Musings and rants about politics and geekery with a distinct Chicago flavor.
A federal judge has decided that Americans must always show identification from here on out to travel on an airline, dismissing John Gilmore’s lawsuit.
Evidently, the nice folks over at al Qaeda considered blowing up my town on September 11, 2001. Some really shocking news about how their original plans encompassed a two-coast attack:
Sears Tower in Chicago and Library Tower in Los Angeles — which was “blown up” in the film Independence Day — were both potential targets, according to transcripts of interrogations of al-Qa’ida operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. “We were looking for symbols of economic might,” he told his captors.
I believe the two words I’m most struggling for right about now are “holy shit” …
I posted this to Slashdot — let’s see if they post it:
9/11 Originally to Be Bicoastal, 10-Target Attack
The Australian reported today that al Qaeda’s chief of operations, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, says that they originally had planned a massive bicoastal attack against ten targets on September 11, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago, as well as a later possible attack against Heathrow (in the UK). Zacarias Moussaoui, the article states, was evidently not the “20th hijacker,” but instead was part of the alleged second wave. The interview also reveals that Bin Laden got the idea for attacking a New York skyscraper when he visited the Empire State Building in 1982.
Virgin Airlines lends iPods to its passengers. Classy!
Okay, April Fool’s joke articles are cute, but people are just jumping the gun.
Ahem. To use the phrase that Monsieur Butthead (or was it Monsieur Beavis?) coined, “Huh huh. Huh huh. Huh huh.”
I am so fucking glad to finally see a blogger who doesn’t just cave in to a cease-and-desist letter! Way to go, Gavin!
*tickled-pink-chuckle* You spam, you get caught, you get your Porsche auctioned off by those you spammed. Possibly the only time I ever found myself enjoying something AOL did.
*more-tickled-pink-chuckle* Bush’s re-election website used to have a program on there that would let you create your own slogan with a Bush/Cheney 2004 logo, presumably for signs, etc., like “American Skinheads for Bush/Cheney 2004″, etc. Only problem is that … well, people came up with more of that kind of slogan than legitimate ones. The campaign took it down, but not before some really great slogans got made up. And the music was just the best choice for it. Couldn’t stop laughing … 
The Statue of Liberty will evidently be a little more visitable. I am not going to agree what the Interior Secretary is saying and saying that it’s going to be “reopened.”
Seven medical myths debunked.
A professor says that that kid you always knew who picked his nose and ate the boogers was actually probably helping keep himself healthy and his immune system strong. Okay …
“All personnel beyond this point subject to anal trauma from helldemons,” and other classics.
Wow. The thief actually returned the money. That’s kind of heartening.
Jan Berry, who became popular for such hits as “Dead Man’s Curve” and “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” died.
The Lord of the Rings … slightly condensed.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!
What the hell happened to Mario, Pooh, Tigger, and, ye frickin’ gods, Pac-Man?
Way to go, lady in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania!
Normally, my ability to sniff out a parody is pretty astute. As far as I can tell, as outlandish as this may be (note the columnist’s biogrpahy), this isn’t a parody. And ten to one, he’ll be the chairman of the RNC in about 15 years. Of course, for commentary on WorldNetDaily, you should look at this, including the comments.
Note to self: try this.
The Federal Drug Administration’s “Gallery of Nostrums.”
You’ve come a long way, baby.
“Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods, Batman!”
America’s creating a terrorism database that’ll be available to the private sector. I can just imagine if someone accidentally gets on this list …
Pinky appears to be a Bad Cat.
Did you ever hear of the Stanford Prison Experiment? It’s pretty amazing. And this is pretty interesting, especially in consideration of conscientious objectors …
And just because my sister and I have known this for ages … the Hampster Dance (now a big overhyped commercial site — kinda sad, really) is a rip-off of a Roger Miller tune called “Whistle Stop,” best known for being in Disney’s 1973 animated version of “Robin Hood.” Compare original and hampster. Of course, for true commentary, check out “How HamsterDance Stole My Soul.”
And, I am one sick fuck … go here (on their own bloody site!), and you can “drag the hampsters” to unusual positions as they dance. 
Particularly apt since one of the lyrics on the new song is “grab your friends and take a chance.” *rolls eyes*
For the fun of it, I submitted this review for their latest CD:
Fall on your knees, oh, hear the angel voices …
A musical compositional style not seen since the days of Beethoven. A skill at instrumentation not seen since the days of Hendrix. A philosophical message that combines the wisest teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. A voice of such beauty that could not be bested by Kathleen Battle, Josh Groban, or Luciano Pavarotti. This is the music sung by these hampsters, and our culture has been deeply enrichened by their contribution to American … nay, global … culture. World peace cannot be far away once we all learn to “sing a simple song,” the simple song known as the Hampster Dance. Rejoice!
Obviously, I was being just a TAD tongue-in-cheek. Just call me someone who aspires to Henry Raddick’s style …
In Australia, a woman was billed $1,100 for a 5-minute visit by an obstetrician, even though he didn’t deliver the baby.
God, what a stick up their heinie …
Oh, my dear God … I just am so glad I was born a male after looking through some of these photographs. Holy crap. And I have to admit that this series of photographs on the same site really led me to become quite shaken about what had formerly been mostly an intellectual concept (the concept of abortion); although I still believe in a woman’s right to choose, I must admit that they gave me extremely heavy pause.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I am incredibly respectful of Mr. Clarke after he said this at the September 11 hearings:
“I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11. To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask — once all the facts are out — for your understanding and for your forgiveness.”
I cannot believe that FOX News and the Bush Administration violated reporter-story confidentiality just to do an ad hominem attack against him.
Holy shit. Hope the media picks up this story.
The photograph is freaky enough. The caption pushes it to whole new levels of creepiness.
Bystander: “Hey everybody. It’s Richard Simmons. Let’s drop our bags and rock to the ’50s.”
Richard Simmons: *SLAP*
The Monty Python guys are now my heroes.
This is pretty cool.
Pardon me for being a bit crude, but are you a woman who lives in Georgia who has pierced her genitals? Congratulations, your state legislature just made you a criminal.
“What? I’ve never seen such a thing. I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing.” — Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Jessamyn: “On Saturday night, her umbilical cord stump fell off. And as you can see, she’s already learned her first obscene gesture. She’s growing up so fast.”
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper writes about the FCC’s increased powers to censor (via the levying of incredibly heavy fines).
An interesting comment from the (female!) designer of the infamous Kisses urinal.
Goofy is, officially, a dog. Which makes it a bit weird that Pluto was an animal, but Goofy was humanoid …
*amused look* The CEO of RealNetworks is saying that Apple will “shrivel” if it doesn’t do something he’s proposing. And this thing would play right into his company’s hands. It’s kind of like Microsoft saying, “Apple, you’ll just shrivel if you don’t license Windows from us as your operating system.”
Weird.
Evidently, if you see “SSSS” on your boarding pass, get there early. Damn early.
Technology columnist Dan Gillmor brings up an interesting issue about Google, but I have to agree with the comment made by his first commenter, Barry.
An interesting look at how Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind actually got most of its science right.
Heh. How about that. George Bush was a uniter …
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I want to write this, but I’m not sure where it will go. Maybe to Dr. Zuskar, at least, and maybe to my LiveJournal under a privacy lock. Maybe to Mom and Laura, too.
It was just a very profound and sad and yet absolutely stealing my breath away moment.
I was walking home, and I had just seen “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” And I was imagining talking with Clementine, because Clementine is enough of a one-off off of Erin that I don’t feel like I’m harboring old fugitives in my head when I use her as a mental image to talk to. She just feels right. She feels like a female free spirit but different enough from Erin.
And she’s talking with me about the thoughts of the day — about approaching this girl named Ursula who worked at the comic store, and about how there was some interplay, and telling me I didn’t blow it and that it’s okay to play it casual, and how if I interact with women more, then individual encounters won’t feel like such end-alls and be-alls.
And she talked to me about a medical thing that just had reoccurred that evening that I wasn’t happy about, and she explained about how it wasn’t something to freak out about. All of this, of course, I knew was just another side of me talking to myself.
Butthen this imaginary Clementine just moved and stood in front of me and reached up and put her arms around my neck, and looked in my eyes, and said, “Just hang on. I am out there. Just wait for me and keep trying.”
And it was just such a directly unexpected thing that she disappeared and I literally stopped walking and put my hand to my chest. I was just stunned.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Absolutely damn spot-on analysis of all that is wrong with Enterprise and Trek in general nowadays. Fave excerpts:
Jean-Luc Picard is not Chow Yun-Fat. He does not dive down corridors, taking out a hail of enemies with a gun in each hand. Since when does the cerebral diplomat of my youth drive dune buggies?
Remember Scott Bakula, that guy from Quantum Leap? The funny, clever hero who survived the most desperate or embarassing of situations with aw-shucks charm? Well, Enterprise doesn’t. Bakula’s Captain Archer honestly looks like he’s walking around with a dilithium rod up his port nacelle.
Especially when [T'Pol] and her spectacular cleavage seem to be confined to the role of Officer In Charge Of Strategically Leaning Forward At Every Opportunity.
I’m all for using science fiction as a means to discuss complicated real-world issues. The problem with Enterprise is that subtlety apparently does not exist in the 23rd century. The writers drag out their clumsy, tinfoil-covered version of some real world event and agonize through all its most obvious aspects, all the while declaring, “Look! We’re being relevant! Relevant, damn you!”
For instance, there’s the enigmatic parable that concluded Enterprise’s second season, involving Evil Space Terrorists who come out of nowhere and launch a devastating killer laser beam that leaves an ugly scar clean across the United States. Gee, I wonder what that could be referring to. It’s ghastly enough for Star Trek to so ham-fistedly exploit such an enormous real-world tragedy. But the path the show has taken since — transforming the Enterprise from an exploratory vessel into a warship hellbent on vengance — feels like a violation of the peaceful spirit that’s defined the series from its earliest carboard-and-model-glue days. [...]
It’s cheesy, but it’s true — Star Trek used to tell us that we were better than hate. That the future was a hopeful place. And that even when we had to defend ourselves, we could still find something in our enemies to relate to.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Quick Takes:
News Item: Scientists say they may have produced a pentaquark consisting of two up quarks, two down quarks and an anti-charm quark.
If our scientists were starting to just make this stuff up, how would we know?
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Dennis Miller is just atrocious in this clip. As Neil Gaiman wrote about it, “It’s not about politics, it’s about professionalism.”
Another Kitty & Robot comic …
Wil Wheaton talks about recording voice work at Walt Disney Animation. Heh heh heh. Hey, if Maurice LaMarche (a.k.a. the Brain, of Pinky and the Brain) was in the same room as I, and Tia Carrere walked by me, I’d be saying, “Don’t go fanboy. Don’t go fanboy. Don’t go fanboy,” too.
“Letters I Wrote in My Head“: fucking hilarious. My favorite was the reference to “the white Ford Extinction” SUV.
I just saw Kevin Smith’s guest spot on Yes, Dear — worked in a Ben Affleck reference while he was at it. But mark me down as really surprised — GodDAMN that guy has a bald spot! No idea why I’m happy about it, either, except perhaps that misery loves company.
What some people will do for an iPod …
Hey! My iBook G3 still does just fine, Mr. Trump …
Candidate for worst yet best pun award goes to …
Boy, SOMEBODY ticked off the Bush Administration …
Very interesting interview with Kevin Smith about his latest flick. Very honest, yet very clever.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Did some conversions to my system this morning. I killed the Dock and replaced it with a registered version of DragThing. That is taking a little getting used to, but I think overall it’s going to work out well.
I also decided to convert entirely over to Safari. Camino’s development is just too glacial, even in the nightly builds, and Safari has far better handling of Flash and other external media, and is very, very quick. Plus, plug-ins and third-party applications are addressing a lot of things I wanted to handle, such as alphabetizing bookmarks, Mozilla-style keywords, and saving of tab sessions.
Also, never mentioned here that my boss, Sherry Pethers, got elected last Tuesday to the Cook County bench. By an extremely thin margin, though: about 51 votes out of a 39,300-vote race. Hoping that it holds up on resampling and through various other things that need to be conducted, but if it turns out that it carries through, I can’t think of anyone who deserves more to be a judge. Very fair-minded and salt-of-the-earth.
Interesting useful tidbit. If you want to monitor a friend’s LiveJournal through RSS, but they limit their journal to friends-only, you can monitor it by putting the feed URL in this format:
http://[username]:[password]@www.livejournal.com/users/[friend's username]/data/rss?auth=digest
AOL is going to start blocking its users’ access to spammer websites. It’s interesting. I can see where they’re going with that, but as the linked article points out, this may set a very bad precedent.
I’m not sure if I’ll be buying Mac OS 10.4 … probably, I will. But this user interface improvement sounds like it might be real interesting to play with.
Very high freak-out value on this photograph, be warned. Icky icky icky big-ass bug.
South Carolina wrote it into their bleedin’ state Constitution that bars can only serve liquor out of minibottles. John & Belle discuss the havoc that ensues.
Very, very humorous moment with the new Doctor Who and the BBC.
This is a very interesting, very puzzling, and slightly gross cartoon. Insight appreciated, if anyone has any.
Bleedin’ amazin’ Arctic 3D panorama.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
, LiveJournalist extraordinaire, put this song on a mix for me, and I have to admit I just crack up at how cruel the lyrics are — and it’s this happy reggae number!
Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy
Kid Creole & The Coconuts
They say that all is fair
in love and war
and child, believe it
When mama stayed
in St. Tropez,
she had a fall or two
And I’m telling it
to you straight
So you don’t have
to hear it in another way
Oh Annie
I’m not your daddy
Oh Annie
I’m not your daddy
They say that out of sight
is out of mind
and child, believe it
Your mama was
in search of love,
but all she got
was used
And I’m telling it
to your face
So you don’t have
to hear it in another place
(Break it to me
gently now
Don’t forget,
I’m just a child)
Oh Annie
I’m not your daddy
(mama’s baby, papa’s baby)
Oh Annie
I’m not your daddy
(mama’s baby, papa’s baby)
See, if I was in your blood
then you wouldn’t be so ugly
OH!
(Ana. Mana. Ana-mana-pee-ah.
Ana. Mana. Ana-mana-pee-ah.
Ana. Mana. Ana-mana-pee-ah.
Ana. Mana. Ana-mana-pee-ah.
Ana. Mana. Ana-mana-pee-ah.
Ana. Mana. Ana-mana-pee-ah.
Ana. Mana. Ana-mana-pee-ah.
Ana. Mana.)
And I’m telling it
to you straight
So you don’t have
to hear it in another way
(Break it to me
gently now
Don’t forget,
I’m just a child)
Oh Annie
I’m not your daddy
(papa’s baby, papa’s baby)
Oh Annie
I’m not your daddy
(papa’s baby, papa’s baby)
I love this one, too … what Will Ferrell and Jack Black performed at the Oscars:
Jack Black: Songs have a magical power to transport us to a different time and place.
Will Ferrell: There is no greater weapon in a director’s arsenal than a strategically placed song.
[audience laughter]
Jack Black: But there’s one song that nobody wants to hear, [music starts] the song they play when your acceptance speech has gone on too long. That’s the song. That one.
Will Ferrell: And did you know … it actually has lyrics?
YOU’RE BORING
Will Ferrell:
This is it,
your time is through,
Jack Black:
You’re boring …
You’re rambling on,
no end in sight,
Will Ferrell:
You’re boring …
Jack Black:
No need to thank
your parakeet,
Will Ferrell & Jack Black:
You’re boring …
Will Ferrell:
Look at Catherine
Zeta-Jones …
Will Ferrell & Jack Black:
She’s snoring …
Jack Black:
You could have rushed
up to the stage,
but you were lollygagging …
Will Ferrell:
They’re turning off
your microphone
and cutting to
a commercial for
Del Taco …
Jack Black:
Del TAH-co …
Will Ferrell:
Del TAH-co …
Will Ferrell & Jack Black:
(triumphantly)
Del-TAH-ah-ah-ah-TAH-ah-ah-ah-coooooooooooooooo ….
Jack Black:
YEAH!
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I love Neil’s writings for Tori’s Strange Little Girls album. If you’ve not read it before, check it out.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Bush’s campaign sells fleece pullovers made in Burma. Only problem is that Bush outlawed imports from Burma. So his campaign is breaking the law.
Members of the House of Representatives have introduced legislation that would allow them to overturn a Supreme Court decision. Which, as Michael Hanscom points out, creates this problem:
If Congress passes the bill, then the Supreme Court declares it unconstitutional … then Congress overturns their ruling? That’s where my brain starts to hurt.
Fantastically excellent moment where Rumsfeld is caught just flat-out lying on CBS’ Face the Nation.
A friend of mine pointed out this rather amazing document. It is an agenda for a meeting of the National Security Council that discusses a “political-military plan for post-Saddam Iraq.” Why, Mike, you say, that’s not odd at all. They had to plan for what they’d do after the invasion. Would your reaction remain the same if I told you that the agenda was dated February 1, 2001?
William Hung, of “American Idol” camp fame (he’s the Asian-American who did the hilariously bad rendition of “She Bangs”), can now be found on the iTunes Music Store.
A pretty amazing CEO. Too bad JetBlue doesn’t service Chicago — I’d love to try them out.
I can’t believe that there’s a study about this. Funny thing is, I used to have a Super Nintendo 64 and play Tetris for hours. And I would find myself dreaming about the puzzles occasionally. Interesting!
Sedna. Whether it finally ends up being classified as a 10th planet or not, it’s nevertheless quite interesting.
The very first use of colon-dash-parenthesis … the smiley.
Rhea County, Tennessee annually celebrates the 1925 conviction of John T. Snopes for teaching evolution — and they just passed a resolution asking Tennessee to amend its criminal code to make homosexuality a “crime against nature.” What a bunch of assholes! (Guess the world spotlight made them reverse themselves pretty damn quick.)
Oh, my God. What a fricking stupid idea.
But this contains some practically visionary ideas about what a PDA really should do.
A very good article in the Boston Phoenix (that one of my commenters pointed out) about how some of the attacks on our civil liberties attack the very structure of civil liberties that allow us to keep an eye on our government. A few excerpts:
In a world where many governments have the power “to lock them up and throw away the key,” habeas [corpus] requires the judiciary to keep a spare key. In fact, the check habeas provides on executive detention powers doesn’t stop with the courts: the US Constitution grants power to suspend the writ only to Congress, and even then only in the event of “rebellion or invasion.”
In words reminiscent of Orwellian Newspeak, the DOJ responded to Padilla’s habeas corpus petition this way:
“The Court owes the executive branch great deference in matters of national security and military affairs, and deference is particularly warranted in respect to the exceptionally sensitive and important determination [of enemy-combatant status] at issue here.”
In other words, a constitutional right that only Congress can suspend and that assures an arrestee judicial review can be thwarted solely on the say-so of the branch holding him prisoner — and that for the judiciary to second-guess the jailer is a violation of the separation of powers!
Besides, there is nothing under this new system to stop prosecutors from re-imprisoning the defendant even after a trial in which the defendant has prevailed. In civilian criminal prosecutions, the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against double jeopardy would prevent such an abuse. But no such prohibition exists for post-acquittal enemy-combatant” detentions. Thus, a terror suspect could stand trial and be acquitted by a jury, but subsequently be forced back into military custody as an enemy combatant. This power to re-arrest after acquittal recalls one particularly noxious historical example: in Nazi Germany, on the rare occasions when the Volksgerichtshof (”People’s Court”) failed to find a defendant guilty, the Gestapo would often take the prisoner into “preventive detention” immediately after the verdict — sometimes even before the defendant had left the courtroom. A nation need not be as deeply evil as Nazi Germany to make a mockery of justice by embracing such a device.
A musical version of The Lord of the Rings is evidently in the works. This guy has some great lyrics, but these are hilarious. I especially liked “Uruk-hai Songs For Uruk-hai Orcs.”
Good for Kris.
An interesting editorial about why it may not be a bad idea to send tech jobs overseas at times. It managed to get me to reconsider a preconceived opinion I had, and for that, I give it credit.
Pretty cool song: “You Ain’t A Cowboy.”
A incredibly good, yet fokkin’ weird, short story by actor, writer, and blogger Wil Wheaton: “A Stout Heart.”
Very amusing critique of American Idol by Phillip Michaels, one of the more talented Vidiots.
Poker techniques, looked through the lens of Star Trek alien races.
AWWWWWWWWWWWW.
I actually feel bad for Courtney Love here. This is really just a blatant invasion of her privacy, and yes, she’s a celebrity, and a slightly scuzzy one at that, but she still deserves a personal life out of the public’s eye.
Some incredibly interesting bits of urban history — the Pink Lady and Skinner’s daughter (the psychologist, not the Simpsons character). Never heard of those before.
Until I reached the small print at the very end, I was reading this webpage and practically panicking at how godawful it was …
Could you imagine how awful it would be if someone tried to claim a trademark on the word “denim,” or “khaki,” or … ? Australians are facing that very problem.
Um, yeah, I’m so sure that this is an artificial intelligence talking. *rolls eyes*
Your circulatory system as a roadmap.
Check the operating systems’ interfaces out. Cool.
The top 100 mispronounced words of the English language.
Great piece by Paul Ford, “What Were They Thinking?“. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrr-buckle.
I like this:
News Item: Vice President Cheney tells gathering at Ronald Reagan Library that “it is our business” and “we have a right to know” which foreign leaders John Kerry conferred with in arriving at his claim that many foreign leaders favor his election as president.
News Item: Vice President Cheney, immediately after speech, releases the names of those he conferred with during meetings of his secret energy task force, saying, “Fair is fair. We won’t ask our opponents to do something we wouldn’t do ourselves.”
Sorry. Made the second one up.
(adult link) That is one creepy-looking breast.
A little boy netted his family $100,000 just by spilling remote batteries out onto the floor.
I wouldn’t want to eat there, but spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam …
“What’s a vehicle compared to a life?” What a hero!
Buy some Soviet nuclear missle keys.
It’s Star Wars: the Musical.
How interesting. Someone discusses how their local library let them “borrow” an e-book (Neil Gaiman’s Coraline). Pretty cool!
There is a 67% chance of God existing, evidently.
Ewwwwwwwwwwww.
Some amazing photographs from Iraq.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Yes, we now have Apprentice remixes, “You’re F-F-F-Fired” and “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.” The latter even has a music video. In case you ever wanted to hear Donald Trump mixed into a techno remix. *blink*
Hey, hey, hey! Not so fast!
The Gospel of Debbie.
“[A] ridiculous, spastic boogie that looked like the sort of jig the Fat Elvis might have danced once or twice when he inadvertently misplaced his stash of bennies.” (WMV)
Ars Technica Newsdesk: “What hasn’t been talked about are the dangers of building backdoors in principle. Can anything be secure when there’s a built-in method for bypassing security? What’s to stop, say, the FBI’s proposed backdoors from becoming the new pot of gold at the end of some hacker’s rainbow, or, dare I say it, a terrorist’s, for that matter? And what’s the use of this when any criminal with a clue would just use strong encryption?”
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
The testimony of a Vietnam veteran before Congress against the Flag Desecration Amendment. His testimony is well thought out and incredibly eloquent.
Is our collective interest better served by amending the Constitution to protect a piece of cloth than by helping spouses understand and cope with the consequences of their loved ones’ horrible and still very real combat experiences? Are we to turn our backs on the needs of children whose lives have been affected by their parents’ military service? The Agent Orange Benefits Act of 1996 was a good start, but we shouldn’t stop there. Veterans of Gulf War I are still left languishing, uncertain if their service exposed them to insidious health threatening contaminants. Does our obligation to our current combatants extend beyond labeling them heroes? Is our obligation to protect the flag greater, more righteous, more just, and more moral, than our obligation to help veterans and their families? I think not.
I respectfully submit that this assault on First Amendment freedoms in the name of protecting anything is incorrect and unjust.
Generate your own “Law & Order” plot …
A lot of humorous metaobservations on stock characters, plots, and sitcom twists.
A woman’s repeated brushes with fame when she gets assigned comedian Chris Rock’s old cell phone number. She talks with Adam Sandler, directors Spike Lee and Ken Burns, and others …
An amazing photograph of a human’s hand and a chimpanzee’s hand, next to each other. It’s really an amazing shot, especially because I had no idea that a chimpanzee’s hand looked so human.
Proof that even the New York Times is abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to censor things it doesn’t like. Shame on you, New York Times. Proof positive, I suppose, that media conglomerates don’t like to be challenged. *sigh*
A cheat code for an automobile? Weird.
Last night, I watched “Wonderfalls,” and really enjoyed it. And the countdown towards its cancellation thus begins … *sigh*
New York and Wisconsin have pulled out of the Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange program (also known as the Matrix — no, I’m serious):
With access to the Matrix database, law enforcement investigators can look up vast amounts of personal information culled from government and commercial databases. The information includes driver’s license pictures, addresses, professional licenses, names of neighbors and relatives, and even domain-name registration filings and hunting licenses.
Participating states agree to regularly feed their automobile and driver’s license databases into a centralized computer, which is housed in Florida and run by a private data firm, Seisint.
FBI to FCC: “Yeah, can we have a backdoor to pretty much everything on the Internet?”
A little creepy: the March 11 attacks in Spain? They happened 911 days after 9/11. Nope. 912 days. Thanks, .
“Whatever happens, we’re Nimrods and proud of it.”
Tamar Sherman saw a dog left out in the cold, pet it, and gave it some water. Its owner had her arrested for trespassing and prowling. And her owner was, of course, an attorney.
From Thursday’s Quick Takes column:
News Item: Physicists for the new Heavy Ion Collider being prepared at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, when confronted with concerns that it might (1) create a black hole into which we would all disappear, (2) create a quantum vacuum collapse that would send a ring of destruction out into the universe at the speed of light or (3) cause quarks to assemble into a “hungry strangelet” that would cause a chain reaction consuming the planet, reassure the public that any of these results would be “very, very unlikely.”
And to think some of you were worried.
Oh, man. This is the guy I’m voting for?
China confirms that no, you can’t see the Great Wall of China from space.
The Justice Department Inspector General says that Rummie kept a piece of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Asshat.
These guys really must not get much sex.
Eeeeep.
The Exorcist. In 30 seconds. Re-enacted by cartoon bunnies.
Good point — if fundamentalists believe that every word in the Bible is gospel truth (pardon the pun), then why do they eat shrimp?
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Excuse me. My mind just blew up into itty-bitty fragments. (Yes, I noted her preferences. No, I don’t know why guys get a kick out of it.)
Think Kerry flip-flops? Hey, how about Bush?
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Just wanted to pass along this piece on the perils of e-voting by Jonah Petri, nestled inside the comments of one of Dan Gillmor’s scribes:
Just wanted to pass along my experience voting in Santa Clara county (for those non-Californians, it is nestled just south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley)
When I arrived at the polling place, the line was pleasantly short. After giving my name and address to the poll worker, I was given a plastic card, and told to approach a voting machine.
The voting system prompted me to insert the card, and then led me through the voting process. About halfway through, I realized that I had forgotten to tell the poll worker that though I was registered as non-partisan, I wanted to vote as a Democrat for this primary. I alerted one of the poll workers, who approached me. I informed her of my predicament, and she told me to “just take the card out”. I tried this, but the machine had a firm grasp on the card, and I was unable to remove it. I again summoned the poll worker, and along with her came a man who later identified himself simply as “an observer”.
This “observer” told the poll worker that since he was not allowed to touch the machines, he would tell her how to recover the card, and restart the voting process. He started directing the poll worker through a complicated series of maneuvers, including pushing buttons both on the screen and on the rear of the machine. Apparently unsatisfied with the poll worker’s efforts, he then motioned her aside and began performing the procedure himself. “I’m not allowed to touch these, you know… Touch, touch, touch,” he said to me, as he was pushing the same buttons as the poll worker had, with an identical lack of success.
Seeing that he seemed to know something more than he was letting on, I asked him if he was from the vendor of the voting machines. He responded, “No, I’m just an observer.” He asked me if I had any tweezers. I told him that I did not. He asked the same thing of the poll worker, but she responded that “they hadn’t been given any”. He then took a paper clip out of his pocket, unfolded it, and began jamming it into the card reader slot, trying to pry the card out. When that failed, he pulled a folding pocket knife out of his pants, found the nail file tool, and began jamming at the card with that. This continued for nearly 10 minutes, while the poll worker and I looked on.
Mercifully, the poll worker decided to intervene and successfully used her own fingernails to scrape the card out of the machine. She then reprogrammed the card to use the ballot which I wanted, and I was able to complete my vote.
Do these guys test their software? Had no one thought of this usage error? I have pretty much zero confidence that all of the votes in my county were counted correctly… FWIW we were using Sequoia machines, but they’re all the same to me… Can someone please clue them in to optical scan ballots? They have all of the benefits, none of the ugly side effects.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I have a pretty high tolerance for horror. However, this online film creeped the blippin’ flippin’ hell out of me.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I really, really love this image.
This strikes me as extremely frightening for the future of democracy. I do not exaggerate.
Was the Great Chicago Fire caused not by Ms. O’Leary’s cow but by a fragment of Biela’s Comet?
John Ashcroft has come down with severe pancreatitis. It is, without a doubt, not the most good or kind reaction I’ve ever had, and I’m not precisely proud of this reaction, but I can honestly think of no one who deserves severe pain more. The man is evil, and I feel the same lack of compassion that I would if I had heard that Satan just got a leg chopped off.
This strikes me as a dumb idea. Bayesian spam filtering, like I have with SpamSieve (and, never fear, many Windows stuff has it), really strikes me as the way to go.
For someone with no car who rides the subway daily like me, this has some interest. I never realized that Chicago’s subway was so comparatively small.
“Silly rabbit … ”
“Kitty & Robot,” by A.V. Phibes. Phun from Phibes, once again.
A black American Express card for the ultrarich, the Centurion, with an annual fee of $2,500.
Metafilter’s reaction to September 11, 2001, as it was happening. And BoingBoing had some interesting coverage, too. They reprinted this remark from John Perry Barlow. Made the very day of the attacks, it now seems incredibly prophetic:
DO WORRY ABOUT US. AND, MORE TO THE POINT, U.S.
As most of you know, I believe that the United States has gradually, subtly, invisibly to most of us, become a police state over the last 30 years.
This morning’s events are roughly equivalent to the Reichstag fire that provided the social opportunity for the Nazi take-over of Germany. I am not suggesting that, like the Nazis, the authoritarian forces in America actually had a direct role in perpetrating this mind-blistering tragedy. (Though their indirect role deserves a much longer discussion.)
Nevertheless, nothing could serve those who believe that American “safety” is more important than American liberty better than something like this. Control freaks will dine on this day for the rest of our lives.
Within a few hours, we will see beginning the most vigorous efforts to end what remains of freedom in America. Those of who are willing to sacrifice a little — largely illusory — safety in order to maintain our faith in the original ideals of America will have to fight for those ideals just as vigorously.
I beg you to begin NOW to do whatever you can — whether writing your public officials, joining the ACLU or EFF, taking to the streets, or living visibly free and fearless lives — to prevent the spasm of control mania from destroying the dreams that far more have died for over the last 225 years than died this morning.
Don’t let the terrorists or (their natural allies) the fascists win. Remember that the goal of terrorism is to create increasingly paralytic totalitarianism in the government it attacks.
Don’t give them the satisfaction. Fear nothing. Live free.
And, please, let us try to forgive those who have committed these appalling crimes. If we hate them, we will become them.
May God — or Whatever you want to call It — bless us all. We’ll need it.
Barlow
Cory made a good point at one point in his coverage: “The flipside of the Orwellian nightmare of the panoptic surveillance society is the voracious data-gathering and republishing of the distributed world, a weird utopia of ubiquitous information and observation.” Yeah, that might take another read. In other words, everyone wanted data about what happened and what was going on and how we were going to fix it, so e-mail, websites, etc. … it all went into ultrahyperdrive. Data just flew across the ‘Net.
Gary Larson + Photoshop = real-life version of Far Side comics.
A story by Mark Twain, called “The War Prayer.”
A remarkably personal and heartfelt essay by a Village Voice columnist about the current vitiriol surrounding gay marriage. Grabs it right out of theory and puts in heartbreaking clarity the humanity of it:
I want our politicians and religious leaders to stop going on television and suggesting that legalizing marriage for us would be like legalizing sex with dogs. My wife, in my arms? They are talking about my wife, in my arms. Do they know, do they care, how much that hurts? Where must we run to be safe from them?
I want my wife not to feel such pressure and fear that she curls up in bed at night and cries. On the night of Wednesday, February 25, a woman in Brooklyn lay crying because she can’t understand why people would hate her so, why they’d have to denigrate a beautiful and private part of her life with the most heinous rhetoric. Think about that. My wife lay in tears because strangers are clamoring for the power to decide whether she belongs, whether the American promise should hold true for her—as if there were any question which way they’d vote.
Oh, boy, does this suck for them: “The train was riding on the Howard Beach line when it went off course and into an area where unused trains are kept. When the train’s doors opened, the dozen passengers on board were exposed to live electrified rail.”
I remember Hostess Choco-Bliss cakes. Very, very good. Of course, they were probably about 7,000 calories per cake …
So I was looking at the description for Frequency, which ABC aired Saturday night. And realized that the same guy who plays Christ in The Passion of the Christ is playing a part in there. Which explains why they chose to air it … I had been wondering. It was pretty good, though. I always chuckle, though, at the lengths our country goes to protect us from ‘indecency.’ Substituting “jerkwad” in when you can clearly see the character’s lips enunciate “asshole” is just a bit silly.
A California school district is now going to be fingerprinting kids as they get off and on the bus for identification purposes. The weblogger to whom I link here makes a good point: not only is it a yucky practice in and of itself, but it’s also dangerous in terms of how it shapes kids’ views of what’s normal for the future.
Interesting article about how films from yesteryore would look a lot more crappy were it not for the help of a real genius … and the help of a few hundred Power Mac G5s.
Who would have thought that the people at Microsoft were so funny? This sounds like something that would have happened at Apple. Reminds me a little bit of Microserfs.
Robert McKee from Adaptation, from LinkMachineGo:
“Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There’s genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ’s sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don’t know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don’t have any use for it. I don’t have any bloody use for it.”
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Some interesting letters to the editor I found in today’s Sun-Times:
Bill keeps reservists’ support payments fair
More than 100,000 reservists are stationed in Iraq, as well as 2,500 members of the Illinois National Guard. Many will remain on active duty for as long as 18 months. But will some Illinois fathers’ homecoming be a jail cell?
It’s difficult to believe, but the answer may be “yes.”
It happened after the first Gulf War. Some of the more than 250,000 reservists called up returned saddled with large child support arrearages they were unable to pay. As interest and penalties on the overdue support piled up, many spent years trying to dig themselves out of debt, while often facing unremitting government harassment. Some lost their driver’s licenses and business licenses. Others had their passports and bank accounts seized and their taxes intercepted. Some even faced jail.
Many reservists and Guardsmen currently serving abroad are facing the same problem. Their child-support obligations are based on their civilian pay, which is generally higher than active-duty pay. When called up, they are sometimes obligated to pay an impossibly high percentage of their income in child support.
For example, the active-duty pay of an Illinois National Guardsman who has served for five years is $1,991 a month before taxes. If this Guardsman is a divorced father of three whose civilian pay is $4,500 a month after taxes, his child support is generally about $1,450 a month — nearly three-quarters of his active-duty take-home pay.
Normally when an obligor loses his job or suffers a pay cut, he can go to court and request a downward modification. However, since Guardsmen and reservists are sometimes mobilized with as little as one day’s notice, few are able to obtain modifications before they leave. Worse, these soldiers cannot get relief when they return home because the federal Bradley amendment prevents judges from retroactively forgiving support.
Fortunately, a workable solution to this problem was just introduced into the Illinois Legislature by Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago) and Rep. Cynthia Soto (D-Chicago). Senate Bill 2895 would require courts to modify the child-support obligations of Guardsmen and reservists stationed abroad by the same proportion that the soldier’s military pay falls below his civilian pay. The modification would be retroactive to the date the soldiers were called to active duty, and the obligor would have six months from the date of his discharge from active duty to file for the reduction.
Missouri passed legislation to address this problem shortly before the first Gulf War, and the legislation has been effective in protecting fathers.
The child support snare faced by many reservists and Guardsmen represents an avoidable and morally indefensible breach of faith with fathers who serve. All of us can agree that fathers should do right by their children. SB 2895 will ensure that the child support system does right by fathers.
Glenn Sacks
Winnetka, CA
Jeffrey Leving
Lincoln Park, IL
This one is my U.S. representative, and I think she makes a good point:
U.S. lets Haiti down
The Sun-Times, in its March 1 editorial, applauds the Bush administration for its policy on Haiti, saying it was “correct in declining to prop up Aristide.” The Sun-Times thinks it is correct for the United States to start a war in Iraq to bring democracy and freedom to that country, but not correct to protect the first democratically elected president of the most impoverished country in our hemisphere from the terrorists — yes, terrorists — who were determined to get him out, dead or alive. Forgive me if I can’t follow that logic.
In a democracy one does not take up arms against an elected president. His life is not threatened, nor is he forced out of the country. Nor are convicted murderers and drug dealers and armed thugs welcomed in to do the dirty work. In a democracy, one goes from elected president to elected president, not coup d’etat to coup d’etat.
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s term was to expire in 2005. According to the Haitian Constitution, he was not eligible to run again. Even so, to stop the violence, Aristide agreed on Feb. 21 to a power-sharing proposal made by CARICOM, the United States and France. The opposition, led by former death squad leaders, convicted murderers and drug dealers, flatly said no. They wanted nothing less than Aristide out — dead or alive.
The Bush administration sided with the murderers. While it is unclear exactly what happened early Sunday, the message from the United States to Aristide was crystal clear: The United States won’t protect you from being killed by the assassins that are on your doorstep.
Now that the elected president is out, the United States is in, and the Sun-Times says “the democratic process in Haiti — such as it is” can begin operating again. Whether Bush or the Sun-Times liked him or not, there was a democratically elected president in Haiti.Now there is no legitimate government in Haiti. Aristide’s and Haiti’s crisis tested our commitment to democracy, and we failed the test.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)
This final one was really sad:
No way to treat the sick
My nephew was hooked on crack cocaine. He had an envelope covered front and back with numbers that he used to contact different agencies for help. The last few numbers were to some area hospitals. After talking to my sister (his mother), I learned they had turned him down for professional help because he lacked the one thing so important to these agencies: health insurance.
At 7:45 p.m. he called his mother and told her he knew of a place that would not refuse him, and 15 minutes later this 32-year-old man took his own life, knowing God would not turn him away. He left a loving fiancee to be partnerless, and a son, age 10, and a daughter, age 12, to be fatherless — not to mention the loss to other family and friends.
I feel that places like this should treat people and worry about payment later. Once these people are off these drugs they may turn out to be very productive in our communities. I also thought the higher cost of our health care premiums goes to help offset the cost so that these people less fortunate can get the treatment they may need. Every day you hear about this country sending billions of dollars to outside countries. Why not spend that money here at home first?
Malcolm Mayfield
New Lenox, IL
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
The Singhsons … get it before Fox sends out a ‘cease & desist’ like they’ll almost certainly do!
If you don’t know what the Creative Commons is, you should, and these clips will show you what it is, in a very cool way. (Except for the third one. I don’t have the faintest idea why the hell that one made it out of their trash bin.)
Oh, my goodness. Harrison Ford is not looking too well. In fact, he looks just the tad bit sloshed …
I REALLY WANT THIS ON A T-SHIRT!
Did you know that the Ewok Celebration song has English lyrics?
Ohhhhh … THAT’S disturbing (listen to their version of Outkast’s “Hey Ya”) …
The Onion: “Jesus Demands Creative Control Over Next Movie.”
There are two links I don’t want any family to visit — too explicit:
I think my libido was permanently killed after watching this clip.
Safe-for-work porn. Fun.
Michael Eisner may get his ass kicked out of Disney. Which means it may actually go from cheesefest (Cinderella II?!?) to good again …
Hey! Come home from a vacation and find an active meth lab in your home!
Oh, goodness … couldn’t have this, could we? *rolls eyes*
The Passion of the Christ: The Blooper Reel, by Paul Ford. Oh, I’m going to hell for laughing at that one.
This is an interesting exploration of an abandonded New York subway line.
I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed this at the Oscars.
If you’re a fellow Mac ubergeek, you’ll find this interesting.
Cheap Trick did a song called “He’s a W—e”. They, presumably, didn’t censor the final word, but the iTunes Music Store does. I, however, cannot figure out what the hell they’re censoring. Any ideas?
How COOOOL! NBC’s hit sitcom Scrubs is put together by Macs.
Interesting comment about how New York may really not be very prepared for emergencies.
An amusing list of corporate April Fool’s Day pranks.
And remember, folks … quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
