Not So Fast

When even the museum curators can’t tell what art is, it’s time to step back, realize you’re just talking jibberish, and possibly make something nice looking.

Truly the world is full of wonders.

Running naked across the street may not be the best way to convince your girlfriend to marry you. Especially if someone starts chasing you with a gun.

via Fark 

The acceptance speeches from the Webby Awards.

Amazon grocery, like Costco without the free samples or bags of frozen salmon.

Silly liberals, you can’t indict Rove, his genius is too great for your granola-addled* minds to trap.

*Full disclosure: I enjoy granola in moderation

Test your ears frequency response. Or find out what frequencies all that hard rocking has destroyed. Requires good headphones.

Humans must colonize space to survive, according to Stephen Hawking. And he’s smart so we should do that.

Darkness, thunder, lightning, gumball sized hail. I love spring in the Northwest.

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to go 0-60 in less than 9 seconds, it’s super Prius!

The British write better books, paint better paintings, and write better music than Americans. But we can sure as heck name our spacecraft better. Which is nice.

It’s bad enough on domestic animals. This is just wrong, Mr. Nutkin.

It’s just their culture, who are we to judge?

via Inoperable Terran

The flight back, blessedly free of interpersonal communication. Dunn Bros. coffee was good but bland. I was finishing up reading Quicksilver, which since you aren’t going to read it probably, is about Newton and Leibniz and Wren and Hooke and all those guys. It was sorta weird to realize there was a fairly straight line between what they were doing 350 years ago, experimenting on dogs and tuning strings to the same pitch as fly’s wings, and the piece of airplane wing I could see out my window lofting us through the air at 35,000 feet and 500 miles an hour. Makes me wonder what stuff I’m going to miss out on in 2356, besides the Enterprise, of course. And then I mowed my lawn. Good times, good times.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

So, cute wedding. Hawaiian themed. My outfit looked fabulous.

That sums it up.

FYI: Everyone flying to Minneapolis from Spokane is not necessarily from Minneapolis. Though I admit that the Appleton, WI sweatshirt I was wearing was a tactical error.

There were several people on the flight that were n00bs that had no concept of the entire airplane/airport system. And there was a particular one that had a distinct lack of knowledge of personal space. The armrest should be like the Berlin Wall, he treated it like the Mexican/American border.

I learned that if you need goose control, there is a solution. An ad at the Minn. airport informed me. I had no idea that there was enough of a problem to require a business.  I knew those birds were not to be trusted.

Caribou Coffee, meh. Not horrible, but not that exciting. I’ll try Dunn Bros. on the way back.

So, after having to disabused several Minnesotans of my non-Minnesotaness and the Canadian with no respect for the armrest, on the way to Springfield, the flight attendant asks what I want to drink and then says, “Is your name Hoppe?” Um, yes. And then we tried to figure out which branch of the Minneapolis Hoppes I was from. Yeah, I was a people person today despite my best efforts to the contrary.

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

I’ll be flying the friendly skies today, so no posts for you. Visit the fine links on the right for all the news, opinion and stuff you need for the day.

And if you happen to be in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport this evening, I’ll be the one with red hair flying Northwest. Stop and say hi.

I just like this quote.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is expected to propose wording to delineate planets from other small, round objects at its 12-day General Assembly meeting in Prague this August.

In Minnesota leotard-wearing superheroes masquerade as pizza delivery guys.

via Fark

I find this highly unsurprising. I also talk to my computer daily, but it’s more of a “hello computer” “don’t do what I click, do what I want, you stupid machine” sort of thing.

Do they suppose that I run a legitimate copy one day and then what? load a pirated copy the next day? If they’re so worried about the program going postal shouldn’t it unistall itself or perhaps, crazy as this sounds, not release it until they can reasonable expect it not to freak out.

Who knew? If the media is reporting this, I guess it’s officially summer now. You’d never guess by the weather around here.

If you’ve got a nice zippy machine you’re willing to mess with, Windows Vista beta is available.

If you just want your computer to look cooler, try this.

*I haven’t tried either of them and am not to blame when they explode you computer into a micro-nova of hot plastic shards

Zarqawi is dead and Instapundit has a nice roundup of links.

You know, when the world is dancing around singing ding dong, the witch is dead at your death, it’s safe to assume you have made some poor life choices.

I’m all for scientific advancement, but cloning human embryos? I don’t know enough about it to really form a solid opinion, but I’m leaning toward the we need a really, really good reason to go there. Not just because it might help someone some time in the future.

Cloning an embryo means taking DNA from a person and inserting it into an egg, which is then grown for about five days until it is an early embryo, a hollow ball of cells smaller than a grain of sand. Stem cells can then be recovered from the interior, and spurred to give rise to specialized cells or tissues that carry the DNA of the donor.

So this morning I had to get something nice for the wedding this weekend. Nordstrom’s Half Yearly sale started today. Truly the world is admirably arranged. Of course, nothing I wanted was on sale. Such is life. But I really like the Nordstrom shopping experience. I can’t afford it, but I like it.

All that to say I’ll be posting this afternoon. Sorry about the delay.

MIT OpenCourseWare has some classes on video now. Not that I’ll be taking any of them probably, but the fact that it’s there makes me feel better about the world.

You know, I would put up with racial slurs for two years for $61 meeellion dollars.

It seems there is regularly unrest in Iran, but it never goes anywhere productive.

John Hawkins interviews Patrick Ruffini, with this interesting quote.

Politics increasingly isn’t command and control anymore, but it is network warfare.

I don’t know what the implications are, but it is interesting.

It’s 06/06/06!

Of course, there’s debate whether it should be 616 these days.

And it’s actually 2010, so where’s my rocket pack?

A Frank guide to battling Satan.

More importantly, my sister reminded me that we will be in the same area this weekend, which usually spells disaster for some part of the country (9/11, Katrina). Good luck, world.

Harsh, but true.

And, if you’re one of the ever swelling numbers of molting hawks among the media, the political class and the American people for whom Haditha is the final straw, that’s not a sign of your belated moral integrity but of your fundamental unseriousness. Anyone who supports the launching of a war should be clear-sighted enough to know that, when the troops go in, a few of them will kill civilians, bomb schools, torture prisoners. It happens in every war in human history, even the good ones. Individual Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians did bad things in World War II and World War I. These aren’t stunning surprises, they’re inevitable: It might be a bombed mosque or a gunned-down pregnant woman or a slaughtered wedding party, but it will certainly be something. And, in the scales of history, it makes no difference to the justice of the cause and the need for victory.

In lieu of something interesting, here’s my most recent mp3 playlist for you to determine my current mindset and lack of coolness.
Continue reading →

Lung cancer, cashew, it’s hard to tell.

The worst songs of the 80s. However, any list of heinous songs that doesn’t include “We Built This City” is not to be trusted.

Norway postal service won’t ship your dead parakeet.

/it’s just resting

Friday afternoons.

I’m inclined to think there is a more mundane explanation than alien life forms raining down on India, but hey, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Choose Your Own Adventure making a comeback. I always ended up dead and had to backtrack. Good times, good times.

So in the stupid political moves today we have….

The comptroller—now, who came up with the word comptroller. I mean, it’s a cool word, but where does that come from—of New York had to apologize for suggesting that Senator Schumer (most annoying Congressperson evar. Could he be more narrowminded and smug?) would shoot Bush if he thought he could get away with it. Yeah, death to the president == not smart.

The world has gotten together and promised to buy Iran a Coke if they will give up their nuclear aspirations. Yeah, that’ll go well.

Roger Simon has some wise words for Hastert. Siddown.

I’m all for regular Joe’s going to space, but strapping yourself to a rocket-propelled crossbow bolt is not my idea of smart.

Greenpeace memo. If it’s real, it’s hilarious.

There may well be a solid third party in contention in the next 8 years, but not to worry, it won’t last. Besides, what would the party’s platform be? Less spending? Lose the progressives. Less war? Lose the conservatives. Less immigration? Lose the minorities. Less government intrusion? Lose the progressives. More government intrusion? Lose the conservatives. If the Libertarians with their fiscal conservatism and social liberalism can’t hack together a solid winning platform, who can?

I seem to remember posting something about this, but that could just be the mind rays trying to keep it a secret.

Jonah Goldberg defending the extremists.

Moreover, because politicians and mainstream journalists alike get the most grief from “partisans� of the Left and the Right, they both assume that the middle is the most enlightened place to be, since they think that’s where they are. But compromise is not always the smartest way to go.

Engadget gets a link just for mentioning Good Eats. And it is sorta a cool gadget.

Oh, there’s my rocket pack, minus the rocket. It really is a new century.

Helen Thomas vs Tony Snow on some guy who merely expressed how most of the country views D.C.

via Inoperable Terran

It’s okay to bring a knife to a gunfight if you are a Marine.

Pocketknife, make sure you note that. Pocketknife.

Obviously you wouldn’t be running Windows Vista Ultimate on a $400 computer but the fact that you could easily get a computer for less than the cost of the operating system is just crazy.

Apparently 3rd graders are writing stories for news.com.au. But if these unknown scientists are taking applications, I’ll live in space.

Also, the Mars rovers are getting an upgrade. Let’s be careful how smart we make them. We don’t want to have to fight them when we move in to colonize.

I’m a little confused on how using horses to help disabled kids is going to bring about Middle East peace, but the ways of Captain Kirk are clearly above our ways.

He is way over-played. If they’d like, I could come up with a list of other songs to add to that.

At least in one arm.

Building up Americans confidence in government and the economy:

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.

Apparently he’s just delegating authority presidents have had since the 1970’s, but that still doesn’t exactly give me warm fuzzies about the government or the corporate accounting world.

I’m taking over the WORLD!!!! one -alanche at a time.

Thank you, John Hawkins. My humble blog is not worthy the attention bestowed.

The sun is shining and it’s hailing. This is why I’m not a fan of spring and fall.

Do-it-yourself Lego flash drive. If only I had a flash drive.

And the proper tools.

And the willingness to invest the time in it.

But other than that there’s nothing holding me back.

The Manolo, he is a genius.

It is this latter fact which always makes the Manolo give thanks to the person who invented the electronic zapper of the bugs. This clever device it kills the pests while the electric blue sparks provide us with hours of joyful entertainment.

If only the zapper it could be produced in the extra-strength congressperson size, then this city of Washington, truly it would be the Garden of Eden.

IRS no longer enforcing a tax. Enacted during the Spanish-American War. Show of hands, who remembers that war?

Who turned up the stupid in Washington DC? Apparently it goes to 11.

Instapundit nails my original thought.

If I were a ravening Bush hater I would swear Karl Rove engineered this whole Iranian thing just so Bush could rush to the rescue right before the elections. Here we are nothing too newsworthy happening in Irag, and lo, right on cue Ahmadinejad comes along. If it were a movie I would groan at the predictability. Ahmadinejad’s belligerence and rhetoric is so preposterous it all but has to be staged. It’s all a little too convienent. So, everyone knows the UN isn’t going to stop Iran, and well, lookie here, Israel and the US have a plan to deal with the problem. Veddy interesting.

Over-representing facts will always come around to bite you. Like how I’ve been told that ecological disaster after disaster is coming and then they don’t come and now I’m really not concerned about anything you warn me about and don’t think we need to worry about global warming until I see a glacier out my window….Wait, I think there’s a fable about this.

Why?

Pretty much sums up the problem with Congress at the moment

WARRANTS: Not good enough for us, too good for you.

Great way to start the morning.

via Lileks

I don’t know why the school thinks it is any of their business what students post online.

Buy a MIT $100 laptop for $300 and donate the other two to the poor laptopless kids.

Ugly though. Very Playskool. But, if that’s what the kids are into these days, who am I to argue.

Hillary is trying to bring it back. It’ll slash fuel consumption because I’d rather walk on cactus barefoot than drive 55 through, oh, Montana, Utah, Colorado, California, Kansas, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Washington, Idaho, or any rather large state.

Next up, bring back Prohibition. We need the corn to make ethanol, after all.

I’m starting to think D.C. has been hit with a goof gas attack. Time to send in Bullwinkle.

Oh those wacky congressmen.

“You sent the FBI to investigate us, that’s unconstitutional!” They had search warrant, which, if I remember my civics class correctly*, means that the judicial check was played and you should shut up and stop taking bribes, morans.

“But I didn’t take any bribes”. Well then act like it and I might believe you. This circling the wagons makes me think you’re a little worried the idea that politicians take bribes might spread and you’ll get caught too.

*we never learned anything like that in civics, we just argued about stuff

But, I’ll be darned if I don’t like Robbie Williams. Since it’s British pop I think that makes it okay.

Right?

Now all we need is warp drive.

Okay, okay, I said no more posts, but first check out the first dozen or so comments in this post.

Busy day today, so I’m imposing a moratorium on posting for the rest of the afternoon and possibly stretching into tomorrow morning.

Your assignment is to use the links to the right, find odd or annoying stories and post them with a ambiguous opinion or veiled pop culture reference.

The shoe-pod.

Insert multiudinous Get Smart quotes.

And then you die of Ebola, or something Ebola-like, on a flight from Africa. Yikes.

Remember how Social Security numbers were never going to be used for personal identification outside the Social Security Administration? That was a good idea.

Google News never really grabbed me (heresy, I know), so I’m not crushed that they are purging the ungood hate speech.

Frank J. masterfully sums up how I feel about America. Read the whole thing.

Anyway, my point, whether I can come up with an appropriate intro or not, is that, even though it seems like we have no heroes in politics right now, America is still full of heroes and things worth fighting for. We have the liberty earned by our forefathers, our innovation, our spirit, our awesome economy, and our general kick-assery – and that should be more than enough to get anyone out of bed and glad to be alive each morning. As bad as things may get in Washington and on the world stage, there’s always a supermarket nearby with at least eight different types of Oreo cookies to choose from – and this week they’re buy one get one free!

Eurovision.

And the counterprotesters get to eat yummy chicken. Well, KFC anyway.

That Christians are the ones fighting “the man”. Crazy rebels

The Manolo, he brings the funny.

Congratulations to Josh and Deborah on their getting married! Poor Deborah, but she didn’t have to say yes.

B. Adelphia cable internets was out all afternoon yesterday, so that totally eliminated any hope of getting the stuff done I wanted to on the site. Yes, you suck Adelphia. Luckily it was rainy and dreary too so I couldn’t do yardwork and was forced to lay around watching Stargate all day.

C. I just found out that Roger’s is not going to be open on Sundays. That just sucks too. I find it hard to believe they are passing up that kind of profit, but more importantly they are cramping my summer Sunday plans. I was going to go there today, matter of fact. Mmm, burger and onion rings. Darn new owners.

D. I Am Sound by the Dandy Warhols has the catchiest melody I have had stuck in my head in a long time.

Go say hi to Matt. It’s his blog birthday.

Again, had I known, cake, etc.

Biting commentary on the techno-industrial music scene. Er, I mean techno-industrial system.

If I had some spare cash, I’d pick up some memorabilia.

This happens every Sunday somewhere in the world. Of course, normally, the Sun isn’t there.

Iran proposes badges for Christians and Jews in Iran. It worked so well last time someone tried it.

UPDATE: Never mind.

Scrappleface on DaVinci Code.

Film critics this week publicly acknowledged the release of the Ron Howard movie, based on the best-selling Dan Brown novel that blurs the line between fiction and entertainment.

Seriously, why all the fuss over DaVinci Code? I don’t understand Americans sometimes.

Remember back in the day when cnet.com had a utility that would check what programs and drivers you had and then tell you what updates are available to download? Yeah. Is there anything like that anymore? Freeware, of course.

So now you too can burn blu-ray discs. I’m not excited about all this. Mostly because I have to upgrade practically every technological type thing in my house to take advantage of it. And I’m not convinced that this is going to be around long enough to make it worthwile.

Seriously, these are some cool shirts.

Helping out the little guys. That is so American.

American taxpayers are in the onerous position of funding both sides in this war. The price of oil is US$50 per barrel higher than it was on 9/11. “Looking at it another way,” writes Gaffney, “Saudi Arabia — which currently exports about 10 mbd — receives an extra half billion dollars every day.” Where does it go? It goes on Saudi Arabia’s real principal export: ideology…. But, not content with funding the enemy in this great clash of civilizations, American taxpayers are also bankrolling various third parties, like Venezuela. And there’s nothing like increasing oil wealth to drive powerful despots down ever crazier paths ….

We give and we give and we give.

via Inoperable Terran

Captain Cook’s ship, Endeavour, may have been found. Oddly enough, on the ocean floor.

In an effort to keep you up to date on all the really important news, here’s a follow-up to the Alaskan elephant treadmill.

To sum up, like most Americans, she’s against treadmills.

It’s Frivolous Lawsuit Night at the ballpark.

“We realize that these giveaways as part of our Salute to Frivolous Lawsuit Night are fairly stupid and serve no real purpose,� said Curve General Manager Todd Parnell. “But if our fans don’t like them, then they can sue us.�

That’s awesome.

via Fark

Based on Moveon.org’s effectiveness, I’d take the donations as a sign that Google secretly leans right.

Back in the letter-writing days misunderstanding the writer’s intention wasn’t a problem, of course. This is a brand new problem we all need to know about.

It’s for journalists, but I think anyone can use it.

HEAVEN: Heaven is a term referring to the ultimate destiny of a certain number of souls. Depending on who you listen to, heaven is either: where all of us will end up (Origen); where many of us will end up (St. Gregory of Nyssa); where some of us will end up (John Calvin); where a small portion of us have, in some sense, already ended up (John of Leyden); where precisely 144,000 of us will end up (Charles Taze Russell); or where Jack Chick will end up (Jack Chick). Theologian Belinda Carlisle once posited that “Ooh, baby, heaven is a place on earth,” but explorers combing the globe have yet to confirm this.

Or

FUNDEMENTALISM: The belief that basic elements of play – like passing, ball handling, and defense – are the essential building blocks of a winning basketball team is generally referred to as “fundamentalism.” The fundamentalists formulated their doctrine in the 1980s against the showy, heretical play of Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers. Leading fundamentalist institutions include Bob Jones University and Syracuse. Larry Brown’s failure to get the Knicks into the playoffs has been seen as a major setback for the cause of fundamentalism.

via In the Agora

Gas prices are still more affordable than ever, historically speaking.

The problem, of course, is that I don’t, or didn’t, have to rearrange my budget every year to make up the price rise.

via The Volokh Conspiracy

Continue reading →

This happens to me and doorjams more than I care to admit. Which obviously means I should be working for NASA.

“The inaccurate perception of its distance and speed … prevented DART from taking effective action to avoid a collision,” the summary said.

So logically, the cameras are racist!

Cause no one dares suggest an alternative.

Here’s the great thing about northern latitudes. You can sleep in till 11, start working in the yard around noon and still get a solid eight hours in.

So maybe tomorrow I’ll get around to more Uganda pictures. I know you all can’t wait.

P.S. I really, really, really hate my pine trees. Well, not the trees per se, but the freaking pine cones and pine needles they drop constantly is what really makes me mad.

Alternative energy environmentalists vs. environmental er, enviromentalists.

Assuming a high yield of 10 tons per acre of switch grass would mean harvesting 100 million acres of land for fuel each year—an area about the size of California. In 2005, the USDA reckoned that there were 39 million acres idle in the conservation reserve program and 67 million acres of cropland being used as pasture, so dedicating that much land to grow fuel crops is not impossible. But planting idle cropland and pasture with fuel crops could have some deleterious effects on the natural environment and wildlife and possibly spark a fight between the naturalist and energy wings of the environmentalist movement.

Not because I particularly care about energy independence, I just think it would be amusing.

For the search “feelings of something crawling on you“. I think with a little hard work I can make it to NUMBER ONE!!11! oh yeah.

Why is the federal government even dealing with the issue? Shouldn’t this be a local matter?

House of Representatives lawmakers proposed a bill on May 9 that would block access to social networks and Internet chat rooms in most federally funded schools and libraries.

Black, tarry goop? Unexplained phenomena? Yep. It’s from aliens. With government help, of course.

A brief discussion of John Kerry.

If you like that you’ll love this.

It’s been a big week for Condi over at Princess Sparkle Pony’s.

DVD-sniffing dogs. But, it was a load of Rob Schneider movies, anyone could smell the stink of those.

This is what I want. This is not quite there yet.

It’s a little whiney, but Lileks has some brilliant moments today. Of course, how can you go wrong with Capt’n Crunch?

Other than a couple spikes, I’m doing well versus the universe.

Making Saturday morning cartoons work. You call that progress? Cause I don’t.

Yes, I enjoy DDR. But cartoons are for zoning out to, not for exercise.

Don’t look. It’s a top secret recipe I need later. Continue reading →

Paul Johnson on why we should be talking about political parties and their future.

Right Wing News accurately sums up how the right views the left’s policies.

Rumsfeld on the new media and the Pentagon on Hugh Hewitt.