POTD

Cap

In 2008, Ford Motor Company will debut its "capless fuel filler," eventually rolling it out to the whole product line.

Funny.

I have this apocalyptic vision of what happens to the world once we can't pump enough oil out of the ground. But my hyper-depressed visions aside, give or take 10 years, we'll surely see gasoline prices in the $8-10 per gallon range in the near future. One of the first things that we'll see is widespread gasoline syphoning.

Were I to buy an automobile, I'd want one with a giant cap and a big, honkin' lock.

Amsterdam

I'll be in Amsterdam starting Thursday, for a week. I keep forgetting to mention that. If anyone has any suggestions regarding what I should do, let me know.

POTD

Reuters

By now, I'm sure everyone has heard about Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj who clumsily used Photoshop's clone tool to enhance the smoke billowing from a building fire in Beirut.

Reuters withdrew all 920 photos from Mr. Hajj yesterday.

More and more news organizations are relying on local stringers for photos, rather than flying staffers all over the place. This is particularly true in Iraq, where conditions are much more dangerous for westerners.

I wonder if Mr. Hajj was a recently-hired stringer? It would make an interesting case for conventional journalistic training.

Java

From the Java Language Specification:

Type variable names should be pithy (single character if possible) yet evocative...

Hmm. I'm not certain that all my variable declarations stand up to the "pithy yet evocative" rule.