From the WedLog of the just married BackupBrains: Dr Seuss Wedding Vows. It gets old real fast, but it’s an amusing concept. And in other wedding news, Crate & Barrel finally added online registry updating and creation. Thank goodness.

Princeton has selected Dr. Shirley M. Tilghman, a molecular biologist, to be its next president, making this a landmark year for Ivy League women leaders. UPenn and Brown are also welcoming female presidents this year. Dr. Tilghman was originally on the search committee, but was asked to become a candidate, and she appears to be a fine, progressive choice. Here, from the NY Times article, are some of her opinions: “She has argued to abolish tenure, calling it ‘no friend to women’ because the trial period leading up to the tenure decision usually coincides with childbearing years, pressuring many women to choose between a family and career.”, “Dr. Tilghman has also said that the federal government should deny funding to scientific meetings that do not include women on their panels of presenters.”, “She recently argued to the Bush administration to continue funding for stem-cell research despite the protests of abortion rights opponents.” I hope she doesn’t have too many staunch opponents in the traditional old boys network, because she could spearhead much positive change, not just for women, but also for genetic research, which is facing many conservative political arguments.

The NIST Stone Test Wall was built in 1948 to study how natural stones withstand the great outdoors. The website has a database of the stones by state, and I found a stone in there from Norwalk, Connecticut. There are 2352 samples, 320 of which are from foreign countries. (via Yahoo’s Weekly Picks)

Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD festival is back this summer and tickets for the Seattle event go on sale today. I attended WOMAD, which stands for “world of music and dance”, in San Francisco about eight or so years ago. Tons of people (we said “moo” a lot as we were herded around), but the music was wonderful, and hearing Peter Gabriel is always an ear-filling experience. It is truly a global festival and the locations this year hit most of the continents and a couple islands too.

Huh. The Seattle Times collected data from the state DMV and calculated what cars were over and under-represented in each zip code in Western Washington. I don’t know much about the Seattle region, but I know what’s in Redmond, and its residents seem to really like Land Rovers.

Metricom, better known as the provider of the Ricochet wireless service, is still hanging in there. They are making a last ditch marketing effort to attract customers. An analyst who doesn’t mince words says that their 40,900 member subscriber base is “effectively zero customers.” Ouch. Their original plan was to save marketing dollars for building out their infrastructure. But they probably should’ve seen if they could get one area serviced well before building access in more cities. It’s a tough logistic though; business travelers need more service areas. But with more cafes and public areas providing wireless ‘net access, like Starbucks’ deal with Compaq, is a Metricom network necessary? In my view of the future, you can pretty much go anywhere (a friend’s house, cafe, restaurant, mall, work, library, park, train, airport, etc) with your wireless enabled device and get online without needing an account, or to pay for anything (‘cept maybe a frappuchino).

Surprisingly, the SF Bay Area is not one of the “Enhanced Areas” for the California automobile smog check program. The L.A. area is, which is understandable, and there are these little spots in areas that I’m not as familiar with. I guess I should count myself lucky that I’m not living in one of the smoggiest areas of the state, but there are days when I wonder! The enhanced test includes a single-axle dynamometer (like a treadmill for cars), which can’t be used with all wheel drive cars. I have an AWD Subaru, so I need to pay attention to these things in case I get a clueless technician, but my zip code is still idle test only.

Update on my PalmVx: After it dried out, it seemed to work for a while. But the digitizer started being flaky and sometimes it would only register pen taps on one section of the screen, no matter where I was tapping. And then the on/off button started being stubborn. It’s a little scary when you can’t turn something off (and, in the case of the Vx, you can’t just take the batteries out!), even if it isn’t causing any damage. So, I called “customer care” and they are sending me a replacement and mine is going to go back for repairs (and probably get sent out to the next person who lives dangerously with liquids).

May Day in the USA: A Forgotten History. “Few Americans realize that the seemingly foreign celebrations of labor held worldwide on May 1st actually commemorate historical events here in the United States. … On May 1st, 1886, the American Federation of Labor declared a national strike to demand an eight-hour work day and 350,000 workers across the country responded.” (of course there are also the pagan roots of May Day)

My cat is obsessed with the neighbors. She’ll watch them through the slits of the blinds and, when something (apparently) fascinating happens, she’ll run outside to the balcony to get a better look. Do they have a cat or a bird or something? I’m too meek to stare at them myself (it’s enough, really, that my meower is voyeur).