Category Archives: Uncategorized

Why, oh, why don’t they ever test these things in Idaho? Then I could go back to hating blogads without any moral qualms.

I know I could live the rest of my life without hearing more about gay marriage, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.

Frankly, I hate blogads. Those of us dinosaurs that still have dialup, because there’s no DSL and Adelphia wants too much money, already had to suffer with the Amazon stuff slooowing the loading down, now there’s even more stuff I don’t read to wait for.

Of course, maybe I could get people to send me money with a blogad and then I could afford the broadband. Hmmm. I may have been hasty. I’ll look into developing a more nuanced position on the matter.

We’re going to run out of oil, the economies of the world will crash and I’ll have to start driving one of those ugly hybrid cars.

Or not.

Spirit set a Mars land record, traveling slightly over 70 feet. And Opportunity, the wimp, only went about 29 feet, and is now digging holes.

More chunks of…something are falling off the space station.

Such debris may include fragments of insulation, labels and possibly important components.

Possibly?

This is great stuff.

via IMAO

UPDATE: Apparently this has taken the blog-world by storm. Naturally Instapundit has the links.

I’ve never seen sounds. Or colors. I don’t even see people. I have friend who does though. We point at her and laugh.

I must be another Lincoln. Okay, not quite right, so sue me.

First off, why does time stop when I’m grocery shopping? As soon as I walk in the store, there is no past, there is no future, there is only the store. It’s like eternity, with a frozen food section.

Secondly, Bush ran on a “Uniter, not Divider” campaign. Well, good news. Campaign promise kept. Front page of the print edition of the Wall Street Journal has an article, “Usually Fractious, Democrats Cut Kerry Some Slack”. Subhead: United by Opposition to Bush, Host of Factions Relax Tests for Front-Runner. Can you feel the love?

Thirdly, the “you’re soaking in it” lady died. It’s been a sad day for my childhood memories.

Slashdot had an interesting article on what Indian programmers think about outsourcing.

I’m fairly bitter about the amount of money the government takes from me all the time, but since I just know I’m going to end up paying a nastily large sum this April 15th, I’m even more bitter about the IRS right now. And that’s why I like this article.

And this makes me nervous. Not because I knowingly cheat on my taxes, but I don’t know enough about taxes to know if I am cheating unknowingly. And then I’d have to give them even MORE money.

From Frank J.

They make fun of us for not knowing much about Canada without even stopping to think of our viewpoint on that issue, which is, “Why in God’s name would we ever need to know anything about Canada?”

…

Even Mexico has more influence on American culture than them; we have Mexican restaurants everywhere, but no Canadian restaurants. No one in America knows what Canadians eat, nor are they even slightly curious.

George Foreman vs. ???. And as to why, Don King elaborates:

“We’ve got all this together,” King said. “The pot of gold is waiting.”

Is upheld by the court. I’d rather they didn’t exempt politicians and charities, but I’ll take what I can get.

I thought the military was conducting the War on Terror. Apparently, John Ashcroft has been mismanaging it.

From Scrappleface.

Some group has the horrible idea to bring back the 55 speed limit.

According to a recent GHSA press release, “Since Congress repealed the national speed limit in 1995, much of the public has perceived speed limits as merely guidelines and not the law.”

No, we’ve always thought they were guidlines. They’re just not as dumb as they used to be.

Oh, and mulcting. I learn something every day.

GI Joe coming to the live-action big screen. How shall I put this delicately…I doubt it’s going to win major awards.

UPDATE: Further Hollywood news. Disney is going to buy the Muppets. Sad. Fox is remaking Mr. Ed. Sad.

Pete can be a great writer when he wants to.

Don’t tell him I said so though.

This story is so much better because it was a woman driving. You’d think she would have stopped for directions.

Darn, I wanted to steal his headline. So I’ll come as close as I can.

I agree with what they said, and have my own entirely selfish reason (I don’t want to waste my Saturday doing sound at your wedding) that I’d be happy if the Church would get out of the marriage business.

It doesn’t affect me in the least (unlike all the other stuff I post, of course), but this is interesting.

The ending seemed rather odd to me.

Opinion polls after the Hutton inquiry was published showed that many people considered its verdict a “whitewash”, and that they trusted the BBC far more than they did Blair and his ministers.

Said the media. Which leads me to this article on how the British are cynical and don’t trust the government or *gasp* the media.

Remember what your kindergarten teacher told you about sharing? Forget it.

A mistery. Cheater help here.

via Dave Barry’s Blog

I didn’t know there was a school for this sort of thing…

I’m going to practice their tips this afternoon though.

The Inland Northwest desperately needs a similar law. While I would prefer that the government didn’t have to get involved, it may be what it takes. And since were talking about the lame driving habits, when getting on the freeway, the on-ramp is there TO GET UP TO FREEWAY SPEEDS. Don’t do 45 until you’re on the freeway, try to merge, and then decide to accelerate. Similarly, OFF-RAMPS are for slowing down. Don’t slow down to 40mph on the freeway. Thank you.

Now, why would a used,er, new car salesman spam under Weight Loss Tips. While it is the favorite of the spammers, there’s better choices out there.

Very polite though.

Bush plays the race card.

Canadian is a race now, eh? Tacky, dumb, over the top, yes. Racist?

I love my Roomba. I’m vacuuming now, even as I type. You all should get one.

At my high school when we heard Jim Henson died of pnemonia, we were convinced he died of AIDS and his family didn’t want anyone to know. Another childhood memory crushed by the truth.

And in other news, man, I’m old.

I was a junior, though. I’m not that old.

Science makes another hidden-in-plain-sight discovery. Using M&Ms, that’s the important part.

The barrel full of plain M&M’s made Professor Chaikin think about how well they packed in. A series of studies have shown they pack more tightly than perfect spheres. That surprises many physicists and Professor Chaikin. “It is a startling and wonderful result,” Sidney Nagel, a physicist at the University of Chicago, said.

Good for Mr. Hunt.

Now I know why I don’t like the word “meme”. And if reality shows have taught me anything, it’s that the fittest get knocked down and dragged off, it’s the mediocre that survive.

Found on Slashdot.

r0535 @r3 r3d
v1013t5 @re b1u3
@11 |\/|y b@53
@r3 b310ng t0 y0u

Demo now available. Make sure you have a zippy video card. Current waiting time for download: 42 minutes.

UPDATE: Current download speed from FilePlanet: 38KB/s.

You might want to wait a week or so.

FURTHER UPDATE: Based on the demo, UT 2004 is everything 2003 should have been. As much fun as UT, fast paced, well balanced weapons, and a great time all around. And on my 32M GeoForce video card, at the lower settings, there was an occasional glitch, but it played fine. I can’t wait to see what it looks like at the higher settings. I’ll be picking it up soon.

Adjectives surrender. Writing just became blander.

Like every other governmental agency concerned with testing, the New York State Education Department devised its own list of taboo words. There are the usual ones that have offended feminists for a generation, like “fireman,” “authoress,” “handyman” and “hostess.” New York exercised its leadership by discovering bias in such words as “addict” (replace with “individual with a drug addiction”); “alumna, alumnae, alumni, alumnus” (replace with “graduate or graduates”); “American” (replace with “citizen of the United States or North America”); “cancer patient” (replace with “a patient with cancer”); “city fathers” (replace with “city leaders”).

And the conclusion is dead on:

Thus the great irony of bias and sensitivity reviewing. It began with the hope of encouraging diversity, ensuring that our educational materials would include people of different experiences and social backgrounds. It has evolved into a bureaucratic system that removes all evidence of diversity and reduces everyone to interchangeable beings whose differences we must not learn about–making nonsense of literature and history along the way.

via National Review

VDH: If life were like pundits say it is

That had Mr. Carter been allowed to employ his patented Nobel-Prize winning Korean model of curbing nuclear proliferation with Muammar Khaddafi, Libya would now be free of nukes.

…

That Democratic senators in anguish over zealous scrutiny of immigrants from the Middle East will soon repeal their near-unanimous prior support for the Patriot Act and demand a return to a more enlightened pre-9/11 visa policy.

And there’s much more.

For Bush, not so much. For Kerry, sure.

Oh, you want all four colors printed? Save a little money and skip the yellow. Naturally, it is seen as some sort of racism. Like a major American business wants to create bad publicity, destroy its brand name, and run the risk of Jesse Jackson showing up to declare it another Selma.

Intel has a device that can encode data on a light beam. What happens to all your data at night though?

The internet is slow today. Someone find out who’s responsible and smack them.

San Francisco’s city hall, afraid of being out-progressived by Massachusetts performs gay marriages, in violation of state law.

Yes, only nine months to go and already we’re getting dental records. It’s going to be a long summer.

From Evangelical Outpost:

Besides, we’re talking about a candidate for the Democrats. Unless the intern turns out to be a goat, an al Queda operative, or a Republican, it won’t affect his chances of being the nominee. In fact, it will probably just end up making Kerry look more Clintonesque.

NCC-1701 mistaken for a bomb. And the bad pun is at the end.

WindowsNT/Windows2000 source code leaked.

Sesame Street hasn’t been the same since Mr. Hooper died. But this is incredible.

I heard that!

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

“We feel we have a much stronger case with Games X Copy,” said Julia Bishop-Cross, a 321 spokeswoman. “PC games are widely recognized as software, and with software there’s a legal precedence set that you can make backup copies.”

Barbie and Ken are splitting up. I hope this makes it obvious to everyone that the moral decline in this country has gone too far.

If this is what it takes to discourage suicide bombings, slather the city in pig fat. And that wall too.

This is just what America needs. Clippy in the kitchen.

New hotness: Peguin darts. Personal Best: 557.7

UPDATE: 719.9. Oh yeah!

For stem cell harvesting.

The Hearty Chicken cup of noodles is tasty stuff. Bigger noodles and there’s no nasty vegetables to get in the way.

See what happens on a slow news day. Let this be a lesson to you all.

The LobsterCam. This is the sort of thing that makes the internet a beautiful place.

I like optimists.

In American eyes (as many a bemused British visitor has noted), not to be basically optimistic is vaguely wicked and certainly pointless. Defeatism is a waste of life, a throwing away of potential and infinite possibilities. Constant self-improvement is not just a virtue: it is what life is about.

Remind me not to move to England.

What arguments there are in the US about big v small government are marginal nit-picking by our standards.

There is nothing better for governments around the world to be concentrating on than its constituents eating habits and weight.

Will WiFi end up free?

via Slashdot

Homogenized and pasturized for your protection.

via Jeff Jarvis

I just finished Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. He may be a freaky cult leader, but the dude could write. It did drag for a while in the middle, but I really enjoyed it. The book, not the dragging in the middle.

Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead are going to be made into a movie. I was underwhelmed by the books, but I could see them being good movies.

I’m not exactly sure why I think this, but this is the wrongest thing I’ve ever heard, well, today anyway. You break the law, I break the same law, the same thing should happen to us, regardless of our incomes. It would be wrong to give someone greater punishment because they are poor, why isn’t it wrong if they are rich?

UPDATE: Pete explains why I am wrong. He makes some good points but he hasn’t changed my mind. And I’m not going to argue with someone that wants to go to law school.

So, it appears the campaigning is beginning for real. w00t!

And “feckless crapweasel” is just plain funny.

The burglar was forced to mow the lawn while the victim figured out what to do with him. I love this country.

ABC mentions there might be a liberal bias in the media. Make sure you follow the link and read the whole thing.

The tin-foil hatters were right. NASA did mess up the images coming from “Mars”.

I like these comment spammers. Very polite.

I wouldn’t be surprised, but this is bad news for Kerry if it’s not.

via Inoperable Terran

Common sense regarding aliens. Er, extraterrestrial aliens, I mean.

Don’t open that attachment. Actually, Doomjuice doesn’t spread through attachments, but if you don’t get Mydoom, you don’t have to worry about it. So don’t open attachments.

Of a sarcastic Iraqi blogger.

Media spin on Iraq and Al Qaida links.

Global Warming. It would make a great book. But I want to know what they plan to do when the magnetic poles switch.

Or the pundit that ate D.C.

Freaky.

Environmental activism from robot dogs.

Joyful Christian on a downer:

Ulitimately [sic], I believe, we’re all doomed. Not just the Republic, but the whole world. And whether or not the people understand the workings of republican goverment won’t change that ultimate fate; it will only affect the timing.

But he’s right.

Casting for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is finalized. I hope this is good.

Since it’s Reagan’s birthday today, here’s my favorite clip of his.

In surprising numbers.

It seems odd there are so many more accidents involving trousers than chainsaws, (1148) but everyone has trousers and hardly anyone has chainsaws.”

And there’s this classic line

“Underpants, for instance, cause a lot of accidents. You get changed, you get into bed, you may leave your underpants on the floor . . you’ve got a polished floor, you get up in the morning, and crash.”

yep, you guessed it, it’s from Fark

Unless the meat was ground and mixed with something, I don’t see how you could confuse dog and beef. Dog is more venison-like than beef-like.

via Fark

Unless of course, you count Marlon Brando.

As I write these words, we have yet another probe scooting around on Mars, and it has been sending back exquisitely detailed photographs of: rocks. At this point, I, for one, am willing to stipulate that Mars is, basically, covered with rocks, but our space scientists apparently do not intend to stop until they obtain photographs of every last one of them.

VDH

I am sorry that the United States has established a hair-trigger reputation in matters of deadly agents of mass destruction — but apparently other rogue nations now believe that the burden of proof is no longer on us to establish that they have them, but rather on them to ensure the world that they do not. And that is not necessarily a bad thing if we ponder that the lives of thousands may hang in the balance.

It cracks me up that the spammers, including today’s idiot who was spamming the old fashioned way, one at a time, pick entries from months ago. If it’s not on the front page, the chances of it being read are infintesimal. Silly kids.

You should get that fixed.

Kick over a rock and watch the bugs squirm. Enterprise is cleaning up its act, a little.

And as an aside, T’pol is the most emotional Vulcan ever. She’s moodier than most of the crew. Maybe she’s an Andorian spy.

Some idiot is filing a class-action lawsuit against Janet Jackson, MTV, Viacom, and various others. I hope the judge laughs this out of court.

Notice the new look. Well, new to you. I’ve always seen it like this in my head. But I finally got it up, thanks to some helpful help from my brother.

The always entertaining, in spite of his dislike of Dr. Pepper, Andrew Stuttaford on McDonald’s latest ploy.

Our government at work.

Senator Lamar Smith of Texas – chairman of the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee – yesterday produced from nowhere extensions to the 1946 Trademark Act that would make giving false contact information for a domain name a civil and criminal offence.

And just to increase my linkiness, Instapundit and Joyful Christian discuss anonymous bloggers.

I’m not saying I agree with all of it, but this is pretty funny, eh.

“There are features in this soil unlike anything ever seen on Mars before,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science instruments on the two Mars Exploration Rovers.

The article is here.

Everyone is all in an uproar about censorship, puritianism, etc. on TV. But I have another solution: Instead of trying to out-debauche each other, Hollywood and the entire entertainment industry could start showing a little class. Radical idea, I know. It’ll never sell in Peoria, will it?

Now 3 year olds are on drugs.

For many parents, like Texas schoolteacher Chapline, the drugs are a last resort. Her daughter Emily suffers from selective mutism. Children who have this disorder become too afraid to speak in social situations like classrooms and doctor’s offices. At home, however, they almost always regain their ability to interact with others.

How did shy kids get by for the last few thousand years without Prozac?

The Pakistani fall guy is pardoned by the Pakistani President.

On Patrick Stewart:

And Patrick Stewart has now become T. J. Hooker. I know him not.

And Kerry:

God no. Please no. I think I speak for millions when I say that I am deathly sick of the counterculture sixties. The music, the war, the protests, all the hagiography – it’s not a reflection of the era’s importance but the self-importance of the generation who hung on the bus as it trundled along down the same old rutted road of history.

What he said.

Fark has a great headline for this story:

Mel Gibson cuts out controversial scenes from The Passion, such as Matthew 27:25 and the scene where Darth Vader orders Jesus frozen in carbonite.

That’s gold, Jerry! As the kids say, mad props to the writer.

And speaking of Fark…

Over at Right Wing News.

Pictures of the little tyke.

Anne Applebaum of Gulag: A History (an excellent book, btw) fame, discusses North Korea’s concentration camps.

We shake our heads self-righteously, certain that if we’d been there, liberation would have come earlier — all the while failing to see that the present is no different. Quite a lot has changed in 60 years, but the ways in which information about crimes against humanity can simultaneously be “known” and not known hasn’t changed at all. Nor have other interests and other priorities ceased to distract people from the feelings of shame and guilt they would certainly feel, if only they focused on them.

In my continued irritation with the insistence that water=life on Mars, why can’t we imagine a non-water based life, if we’re going to imagine extra-terrestrial life at all.

FYI: “Goethe” is pronounced “Gerta”. I learned that one the hard way, I’m just trying to help you do it the easy way.

But I’m not dead yet. I feel happy!

My knees ache just thinking about it.

Ouch. When it rains, it pours. And here is Mark Steyn on the BBC.

via Instapundit

Sharpton came in third in South Carolina! Bwahaha!

I cant’ explain it, they’re down south. It’s like another state down there.

We learn nothing from history.

Spirit and Opportunity are both operating well.

People vs. Plants/Animals.

Over at Scrappleface.

And it’s good news, well, sort of. Sure the guy that brought the lawsuit is an idiot, but he got shot down.

via Best of the Web

Not only does milk last forever nowadays, my yogurt nowhere on it says “Keep Refrigerated”. I’m scared.

Chirac seems to be in a bit of trouble.

In Brazil.

And the coming election.

First, Democrats are now largely a party of providers of government services (public school teachers, government employees unions) and people dependent on those services. By deepening the culture of dependency, Democrats expand their political appeal — and serve the left’s traditional preference for equality of condition over freedom.

Second, Republican strong-government conservatism contracts the dependency culture and expands the sphere of choices, thereby enhancing the individual’s competence and responsibility. This validates Republicans’ claims to power — and serves the right’s traditional preference for freedom over legislated equality.

via The National Review

Earth-shattering news. Elements 113 and 115 found. I didn’t know they were lost.

I knew you could.

The father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb has confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, but authorities have yet to decide if the national hero will go on trial, officials said Monday.

via Drudge Report

It’s Groundhog’s Day.

The Patriots Win.

Oh, and could Americans please remember that we are not some third-world soccer loving country and stop destroying everything in sight. Thank you.