The West Wing has some really good speech writers. The past few episodes have all had very well written speeches by Bartlett. Here's the latest (well delivered by Martin Sheen):

"'Joy cometh in the morning,' scripture tells us. I hope so. I don't know if life would be worth living if it didn't. And I don't yet know who set off the bomb at Kennison State. I don't know if it's one person or ten, and I don't know what they want. All I know for sure, all I know for certain, is that they weren't born wanting to do this.

There's evil in the world, there'll always be, and we can't do anything about that. But there's violence in our schools, too much mayhem in our culture, and we can do something about that.

There's not enough character, discipline, and depth in our classrooms; there aren't enough teachers in our classrooms.

There isn't nearly enough, not nearly enough, not nearly enough money in our classrooms, and we can do something about that.

We're not doing nearly enough, not nearly enough to teach our children well, and we can do better, and we must do better, and we will do better, and we will start this moment today!

They weren't born wanting to do this.

Astronomer's have discovered the biggest object since Pluto. Dubbed "Quaor," it is 800 miles across (1/10th the size of Pluto) and orbits the earth every 288 years.

We received the preclues for the game. We solved the first one quickly. It is simply just a list of VCRPlus codes. After you look them up, you fill in the appropriate time slots on a chart and you get:

protractor
compass
ruler

Original puzzle:
BUFFYPHILIA

Buffyphilia solved (well, almost):
"HUNDRED SEAPORT BLVD REDWOOD CITY"
One word unsolved: "TEN EFFS" or "STEFFEN"
(the 'S' should have been an 'I', giving FIFTEEN)

Description of puzzle: seven pages of screen captures of Buffy and Gilmore Girl episodes. On each page the screen captures are arranged in a cross. The first page serves as a link to each of the other pages. On the other pages, it is noticeable that the sizes of the images don't line up perfectly, this turns out to be the key to the puzzle (it turns out that the names of the episodes is not meaningful). The other key to the puzzle is to ignore Gilmore Girl episodes. The baseline dimension of the images is 240x180. The encoded character is determined by the offset from that size, so 241x180 = A, as does 240x181.

X - Gilmore Girls episode, ignore

Index 0: establishes baseline for character decoding
240 180
240 180
240 180
240 180
240 180
240 180

Index 1
BLVD (If you include Gilmore Girls, you get BEDEVIL, clever)
244 180 D
240 182 B
240 202 V
252 180 L
X 240 185 E
X 245 180 E
X 249 180 I

Index 2
FIFTEEN (originally decoded wrong as TEN EFFS/STEFFEN)
240 185 E
240 186 F
240 186 F
240 185 E
260 180 T
254 180 N
249 180 S (This should be an 'I')

Index 3
CITY
240 183 C
240 200 T
249 180 I
265 180 Y
x 248 180 H
x 240 199 S
x 258 180 R

Index 4
HUNDRED
254 180 N
240 185 E
240 184 D
240 188 H
261 180 U
258 180 R
244 180 D

Index 5
SEAPORT
260 180 T
240 181 A
240 185 E
240 196 P
258 180 R
255 180 O
259 180 S

Index 6
REDWOOD
258 180 R
240 195 O
240 195 O
240 184 D
263 180 W
244 180 D
245 180 E

Giants going to World Series

Another sniper shooting (seven corners)

Sniper arrested
- caught at Maryland rest stop
- sleeping in car matching description police were searching for
- John Allen Muhammad and stepson Lee Malvo (17)
- former military
- You asked us to say, 'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.' Reference to folk tale, where rabbit catches duck in noose, and is then dragged by duck into a tree stump, where it is stranded
- sniper made reference to Alabama shooting, which led to Tacoma, WA
- gun found link to shootings
- hole in trunk to shoot from

Giants even up series
- 4-3 victory on David Bell single to drive in JT Snow

Game 6 of World Series
- Giants blow 5 run lead
- lose 6-5 in final innings

Bloody end to Russian Hostage Crisis
- 750 hostages rescued
- 90 hostages killed. Many may have died from gas
- 50 hostage takers killed
- late night raid using gas

Nathaniel Osbourne held as material witness in Sniper case
- co-owner of car

- Redskins hold on to win
- waste 20 point lead

Gas killed all but one of 117 hostages in Russian theater

I separated the notes for this book into several sections. The level of detail that Stephenson put into describing the Snowcrash world is so amazing that I felt like outlining it. This section of notes describes the Metaverse.

Second set of notes for Snowcrash. This set describes the "real world" portion of Stephenson's novel.