shift.com posts their list of the key and stupid web moments of 2002. Good clean wholesome fun.

BWA-hahahahaha! Why not to direct link to other people's pictures. Ho ho ho.

Tim Blair makes his predictions for the new year. I wonder, though, how much of this will be funny to people who don't read blogs obsessively, because I was laughing out loud and interrupting my cow-orkers on several occasions.

This may be the first time I've read something written by David Mamet. Usually I just listen to actors reciting what he's written. Anyway ... he took a trip to Israel and had this to say about the experience.

A quick runthrough a pair of news stories from Reuters with commentary on framing bias by the incomparable Meryl Yourish. Great fun. Have some.

Max Boot lays out what he thinks defines a "neoconservative". Doesn't sound too far off of "South Park Republican" to me, by the way. I also see I'll need to go find an issue of Commentary to see what a "neocon bible" looks like.

I'll just quote Razib's lede and leave it at that: Wow-times have changed, but it's still whitey's fault!

BWA-hahahahaha! Scrappleface details the changes a-comin' to the church now that they're getting some of that Powerball money.

Corsair the Rational Pirate finds an interesting story about an American on the receiving end of a fatwa judgement, plus the cause of said death sentence (such as it is). In his own words:

Once again it is proved that Islamonazis have no sense of humor. If you can't laugh at youself, everyone else will do your laughing for you. You just look stupid and ignorant when you protest things like this

Tony Woodlief unloads a short stream of cluefulness on his own relatives. Well done, my good man. Well done indeed.

Nobody cares but me, I suppose, but because of Tim Blair I've been thinking about why I'm doing this. Way back when, I just trolled around the web and other people's blogs looking for things that I found interesting. As I found each one, I'd email them to my short list of victims (in fact, that's what I called the mailing list: "victims"). Eventually, Lee decided that I should stop emailing the links around and started this blog. The first two of three things I posted were pretty much just what I would have emailed out: a link with maybe one sentence worth of context. In an email to my wife, this is okay; on a publicly-available blog, not so much so.

My current theory ties in with the rather common "thinkers" v. "linkers" dichotomy, although I dispute the implication that I'm not thinking when I choose to spend my credibility (such as it is) in recommending someone else's writing. I posit instead that everybody is a newspaperman. Some people, Steven Den Beste, Eric S. Raymond, Bill Whittle, Jane Galt, et al, write their articles to suit themselves. They have some position on some topic, and write about it to whatever extent they find necessary. In short, they're journalists. Other people, like me, don't write the newspaper but we do select from the set of articles to accumulate a periodic digest of interesting bits of writing plus the occasional op-ed. In short, we're publishers.

You might imagine that being a gatekeeper is an easy job, and I'll certainly agree that it doesn't involve as much typing as authoring the content in the first place. The downside is that Jane Galt writes two or three posts a day; on an average day, I read every posting on every blog on my blogroll since the last time I read it (which was probably yesterday). I'll try to remember to count today how many things I'll read through to find the two/three/six/ten things that I think are important/relevant/amusing enough and in the right vein to make people like me go "Cool/Huh/#$@@#^", but I suspect it's over 200 articles a day. It's different work than writing the articles, but it isn't falling off a log either.

Anyway, I'll try to be worthy of Tim's praise going forward. Thanks for listening.

UPDATE: 205 articles before starting the commercial news outlets, and it's a slow news day in that lots of bloggers had no updates at all. That's me ... selflessly slaving away reading all this stuff so you don't have to. Unless you want to, in which case you can follow the links I've provided over there <--- on the left side of the screen.

Gary Farber was kind enough to write me a polite letter pointing out that I had inadvertently credited his blog to some guy named "Brian". He was gentlemanly enough not to call me "stupid", so he gets extra bonus points. Sorry 'bout that, sir.

Oh, my aching sides. Tim Blair reviews the execrable Bowling for Columbine for The Australian. What he said.

Why, just this morning a colleague asked me why Jimmy Carter is an Idiotarian. I replied that it was mostly his knee-jerk anti-America bent plus his willingness to fellate foreign dictators. And, in a stunning bit of synchronicity, I stumbled across Jay Nordlinger's anti-paen to Carter himself from earlier this year. (Found via Little Green Footballs)

Them's fightin' words!!! That ain't barbecue, it's smoked brisket and/or ribs. Barbecue is, by definition, chopped pork in yellow mustard sauce, although I'll allow that chopped pork in vinegar/pepper sauce is almost barbecue.

By the bye, anybody who uses "barbecue" as a verb is obviously beyond apostasy, and should be enlightened at gunpoint if need be.

I'm shocked, shocked!!, to find that Hans Blix and crew are bungling the interviews with Iraqi scientists. Who could have imagined such a thing?

BWA-hahahahahaha! Save the Earth! Drive an SUV!

I'm sure I'm behind the curve on this, but I just watched the "Lamp" commercial from IKEA at www.unböring.com and loved it. Consequently, I can only assume the general public will be either (1) offended or (2) completely indifferent. Sigh.

Professor Bunyip describes his journey from leftist to not-a-leftist (presumably a conservative, but he didn't label himself). Found via Tim Blair.

A not terribly impressive 122 mph, at least compared to Emperor Misha's minions.

Only to be viewed by those who have taken their blood pressure medication recently: Technical Difficulties. Yes, I'm about to explode. I especially appreciated the "criminalizing dissent" part. I'm sure the author(s) of this particular animation are currently being tortured in the secret dungeons under the White House even as we speak. What? You mean they're still allowed to roam the streets freely even after saying things like "it's all about the ooooooiiiil" and the like? What kind of jackbooted thugocracy are we running here anyway?

One of the simple pleasures of owning a telescope (even if it's just an amateur one), is viewing Saturn. Sky and Telescope was kind enough to publish an entire article on vieweing Saturn targeted towards the backyard dilettante such as m'self.

BWA-hahahahaha! Fun and games! Play Busy Marquee!

WARNING: Full-blown geek alert:

Two things I recently needed but found too late:

• Enterprise Integration Patterns - Overview
• Patterns for things that change with time

What the f*cking f*ck does this mean? Can somebody please explain how these words can be arranged into this sequence and a meaningful communication takes place as a result? I roughly (very roughly, mind you) understand how the game is played, but this just continues to be a nonsensical arrangement of otherwise useful English words. Lee, come on man ... help me out here.

UPDATE: Tim Blair himself deigned to descend from Olympus merely to call me a "Cricket-hating U.S. scum." I'm truly honored, and couldn't be happier. Surely now I'm on my way to fame, fortune, and world domination.

I was completely unstuck by the news that Senator Lieberman is meeting with King Fahd in Saudi. I mean, I just boggled. I see I'm not the only one at a lack for words.

If I believed in God, I'd be thanking him for this evidence of clear thinking from a generous man.

The Matrix. The Matrix. The Matrix. It just feels good to say it, doesn't it? The Matrix. I can't effing wait.

Spider Robinson is a victim of identity theft and eBay. Guess how the story ends. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Arrrrrrgh! Frustrating Flash games for your blood-pressure elevation.

I've tried to find a self-characterized "left wing" blogger that I could read without foaming at the mouth. I want to find someone who espouses group identity politics and wealth redistribution economics and is willing to back it up with something other than "the Repugnicans are eeeeeeeevil". So far, I'm coming up empty. Hesiod? Don't make me laugh. Atrios? Marginally better, but still lacking that intellectual rigor I was hoping to find. Ted Barlow seems like the go-to guy, but (since it's my wishlist) I was hoping for more volume. Damn him for not spending all his time the way I want him too!

So who's the standard-bearer for the leftists these days?

Okay, Ted Barlow is a bigger man than I am. He's actually studied relationship dynamics and written a report thereon. I'm a feeble sort of troll who just say "yes, dear" and does whatever my wife tells me too unless I'm fully enshrouded in my passive-aggresivity in which case I say "yes, dear" and continue to play Super Mario Sunshine.

Sun continues to hammer Microsoft over their Java lack-of-strategy. A little history: way back when, Sun stupidly announced that Java would let them virtualize the desktop before they had managed to get themselves irretrievably ensconced as the market leader. Microsoft responded by releasing a version of the Java interpreter that (a) ran only on Windows, and (b) had some unapproved-by-Sun hooks in it that allowed developers to write Windows-only Java apps that did things that 100% Java apps couldn't (like script COM objects, f'rinstance). Sun took them to court over the license violation, since the Java license says you can't change the language and still call it Java. Microsoft renamed the product, and started getting rid of Java completely (this eventually turned into C# and dot-NET).

To thumb their noses at Sun, Microsoft began carrying a particular broken interpreter in the O.S. which had the "unforseen" side-effect of making Java apps look bad and break strangely. A previous lawsuit managed to get a court to enjoin Microsoft from doing this anymore. Next, Microsoft began shipping the O.S. without any Java at all, secure in the knowledge that the vast majority of people would never go get a JVM, so Java will (again) be a non-starter on Windows as an application development environment.

Now, Sun has gotten a court to rule that Microsoft's Windows must use Java. As much as I don't like Microsoft, and often spend valuable hours of my life cursing them and their bug-infested security holes, this isn't right either. I haven't read the court's opinion, but how do you justify forcing Microsoft to bundle their competitor's products with their own? And why just Sun's product? Why are they special? This just seems like a bad idea.

Did I say I wasn't a big Microsoft fan? Just wanted to make sure.

Note that this doesn't affect the viability of Java as a server-side environment. As far as I can tell from my individual perch, there is so much Java servlet/JSP development going on that dot-NET has approximately zero chance of really taking the niche.

Just when you thought the case mods had reached as far out as they could go before circling back in, the Japanese come up with this lovely. I wonder if I can stuff an iMac into that?

Scott Ottt has ripped the mask off the Republicans. The jig is up! We've got your number, now, me bucko!

I'll just quote James Lileks here:

Ask yourself: if you and your friends decided to shoot an entire episode of TOS Star Trek, and you wrote a script set on the recommissioned Exeter, and you rented a warehouse, built a replica of a Constitution-class starship, designed all the sets and lighting to look like 1967 TV, and spent SEVEN YEARS on the project, meticulously recreating the look and sound of a TOS episode, what would the result look like? It might go something like this. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Starship Exeter.

Note to self: stop writing network monitoring crap.

WARNINGNot to be viewed if you have a weak stomach.

How Americans treat their dogs.

How the Peruvian Army treats theirs.

Peggy Noonan has quite a bit to say about Trent Lott and why Republicans are glad to be rid of him.

Man, if this had been me, I'd have been a whooooole lot more popular with the girlies, I bet.

Ken Layne has a few things to say about GM corn. Go and read for yourself(ves).

Newsflash! RIAA finally has a winning strategy for dealing with fileswapping among the record-buying public.

No! Say it ain't so! They weren't all sooper-dee-dooper and full of truthful wisdom? Dag! Maybe we should rethink our whole policy!

James Lileks uncorks a loverly screed about Christmas cranks, in general, and these two f*ckwits in particular.

Make sure you subscribe to Showtime now, because if you forget you might miss an episode of this important new series.

"Mike" (otherwise unidentified) writes a little parable called "How Taxes Work" which I found entertaining. (Found via American Realpolitik).

I have long since come to terms with my, um, atypical existence. I do watch teevee, and have been able to predict with uncanny accuracy which shows will get crappy ratings: they're the ones that I really really like. The more I like them, the higher a chance they have of being cancelled. Profit. The Brethren. American Gothic. Apparently Hollywood and the Nielsen folks could just ask me which shows to cancel right off and save themselves a bundle.

Consequently, I was devastated to find that I really really really liked Firefly, as that is the kiss of death. It's on Friday nights at 8pm, which I believe is the time that network execs reserve for shows they hate so they can cancel them in good faith when the ratings suck. This show is incredible. Even in the first season, the characters are filled-in and likeable, the actors seem comfortable in their skins, and the writing is crisp and well-paced. I don't understand why everybody doesn't like and watch the damned thing, or at least TiVo it up.

Fox has announced they won't be buying any more episodes. Game over, man. The part that irks me the most is that I'm not getting to find out why The Shepherd Book is so obviously (to everyone not on Serenity) not a shepherd and where he came from. All I can hope for now is that they'll release the episodes on DVD including the pilot (which we haven't seen yet either, dang it all).

There is a campaign forming, however, to try to convince UPN to pick up the series. Watch an episode before it's too late, and send UPN a postcard, would ya? It's important to me, if no one else.

BWA-hahahaha! Bite me too, Admiral Poindexter!

Rachel Lucas posts an excellent essay on guns and citizenship which sparks a huge comment debate between reasonable people, a gun-toting anarchist loony, and (at least one) Michael Moore-loving fact-sidestepping socialist right here for your entertainment.

The first fallout from the Iraqi declaration may not hit the Iraqis themselves, but rather the Germans.

BWA-hahahahaha! Trent Lott's to-do list.

As Jane Galt observed, "Who says that cold technology can't give you a heartwarming Christmas miracle?" Who indeed.

I'm beginning to sense a pattern here: David Brin is channeling Loki. Why else would he claim "J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress" if it wasn't to amuse/entertain/enrage the general public? Good on him!

Brian Tiemann talks briefly about how Microsoft co-opts TCP/IP to make their browser look better than it otherwise would merit.

Oh yeah ... Lee's right. It appears that I'm in a minority of one, and everybody else is just gushing over 'Bowling for Columbine' and Michael Morre in general. Ho ho ho. It is to laugh.

There's just so much information here that the mind boggles. (insert your own god-game analogy here).

Jim Dunnigan at Strategy Page writes about the Javelin anti-tank guided missile. It also includes a few before-and-after pictures of a T-72 taking a Javelin to the top armor. Hooray for blowing stuff up real good!

And yet more evidence of the Iraqi-al Qaeda connection. Exactly how much evidence is needed before people quit imagining that exporters and supporters of terrorism are somehow not linked to terrorists?

All the people who said anything that might have been construed as a question about Iraq around me have already heard my pontification about why Saddam has to go. The short summary is "he's openly exporting terrorism and supporting known terrorist groups, and there's no reason to believe that if he gets WMDs he won't supply his favorite terrorist groups with them." It appears that the "if" part above may not be so iffy and further that Saddam isn't above sharing the wealth. The bombs can't drop fast enough to suit me, damn it.

Michael at 2 Blowhards writes a bit about looking at advertising for fun-with-deconstruction. I must admit that this is rather close to one of my favorite ad-related games: spot the assumption.

Ooooh ... a new H&K sidearm. I wonder if my sweetie would like one? She's been complaining that we need to go to the range and fire off a few rounds, plus carrying this beast would certainly get a few of the locals to pay more respectful attention to her.

Of course it isn't for sale to civilians, dang it.

Well ... crap. Now I have to go buy one of these, and then of course I'll have to have a G4 to go with it. There goes the budget.

It's the End of The World(tm)!!!! It's Mass Hysteria(tm)!!! It's ... it's ... Brian Tiemann agreeing with Steven Den Beste!!!! Will miracles never cease.

Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly and Associates (publishers of fine IT books (and how deeply can I parenthesize and tangent off before even I lose the thread?)), has a bit to say about file-swapping. Of course he isn't quite the authority on MP3 warez as he is on books, but he's still in the mass-media content business. Consequently, his opining probably carries more weight than does mine (which, if you're curious, is "MP3 sharing hasn't seemed to hurt CD sales yet ... what makes you think it's going to in the future?").

I know Lee has problems with his fingers and wrists: perhaps this review of this product will be useful for him and other people like him. "Plagued by CTS/RSI", mind you, not "smelly, socialist, and British."

Look! Look! See, honey! I'm not that unusual!!! It even includes a useful planner on dealing with a public restroom where the doors open the wrong f*cking way.

Well, of course inspections will do the trick. Just look at how well Iraqi cooperation is going already.

BWA-hahahahahaha! Only In America Pics. Found via The Volokh Conspiracy via OxBlog.

Yet more optical illusions. Found via The Volokh Conspiracy who apparently have a never-ending supply of these things.

Scroll down to helmet ears. I may have to buy another motorcycle just so I have somewhere to wear these.

After reading this post by Jane Galt, I've decided that I too can no longer link to Mindles H. Dreck at MoreThanZero.com.

Just a quick troll through the referrer log, and I find someone looking for "hateful tony blair pictures" from google.co.uk. Sorry, mate ... we're (or at least the verbally productive half of "we") is all in favor of Mr. Blair and his gummint except for the R.I.P. bits. While I'm spouting off, how long before the U.K. recovers its senses and tell the EU to piss off? You don't need their financial policies, their currency, or their cheese. F*ck 'em.

To the person googling for "alton brown hate", you'll need to move along as well. Alton Brown is a GODDAMNED GENIUS!!!!!!! Everyone should watch Good Eats, or at least TiVo up new episodes. Also, he has a book and DVDs out as well. Everybody go buy some stuff.

Well, I'm thinking about buying a new camera, and I'll inflict my bookmarks on all (both) of my readers:

• Canon PowerShot G3
• Sony DSC-F717

Now THAT'S a case mod. Woo-hoo for LEGO's!

Tony Pierce's photo essay "Dear Kids." If I was the sort, I might have teared up, but I'm not so I didn't. There are some good shots here anyway.

BWA-hahahahahahaha! Something Awful weighs in on the Xmas season. It's funny ... I usually only look at Photoshop Phridays there, but Amish Tech Support apparently reads the whole thing. Go figure.

Which Firearm are you? brought to you byStan Ryker

Woo-hoo! Stand back, Jackson!

Well, it appears my socio-political education was sorely lacking, because this essay into the intellectual origins of America-bashing contained a great deal that I didn't know about Marx (and Marxism) beforehand. Excellent reading, if a bit long-ish (around 5,000 words or so).

Pig Newtons?!? Yummy!!!!

Woo-hoo! Semper fi!

The new season of Demotivators are out! I love 'em all!

Available now: Dave Barry's 2002 Gift Guide.

TiVo? That is so old hat ... you can't even archive to DVD with that thing. What an antique.

Ummmmm .... okay. Suppose you're a misanthropic hermit with a gadget fetish who wants some ink. What to do? What to do?

Found via The World Wide Rant, a lovely little time-waster with heaps of badness in it.

Ummmm ... doesn't that kind of invalidate the inspection results? A bit? There is a huge amount of maneuvering in the U.S. to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest, both in politics and in business (a.k.a. politics with smaller budgets). Apparently our unease isn't shared by the U.N.

BWA-hahahahahahaha! I thought I was condescending and hateful, but I bow before the master! Stop it! You're killing me!

A small "bwa-hahahaha" right in Lee's face. It would be a big one, and I'd claim it demonstrates that apparently guns aren't magically evil and soul-consuming after all except I can't find the primary source, but only this newspaper article stating that the U.N. published a report showing the the U.K. and Wales are now more violently crime-infested (per capita) than the U.S.

I see here that November 29th is the U.N.-recognized "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People ". I wonder when the "International Day of Solidarity with the Israeli People" happens? What about the "International Day of Solidarity with the U.S. People"? U.K.? Australians? Just exactly what do you have to do to get a U.N. holiday of your own? I suspect the answer involves explosives, killing, and Jews.

Yet another interesting optical illusion. Found via The Volokh Conspiracy

One of my favorite parts of "Age of Empires II" is the endgame, where you have an army of archers, a handful of cavalry, and a few trebuchets walking the countryside absolutely obliterating the enemy's physical plant. Now, for you do-it-yourselfers, you can get some computer help designing your own trebuchet. Great. Now I have another time-consuming borderline-obsessive hobby.

An even larger annotated ZyNOS CI command reference. Once you start looking, as always, the information just floods over you.

It isn't the official document, but at least it's accessible. Netgear (among other manufacturers) licenses ZyXEL's embedded OS for their router hardware. It includes a command-line interface which is otherwise undocumented. I tried spelunking around ZyXEL's website looking for it and got bupkis, squared. Luckily for me, a quick Google search turned up a useful annotated cheat sheet. Even with these clues, by the way, ZyXEL's website is less than spectactularly useful.

BWA-hahahahaha! Read it and laugh-slash-weep at our lost opportunities. As always, I have a rant prepared, but it doesn't really add anything to this except lots more words plus some invective.

While delightedly trolling through Mark Steyn's catalog, just recently discovered thanks to Tim Blair, I found his takedown of 'Bowling for Columbine'. So far it appears that only Lee actually thought this film was thoughtful and provoking. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm thinking the right environment might be with the DVD in the player, Lee fuming on the couch next to me, and the remote control with the pause button on it firmly in my hand.

Hooray! Mark Steyn's writings are finally collected online! An immediate entry into the ol' blogroll.

I'm still stuffed from eating plain ol' turkey with lots of goodies. I can't imagine even trying to light into a turducken, although by next week I may be recovered enough.

Time magazine's Best Inventions of 2002. Found via Amish Tech Support.

I swear to <diety/>, this isn't even English. Faugh! Lee, you're going to have to explain and explain and explain a lot before I get it, I'm afraid.

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

FIVE BLIND ELEPHANTS (AUTHOR UNKNOWN): Five blind elephants want to find out what men are like. Each touches a man with its foot, and all agree: Men are wet, sticky, and flat.

Steven Den Beste writes about the new rice strain engineered at Cornell and goes into some depth about the expected political fallout from its (almost assured) superiority over laboriously slowly cross-bred rice.

Before I had children, I hated all kids. Really. Now that I have two of my own, however, I love my own children and I don't always want to throttle other people's children anymore. Consequently, I enjoyed reading this bit about Tony Woodlief's son. A short sample:

I'm going to give Eli a nickname: Catfish. Set him down on the floor, and he will commence to picking up anything in sight and putting it into his mouth. Occasionally he'll crawl over to his mother's favorite rug and yack up a hairball or a dried pea or something. He's very cheerful about all of it. He's a total bottom feeder. I'm worried he will become a lawyer.

"Henry Kissinger should never have been defrosted," sez me. These two agree, and state their cases with commendable depth and detail.

There are some here that are a bit grisly, but the FReepers have pictures from the bombing in Kenya. It seems that the stakes are certainly being raised: explosive car bombs, SAM attacks on civilian jet airliners, continued jubilation from Islamic fundie nations. Perhaps we ought to do something about it, whaddaya think?

Once again, rational self-interest trumps well-intentioned socialism. At some point, won't we (as a colleciton of humans) run out of people who haven't yet learned this? Please?

I'm working my way through John Scalzi's back catalog of "Whatever" columns, when I found this gem of distilled hatred:

The chances of you being qualified to do anything else that doesn't involve answering to a Wal-Mart department manager named Earl, who makes $10.50 an hour shoving Chinese-made shoes into the racks and who hankers to move out of his doublewide and into a house with a real cement foundation, are impressively slim. If you're not ready to play until the grounds crew is ready to shoot out the lights with a BB gun so they can leave, then you shouldn't be playing baseball, period.

From Agenda Bender, "A Textbook Case" covers quite well a pair of worthy targets: hate crime and God-botherers.

You can't even spread the good news of God's disapproval of his life and love to a homosexual in his own home anymore without risking martyrdom. Yes the case "easily meets their definition of a hate crime." Textbook case. Haters marauding around their own livingrooms bashing innocent old ladies who just dropped by to tell them how far from God's grace they've fallen. Exactly the circumstances hate crime laws were written for.

Just a bit of whining, but every time I look at Tony Pierce's blog I am forcefully reminded that there isn't any talent whatsoever in the stupid camera and all the blame is mine mine mine. His work is so astoundingly much better than my pitiful snaps that I just get depressed. I'm also thinking that maybe I should start carrying my stupid camera with me and just shoot more stuff so that eventually I might be able to take a really good picture (instead of the ocasional "not entirely crappy" record I'm working with now). Hooray for wallowing in self-pity!

Archives may or may not be working again, but Tim Blair, in a post from November 26 at 10:03am (drat the lack of working links!!!) points to an open letter from my new favorite Australian politician. Extra hooray for the P.M. for getting it exactly right: the guilt lies entirely on the scumbags who set the explosives.

Blogger archive postings don't seem to be working quite right, so just scroll down to the bit entitled "Unequivocal Good News" and read. The short summary is that researchers at Cornell have engineered a new strain of rice that is significantly more drought resistant, can grow in salt water, and can live in weather that's 10 degrees cooler. What's more, they didn't patent it but have released it into the public domain. Hooray for Cornell!

National Geographic has posted a quiz of (duh) geographic trivia. Can you do better than the high school students who can't find their own state on a U.S. map? I scored 19 of 20 because I didn't know which was the most populous religion.

John Scalzi starts with a quick pass on Discover magazine's cover story on the Big Bang and winds up explaining why science isn't a religion. Excellent article. (Found via The World Wide Rant)

Not a joke: "My TiVo Thinks I'm Gay" declares Mike Bender in this WSJ article. (Found via Jim Treacher)

Woo-hoo! A lawyerly can of whoop-ass is hereby opened upon the MLDEF.

Brink Lindsey comments on Bush's proposal to eliminate tariffs on industrial goods. Period. Zero percent tariff. Apparently, all those car commercials ("Zero down, zero payments, zero interest ... please take our cars. We're dying here!!!!!!") are having a larger impact than previously suspected.

Hmmm ... it couldn't be because the game is afoot, could it?

In fact, read the whole damned thing. It's just amazingly ugly.

Wow. This just gets more surreal the longer I look at it. This was taken during the riots in Nigeria about the Miss World contest. (Found via Agenda Bender found via Colby Cosh)

You damned Skippy! Raising our children is the most important job we have, and trying to foist that responsibility off on non-accountable factory mandarins is just lunacy. I have a rant prepared, if anyone cares.

Hooray! The poor man's Telezapper!!! Woo-hoo!

BWA-hahahahahahaha! Oh my aching sides! (found via The World Wide Rant)

Ummmmmmm. Weird.

Apparently, the impending war with Iraq didn't derail the War on Terrorism at all. Good. I'm glad to hear it. Let's keep the pressure on, shall we?

I read this, and I re-read it, and although each of the individual words are recognizable, when you arrange them in that order they don't make any sense. Cricket is just bizarre, and more evidence that there's nothing as insane as a "normal" Englishman (unless it's an Australian).

Tim Blair posts the definitive "What Would Jesus Drive" quiz: Tim Blair. As usual, Blogger links not working, so just scroll down until you find it, entitled "TAKE THE "WHAT WOULD JESUS DRIVE" MULTI-CHOICE THEOLOGICAL AUTOMOTIVE QUIZ CHALLENGE!"

Yet another quiz. It appears that I'm a "five". Is that good?


free enneagram test

As the article is entitled: Will It Work? I know that we have some very bright people working on weapons systems, but dayum! This sounds like quite the "steel on target" delivery package (assuming it works).

As an aside, I've been saying for some time now (thanks to Virginia Postrel) that enough important base inventions have been made already; most of the low-hanging fruit now will be in nailing together two disparate bases and making them work. Examples of this nailing include: TiVo (machine-readable schedule information plus content-based searching plus recording), Roomba (miniaturized electronics plus acceptable pathfinding plus drudge labor), and SABR (miniaturized electronics (again) plus cheap accurate laser rangefinding plus accurate timing plus ordnance equals boom).

For reasons which I never really explored, I don't play much chess nor do I expect ever to do so (rather more intricate wargames being my poison of choice in my younger days, and now RTS games on the computer). From PejmanPundit comes a pointer to OMEGA CHESS - The Next Evolution of Chess!. Sounds interesting enough, especially considering that real-life (not computer) games rarely have sequels.

Ummmm ... maybe I misunderstood something. I thought the purpose of U.N. inspectors in Iraq was to determine if there were any WMDs or WMD programs. Apparently, I was wrong because Hans Blix' anonymous aide says that their job is not to provoke, harm, or humiliate. So, if Iraq says they have no WMDs and no WMD programs at all, then how do you avoid provoking them? By not looking? I have to assume this farce will end shortly after December 8th, or I'll be holding my nose and voting Democrat next presidential election.

The American Prospect, not usually considered a bastion of right-wing conspiracy, lights into Michael Moore for his racial blindness and other non-factualism (is that a word?) in "Bowling for Columbine".

James Lileks, again: hates Pizza Hut: check; thinks George Lucas is a soulless marketing robot: check; loves "Monsters, Inc.": check.

I finally got all the write Javascript/permissions/etc crap set to allow me to successfully complete the religion selector. Amazingly enough, I arrive at:

1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Nontheist (88%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (88%)

What? Where did that Unitarian thing come from? Are they an atheistic church? What gives? My real theory is that if you peg hard enough as a materialist along the materialist/duallist continuum that all the other discriminants reduce to singularities.

Oooooh. More about Saddam's brand of insanity, this time on film. Cinemax will be running the documentary on November 26th at 7:00pm. I'll be setting my TiVo to capture that, sho'nuff.

News flash! Stupidity and hypocrisy not in short supply in Iowa. (Found via Pejman Pundit)

BWA-hahahahahaha! It's so obvious, and yet so amusing.

It's rather like shooting fish in a barrel, I know, but Michael Jackson's weirdness is accelerating.

It's actually a pretty long article, and although it mentions references and authorities quite a few times it doesn't have a single footnote nor an endnote so it's hard to verify its premises, but it's still an interesting opinion about Saddam Hussein the person.

You don't say! You mean that the lumps of lead traveling down the barrel at supersonic speeds along with astonishingly hot gases don't always emerge exactly identical to four decimal places? Shocking.

To quoteJim Treacher quoting Achewood:

Everybody dance
everybody dance
everybody dance
LIKE THERE'S ASS IN YOUR PANTS

Apparently, prison in Lithuania is nothing like prison in the U.S. (Found via Corsair

Happy Fun Pundit lights a fire under chief inspector Hans Blix, and boy is it ugly. Go and read.

Uhhhh ... ewwwww. Apparently there is a dark side to the Mac faithful.

A Duke University confirms that the Atkins diet had measurably better results than the American Heart Association's low-fat diet. Published in the American Journal of Medicine, no less. Dayum!!! Cheeseburgers for everyone!

Which religion are you? Is there no end to these silly quizzes?

If only I could read Arabic ... although the pictures are, um, entertaining. Not safe for work, mind you. Found via the inestimable Jim Treacher.

I'm absolutely staggered. My brane explodiated. See for yourself. Not really unsafe for work, but your cow-orkers may wonder what's wrong with you that you're watching something this ... bizarre. (Found via a Godless Capitalist (my demi-hero) on Gene Expression)

(Links probably not working, damn Blogspot ... scroll down to "Well That is Awful Presumptuous Of You
") Corsair the Rational Pirate once again finds more of the Clue-Challenged Religious Folk doing what is (apparently) indigenous in their circles: stupid shit. I'm entirely with Corsair here (that they're insane), and further I don't understand why in the world these people got a pass from the newspaper. If they were making the same kinds of counterfactual claims involving flying saucers or cornholing their cousins, then there would be no end to the winking, nudging, and hinting at their genetic unfitness. How come invoking an imaginary friend gets them a pass?

It doesn't appear that Saddam is planning to bug out himself, but he is (apparently) arranging a bolthole for his family and top advisors. Do ya think maybe he knows something?

BWA-hahahahaha! Thomas Friedman tells it like it is about the "new" NATO. (free registration required blah blah blah). Found via Glenn Reynolds.

Dr.Frank catalogs the inability of the INS to do anything except screw around with law-abiding citizens-to-be. (If links aren't working then scroll down to "So That's Why They Let Him In") I'm generally in favor of much more open immigration, and Lee (of course) has first-hand knowledge of how much the INS suXors. Maybe he'll write his thoughts after the green card process is all done.

Glenn Reynolds comments on the same piece of art as Lileks, although he's less concerned with the newspaper reporting of same.

James Lileks writes about a newpaper article about a painting about a touchy subject. (Follow the pointers, people!) He sandpapers all the shiny bits off to reveal the racism underneath in a truly lovely fashion.

If the link doesn't work for you, it's the last article. Just scroll down to "Today is FRIDAY"

My beloved wife reads those icky things too, so now I know what to buy her for Saturnalia. Super! Thanks!

P.S. I'm with you on the Yorkshiremen thing.

Okay ... a quick article from a woman who decided to become a professional escort at the age of 57. No comment, really, but it was an interesting view into another space.

Maybe its my own informed self-interest speaking, but why is it that the British have the Reading Reform Foundation and we have the NEA? That seems grossly unfair; we need an RRF of our own.

I was just emailed this by a cow-orker: Opera Baby. Not an incredible work, even in the genre, but twee has its place, damn it!

Ahhhh!!! My eyes! My eyes! (Once again, links aren't working. If you can't figure out which picture I'm talking about, I'll thwack you later)

Well, maybe he can take Donahue's time slot. I'd watch at least once in the hopes that he'd break out the glitter sunglasses and the feather boa.

Note to self: leave misanthropy at home if I decide to visit Merrie Olde England, as it could conceivably land me in the clink. Suspicion of making racist threats? What exactly is a racist threat? Can I still call people "clueless morons"? Or is that offensive to Moron-Americans and thus racist by definition? Are there Moron-English who would be likewise offended that I didn't call them Moron-UKers? My head hurts.

Mindles H. Dreck heaves a big ol' helping of scorn and derision on Selena Roberts' histrionic jeremaid about Augusta National. You damn skippy she's around the bend!

Stan Lee sues Marvel. The short story is that Marvel says that the blockbuster movie "Spiderman" didn't actually make any money. Uhhhhh. Yeah. Okay. Um.

It just goes to show: your mileage may vary. I've got a puny little D-Link WAP in my house and it just barely provides 5Mb/s over the main living areas dropping down to 2Mb/s in the basement. I've started looking into antennas and other arcane radio bits well beyond my competence, but now I've seen what it looks like when the pros get involved. 72 miles!!!! Dayum!

I totally forget how I found this graphical adventure. I was looking at The World Wide Rant (or at least his page is still open in its own window), so it's probably Andy's fault somehow.

Ummmm. I'll take "Too Much Time On My Hands" for $1000, Alex. (Found via The World Wide Rant)

Well, now ... that just isn't fair, is it? I mean, asking the school system to choose a teaching method based on measurable effectiveness is just too much. Silly man, imagining that public "education" is about anything except indoctrination. Blech.

Hmmmm ... the University of California system is rolling out a new twist to the admissions process in that "accomplishments and personal circumstances" (read: sob stories about how poor and miserable your upbringing was) would weigh heavily. Now they're deploying a verification service. As suggested (rather indirectly) by The Cranky Professor, I wonder how to go about monetizing this. Is it just as simple as fabricating a paper trail? No actual counterfeiting involved, just a statement from a few dummy corporations and/or non-profits that yes, little Johnny was quite disenfranchised as a youth? Maybe I should open a branch office there in CA.

From the Volokh Conspiracy,. a highly amusing story about the meaning and value of professional certifications. Since the link doesn't appear to go to the correct place, I'll cut-n-paste it here inline:

Zoe D. Katze has an impressive-looking set of credentials -- Ph.D., C.Ht., DAPA. She has been board-certified by three major hypnotherapy associations and holds diplomate status in the American Psychotherapy Association.

Not bad for a 6-year-old house cat. . . .

[Zoe is] Philadelphia psychologist Steve K.D. Eichel's cat. Eichel had a point he had been wanting to make about the proliferation of bogus credentialing organizations over the past 10 or 20 years.

So he decided to credential his cat.

To do that, Eichel first had to get his cat some credit, which turned out to be the hardest part of the process. The credit card company's agent initially asked for Zoe's Social Security number, Eichel says, but cheerfully relented when Eichel told him it wasn't readily available. Zoe was then added to Eichel's account as an authorized user.

To get Zoe her first credential, Eichel says, he simply filled out an "application for certification" on a lay hypnosis association's Web site and charged the fee to his credit card under Zoe's name. Since most lay hypnosis associations have reciprocity agreements, he says, it was a snap getting Zoe board-certified by two other credentialing organizations.

Eichel then decided to go for the gold: diplomate status in the American Psychotherapy Association, which, according to its own promotional literature, "is limited to a select group of professionals who, by virtue of their extensive training and expeexpertise, have demonstrated their outstanding abilities in regard to their specialty." . . .

Zoe got the APA certification.

Geek alert! Joel Spolsky has written a new essay, this one about The Law of Leaky Abstractions.

BWA-hahahahaha! See, honey? It's not just me that's like that!!!!

Well, the Iraqi parliament has unanimously rejected the UN proposal. They still have until Friday to comply, but they seem to be openly stating their defiance so far.

Hah! Given this, how long before you can just buy an "out-of-body adventure" kit? Would it play well at a rave? What if it included black lights? (Found via The World Wide Rant.)

You tell 'em, Jim. And there's even a Seanbaby reference in there! That's three great memes that meme great together!

So when is spousal abuse not actually spousal abuse? According to Nancy Scannell of Jane Doe Inc., if a woman hits her husband it doesn't count ... only husbands hitting wives counts as spousal abuse. Uhhhhhh ... maybe I'm slow, but how in the world could you draw a meaningful distinction there? It seems to me that if hitting your spouse is bad for men, then surely it's bad for women to do the same?

Okay, so now tell me again about how Saddam and his sycophants are rational actors? You mean "rational like the EU" (which is not very rational at all), or "rational like Muhammad and Malvo when the police surrounded their car" or maybe an entirely new definition of "rational" that involves sticking your head into the meat grinder. (found viaf Virginia Postrel.)

Dag! I'm only about 200K short right now.

Ummmm ... okay. Ahem.

Waaaaaah!!! No NV30 this year!!!! Waaaah! I'll have to console myself with a lowly Radeon 9700, I suppose.

BWA-hahahahaha! You think?

you have an ominosity quotient of six. you are really ominous. find out your ominosity quotient.

Is that good? I can't tell.

Woo-hoo! Hit'em again!!!!

From the "things that make you go hmmmm" department: London European Foreign Affairs Commisioner Chris Patten has turned down a European legislator who wants an investigation into alleged illegal use of EU aid to the Palestinian Authority. "How come?" I say in my best thick country yokel accent. "What you tryin' to hide?" I add.

Don't feel bad ... it could happen to anybody. An on-air Fox News anchor (his name I don't know) makes an amusing gaffe talking about J-Lo and her "root" in the Bronx.

I've given Microsoft's new "offering", the Tablet PC, almost exactly no thought whatsoever. I don't want a box that expects me to write crap on it by hand for two reasons: (1) my handwriting suXors hard, and (2) I type significantly faster than I write. A box that expects to use handwriting (a.k.a. "ink") as the primary input is doomed as far as targeting me as a consumer. (That goes for Palms too, by the bye. I keep buying them because I like gadgets, but I keep not using them. My RIM interactive pager, though, has a keyboard and I use the damned thing fifty times a day.)

Timothy Dyck, publishing in eWeek, takes a similarly dim view of the things.

Ummmm ... I have no reason to blog this, nor do I really have any commentary. I'll just say "Go USA" and leave it at that.

Not safe for work, boys. Be ready with the quick alt-Tab.

BWA-hahahahahaha! "People of Feather," he said! BWA-hahahahaha!

Links aren't working, so I'll just cut-n-paste it. From Brothers Judd Blog: A tourist walked into a curio shop in San Francisco. Looking around at the exotic, he noticed a very lifelike, life-sized bronze statue of a rat. It had no price tag but was so striking he decided he must have it.

He took it up to the owner, "How much for the bronze rat?"

"Twelve dollars for the rat. One hundred dollars for the story," said the owner.

The tourist gave the man twelve dollars. "I'll just take the rat. You can keep the story."

As he walked down the street carrying his bronze rat, he noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the alleys and sewers and began following him down the street. This was disconcerting; he began walking faster. But within a couple blocks, the herd of rats behind him had grown to hundreds, and they began squealing.

He began to trot toward the bay, looking around to see that the rats now numbered in the MILLIONS, and were squealing and coming toward him fast. Scared, he ran to the edge of the bay and threw the bronze rat as far out into the bay as he could. Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped into the bay after it, and drowned.

The man walked back to the curio shop.

"Aha," said the owner, "you have come back for the story?"

"No," said the man. "I came back to see if you have a bronze Democrat."

The U.S. Military Academy (a.k.a. West Point) has published a collection of maps of military conflicts. Very interesting stuff, assuming you like studying maps and military history (guilty on both counts, by the way).

Austin Bay writes, for StrategyPage.com, a lovely article about the Predator UAV and the War On Terror. "Have some," I say.

Cool optical illusions, as found by The Volokh Conspiracy.

Once again, one of Eric S. Raymond's fans leaks an internal Microsoft memo about open source software. Hee hee hee.

Let me see if I can get this straight: the voting machine clearly displays an error (in that the word "Democratic" appears when it shouldn't), but we should just accept your unsubstantiated word that everything is just peachy, and there isn't the slightest chance of miscounting, or anything? And we shouldn't be even slightly worried that there isn't any physical possibility of an independent audit of the votes? I hope Maryland voters feel much more enfranchised now.

Professor Reynolds finds an incident of truly staggering foolishness on the part of our own home-grown Federal Bureau of Intrusiveness: go read his except and commentary. Thank you, boys ... no amount of average citizens' complaints about the necessity of oversight will ever carry as much weight as self-important armed thugs demanding people give up their Constitutional rights on teevee will.

A two-fer! Ars Technica has published two bits on wireless security:

• Wireless Security Blackpaper is an overview of wireless and security practices
• Wireless security howto concentrates on securing a SOHO net.

Boo-yah! Hooray for the CIA for striking down military combatants without any allied casualties. I hope all the opposing forces are now asking themselves "I wonder what else is up there that I can't see."

The Yale Law Journal is publishing a paper about the tension between copyright and the 1st Amendment. From the abstract:

Measured in light of the freedom of imagination, copyright's central prohibition of piracy is fully constitutional, but its prohibition of unauthorized derivative works is not.

What do you imagine that says about fair use and the DMCA? "Nothing good" is the correct answer.

Hee hee hee! I can just imagine the reactions of opposing infantry after this is working. The poor schlubs will be sitting there, minding their own military business, and the hand of <diety/> just swats them down. Outstanding!

And now for something not Microsoft-related .. National Ammo Day is November 19th. Go buy some ammo to show your support for your individual 2nd Amendment right.

How can the living embodiment of all that is good (and quantifiable) arrive at the conclusion that nothing should be done about Microsoft? I am crushed.

• Consumers like Wintel

Jane says "Consumers like Wintel", I assume because the overwhelming majority of them buy computers with Intel chips running the Windows OS. How come they don't buy machines with Linux, or BeOS, or really anything else on them? I assume (from later comments) that Jane's answer would be "network effect" (which I'll come back to). How about that Microsoft would cut off the air supply to any vendor who dared to sell such a thing? It is unreasonable to claim that this threat, and the consequent unavailability of machines without Windows on them, had no effect on the market. Consumers can't buy what isn't available for sale.

Microsoft should disclose their licensing agreements with OEMs, and they should be subject to governmental oversight, since they have demonstrated rather conclusively that they won't play well with others without adult supervision.




• Innovation will stall

Jane also says "Innovation will stall". Before I hurt myself laughing, please suggest which innovations we're talking about. Pay-per-incident support? UCITA? HIPAA-incompatible license agreements? DR-DOS detection and spurious error message generation? Palladium and <scare-quote>trusted</scare-quote> computing? I will opine that Bill Gates' and Microsoft's primary contribution to the computing field is to establish that (a) software is a product and people should expect to pay for it, and (b) computers are unreliable and should be expected to fail early and often. He also helps establish that (c) corporations are evil and rapacious in exactly their capacity to inflict evil and rapine.

I'm all in favor of (a) what with me being a professional software developer, but (b) causes me no end of teeth-gnashing. I've had to reboot my stereo exactly once, and I don't believe I've ever had to reboot my cell phone. I guess my car doesn't count since I can't tell when it reboots, but I've never had to manually start the reboot process to clear up some flaky behavior. If that's the innovation we're talking about, I'd just as soon not have any.

As an aside, has anybody ever actually called Microsoft tech support and gotten any useful information from them? Show of hands please. Note that this doesn't include getting support for Windows from your computer hardware vendor. You must have called Microsoft themselves and gotten satisfaction. I opine that "support from Microsoft" is a useful fiction in the same category as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

I don't think (c) ever actually goes away, but damn me if I can think of an alternative. Transaction costs, after all, are real real real.

I propose no remedy here, since there isn't any objection. Claiming "innovation" is just an appeal to apple pie and Mom-hood. Yes, we all think all the children should have shoes, and as soon as Microsoft comes up with an innovation that people voluntarily purchase, then they should get to sell all they can make of it subject to all the other rules that bind the rest of us.




• Network Effects save companies money

Yes, network effects are real. The network effects would be just as real if there were interoperable products as they are now with the ubiquitous computing monoculture. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't actually interested in interoperability. Primarily, they are interested in Microsoft-only versions of things, as evidenced by their conduct vis-a-vis Java and Visual J++ and their refusal to abide by licensing agreements that they find inconvenient (ibid). If you really believe that network effects provide a benefit to consumers (which I do, by the bye), then yes, a ubiquitous platform is very desirable but that doens't mean that it must come from a single vendor.

Microsoft should publish their file formats and APIs, and those interfaces should be the only communication between Microsoft OSs and applications, which, coincidentally, is the same rule that the rest of us have to follow if we want to play in the pool.




• Microsoft has a lot of shareholders

I opine that neither the government nor the people of the U.S. have an obligation to re-arrange the game to insure that a company that previously was profitable continues to be so if circumstances change. The investors have already been offered their reward in the form of increased stock prices. I feel strongly that we are not obligated to continue to force their stock price up. After all, Sun has stockholders too, as does (or did, anyway) Enron. Would we also be obligated to keep their stock prices up? I could insert a slippery-slope argument here, but I assume everyone can see what sort of shape it would have. Discuss amongst yourselves, if you wish.

Microsoft's shareholders should have no special standing before the court, or at least no more special than that of us consumers.




• Risk is not good for the economy

First, I'm not entirely sure that risk isn't good for the economy. It seems to me that accepting risk and attempting to mitigate it is the essence of starting a new business; if everybody is fat and sassy then they're unlikely to select you as a vendor. If there's no chance that anything will ever fail to be perfectly wonderful, then you're probably not going to be interesting in buying any new anything.

Second, Microsoft is apparently not shy about letting their customers swing. We've already establish that everybody is their customer, including (unfortunately), the U.S. Navy. What exactly is the risk of having our armed forces left stranded because their increasingly-wired equipment BSODs? What are the risks to the rest of us from having truly astonishing vulnerability to every s|<ript |<iddy who finds the source to a distributed denial of service 'bot? What is the risk to us of current and future variants of Melissa, BugBear, Anna Kournikova, Code Red, etc etc ad nauseam?

Recognize that there are real risks to inaction as well, and that the status quo contains harmful elements.

In short ("too late" I hear you say), Microsoft is not a poster child for the free market. They have acted contrary to their customer's interests on quite a number of occasions. (As I recall, Adam Smith claimed that the invisible hand worked because the vendor, working in his own selfish interest, would improve the position of his customers as well; that doesn't seem to be working here, damn it all) Far too many people are willing to give them a pass for what is truly unconscionable behaviour just because their logo is stamped onto damn near everybody's desk. They have commited harm, and if we wish them to stop harming us then they must suffer some penalty. One of my personal quirks is I refuse to accomodate people doing crap that I don't approve of. If you want to screw me, I will not be assisting you in doing so, and I will do what I reasonably can to make it painful for you. We, as consumers, should be making it painful for Microsoft to work against our interests, and so far the DOJ isn't doing such a fine job of that.

BWA-hahahahahaha! I don't know if this is for real, but it's damned funny even if it's not. Ho ho ho!

Ummmm ... <conspiracy-theory mode="on">He wouldn't do that, would he? I mean, he's a huge proponent of international law. And that would clearly be a violation of same, wouldn't it? Obviously it's a fabrication of the Great Right-Wing Conspiracy. After all, our own governments take great delight in lying to us about everything. Just think about the 100 mpg carburetor and all those crashed flying saucers interred at Groom Lake.</conspiracy-theory>

Woo-hoo! There was really only one thing about the original Star Trek series that I still like, and that's the green-skinned girlies!!!!

Hooray for Qatar! What say we remember this too, for when the appropriate time comes. Sorry bastards. I understand geopolitik demands that the Saudis not see the gun barrels just yet, but damn me if I like it.

Mindles H. Dreck post a short-ish essay on wealth redistribution in which he argues (quickly) that wealth redistribution, even though we might collectively agree that a certain amount is desirable, is actually problematic on its face. I know this makes me weird(er), but I actually enjoy reading economics. Once I get to be stupid idle rich, I intend to run right off and get an MBA and just wallow in it all.

Hooray! An editor for Struts configuration files! It even integrates with JBuilder! Go get some!

Ars Technica has published their new system guides. I'm in the midst of buying new pieces-parts these days, so I'm extra-happy to see these come out.

A quick puff-piece on a guy who's built a BattleBot from a Mathematica model.

I'm really conflicted about this. The bullet is that there is a mentally retarted kid playing for Northwest Ohio (I think). Just like "Rudy", he showed up for all the practices, and dressed out for all the games for four entire years. (It was high-school ball, so there weren't any issues about walk-on v. scholarship to muddy the waters). The coach decided he'd let the kid take the final snap of the game and take a knee so he'd get his football letter or something. Maybe there was nothing more than just "Rudy"-style feel-goodism.

The game was a 42-0 blowout, so there appeared to be no difficulty in letting the kid take the knee. The winning coach offered instead to tell his guys to stand down and let the kid score a touchdown (so Northwest would lose 42-7 instead). They all agreed this was a good plan, so off it went. The ball was snapped, the kid got the ball, and after a bit of confusion eventually ran it down for the T.D.

Hooray for the kid, I suppose, but my disquiet comes from the self-congratulatory "victory for us all" tone of what was really nothing more than naked condescension. If the kid wanted to play football, then let him play football. He went to practice, he's wearing his pads, let him hit somebody (or get hit by somebody). Put him in on the last series so he can hit or get hit a couple of times; it's not like the game was on the line anyway. At least then he'd be being a player instead of just play-acting. Crap. Empty gestures drive me nuts.

Ralph Peters lights into Rumsfeld for being a wilfully clue-resistant SecDef. Generally speaking, I'm still a supporter of Rummy, but that may be left over from his decidedly anti-Powell stance on Iraq. I must admit to being ignorant of the wrangling between Rumsfeld and the Army, but perhaps I'll have to add more of that to my reading list.

Yet more on the travesty that was masquerading as Senator Wellstone's funeral.

"Let everyone have a gun" he says. Not nearly so inflammatory here, but in Australia? Right after, and indeed about, the shooting at Monash? Some people are much braver than I am, and he's one of them.

Sure, it's just a clock, but it sure is hard-working. (found via Glenn Reynolds)

The America Institute of Graphic Arts interviews Virginia Postrel about her new book on aesthetics and design. I can't wait for the book, myself.

BWA-hahahaha! Jim Treacher lets us all know the real story about decriminalizing marijuana. (If the link isn't working for you, as it isn't for me, scroll down a bit. You'll know it when you see it).

Ummm ... bleah. Now do you believe that Saddam is guilty of crimes against humanity? Cripes, that thing is ugly.

Well said! Lee and I have had our moments arguing over the impending Iraqi conflict without ever coming to a conclusion (he's hard-headed, you know). Certainly no single 1000-word essay is going to convince everybody (or even Lee), but this is an excellent summary of the current situation.

According to the media doctrine established during the sniper attacks in D.C., the killing of the U.S. envoy in Jordan is not terrorism. I assume the thinking is that since Osama bin Laden didn't show up for a press conference to claim in English that he himself pulled the trigger, that we can't really "be sure". Fah.

I know I don't get out all that much, but damn, that's bizarre. Apparently, there is a serious problem in Japan of young twenty-somethings, who in America would be out drinking and puking with their friends nightly, are instead sequestering themselves in their parents houses, and only sneaking out for food when the 'rent are alseep. What gives? Rob, do you have an expert opinion?

Another t-shirt I need to buy.

Oh my word. You decadent moderns with your new-fangled ipsemobiles and self-propelled cheese straighteners! Back in my day, we had to actually press a key to make marks on paper. You have it so easy.

I can't tell if the permalink is b0rken for everybody, or just me, but Godless Capitalist posts a completely non-P.C. observation about guns and crime in the U.S.

Really just hours of click-inducing time wastage (found via Corsair the Rational Pirate)

It just goes to show that there's nothing new under the sun, that human nature doesn't change, and that the play repeats itself with a new cast every so often. <sigh/>

Yet another quiz, but this one is perhaps guaranteed to piss off the P.C. hiding out amongst us: ALL LOOK SAME.

I scored a 7.

I missed this when it was timely, so here it is only four days late: Happy Birthday Mrs. Dumont.

First the hospitals find themselves unable to upgrade to XP nor could they not upgrade to XP, but now the banking sector is discovering that Microsoft is not their friend. I had previously said that I could only imagine a security flaw so fatal that insurance companies would force their clients not to use MS products could possibly dislodge the software colossus. Apparently, I suffer from a deficit of imagination, since now it appears MS may be actively driving their large corporate customers into their competitors arms (in the back office arena, anyway. on the desktop, there aren't any real competitors)

BWA-hahahahahaha! Ho ho ho! I'm absolutely dying! (Found via American Realpolitik)

Porphyrogenitus has quite a bit to say in response to Lord Robertson's speechifying. His response is, and it includes a bit of profanity towards the end, is we asked you to play nice years ago, and now you can piss off. Hear hear, my good fellow. I also welcome you to the ol' blogroll.

I'd just like to say that, at least once, Jane Galt herself read my page and commented. I'm so thrilled I could just pop. I abase myself at your feet, m'lady. Please forgive me my moment of heretical weakness.

John Robb posts an essay about the big difference between advertising and spam: trust. Not so much about how to acquire it, but rather a small sampling of case studies of companies that have firmly grasped the difference between the two.

Look! It's a box that might have contained the bones of Jesus' evil twin brother Skippy. No, seriously. Okay ... he wasn't called "Skippy", and he wasn't actually a twin, but he did have a brother named Jesus.

I'm with James Lileks: I will not be teaching my daughters to pledge allegiance to soil.

Steven Den Beste reworked his previous article on CDMA v. TDMA et al, and got it published in Tech Central Station. It's a bit less technical and consequently a bit more general-user friendly. He even gets to indulge the all-too-human desire to say "I Told You So ..."

I really do my best these days never to open the case on any of my computers. I'm a developer, damn it, not a wiring monkey. Nonetheless, it's time to buy some new components to build a new machine that will play Jedi Knight II without chugging down. I hear you asking "Mitchell, what have you always hated about computer-y things?" Well, I'll tell you. It's the damned disk drive cables. They're flat, short, and unwieldy, but what are you going to do? Not have a hard drive? No! Get better cables!!! I'll be having a set, thank yew.

Woo-hoo! Rob Lyman opens up a huge pile of commentary. Under the guise of explaining why he calls himself a "conservative" (sort-of) these days, he actually captures in wonderful detail exactly the kinds of things that drive me batsh*t in what passes for political thought, commentary, and "leadership". And don't get me started on the moronic things I hear in the elevators as I come to the office daily.

Egad! Another wired goddess has shown her frailty. I'm ... crushed.

My most admired-from-afar Jane Galt stumbled onto this story, wherein some twit was fired for refusing to remove her eyebrow ring. She sued to be reinstated because she claims she was discriminated on the basis of her religion; she belongs to the Church of Body Modification. Jane develops an advanced form of apoplexy because she thinks that the twit is somehow debasing other religious beliefs, and she even discards her heretofore unsullied upbringing by suggesting that maybe the judge should rule that this isn't a real religion.

Crap. The twit's beliefs don't sound any more foolish to me than does any other belief system constructed around imaginary friends, post-mortem Ponzi schemes, giving your money to <diety/>'s friends/workers/bagmen, etc. If we're going to say "that religion is stupid", then the emphasis shouldn't be on "that", but rather on "religion". They're all stupid.

Please, Jane, tell me this was all a lofty pile of sarcasm and I just missed the joke. Please? Pretty please?

Well, I'm a bit late coming up on this, but better late than never, I suppose. Excellently stated, my good man.

We interrupt this "free speech" nonsense to bring you a very important announcement: you may only speak nicely about the Democrats from now on. Period. No discussion allowed. (BWA-hahahahahaha! I wallow in my evil-tude, now that I know what the shallow end of the gene pool looks like!)

More info on the Microsoft "switcher" astroturf brouhaha: details and a timeline.

Behold! The evolution of math education in America!

BWA-hahahahaha! Hee hee hee! I'm absolutely dying! Hooray for the Scots!!!

Hear hear! Eric S. Raymond (nearly) hits the nail on the head with his "Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto". I would have left of the mention of the big-L Libertarians as they're so insignificant in numbers and influence that I can only read this paragraph as a plea from the pulpit. Aside from that, however, right on baby!

I don't get it. Are they asking to be next? Or is this an indicator of their willingness to institute their own change of regime in order to forestall our forcible regime change? Hmmm.

Well, dang. It's really going to be difficult to convince the missus to let me spend a few bucks on a new rig for 3D modeling now that the secret is out.

I don't have any suggestions on how to make it work, but damn me if I don't want to help this woman get what she's asking for. I'm hoping that our showing in Iraq will cause something to happen spontaneously there. If not, well, poop. Maybe another alternative will present itself.

BWA-hahahahahaha! That'll teach 'em!!!!

BWA-hahahahahaha! I had been contemptuously dismissive of Apple's "Switch" campaign, mostly because of the universally dweebish character of the "professional" users they trot out as spokesvermin (as opposed to Tony Hawk and Kelly Slater, who have day-jobs not involving computer crap). It must have been effective, however, because Microsoft came up with their own "Switch" campaign showing how "easy" (read: painful) it is to switch to Winders from a Macintosh. The problem? The whole thing was a lie.

Way back when MS was in court trying to claim, with straight faces, that they weren't monopolists but were philanthropists of the first order, they claimed that the people were on their side. To demonstrate, they pointed to a "grass roots" effort to petition the court to stop picking on Microsoft. Unfortunately for MS, the artificial nature of the campaign was winkled out in an amazingly short time, and the online world crafted a new name for that kind of underhandesness: "astroturf". (Get it? Artificial grass? Hee hee!)

Right on schedule, MS demonstrates that they continue to think their job is to LIE TO THEIR F*CKING CUSTOMERS!!!! Is there anybody who still believes that Microsoft is out to do anything, and I mean anything whatsoever, besides increase their market share and/or earnings? Other corporations have to limit their predations upon their customer base because the customers could go somewhere else. If IBM lies to you about WebSphere, BEA will cheerfully sell you a Weblogic license. If Oracle lies to you about their security-hardened database, well then IBM will sell you a DB2 license. Microsoft doesn't seem to have that limit; if Microsoft lies to you about a security vulnerability (cross-site scripting, VBA, HTML mail in Outlook, etc etc ad nauseam), then you can, um, piss up a rope.

I can only hope that a security breach so extreme happens somewhere that insurance firms will either raise the premiums for, or stop insuring entirely, companies which use Microsoft products as their infrastructure. I don't see any other path down which the U.S. would cease their reliance on Microsoft products, damn it all.

This article states that the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" campaign starring Steven the Dude moved a lot of product. His likely reward? A pink slip! Will they work that into the commercial? He's making his "Dude, you're getting a Dell" comment to some schlub, and his manager towers over him and says "The vocal minority of hipsters find you unspeakably bourgoise, and so you're being downsized! Piss off!"

Ralph Peters (yes, that Ralph Peters), writes a short essay on why the bombing in Bali represents the fading power of Islamic Fundie terrrorists, and not any sign of a resurgent strength. (Unfortunately, the WSJ in general and the Opinion Journal in particular occasionally require a free registration to read their articles. Sorry about that. Register if you want to read it, or not if you don't)

Maybe it's just me, but perhaps a lifetime of teaching yourself to talk to imaginary friend(s) doesn't really prepare you for the kind of scepticism needed to survive in the U.S. these days? I mean, it seems that any schmuck can say "it's God's will" and you've got nothing to check against, because after all the ways of the diety beyond mortal ken (or some such). To paraphrase Queen Victoria, "just lie back and think of Heaven".

(You have also got to be a bit of a moron to fall for this.
A fool and his money are easily parted.
Lee)

I'm not usually one to put stuff on my car (mostly because I don't have anything to say to random strangers that can be captured in an icon), but I might have to make an exception or three.

Okay! Who remembers "Kung Fu Master"? Almost as good, and no quarters required!!!!

Dan Bricklin, one of the pioneers of the PC revolution, pens an essay about how copy protection robs the future. The applicability of this to the current discussion about digital rights management is, I hope, obvious.

BWA-hahahahaha! HOWTO produce a techno song.

News flash! Important evidence as to why Congress voted to authorize force! Hooray for my fellow citizens!

Larry Miller publishes a correction to his previous article. It wasn't the Buzzcocks that got booed after dissing The Prez, it was Blink-182. Go figure.

Well, I'm delighted to find that our elected representatives did what I wanted them to. "Regime Change" is our next stop, I think. Furthermore, it appears there is a post-war plan. Things are really looking up.

Oooooohhh!! In a universe of marketing-driven <scare-quote>needs</scare-quote>, we finally have something that solves a real problem that I have: I hate vacuuming.

Ugh. I'd hate to think that this is true. I'm awash in debt, and if my income is going to decrease, I'm going to be in super-hot water (instead of the normally hot water I'm in now).

Mother of <diety/>!! Please make me stop playing this stupid helicopter game!!!!

I might have to actually bookmark this: Apple publishes their User Experience documents. I'm enjoying the comparison between Winders and Mac OS X especially.

Another Boutique presents The Best English Ever! After a stint in alt.religion.kibology, I wandered around for a bit saying things like "please to keep in polybag when Jesus not in use", so I found this nearly irresistably funny.

Hmmmm ... I've got my own pond, and three and a half pounds of sodium metal. What to do ... what to do?

It will soon be illegal to store or manipulate medical records on computers running Windows 2000 SP3, or Windows XP. Unfortunately, it also might be illegal not to do so. I've got an idea so wild, it just might work: how about you don't use Windows? Maybe Apple or Red Hat could sell you something to replace it?

I am not a lawyer (duh), but I was under the impression that people were allowed to use their own names, and someone else having a trademark was not sufficient to prevent that. That is, if my name was "John McDonald", then I would be allowed to open a restaurant named "McDonald's" and Ronald and crew couldn't do a damn thing about it. Apparently, however, it doesn't work like that in Los Angeles. There, big-money automakers are allowed to actually own an entire family name, and the other members of the family can go pound sand.

Okay ... one last bit about the onerous CBDTPA from Ed Felten: Fritz's Hit List #13:

Fight piracy -- regulate Christmas ornaments!

BWA-hahahahahaha! Larry Miller pens another gem, including this:

Not bad, eh? I know, I know, it's not exactly parliament shouting down Clement Atlee, but, all in all, not bad. Americans can always surprise you, for good or ill. Jim McDermott and David Bonior are Americans, and they surprised me by making me think, "Gee, I didn't know I could throw up that much."

It's all good.

Update: The article has been pulled, apparently. It turns out that the Buzzcocks say they didn't make any such slurs, several other concert attendees agree that the Buzzcocks didn't make any such slurs, and nobody else has come forward to say it did really happen. Good for the Weekly Standard to pull the story until they can verify if it's true.