Musings and rants about politics and geekery with a distinct Chicago flavor.
Hm. Did a few things this evening.
I redid my main website a little bit. Changed the background color, added some buttons, and rearranged and rewrote some content. Nothing really big, but it’s different.
I also finally used the Disk Copy application within Mac OS X to encrypt some sensitive data that I had just left out in the open before. It’s nice, because since it’s the same size (and not compressed), it essentially puts whatever data you want onto a separate ‘volume’ that you have to type a password to mount. I just feel a bit more secure having that behind another password, now, and it’s good that I know how to do it, too.
Another thing I did today was making up my Geek Code:
—–BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK—–
Version: 3.12
GJ$/PA d+>– s+:++>- a29 C++ U* P L- E—- W++ N+ !o K- w–(—) !O M+ !V
PS++(+++) PE(-) Y+@ PGP(+)@ t+(—)@ !5 X+@ !R tv+(++) b+++(++++) DI++
D(-) G e++>* h+ y?
——END GEEK CODE BLOCK——
(If you need a translation, like I would, get it here.)
I was listening to a song off Weird Al’s new album … it’s called “Why Does This Always Happen to Me?“. I’ve heard it a few times, but I was struck this time around by how clever it was. It starts out with a bit of Americana indifference … being upset at a favorite TV show being interrupted by a ’special news’ report about a tragedy. And it then progresses onwards to homicidal indifference … and in doing so, I think, draws some clever parallels. Check it out.
And this one’s pretty hilarious, too. 
Anyway, it’s late … better call it a night.
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From Roger Ebert’s Answer Man column:
Q: The Hulk never knows when he’ll be angry enough to metamorphose into a giant of extra proportions; yet whenever he does metamorphose, he always has his shorts on. I’m a science fiction fanatic, but I’ve never come across the explanation as to how the Hulk is not running around totally naked. — Her Lao, St. Paul, Minn.
A: “I’m as fascinated as you about that,” “Hulk” actor Eric Bana told the London Observer. “Obviously it’s got to do with the fact that otherwise we’d have a large green penis flopping around, and that would diminish the chances of us opening in 4,000 cinemas across the country.”
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Some more tidbits from Sun-Times columnist Zay L. Smith:
Capitol idea
This just in from the Senate Rules Committee:
“S. Res. 178, to prohibit Members of the Senate and other persons from removing art and historic objects from the Senate wing of the Capitol and Senate office buildings for personal use.”
Nice to have closed that loophole, after 214 years.
Tell it to the jury
A woman in Weymouth, Mass., after an incident of road rage:
“I don’t care who [expletive] died! I’m more important!”
Have you lately seen the time we live in summed up more succinctly?
RIAA: “Business sucks. It couldn’t be because of overpriced CDs, a lack of new talent, and lackluster releases by older artists. It must be that scary thing called technology.”
MSNBC: “Antibody could lead to AIDS vaccine.”
They must have had real fun constructing this headline.
Ever wonder what a web spun by a spider on pot, caffeine, LSD, or speed might look like? Wonder no more.
Clearing out my old bookmarks file, so here we go with a few that might be a little dated.
“Let me tell you about my life with Salam Pax.”
Funny things heard over London subway speakers.
You may get Gulf War (II) Syndrome ten years down the road, but heck, you can get free sex in the meantime!
If you’re a female family member of mine, don’t click here. For all the rest of you … yeesh!
This is an extremely beautiful thing to read. I like his stuff.
This guy’s photographs are pretty funky.
The FCC recently decided that hey, big money media conglomerates are ay-oh-kay with them, and who the heck cares about a diversity of voices in who’s feeding news and entertainment to America!
How autopsies are performed … in pure pixellation. Looks like it’s a Nintendo game.
The winners of the Privacy International Stupid Security Contest.
Have you ever thought about what your life might have been like if things had gone a little differently? If you had made a different choice? Now, scientists are saying that those worlds actually exist. Interesting reading, if a little bit technical.
It’s the Soulmate Calculator!
The Good Fairies of New York.
This is a little gross: evidently a lot of air fresheners work by not getting rid of the scent, but by anesthesizing your sense of smell.
Go ahead, have fun with this one.
I read this, and I suddenly imagine Dr. Evil saying, “I’m hip,” and doing the Macarena.
I’m not sure if I’ve blogged this already — if I haven’t, it’s a shame. This was a true travesty.
Bill O’Reilly on Al Franken: “I woulda had the cheroot, the serape, woulda given my squint, and I woulda put a bullet right between his head.”
What’s funny is that this page is a parody. Now, see their entry for the “Super Giant Ultra Manly Mega Roadbeast.” Then look at this actual military vehicle (look at the URL — it’s a military website).
Some of the wit and humor of the Honorable Alex Kozinski, who wrote that litigants in the “Barbie Girl” copyright infringement case were “advised to chill.”
Ever want to see Mario dancing to “Baby Got Back”?
Remember when Sen. Santorum made those homophobic comments? Not sure if you caught it, but the White House issued a statement after the controversy broke calling Santorum an “inclusive man.” Yet another reason that I so very much desire Bush to be out of office.
24 hours inside the soul of the Web.
Interesting and more than a little bit horrific: a brain tumor seems to have turned a man into a pedophile and sexual predator. Once the tumor was removed, “the behavior disappeared.”
Talk about the fox being put in charge of the hen coop.
You know, you wonder whether we were supposed to be over there. Whether it was a Good Thing or not. And I still do. But at the same time, I can’t help but read this and find tears coming to my eyes.
I had been thinking we should elect Dennis Kucinich as president in 2004, but now I think we should choose General Zod.
If you watched the Buffy musical episode, and you’ve read the Harry Potter books, then you’ll really like “Harry Potter and the Musical Extravaganza.”
Shamvawati Chaudhary: “The baby girl is in good health and can see with all her four eyes and sucks milk with both mouths.”
This is freaky. On September 11, watch the first five minutes that Bush knew America was under attack. It’s remarkable because he doesn’t do ANYTHING. Nor does the Secret Service. Why wasn’t he alarmed? Why weren’t his agents alarmed?
Bush-Cheney ‘04 Beta. I love how the Environmental section is one sentence long.
This is unfortunately not an Internet prank: one of the X-Men books is ‘bringing back’ Princess Di as a “mutant zombie.” This has to be the sickest thing I’ve read about in a while.
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
This is one of the coolest-looking Macs I’ve ever seen, and, no, it’s not the G5.
Another instance where big business says, “Hell, your First Amendment rights and parody rights have no validity if we don’t like what you’re saying.” In this case, it’s (no surprise) FOX News.
Nice ad.
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“Elsewhere, driven by the acceleration of computing power and connectivity and the simultaneous development of surveillance systems and tracking technologies, we are approaching a theoretical state of absolute informational transparency, one in which ‘Orwellian’ scrutiny is no longer a strictly hierarchical, top-down activity, but to some extent a democratized one. As individuals steadily lose degrees of privacy, so, too, do corporations and states.” — “The Road to Oceani”,” William Gibson
X-Statik, one of the X-Men titles, is going to bring Princess Diana back as a ‘mutant zombie.’ It’s rather sick.
This is, without a doubt, the scariest-looking convict ever. This isn’t a joke link, BTW … the guy freaks me out!
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Very amusing response to Sen. Hatch’s comments:
“This is an entirely unreasonable proposal, tantamount to a debt collector sending you two warnings that your car payment is late and then claiming that he is entitled to burn down your garage,” said EFF staff attorney Gwen Hinze.
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Microsoft offered to buy Google; they declined (thank God). Now Microsoft is trying to copy Google as closely as it can, and integrate MSN Search as tightly as they can with their OS.
MS Windows runs a 30-foot-tall, 8000-pound ride that’s strapped to an industrial robot arm. Scary.
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You know, I’m liberal for the most part. I’d love to see Bush kicked out on his ass. But this was more than a little too heavy-handed.
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Another one from Zay’s Quick Takes:
He was due
News Item: A Croatian man who survived a train crash into a river near Sarajevo, falling out of a DC-8 airliner between Zagreb and Rijeka, another train crash into a river near Split, a car fire in which his fuel tank exploded, another car fire in which a pump spewed gasoline over the engine of his car and blew flames at him through the air vents, being hit by a bus in Zagreb and crashing his car over a guardrail in the mountains after a head-on collision with a United Nations truck, wins the state lottery.
He is referred to in the news story as “the world’s luckiest man.”
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Sen. Orrin Hatch is all in favor of damaging file sharers’ computers:
During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.
“No one is interested in destroying anyone’s computer,” replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can’t.
“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.”
[...]
“If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we’d be interested in hearing about that,” Hatch said. “If that’s the only way, then I’m all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize” the seriousness of their actions, he said.
Of course, a lot of people wouldn’t turn to piracy if they could just get the damn stuff they bought to play wherever they want to. Or, as a Reuters article puts it, “A system that introduces too many limitations will most certainly end in bad PR and a consumer backlash.”
In today’s White House press briefing, someone pointed out that although the President himself doesn’t check that little box that says “do you want to contribute to the presidental election campaign fund?”, he’s going to take money from it.
You know Roe v. Wade? Well, Roe changed her mind, and she wants her own decision overturned.
Problems with your love life? Got tough times at work? Ask Gollum.
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EEP!
The government is saying that some would-be terrorists just like the good life too much.
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Well, I don’t suppose I’ll be watching “Powder” any more, since it was written and directed by a convicted child molester.
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Voice of America: “The head of the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse oversight panel in the United States has resigned. His resignation came days after he compared Catholic bishops to organized crime.”
Said Bishop Angelo “Da Knuckles” Santucci, “Nobody compares us to the Mafia and li… uh, remains in their current position.”
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Another good one from Sun-Times columnist Zay L. Smith:
Student Newspaper Correction of the Year:
“The [Washington State University] Daily Evergreen would like to sincerely apologize for an injustice served to the Filipino-American, Spanish-speaking and Catholic communities on the front page of Thursday’s Evergreen. The story ‘Filipino-American history recognized’ stated that the ‘Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza,’ the galleon on which the First Filipinos landed at Morro Bay, Calif., loosely translates to ‘The Big Ass Spanish Boat.’ It actually translates to ‘Our Lady of Good Hope.’ “
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Microsoft is no longer providing any newer versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, either for the Macintosh platform or as a stand-alone version for Windows. Todd Dominey explains why, even if you don’t use MSIE and don’t like Microsoft (both statements that describe me well), this is going to be a Very Bad Thing for the World Wide Web.
The next Shuttle mission may launch December 18.
Do you remember “Tubthumping,” the song that goes like:
I get knocked down
But I get up again
No, you’re never going
to keep me down
It’s really a kick to listen to it in French.
From the June 13, 1992 strip:
Calvin: BUH-URRRRRRRRRRRRP!
Calvin’s Mom: Good heavens, Calvin! What do you say after that?!
Calvin: Great diaphragm control, huh?
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George Bush wipes out on his Segway!
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BRITNEY’S BREASTS THROB
Britney Spears is to get a pair of pump-up breasts that will throb in time with her breathing.
A group of lucky experts are fixing the attachments to the singer to make her pole-dancing poses more raunchy.
But they won’t be getting their hands on the real thing.
The pump-up breasts are being fixed to the star’s waxwork model at Madame Tussauds in London.
Bosses want to make the ?52,000 model more realistic.
So they are hoisting it up and around a dancing pole.
Her breasts will then hang provocatively out of a skimpy top, inflating rhythmically to make it look like the singer is breathing heavily.
“For the first time we are installing balloons in her chest so her boobs heave in and out,” a spokesman told The Sun.
Britney will be the centrepeice of the museum’s new ?2m interactive room.
It will also feature a blushing J-Lo and a Brad Pitt with a squeezable bum.
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Our anti-terrorist “you can’t fly” list is based on a method called Soundex that was invented for use by the U.S. Census. This essentially means that if a terrorist with the last name of Harkey, Harries, Harsh, Herrick, Hersh, Hershey, Hiers, Hirsch, or Horrocks ever does something nasty, I’m going to get hell any time I ever try to fly. (Check your own name here.) As others have pointed out, using a method invented in 1800 to catch terrorists is not precisely … er … wise.
In Japan, teenagers have gone bonkers learning how to very quickly type in text messages on their phone. So much that they’ve designed a phone-style keyboard for computers. Amusing.
Nonprofit Organization to Foster High School: We’ll give you 30 new Macintosh computers and six laser printers.
Foster High School to N.O.: EXCELLENT!
Tukwila School District to Foster High School: Um, no. Our Information Technology program says that you can only use PCs; that way, we save money on tech support.
Foster High School to T.S.D.: WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?! ARE YOU ON DRUGS?!?!?!
[King County Journal and /. articles.]
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Wrigley’s Viagra Gum?
Second base looks like it could be quite painful.
Hey, they’re bringing “V” back!
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If you too are from the ’80s, and remember your ’80s films, then you’ll really enjoy this. The only thing I thought was missing was “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds, but that’s probably because of all the various ’80s ‘teenagers’ films, I remember “Breakfast Club” best …
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This is more than a bit fun: the state-of-the-art in 1983 …
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Rather fun PhotoShop contest: what would an alternate universe be like?
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Isn’t this a beautiful view? (Requires QuickTime.)
This is another one from Zay Smith, although I don’t have a link:
Bureaucracy’s not all bad
News Item: Latvia establishes Anti-Absurdity Bureau to investigate complaints of “the arbitrariness of those in power, the laziness of civil servants and the lack of order in national and local government.”
We might pay more attention to the Latvian model.
Not a bad idea, right? 
This quote from Bill O’Reilly is just more than a bit freaky:
What this guy writes and says does not matter to me, other than, Mike, he insulted me in a forum where I was at a decided disadvantage, you know, he went over his time limit. It was very, very sneaky, and you know, as I said at the top of the broadcast, somebody calls you a liar to your face, you don’t just laugh that off. That’s an insult. In the Old West, that woulda got you shot. See in the Old West, and I woulda loved to have been in the Old West, Al and I woulda just had a little, uh, a little shootout. You know? We woulda went out, on Wilshire Avenue, and uh, six shooters, now he’s a much smaller target than I am, about four foot eleven, but he’s wider, and it woulda been you know, Clint Eastwood time. I woulda had the cheroot, the serape, woulda given my squint, and I woulda put a bullet right between his head. Woulda been wrong, woulda been wrong, but it was the Old West, and I would not have known any better, so I wouldn’t have been held accountable because I would not have known any — now I do, now in 2003 that would have been wrong.
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Zay L. Smith’s June 5 Sun-Times column:
News Item: “The House yesterday voted 300-125 to approve an amendment to the Constitution to make it a crime to burn the U.S. flag.”
Is there any worse desecration of a flag that stands for liberty and freedom of expression than to take away the right to desecrate it, by the way?
[...]
The Group of Eight summit consumed 7,800 gallons of bottled Evian while discussing the world shortage of drinkable water.
From the June 5, 2003 Lloyd Grove column in the Washington Post:
‘Le Facteur’ O’Reilly
For the past several weeks, Fox News Channel star Bill O’Reilly has been bashing France and its government, urging viewers to boycott French products because they “lied” to and “double-crossed” the United States in the war against Saddam Hussein.
Even after the Iraqi dictator was tossed out of power, O’Reilly announced last month: “Until President [Jacques] Chirac apologizes to all Americans for putting us in danger, the boycott stays.”
But yesterday, in what might be further evidence of a spring thaw in Franco-American relations, O’Reilly had lunch at La Colline, one of Washington’s better-known French restaurants. “He had a soup and salad,” part-owner Paul Zucconi, obviously an Italian Frenchman, told us, adding that his restaurant is popular with Fox News types because it’s in the building that houses their Washington bureau. “He was eating light. He dined alone. He tipped 22 percent and was very nice.”
Fox News spokesman Robert Zimmerman, meanwhile, said O’Reilly’s boycott applies to products from France, not French cuisine being served in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
Does it really matter when you sign your credit card receipt? Evidently not really.
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Oddly enough, I’m watching “While You Were Sleeping,” and they’re replacing “putz” with “bum.” Probably because ‘putz’ is Yiddish for ‘penis,’ I think.
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You remember that guy, Salam Pax, who blogged from Iraq during the war? Well, he was this guy’s interpreter.
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Grinding Nemo.
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Matt Labash, senior writer for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard:
JournalismJobs.com: Why have conservative media outlets like The Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel become more popular in the past few years?
Matt Labash: Because they feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it’s true somewhat. We come with a strong point of view and people like point of view journalism. While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We’ve created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket. I’m glad we found it actually.
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I have a friend of mine who is coming out with an album, Songs for Dustmites, on August 12, 2003. You can listen to the album on his website.
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New York Times: “Although almost every Senate Republican voted for [an increased child tax credit to millions of low-income families who did not receive it in the new tax law], some clearly were unhappy at having to do so under what they considered public pressure from liberal groups and Democrats. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi voted for the bill, but as he did so he stuck his tongue out, put his finger in his mouth and made a gagging sound, indicating his apparent distaste for the bill.”
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Bob Harris: “Our Attorney General wants to make terrorist attacks against military bases or nuclear plants a capital offense. Obviously. Nothing deters a suicide bomber quite like the death penalty.”
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ACLU report on the newly renamed Total Terrorist “Super-Mean Bad Guys Who Want to Kill Everything You Hold Dear” Information Awareness System (which now that it’s been renamed must have absolutely no concerns for the average American, right?):
“DARPA needs to explain how the principle of individualized suspicion can be squared with a system that [...] [e]ffectively asks every American a specific question about their life every time the system is searched. For example, if a security agent were to come up with a model that includes people who have recently purchased several garden hoses, the TIA system would then have to search its database for people who fit that description. It would do so by examining every person in the database, and looking to see whether they have recently purchased garden hoses. That means that every time a query is run, a person is, in effect, being asked a question about their life by the government. Except that that query takes place in secret; looks at data that an individual might not even be aware has been collected about them; and leaves the individual no leeway in how the question is answered and no chance to explain away the presence of any flukes, errors, or unusual circumstances.”
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Forgot to note this interesting quote from the Times article (emphasis added):
“The judge also prohibited Mr. Max from ‘disclosing any stories, facts or information, notwithstanding its truth, about any intimate or sexual acts engaged in by’ Ms. Johnson.”
Disturbing.
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“Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at ‘neutralizing’ — through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture — the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam.”
U.S. District Court Judge Cougenour: “Thought-policing is not a compelling state interest recognized by the First Amendment.”
West Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge Diana Lewis, however, doesn’t seem to feel the same way. This guy wrote a horribly nasty story about a Miss Vermont (whose site is one of the most sickeningly saccharine things I’ve ever seen), and she was able to get it blocked by a district court judge. She should’ve done it through the libel route … but the way it was done by the judge just violates the First Amendment all over the place. (See this New York Times article. She is even trying to forbid him from talking about the case and having the court file sealed!) The guy, however, is perhaps the biggest slimeball I’ve ever seen (and evidently, unfortunately, a Chicagoan) — perhaps the most misogynistic bastard I’ve ever seen — and sorely tests my belief in one of my favorite quotes, which, interestingly, turns out not to be from Voltaire.
Something I never knew: “Utah is an odd state. It’s almost as large as the U.K., but because of the way it was settled by the Mormons, roughly 75 percent of its two million people live on less than 1 percent of that land, a narrow band defined by Interstate 15 from Ogden in the north to Provo in the south. Only about 10 km wide, the corridor is an ideal market if your goal is to provide wireless broadband to as many people as possible as cheaply as possible.“
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Remember when I posted the Onion article?
Well, from a real interview with Homeland Security director Tom Ridge:
Don, from Washington DC writes:
Terrorists, Iraq, Homeland Security… all well and good, but here’s what I want to know… Eagles or the Steelers?
Tom Ridge
Born in Pittsburgh, you know the answer….
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