Moribund intentionalism and the death of the author II: The Wrath of Cant

Holy crap. Head hurts. Must sleep.

I think it's funny

BWA ha ha ha ha

Found via Dean Esmay, whom you should be reading daily anyway.

Talk Like A Pirate Day - September 19

It's today! It's today!

Now don't ya be forgettin', me hearties.

BLACKFIVE: Predator says "Hellfire Missiles, Meet Terrorists" - Video

Woo hoo! Get you some of THAT!

Hurricane Andrew: resurrected and still blowing

Having now read Jeff Goldstein's magnificent essay "Hurricane Andrew: resurrected and still blowing" I find that I have absolutely nothing to add, which is just freaky, man.

The Belmont Club: The Flight 93 Memorial

I guess it's possible it's just a coincidence. But wouldn't the artist have said something like "if you look at the history of my work, you'd see that I'm very fond of circular arcs"? Or really anything at all besides having his mouthpiece say "well, the moon is crescent-y sometimes"?

That said, I'm not at all convinced.

It wasn’t desperation, or insanity, or protest. It was New Orleans, without police.

Go read the whole thing.

The Full Of Hate Brothers Say......

Jebus. How exactly did it happen than Karl Rove and George W. Bush are the source of all evil in the world? Especially when this sort of thing was going on apparently unquestioned by anybody who was there (supposedly) representing us?

There's already enough urban legends surrounding Katrina and New Orleans that I get the occasional ball o' tripe in my email. I'll start responding with this debunking instead of just my usual metric ton of invective.

Extraordinary Problems, Difficult Solutions

Holy crap. Sometimes, you just never really grasp the magnitude of the problem.

New Sisyphus - PDX: Where Have You Gone, President Bush? A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You

Go and read: Where Have You Gone, President Bush? A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You. I'll be here when you're done.

Ace of Spades HQ

Ooooooh! I'll have some, thanks.

File it Under: Cat-blogging-free since 2004.

"Take cover, sir" he said. Hee hee

Look! A meme!

As suggested by Laurence himself, I'll post up this truly craptacular playlist:

1. Every Breath You Take, Police

2. Billie Jean, Michael Jackson

3. Flashdance... What A Feelin, Irene Cara

4. Down Under, Men At Work

5. Beat It, Michael Jackson

6. Total Eclipse Of The Heart, Bonnie Tyler

7. Maneater, Daryl Hall and John Oates

8. Baby Come To Me, Patti Austin and James Ingram

9. Maniac, Michael Sembello

10. Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), Eurythmics

11. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Culture Club

12. You And I, Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle

13. Come On Eileen, Dexy's Midnight Runners

14. Shame On The Moon, Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band

15. She Works Hard For The Money, Donna Summer

16. Never Gonna Let You Go, Sergio Mendes

17. Hungry Like The Wolf, Duran Duran

18. Let's Dance, David Bowie

19. Twilight Zone, Golden Earring

20. I Know There's Something Going On, Frida

21. Jeopardy, Greg Kihn Band

22. Electric Avenue, Eddy Grant

23. She Blinded Me With Science, Thomas Dolby

24. Africa, Toto

25. Little Red Corvette, Prince

26. Back On The Chain Gang, Pretenders

27. Up Where We Belong, Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes

28. Mr. Roboto, Styx

29. You Are, Lionel Richie

30. Der Kommissar, After The Fire

31. Puttin' On The Ritz, Taco

32. Sexual Healing, Marvin Gaye

33. (Keep Feeling) Fascination, Human League

34. Time (Clock Of The Heart), Culture Club

35. The Safety Dance, Men Without Hats

36. Mickey, Toni Basil

37. You Can't Hurry Love, Phil Collins

38. Separate Ways, Journey

39. One On One, Daryl Hall and John Oates

40. We've Got Tonight, Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton

41. 1999, Prince

42. Stray Cat Strut, Stray Cats

43. Allentown, Billy Joel

44. Stand Back, Stevie Nicks

45. Tell Her About It, Billy Joel

46. Always Somethmg There To Remind Me, Naked Eyes

47. Truly, Lionel Richie

48. Dirty Laundry, Don Henley

49. The Girl Is Mine, Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney

50. Too Shy, Kajagoogoo

51. Goody Two Shoes, Adam Ant

52. Rock The Casbah, Clash

53. Our House, Madness

54. Overkill, Men At Work

55. Is There Something I Should Know, Duran Duran

56. Gloria, Laura Branigan

57. Affair Of The Heart, Rick Springfield

58. She's A Beauty, Tubes

59. Solitaire, Laura Branigan

60. Don't Let It End, Styx

61. How Am I Supposed To Live Without You, Laura Branigan

62. China Girl, David Bowie

63. Come Dancing, Kinks

64. Promises, Promises, Naked Eyes

65. The Other Guy, Little River Band

66. Making Love Out Of Nothing At All, Air Supply

67. Family Man, Daryl Hall and John Oates

68. Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', Michael Jackson

69. I Won't Hold You Back, Toto

70. All Right, Christopher Cross

71. Straight From The Heart, Bryan Adams

72. Heart To Heart, Kenny Loggins

73. My Love, Lionel Richie

74. I'm Still Standing, Elton John

75. Hot Girls In Love, Loverboy

76. It's A Mistake, Men At Work

77. I'll Tumble 4 Ya, Culture Club

78. All This Love, Debarge

79. Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy, Sammy Hagar

80. Heartbreaker, Dionne Warwick

81. Faithfully, Journey

82. Steppin' Out, Joe Jackson

83. Take Me To Heart, Quarterflash

84. (She's) Sexy + 17, Stray Cats

85. Try Again, Champaign

86. Dead Giveaway, Shalamar

87. Lawyers In Love, Jackson Browne

88. What About Me, Moving Pictures

89. Human Nature, Michael Jackson

90. Photograph, Def Leppard

91. Pass The Dutchie, Musical Youth

92. True, Spandau Ballet

93. Far From Over, Frank Stallone

94. I've Got A Rock 'N' Roll Heart, Eric Clapto
n
95. It Might Be You, Stephen Bishop

96. Tonight I Celebrate My Love, Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack

97. You Got Lucky, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

98. Don't Cry, Asia

99. Breaking Us In Two, Joe Jackson

100. Fall In Love With Me, Earth, Wind and Fire


Oh, it pains me to realize that I remember all of those songs. I'm surprised I didn't hate more of them, actually.

I'm sure this says something about me, but damn me if I know what that might be.

Sensitive Light: Coloured Smoke

Now that's really cool

Starving won't make people live longer-researchers - Yahoo! News

Yay! Yay for eating anyway!

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Coffee a good source of antioxidants

Yay! Ya for coffee! And yes, I think I will have another cup or ten.

Patterico’s Pontifications » A Modest Proposal

I'd go along with that!!!

Mother, May I Sleep with Treacher?: Of course, of course

That's not funny. Well, actually it is funny ... it just shouldn't be. Jim Treacher has a special talent.

421v.jpg (JPEG Image, 266x384 pixels)

Well, I will grant that it is a tattoo, but .... dag. I don't think I'd have paid money for that.

Let me also hurry to say "very NSFW"

101-280: Road Trip!

Okay, so I'm a bit confused: did you like the stupid thing, or not?

Michael Yon : Online Magazine: Gates of Fire

Holy farking crap. I am completely staggered.

Chickenhawks, revisited revisited

Oh! Ouch! Dag, that's gotta hurt!

Development Portal

Best! Commercial! Evar!

Chaffinch Shoelace :: Make Your Own Flame Thrower

Great. so now I have a new hobby.

The Belmont Club: Unintended Consequences

Holy farking crap. Clearly I wasted my life going to the wrong schools, because I would love to be one of the boffins designing and building this stuff. Oh, and weapons systems too.

IFILM - Viral Videos: Mercenary Sniper in Iraq

Bang bang bang bangity bang.

Losing the Iraq War - Can the left really want us to? By Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens asks a few tough questions:

The United States is awash in human rights groups, feminist organizations, ecological foundations, and committees for the rights of minorities. How come there is not a huge voluntary effort to help and to publicize the efforts to find the hundreds of thousands of "missing" Iraqis, to support Iraqi women's battle against fundamentalists, to assist in the recuperation of the marsh Arab wetlands, and to underwrite the struggle of the Kurds, the largest stateless people in the Middle East? Is Abu Ghraib really the only subject that interests our humanitarians?

??????? ?????? | ?????? » ???? ??? ???????? ??? ?????????...

How to construct a crossbow using only items lying around the office supply cabinet. In Russian, no less.

Instapundit.com -

Now that's well done. Faster, please.

Joel on Software - Hitting the High Notes

I have no idea why it isn't just gobsmackingly obvious to everybody, but I've long since come to terms with acknowledging that it just isn't. But ... Joel Spolsky takes on
why programmers aren't interchangable, and why real talent is worth more than you're paying for it. He does find a new line of attack, or at least it's new to me, so there's that.

Webshots - Images of Amazing Chinese Art of Watermelon Carving

I had no idea such a thing existed.

Prettier Than Napoleon: The Blog Formerly Known As Class Maledictorian

Well, all right then! Pucker up, baby!!!

*kiss*

Open Sesame!

I know I'm a geek; perhaps more of a Morlock, a boffin, a troll, but in that basic genera. How much so? It's hard to say, but this article was very exciting, which is probably a litmus test of some sort.

LILEKS (James) Screeeeeeedblog

You're damned skippy. And no, that isn't bomb-throwing; that's cutting like a surgeon. You barely feel the scalpel on the way in.

How I Spent My Weekend

So the girls went to spend the weekend with their grandmother. We were a bit apprehensive because this is the first time the baby's spent the night away, and the first time the eldest has spent the night farther away than across the street, and we didn't want them to get there and start crying they wanted to come home. Turns out I was overestimating my attraction; they didn't want to come home at all. Hmph.

In the meanwhile, Kathy and I took the opportunity to go see some films: "Batman Begins" and "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith". We saw "Batman" on Saturday after dropping the girls off, and "Star Wars Ep.3" on Sunday before picking them up.

First up: "Batman Begins". This was a fabulous film. People were fighting, ninjas were jumping down from the rafters, things blowed up real good like ... what's not to love? I understood why everybody did what they did. I liked watching them do it. Then more things blew up. Yay! Go see this one. I'll also be buying the DVD when it comes out.

Second up: "Star Wars: Ep.3". We walked out of the theater a bit let-down. It was visually striking, sure, but just walking out were were a bit ho-hum about it. And as time has passed, I am more and more disappointed by the film. Wasn't Padme once the Queen of Naboo? Wasn't she a Senator? When did she stop being a person who did things and instead turned herself into a weepy chyk who haunts her own living room crying? At what point did Mace Windu stop being concerned for the Jedi Way and turn into "The Punisher"? What the hell kind of narrative device was flying around mind-controlling those people without ever once being spotted?

And another thing: for most of the film, I actually felt bad for Skywalker. He was young, but because he was powerful an incredible amount of pressure was placed on him. People were lying to him (or telling him the truth, which might be worse) and using him for their own purposes, and I really felt bad for his situation. Then he went into the Jedi Temple, and I didn't care anymore. I completely disconnected, and that was that for emotional attachment. Obi-Wan should have taken his head. More to the story, though, what was his motivation for that? Even if he did all of everything he did out of loyalty to the Republic and/or to save Padme's life, when did he quit caring about that and decide that what he really wanted was to rule the Empire? The grue must have gotten to him as well.

Things sure did blow up good, though. I'm going to go out on a limb and opine that George Lucas should let other people write his scripts and he should stick to visual design.

Apparently I've turned into a bomb-thrower. I don't need that kind of self-image, so I'll stop talking about anything of import until I don't want to stab people with serving forks and other such anti-social behaviors.

CNN.com - Schiavo autopsy finds no sign of trauma - Jun 15, 2005

What's that? You say an autopsy rather conclusively shows that Ms. Schiavo was brain-dead, and failed to find any evidence of abuse? Well, color me shocked. All those times I claimed that Jebus H. Christ wanted her to LIVE LIVE LIVE and it was only her hate-filled evil louse of a husband that had beaten her with a crowbar that kept her in that bed against her will turn out to have been wrong?

Luckily I never claimed any such thing. In fact, I claimed just the opposite. I feel so ... vindicated.

Music Choices

An amusing parlor game, as suggested by Timmer: sort your iTunes music library alphabetically and post the first song in each letter/number category:

1-2-8	The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
2 Turntables And a Crate of Skint	The Bassbin Twins
3 A.M. Eternal	The KLF
40'	Franz Ferdinand
5/4	Gorillaz
7	Moby
911 Is a Joke	Public Enemy
A Better Man	Clint Black
B.O.B.	Outkast
C'mon N' Ride It	Quad City DJ's
Daffodil Lament	The Cranberries
Earn Enough For Us	XTC
Fade Into You	Mazzy Star
Galvanize	The Chemical Brothers
Half Day Closing	Portishead
I'll Be Gone	Clint Black
Jack-Ass	Beck
Kalandero	Cirque du Soleil
L-L-Love	Astaire
M1 A1	Gorillaz
Naked Eye	Luscious Jackson
O Death	Ralph Stanley
Pacific Coast Party	Smash Mouth
Que Me Quedes Tu	Shakira
Rage Against the Coke Machine	OPM
S'Wonderful	BBC Big Band Orchestra
Take It From Here	Justin Timberlake
U Can't Stop Me	Basement Jaxx
Val Vedral	Cirque du Soleil
W.M.A.	Pearl Jam
X-Files Theme	DJ Dado
Yeat's Grave	The Cranberries
Za	Supergrass

I have no idea what (if anything) that says about me.

Mile Zero

Hey! It's the Carnival of the Gamers! Now with a new improved presentation format!

PBS | I, Cringely . June 9, 2005 - Going for Broke

Like all good conspiracy theories, it (barely) hangs together, but is so amusing you cheerfully get past all that: Apple and Intel are going to merge.

The Volokh Conspiracy - -

Well, at least we've got that going for us.

The Belmont Club: The Sound of Silence

How's your blood pressure? The Belmont Club: The Sound of Silence

TCS: Tech Central Station - The Collectivist Feeling

First, let me say that I liked this short essay about thinking v. feeling quite a lot. I wonder, though, at Mr.Kling's use of "libertarian" (lower case "L") as a rough analog of "good". Maybe it's my personal distaste at the obvious counter-productive antics of the Libertarians (upper case "L"), but I'd really rather use a completely different adjective to emphasize my distance from Harry Browne et al.

Anyway, go read it.

ScrappleFace: Dean: Dem Poll Workers Can't Tell GOP Voters Apart

BWA ha ha ha ha! I agree with The Professor(tm): Howard Dean is the Scrappleface full-employment act made human.

ScrappleFace: Dean: Dem Poll Workers Can't Tell GOP Voters Apart

OKCupid! The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test

a Pirate You scored 4 Honor, 5 Justice, 3 Adventure, and 11 Individuality!

Arr matey. You may belive in honor, and justice, and you certainly have a sense of adventure. But mostly, you play by your own rules. Your code is your own and you are flexible in most situations. Dress flamboyant and look into a parrot. I think you'll do fine.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 4% on Ninjinuity You scored higher than 56% on Knightlyness You scored higher than 0% on Cowboiosity You scored higher than 91% on Piratical Bent

Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test written by fluffy71 on Ok Cupid

Transterrestrial Musings

BWA ha ha ha ha ha! You're absolutely right; clearly that's a quagmire.

Elitist Parents and Their Sappy Class Delusions

Cathy Seipp rips elitist parent a new one. Woo hoo!

mistful: So, Star Wars.

Fans of quality mockery: click here. The rest of you: piss off.

Girl, 8, Found Buried Alive in Trash Bin | ajc.com

The "boy" who did this can't be killed enough. It just makes me sick and angry, which is not a good combination.

BBC NEWS | World | Lion Mutilates 42 Midgets in Cambodian Ring-Fight

That just makes me sick.

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster: The Tao Of Sith

You know what? That explains a whole lot.

Joel on Software - Making Wrong Code Look Wrong

Joel Spolsky writes stuff. "Well, duh" I hear you almost saying. He often says things that you think are quite obvious, but that's only after he's already said them; before he said them, you (and I) kept doing the stupidly wrong thing. In his latest essay, Making Wrong Code Look Wrong, he explains why the original Hungarian Notation didn't suck, and provided a bit of history showing how Microsoft managed to f*ck that up too. Along the way he also says (again) "exceptions are bad" and I find myself unable to really argue with that.

A Field Guide to Chess Tactics: Ward Farnsworth's Predator at the Chessboard

Note to self: learn how not to suck.

BATMAN BEGINS

I CAN'T FARKING WAIT!

Reason: A Day at the Brain Spa: Coming soon to a mall near you

I'd give my kids the pill, for damned sure. And then I'd take one myself.

Furthermore, anybody who disagrees is a moron. There is no God, and even if there was, he isn't going to award you extra points for style because you did something the old/stupid/hard way.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

The New Yorker reviews Ep.III and all I can say is "ouch."

You broke my weiner! I'm going to sue!

Well, drat.

Ah ... crap. I was pulling for Ian.

Border Patrol told to stand down in Arizona

Well, color me unsurprised. The Border Patrol would rather not do their jobs than admit that "Neighborhood Watch" works. I've never understood unions, partially because I don't get demanding pay and/or respect for refusing to do your fucking job, and look! Here's yet another example of that mentality.

I just want my weenie back

"It's tough to hide a 10-foot weenie," he said without smiling even a little bit. "I just want me weenie back," he continued.

Man, you can't make this stuff up.

Development Portal

Well, Uchenna and Joyce won The Amazing Race, so that's good. Once again, though, the game is clearly being rigged by the production crew. Raise your hands if you've ever (and I mean ever) seen an airline push the walkway back up to the jet once the doors have been closed. And yet, magically, they decided to let Uchenna and Joyce on the aircraft. Coincidentally, that prevented Rob and Amber from having a two-hour lead going into the final taxi ride to the finish line.

As long as Rob and Amber didn't win, then I'm okay with it, but I find my enthusiasm for the game to be significantly reduced now that the production crew isn't even pretending it isn't rigged anymore.

CNN.com - Jesus Christ in legal battle to get license - May 10, 2005

"Christ is not speaking to the press at this time," his lawyer said.

iowahawk: My United States

BWA ha ha ha! Hee hee! Ho ho ho!

Vodkapundit - Moral Exhaustion

Blah blah blah, whinge whinge, and Mr. and Mrs. VodkaPundit are springin' a sproggin!!!

P.S. Who cares if other people disagree with you? You should always consider that other people might be right, and a large volume of disagreement might very well be a sign that you've made an unwarranted assumption, but it might also be that people are just like they were in high school: a few brilliant people, plus a huge mass of average schlubs who care more for their cars/clothes/weed than anything else including actually thinking about anything.

Do Not Press

SarahK says "Do Not Press".

Constantine is gone daddy gone, love is gone.

I know it's irritating Kathy (and her mom, who's here visiting at the moment), but Constantine "Cheez-bawl" Maroulis is going home. And Scott is still there ... go figure. My pick is still (barely) Anthony. Of course, now that I've written that down, he's doomed.

Sand in the Gears - Archives

Tony Woodlief seems somehow able to capture exactly the sorts of things that I most love about being a parent. Today's reading is about zerbits, which he calls (for some reason) flurgles.

Paul Graham, "The Submarine"

Paul Graham has a new essay up: "The Submarine." Go and read. I'll wait.

Vodkapundit - Socialism Debunked In... The New York Times?!?

BWA ha ha ha ha ha! BOO-YAH! Take that, hippy!

Take That, Lucas!

M&M's candy makes a "Star Wars" parody-slash-homage commercial for their new candy that manages to be as good as Episode I and II, mostly due to the lack of Jar-Jar. M&M'S® Chocolate MPire

The Artist: A Self Portrait

Here's what I've got for self-portrait. Lee agrees that it looks rather like me except not quite angry enough.



Want to try it yourself? South Park Studio 2, by Planearium

How Very Clever, Mr.Bond

Can't score tickets to the big sports game? Follow this man's example and pretend to work for a teevee station. Works like a charm, apparently.

Wretchard comments, as eloquently as always, about the increasing prevalence of 'evil' in our lives which reminded me of my apoplectic fit yesterday.

My wife TiVos up "Dr.Phil" every day. Yesterday she was watching some of the backlog while I was at home. The guests were a 13 year old girl and her mother; the reason they were there was the girl claims she's more than ready to be sexually active up to and including having a child. Yes, I boggled at that as well.

What really got me going, though, was the mother's observation that when she talked to her OWN FREAKING DAUGHTER that it didn't seem to do any good, so she just gave up because she was tired and worked hard at her job and boo hoo hoo. From her daughter's reaction (eyerolling and all that), it was clear that the mother gave up on raising her own child several years back. The father was, of course, nowhere to be found.

If that's you, what the f&@#^%k is wrong with you? You had an opportunity to be a slacker before giving birth. Once you have a child, you have a responsibility to that child that far supercedes any desires you might have along the lines of "I just wanna sit down" or "I just want some peace and quiet" or "I just wanna watch teevee." You know what? you're the parent ... STFU and be the parent. You can sit down and watch teevee once your children have grown up and moved out, or at least have gone to bed.

I don't want to sound like I don't understand how hard it is to be a single parent. I get it. Hell, it's hard to be half of the parent team. Your responsibility to your child, though, carries a huge amount of weight. You shouldn't stay in a relationship where your spouse beats you. You probably should give some serious thought, though, to staying in a relationship when your only real complaint is your spouse just won't pick up the wet towel off the bathroom floor. If you decide to go it alone anyway, you really ought to line up some assistance because children shouldn't be at home by themselves. Period. Your children need parenting (and their need is rather more absolute than your "need" for overtime to pay for that big-screen television), which means they need your time and attention and you have to provide it. There is absolutely no substitute for being there, talking to them, setting boundaries, and enforcing the rules. You don't get to not be the parent. You don't get to hand your responsibility off to other people.

Damn, but this just validates my hatred of huge swathsof the population. It's just as well I wasn't on the stage because I'd have throttled the woman while foaming at the mouth, and then my wife and children would have to find some way to fend without me and they don't need the hardship. See? That's what I'm talking about; forgoing the momentary pleasure, strangling a deserving oxygen thief in this case, in order to avoid the larger harm to many people of much more importance.

Michelle Malkin wrote a post "CHILD PORN AND P2P: A REALITY CHECK". There she claims that since people can (and do, apparently) use P2P software for trafficking in child pornography (which is unspeakable vile and those people can't be killed dead enough), that Grokster et al. have must "... take increased corporate responsibility for doing something about it."

Her reasoning is that their product is being used in to commit crimes, and therefore they must necessarily "do something" to stop them. From this I can only conclude that she believes that Sony, Canon, and Nikon must also take increased corporate responsiblity for doing something about the criminals using their camera to take illegal pictures; that Swith&Wesson, Colt, and Beretta must take increased corporate responsibility for people shooting convenience store clerks with their guns; that Ford, GM, and Toyota must take increased responsibility for people driving their cars into pedestrians; etc etc ad nauseum.

I actually empathize with her revulsion: child pornography is an unmitigated abomination and its practitioners outght to be found and killed to remove their pernicious influence from our society and gene pool. It isn't Grokster's problem to solve, though, nor is P2P necessarily an especially good prism through which to view the problem. There are a number of technologies involved in producing and disseminating that excrement, so I don't see how you can justify singling out one of many possible last steps in the dissemination process as somehow culpable for the whole mess.

On a side note, Photoshop won't let you dork with pictures of money. Why isn't she demanding that the USG nationalize that technology and mandate its usage in all cameras, scanners, and image display devices so that child porn can't be photographed, manipulated, scanned, or displayed?

Colby Cosh is da man! I don't know that I've ever seen such a wonderful electronic drubbing as he delivers here. Read and marvel at the spectacular wondrousness of it all.

This also reminds me that I really do hate everybody, and attempting to pour oil on the troubled waters just isn't my thing unless it involves adding fire to the accelerant afterwards. Thank you, sir.

I finally got around to watching The Amazing Race which I had TiVo'd up from last night. You know, if the producers are going to rig the game in order to keep some couple in the "competitive" group, then it pretty much ruins the show, doesn't it? I mean, if they're going to pick who they want to win and then rig the game so that they win, then I don't really need to watch.

Sucks, too, because up until recently (last season, when they pretty clearly gamed the system to prevent one team from getting well ahead of the pack) I really enjoyed watching the show.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Just 'cause I can:

I continue to be amazed at the spectacle that is surrounding Terri Schiavo.

Before proceeding, please read Abstract Appeal -- by Matt Conigliaro. Thanks.

Mr. Conigliaro is an attorney licensed to practice law in the State of Florida. He is not involved in this case professionally for either side, but has been writing down major milestones concerning Mrs. Schiavo for quite a long time. He very thoughtfully attached links from his page to the actual court opinions so you can go and read what they wrote for yourself.

I'll go ahead and throw my hat into the ring. Dog knows I love winding people up, so why should I pass this opportunity by?

1. Terri's parents have been set upon by charlatans and vampires who feed upon the suffering of the vulnerable.

   Suppose these medical personnel came out and said "We're taking Terri to our experimental clinic in Mexico and we're going to give her coffee enemas 15 times a day until her brain reflexively regenerates a cortex," would you still go along with it? Terri's brain has died, and her parents are consumed by inconsolable grief. There are people who see nothing here but an opportunity to make political points, reputation, or money. Every one of you who encourages her parents to continue pretending that their beloved daughter is still trapped in that husk are de facto helping the vampires. Stop helping the vampires.




2. Stop thinking that everybody is out to commit evil.

   It's much easier to think that Michael Schiavo and his lawyers and the judges and the doctors and the nurses and the hospices and EVERYBODY IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA'S JUDICIAL SYSTEM are involved in a conspiracy to kill Terri because they're full of hate and evil. They're not. Everybody in this situation is holding the shitty end of the stick.




3. Where is your normal skepticism, people?

   If Saddam Hussein (or George W. Bush ... pick the one you hate more) released a video of his subjects singing and dancing about how wonderful he was, would you swallow it as uncritically as you did the video of Terri's envelope apparently watching a balloon? Seriously?

Do you really live in a world where Michael Schiavo sets out to commit heinous evil, and he manages to find an attorney to help him, and they together find a judge plus an appeals judge plus a state Supreme Court to go along with it? For funsies? Really? Man, I don't want to live in your world; it sucks.

How 'bout this: you try imagining that everybody (except the grifters working the con on the parents) here are really truly honest-to-Jah trying to do the right thing. You might still wind up at the same spot, but maybe you can let the demonization go.

HOLY FARKING CRAP!!!!!

I want one

Because once just wasn't enough, damn it.

Apparently I'm not trying hard enough:





Update! New posts have pushed us over the threshold! Yay us! Our new rating:

I just read The Law of Monkey and actually hurt myself from laughing. Have some.

"The broadcast flag" has been struck down by the DC Circuit court!!!! Yay for us consumers of fine computing products!

I'm looking to Ed Felten to talk about this some more, since he's not nearly as stupid as I am.

I got yer Kyoto Protocol right here, baby.

BWA ha ha ha ha ha! Greenpeace weenies get their asses kicked. It is to laugh.

But you went and read Tim Blair already, so you knew that, right?

I just got finished reading Blue-Eyed Infidel: winter makes me want to kill and all I can say is "mmmmm ..... Hot Pockets!!!!!!1!"

I just finished reading "WORDPLAY/Columns/40. The Off-Screen Movie" and man, there's a lot of stuff running through my head now. Well worth a read, I say.

Oh, those poor cats. No animal deserves this type of torture.

Oooooh ... "pick me a winner!"

Well, this is interesting news, but it doesn't seem nearly as exciting as you'd think. Wasn't David Brin telling us that our first uplift clients would be dolphins and chimpanzees, followed by great apes? Where do prarie dogs slot into that progression?