the air marshals (unless my referral log is missing something — are you all coming for some other reason?). And here I go sticking even more of those words on this page.

This history of Braille begins not with Louis Braille but with an earlier Louis, King Louis the Ninth of France. He founded the first institution for the blind which still exists today as an ophthalmologic hospital and residence for the blind. The city named after him, St. Louis, is the home of the Missouri School for the Blind, the first American institution to adopt Braille. (via xBlog)

How we lost our sense of smell is an essay by A.S. Byatt. She does not shirk from discussing the more vulgar odors but also calls up warm memories of baby scents. As she discusses our artificially scented environment, she calls up literary references to strengthen her argument that we are losing our ability to make truthful use of our sense of smell.

Pete Townshend’s website has a message from him (click on “latest news”) confirming that The Who will be performing at the October 20th benefit at Madison Square Garden and giving his thoughts on New York (“my second home”) and on standing a little more to the right than he usually does “I don’t want to see unjust vengeance, but today I am a hawk rather than a dove.”

Go Pink for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month… “the illumination of worldwide landmarks in pink lights to raise awareness about breast cancer.” (including Yahoo’s front page on October 2.) Pink is my favorite color. Breast cancer research is a worthy cause for a color that makes me feel warm and comforted.

More technical difficulties today. But help is on its way. And, in the meantime, I found an article on a cat who rides a motorcycle. She “braces herself for stops, recognizes turn signals, and leans into curves. She even waits patiently at intersections—usually.” Once he didn’t notice the light had changed until she meowed loudly at him to get going.

This site was down most of yesterday, and I was home sick with an upset tummy. So I’m taking a day off from the ‘log.