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.