Posted on December 2, 2004, by jank in Politics.

Seems corruption knows no party lines.

Turns out Mark Rich (the billionaire friend of Bill pardoned for tax evasion and allowed to return from exile in Switzerland) was acting as a middleman for some of the Oil for Food kickbacks to Sadaam.

Posted on December 2, 2004, by jank in Nerd.

Vote for MJ Hibbett and Hey, Hey 16K

Or for whatever.

In any case, kiss the next 30 minutes goodbye.

OH, and thanks to Hibbett himself for the e-mail:

Read more!
Posted on December 2, 2004, by etrigan in Politics.

God has given Satan a waiver to create a special place in hell for Jerry Falwell. Reading the transcript of his Thanksgiving sermon makes me want to condemn him for co-opting the mantle of Christanaity for his evil personal vendettas.

… The world is filled with the “blame America first” crowd. Many live right here in the U.S. … Among them are Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, George Clooney, Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Roberts, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, Robert Redford …

…I daily thank God for talk radio, Fox News Channel, internet bloggers and news producers like NewsMax.Com, WorldNetDaily.Com, The Drudge Report, etc. …

Actually, the people who have waved the bible in support of their decidedly non-Christan activities throughout history already have a special place in hell. This sermon is simply JF getting his pre-boarding authorization to that place.

Posted on December 2, 2004, by etrigan in Politics.

W’s man in New England during the 2002 election cycle, James Tobin, is being indicted for phone fraud.

The 2002 jamming consisted of computer-generated calls to get-out-the-vote phones run by state Democrats and the nonpartisan Manchester firefighters’ union. More than 800 hang-up calls tied up phones for about 1 1/2 hours.

The jamming’s intent was to ‘‘annoy and harass those called and disrupt those two organizations’ efforts to encourage and assist citizens in exercising their right to vote,’‘ the Justice Department said in a news release. The Department identified Tobin as one of several people who orchestrated the jamming.

Innocent until proven etc. for Tobin but several GOP staffers have already pleaded guilty. This kind of base criminal activity is going to drag the GOP down along with their in-fighting. This attitude of “all’s fair in politics” is despicable.

Posted on December 2, 2004, by etrigan in Entertainment.

Some weirdo at MIT wrote a program that analyzes music and can synthesize new songs based on what it has learned.

This season, as a present to friends worldwide, our system listened to as much Christmas music as it could handle. When it was done it synthesized these sixteen new timeless classics.

Please enjoy A Singular Christmas.

Posted on December 2, 2004, by etrigan in Food.

Salon.com is slowly recovering from election season (aren’t we all?) and has an excellent article on cooking shows today. Good Eats is regularly in my BT(Bit Torrent) list and I’ve been meaning to add America’s Test Kitchen to the Tivo for some time now.

… As Leonard gets to be a better and better cook, I find myself inviting people over to his house for dinner, and last month I finally stopped trying to convince myself that my jeans had just shrunk in the wash.

How did my engineer boyfriend learn to cook so well? Certainly not from watching the food shows the cable TV channels dish up in abundance. The personality-driven recipe files of Emeril Lagasse, Nigella Lawson, Rachael Ray, Jamie Oliver, even Jacques Pepin entertain us, but they don’t teach us much cooking. And “Iron Chef”? That’s just a neo-feudalistic game show that happens to involve food.

Nope, Leonard and I aren’t much for food shows. It’s the geeky cooking shows we devour in search of explanations, technique, equipment tests and, yes, entertainment: Food Network’s gimmicky-in-a-good-way “Good Eats” (which sometimes runs as often as three times in one day) and PBS’s consumer-reports show “America’s Test Kitchen” (check local listings), which explain the science and engineering behind good food. …