Best Oscar Night Quotes

…from the folks watching at my house:

• “Look kids. Sea Biscuit, Big Ben, Parlaiment…” -Rod
• “New Zealand’s empty! Let’s invade!” -Zack

p.s Most Robbed (Although They Lost To Films Just As Good): “Lost In Translation” and “Triplettes of Bellville”

Warthog Launch

The designer of this game equips you with a Warthog (the military vehicle with a gun on top) and a passle of grenades. A group of giant mutant fleas appear and to fight them off…you do what? That’s right. Place the grenades under your vehicle so you can launch it at them.

I’m stuck on Level 30.

LOTR

Read this article in Salon (Darn them, why do they have to inject actual quality from time to time?), and was left with the following question:

“When someone mentions Led Zepplin to you, what song immediately springs to mind?”

Me? It’s Kashmir, specifically the part in the middle where the strings, ‘cept the cello, fall to a supporting role for a while, and Robert Plant just kind of moans, immediately before everything swells and somehow the drums beat even louder.

I Carried a Watermelon

I was right! Dirty Dancing IS one of the best movies ever!

Where Was Bush? Ask Again And We'll Have To Kill You

This is a conspiracy theory I could get behind and one the Bushies should secretly promote while publicly denying it. Bush was a spook and that’s why he can’t account for his time served in Alabama or even specify his real-world job during that time frame.

“George’s job was to travel around the United States and to countries in Central America looking for plant nurseries his company might want to acquire,” read one account.

..

Bush’s plant-nursin’ jet-flyin’ story was the future Presidents “cover” for the unit to which the young second lieutenant was actually detached—officially or otherwise—a massive clandestine U.S. government operation that was going on just then called Operation Condor.

DJs, "Anyone but Bush."

Four years ago local radio personality (don’t call him a DJ!) Dale Dudley of the Dudley and Bob Show was all about the Bush. He was sure that W was the savior of the U.S. Lately, though, he’s been making it clear that he won’t be backing that horse this season. If can’t be easy for a public figure to decry a former governer and the most powerful resident of Texas but he’s making a clear stand.

Howard Stern is doing the same kind of about-face. Some conspiracy nuts and Stern fans (which I am neither) relate Stern’s Clear Channel fallout to these statements, but I think Clear Channel is simply tired of paying his FCC fines and recognize that he’ll be generating tons more fines under new FCC enforcement.

[ Stern discussing LatLLWTT:AFaBLATR ] “If you read this book, you will never vote for George W. Bush. … I think this guy is a religious fanatic and a Jesus freak, and he is just hell bent on getting some sort of bizzaro agenda through—like a country-club agenda—so that his father will finally be proud of him. … I don’t know much about Kerry, but I think I’m one of those ‘Anybody but Bush’ guys now. I don’t think G.W. is going to win. What do you think about that?”

Baby Pictures

Can’t wait to hit Houston to see him, but here’s pictures in the mean time.

If Major Calls

Major Applewhite called me at work today. Sadly, it was not to profess his undying love, but to endorse John Kelley ® for Congress.

Good thing I’ve got another QB to fixate on.

Damned Christians

…and I mean that literally. There are people who profess to be Christians who are unquestionably damned, and I’m tired of being associated with them. A “minister” in Colorado put up a billboard proclaiming “Jews Killed The Lord Jesus”. The a—hole was nice enough to remove part of the billboard that said “Settled!” but refused to pull down the whole thing.

“If I can get people to rediscover their bible…if I can get people to go back and look…what does it actually say?” asked Gordon [, the pastor responsible ].

Well, gee, Gordon you moron. My bible makes it pretty clear that the Romans are the ones who beat the ever-living crap out of Jesus and then cross-marched him up Golgotha so they could nail him to the cross and stick a sword through his innards.

Maybe Gordon is just afraid that his Roman heritage will be revealed and he will have to answer for killing Jesus. He’s just trying to draw attention away from himself while he comes up with a good excuse.

Senators and Inside Trading

It’s may just be groundless conspiracy fuel, but “US senators’ personal stock portfolios outperformed the market by an average of 12 per cent a year in the five years to 1998, according to a new study.” The numbers actually would be interesting when viewed by Senator since over time it might indicate Senators who should answer questions to the SEC, but this is worth looking into.

Pongling and Shuriken

Here’s a couple twitch games (my favorite kind!) to waste your time. Shuriken places your ninja in a canyon throwing stars at bad ninjas and dodging a hovering fireball. (Were you looking for some kind of realism? Build a bridge…) Pongling is a cross between Pong© and bowling. Score a strike or spare in the 10th ‘frame’ and 11 will open, etc.

Happy Birthday

To Nathan Joseph, born today. 7 pounds, 9 ounces. Mother and child are resting, father is moving into a new house, but catching a plane early, early Saturday morning. Big brother Jake is sleeping.

Sweet Home Chicago

There’s tons of reasons to love the windy city - the Cubbies and The Blues Brothers are those that pop to mind immediately, without even a moment’s thought.

Chief reason this evening is beer in plastic cups. As befits a city of meatpackers, the neighbor to the south of the place the native americans called Mil-le-walk-ee, O’Hare has an enlightened view of the proper place of booze in an airport - namely, everywhere.

I’m sure that all of us have at one time or another suffered through an intermittent layover at DFW or other cities with less lax liquor laws - hundreds of like-minded souls crammed into a bar smaller than even the worst Manhattan dive, all struggling for the attention of the sole overworked barkeep, who is used to feeding martinis to the poor soul who failed to land either the deal or the attractive person at the hotel bar, and is merely killing time before a scheduled flight.

Delayed flights propose an interesting dynamic - suddenly, there are people with no other life tragedy than unexpected time to kill clamoring for booze. Early in the day, it can be a lively dynamic; in the evenings, such as our protagonist’s situation, it’s more sullen - people craving a tranquilizer to make sleep possible in the contortionist seats on modern airliners. But always, always, there are more wanna-be drunks than there are seats in the establishment.

Not so in the windy city. Unless specifically requested, beer comes in plastic cups, and wandering imbibing is encouraged by the paucity of places to put one’s posterior. It’s a matter of time until ashtrays take their place back in the waiting areas. Unless the same enlightened people who have outlawed fun in other metropolitan areas set their sights on the wreckage wrought by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

Last note - spotted two other iPods in O’Hare - both belonged to beer drinkers.

British Breakfast

My wife is brian-washing me and I have to fight back. My name is John and I like comfortable food. I am not ashamed that this looks yummy.

(this picture stolen from the most recent update at brian battjer, jr.’s ikeepadiary.com which you should check out because his trip to europe is a pretty fun photoblog.)

What the Heck is that thing?

I have had a few conversations with folks regarding the new Quizno’s add. Today, it was a topic on MSN.

I know that the add gets the name out there, but geez. Everytime I see one of those singing spongmonkeys, I lose my appetite.

NSFW: I Did It For Science

Do not click through on this link. It is not safe for work or home and especially not the public computers at Schlotzsky’s. It is not safe for you. It is of a sexual nature and it’s just wrong.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Grant Stottard does a column for Nerve called I Did It For Science. (You may or may not remember Grant as a close friend of IKeepADiary.com’s Brian Battjer, Jr. He moved to Cali recently and he got worse.) The most recent issue has Grant going to the Real Doll — a manufactured life-size sex doll — manufacturer’s warehouse and test driving a Real Doll for his column. Despite being one of the wrongest things (along with Chuck Palahniuk’s short story in the latest Palyboy) I have read in a long time, it is funny like Benny Hill never could be.

Again, don’t go and read it. (but you’ll laugh if you do.)

Low Blow To Babies

I just got an email from MoveOn.Org and this time they are bringing babies into the picture.

Under energy industry pressure, President Bush’s EPA plans to defer controls on mercury emissions by power plants for at least a decade. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 4.9 million women of childbearing age in the U.S. — that’s 8 percent — have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood. The people hit hardest will be new-born infants — every year over 630,000 infants are born with levels of mercury in their blood so high they can cause brain damage.

On the one hand, if this is true the Bushies should cower in shame for blocking abortions world-wide and then increasing the number of brain damaged children here on the home front. On the other hand, if it’s not true MoveOn.org should be ashamed of dragging babies into the fight.

On January 30th, the EPA announced its intention to weaken its own earlier proposal that would have required a 90 percent reduction in mercury pollution by power plants by 2008. The new proposal doesn’t force every power plant to limit mercury pollution, leaving many communities vulnerable. It would also delay implementation of even these weaker requirements until 2018, leaving a whole new generation of kids needlessly at risk.

Because I’m a biased liberal jerk, I’m going to blindly believe MoveOn.org. (Well that and several scientists that I know and trust describe the Bush environmental record as a “holocaust”.) I’ll be singing the petition at http://www.moveon.org/mercury/.

Bush loves it when a plan comes together

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Congress on Wednesday to deal with the country’s escalating budget deficit by cutting benefits for future Social Security retirees rather than raising taxes.

also

He also said that the age for retirement should be indexed in some way to take into account longer lifespans. He noted that presently the age for being able to get full Social Security benefits is rising from 65 to 67 as one of the changes Congress adopted in the mid-1980s, based on recommendations of a commission Greenspan chaired. In his testimony, Greenspan said Congress should go further and index the retirement age so that it will keep rising.

Which makes sense, but what is up with people who talk about wanting to keep working after retirement age as a way to “keep busy”? As soon as the retirement accounts are full, you can bet my ass is going to be on the hovercouch in front of the Playstation XI.

Engineers...No Comment

I’ve got so many jokes rolling around in my head about Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day that I don’t know where to start. From the concept and title of this event to the idea that girls need to be “introduced” to engineering…I can’t get anything funny to fully develop.

How's your maths?

Those funny brits! When they discuss mathematics as an educational subject the refer to it in the plural, as in this How’s your maths? quiz. See if you need to brush up a bit.

Are You A Cynic?

You will have to pretend that you are British for a few of the questions that come up on the Are You A Cynic? quiz, but it’s short and self-reflecting quizzes aren’t a bad thing.

Tax Cuts Not For Small Business

I like this article from the Washington Posts that covers the differences between what Bush sayas the tax cuts cover and what the IRS numbers show. Bush wants us to believe that raising the tax rate of the highest tax bracket would hurt small business.

According to IRS data from the 2001 tax year, 3.8 percent of the 18.2 million business tax returns filed that year reported taxable income of $200,000 or more. The top tax bracket last year kicked in at $311,950 of taxable income.

…

Republicans point to a different statistic: Of the 750,000 tax filers that pay the top rate, more than two-thirds receive some small-business income from sole proprietorships, partnerships or small businesses incorporated as S corporations…

But under Treasury’s definition, both Bush and Vice President Cheney are members of the entrepreneurial class. In his 2002 tax return, the president reported $1,549 from rental real estate, royalties, partnerships, S corporations and trusts, including income from GWB Rangers Corp., a remnant of his days as co-owner of the Texas Rangers. Of the Cheney household’s $1.2 million income, $238,682 was from business ventures within the White House’s definition of small business.

Economists say the broad Republican definition of “small-business man” includes not only doctors, lawyers and management consultants but also chief executives who earn $3,000 renting out their chalets in Aspen or report $10,000 in speaking fees. …

This is what I see as a repeatable offense by the Bush administration. Presenting a set of “facts” drawing attention to a hot potato which on closer inspection is neither hot nor even a potato. Between his assertions on the everyman-impact of these tax cuts and his assuredness that Saddam Hussein had the bomb and his claims that drilling in Alaska will actually help the environment, his credibility is lacking.

Make-A-Flake

Make your own Snowflake and email it to friends!

Word.

Conservatives Crowded Out of College

As I started reading this article from some dumb paper, I was really feeling the plight of conservative students. Surely, I thought, there is some Catch-22 in trying to retain the conservative values of your upbringing on a college campus since most professors are liberal. The whole chicken/egg kind of problem presents itself on whether professors are liberal because an extensive college education opens the mind, or are liberals running the college experience and scaring away conservative students? Then I read this:

Now conservative activists are fighting back. David Horowitz…

and my mind shut down.

How can anyone make a reasonable effort to support an idea and let David Horowitz get involved. To balance the article, further down they mention the support of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, too. (Not really. I made that last part up.)

Dial 9 to End the Call

Whether or not this is about Dell, it’s still some funny reading.

I provide customer/tech support (to lawyers no less) as part of my job, and have come to realize over the years that less than 1% of the customers just can not be appeased. Everyone else just needs a little love. The best part — once I take care of their problem they leave me alone. I’m not allowed to scream at them, though. Which kindof sucks sometimes.

Flowers For Gays-to-Wed

I saw this trend emerging on another group late last week, but I didn’t get a change to send flowers to any of the waiting couples at SF’s City Hall.

thanks to the Internet, there’s also been beauty, in the form of hundreds of bouquets of flowers that have been delivered to couples waiting in line for their marriage licenses. These flowers have been ordered and paid for by total strangers, people from all over the world wanting to share in the good feeling happening in San Francisco and wanting to show that they believe marriage is a civil right that should be available to any two people, not just to a man and a woman.

Tower Blaster

Tower Blaster is played by replacing numbered blocks to successfully build an incrementing tower of numbers.

Billionaires For Bush

So, is Crazy Billionaire going to support this program asking for No Billionaire Left Behind?

Deregulate elections. Eliminate all limits on campaign contributions. Democracy means the right to use our money in any way we choose. Repealing the restrictive laws regulating money in politics will make the buying of elected officials vastly more efficient.

The Viagra Prank

This is the story of one man’s quest to buy the little blue pill after being hounded by so many spam ads, then it continues into his use of said pill.

The secret to ordering drugs online, I discovered, is that you have to lie.

Can you believe that? You have to lie in order to get the Viagra. See, when their online form asks why you’re ordering the drug, instead of writing:

I want to make sweet, sweet love all night long.

You’re supposed to say:

male sexual function problems (erection problems)

Not to bury Clinton, but to praise him

(JRO - I’m mulling on the two earner thing, but as I’m in Houston, playing with the boy and spending quality time with the round, round wife takes precedence)

Praise for WJC at NRO.

“Bill Clinton may have had his faults, but on trade he was superlative. He refused to pander to the squeaky wheels demanding protection from foreign imports, and pushed vigorously to open U.S. and foreign markets to increased trade… Restricting imports to temporarily save a few jobs would have threatened foreign retaliation and reduced foreign investment in the U.S., which would have cost far more jobs than the few that were saved. And the job losses would have been in businesses that pay above-average wages, which is generally the case for workers in foreign-owned companies. Thus, Clinton made the simple calculation that increased trade and investment was good for him politically and protectionism was not.”

There Was An Old Lady

FTK, the classic poem There Was An Old Lady done up flash-style.

Trickle Down Destroying Traditional Family Unit

I’ve been thinking about a conundrum lately. The conservative-types want to push the traditional family unit and support “family values”, but the economy of the last quarter-century is creating a world without an opportunity for people to choose a traditional living situation: specifically single-provider households.

Conservative values decry things like “the living wage” and support the idea of “trickle down”, yet this inevitably leads to more homes with working couples. Even the familes I know who have one parent living at home do so only because they have found a way to work at home. (and I won’t sidebar about both sides of the aisle trying to kill that particular worthy effort. dems with increasing liability issues for employers, ‘pubs with refusal to fund trial programs. — this sidebar is dedicated to reeder!)

What is the American Dream today? For me and mine, it would be to make enough money (salary minus debt) for Becky to chose whether she works or not. I am admittedly a poor money manager, but only a major reduction in my historical quality of life would have changed my current fiscal outlook. (For those who encourage me to have children, this particular issue is one of — if not solely — the major barriers to me feeling comfortable supporting another Osmon in this house.)

What good is an economy where only the truly rich can afford a decent quality of life and support it with only a single income provider? and what kind of stress does the single provider have to suffer to get there? I don’t blame this solely on the GOP, but double-income households are definitely an 80’s era fungus that has taken hold of our country.

(While the trend apppears to be going down these last couple years, I propose that it’s due to a lack of availability in jobs. This is supported in real life by my roommate (with a college degree) who had to take a job as a cabbie to stay employed.)

If I were truly master of my time, I would spend some time looking at income/earner in each fifth as related it to the poverty level (since this particular stat isn’t available in adjusted dollars).

A lot of rambling to say: I don’t think trickle down economics and stay-at-home parents are compatible, because TDE create higher earnings higher up the food chain where it’s needed less and forces people lower down the food chain to take multiple jobs. The only way I can see making it work reminds me of my father who lead a miserable life for 20+ years trying to climb a ladder that lead to a place that made him unhappy — only so he could afford the option of a stay-at-home wife (and eventually a college educated PhD wife). If I plan and execute well, I may be able to provide for my family by the time I reach 40. That seems horribly late for me to start expanding my family, and providing my wife with the option of freedom.

Worried about Scott

First he does the thread where he kicks out the beer drinking bums on the couch because they may have plagarized a story, and then he runs this strip

Is it just me, or does the cat remind you of the baby on THe Family Guy?

Credit where it's due

GWB and John Ashcroft are bringing corporate crooks to heel: Jeff Skilling, former Enron CEO, took his perp walk last week.

Ashcroft’s desk now bears notches for Skilling as well as Adelphia’s John Rigas and Tyco’s L. Dennis Kozlowski. Janet Reno’s desk? No corporate crooks, as near as I could tell.

Which party lets big business get away with shady dealings again?

Heh. Did a bit more digging and found some charts about the Dow and big events. Just skimming for what the Justice department was doing…

“1990-2000”http://www.djindexes.com/jsp/avgDecades.jsp?decade=1990 - Let’s see Bush 1 - “Milken pleads guilty”, “Keating convicted”.
Clinton - “Waco cult siege”
2000-2010
Bush 2 - “Justice Department begins Enron Probe”

Give the guy some credit. Even if you donate to him, he’ll send you up the river if you deserve it. Instead of getting Laura to hide law firm records under her desk.

Signs of Peak Oil?

From the Chronicle

Apparently both El Paso and Royal Dutch Shell have reduced their proven reserves estimates by 41% and 17% respectively.

More ignoring laws

San Diego, CA - Mayor Dick Murphy stunned the attendees at the Southern California Gun Show and Swap Meet at the San Diego Civic Center when he and several city employees showed up with a stack of concealed weapons permits and waivers for California’s seven-day firearms purchase waiting period. The city employees then began issuing weapons permits to any person requesting one.

“We sat down and read it: the Second Amendment’s pretty clear that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. Without access to lots and lots of powerful weapons, how are citizens supposed to form their own militias? California’s laws are clearly not in line with the idea of a well-armed citizenry; this is our attempt to correct mistakes in Sacremento,” said the Mayor.

“Shouldn’t the weapons a person owns be a private matter? Consenting adults should have access and freedom to buy and train with whichever firearms they see fit, without the state’s interference. Why should citizens be limited to outdated ideas like small magazines and limited rates of fire? And why should access to the protective benefits of high tech weaponry be limited to a select group of people, those in the military?

“Certainly, there will be people who abuse these permits, but that is their fault. It isn’t a reason to deny ownership privileges to everyone based on a few bad apples.

“There are also those who will argue that increased weaponry in private hands will lead to accidental shootings. This is why the San Diego ISD will begin requiring mandatory gun safety courses for all students, beginning in second grade. No student should ever be in a situation in which they are unable to properly use any accessible gun in a safe and controlled matter.”

Due to overwhelming demand, the city employees asked newly licensed people to assist in collecting information and giving permits to the people who were requesting them.

“I’ve always wanted to legally have my own MP-5,” said Tom Deegan, an elementary school teacher from El Segundo while writing a license for another gun lover. “But, until this time the state has turned me down because I could not demonstrate a valid need. Thanks to the courageous action of the Mayor, I can now legally live out my dream, and publicly use the guns I’d acquired on the black market for target shooting.”

When asked about people who might think that there is no need for a private citizen to own large caliber weaponry, Mr. Deegan responded “Well, there are those who are closed-minded. Responsible citizens can safely use these high-rate-of-fire weaponry; why should the state be able to deny them the pleasure of shooting? Heck, many of them probably know a closet gun nut. Hopefully this will enable their friends to finally acknowledge their love of gun oil, cordite, and the sound of a 240 grain slug slamming into a target.”

Starry Night

Starry Night is a simple pretty game where you bounce stars off a bubble trying to light other stars.

Rewriting History

I especially like the title of this article Inventing The Clinton Recession about Bush’s folks rewriting history.

The CEA’s Economic Report of the President, released Feb. 9, unilaterally changed the start date of the last recession to benefit Bush’s reelection bid. Instead of using the accepted start date of March, 2001, the CEA announced that the recession really started in the fourth quarter of 2000 — a shift that would make it much more credible for the Bush Administration to term it the “Clinton Recession.” In a subsequent press conference, Mankiw said that the CEA had looked at the available data and “made the call.”

Come up with all the stats you want, jank, but “or almost 75 years, the start and end dates of recessions have been set by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private nonpartisan research group based in Cambridge, Mass.”

To be fair, even if the latest recession did begin after Bush took office in January, 2001, no one can say he caused it.

This would be a perfect opportunity for the Bush administration to educate the public instead of trying to stretch the wool.

For the love of god.

Ralph, you do a great job fighting The Man. But whenever you run for president you just stir up the hippies and hand the government to the Republicans.

Sit this one out buddy. I know you like to see your name up there, but take one for the team.

Return of StarCon

Here’s an opensource effort to recreate the classic PC game StarCon 2. I used to love this game. I will have to find out if time treated it kindly.

Is My Husband Trying to Kill Me?

After several years of pestering from my sweet husband, I gave in and allowed the purchase of an electric blanket. Terminally cold hands and feet won over my paranoid fear of going up in flames and this last winter, I’ll admit that I’ve basked in the toasty goodness like a human baked potato.

But this new study has me worried all over again.

Turns out that exposure to low-level magnetic fields causes damage to brain cells, and the effect is cumulative over time. Researchers say there’s no cause for concern (yet!) and we should just “limit our exposure,” but the study was based on a 240-volt system and we’re on the higher 110-volt here in the states.

And what about the kitties, who sleep every night on top of the electric blanket and are not much bigger than rats.

Clearly, I live in the world and I can’t just stop using common household electrical products. Can someone with a bit more of a science background assuage my fears? And don’t give me the “you’re going to die sometime, so it may as well be of cancer” argument, please.

Bush Hates Deaf People

The extremists are trying to make it a censorship deal, and my first guess was that it’s just a money deal. The Bush administration has cut the funding for close captioning on several TV shows.

Officials at the department now say, however, that they are acting on the “intent of Congress” to limit captioning to “educational and informational” programming.

“We in the Department of Education had external experts come in and help us determine the parameters for what would be appropriate,” said Troy Justesen, deputy secretary for special education and rehabilitative services.

…

The blocking of the 200 programs was not a cost-cutting measure, Justesen added.

“We haven’t changed the amount of money on closed captioning and have no plans to make a change,” he said.

Apparently, deaf people will have to pay extra if they want to be entertained like the rest of us. This is one of those ‘give-a-ways’ that I think the government absolutely should shoulder. How can we as a nation deny deaf people the right to laugh at “The Simpsons”?

BpB banner derby

I guess some of you may have sentimental attachment to the all-text Backporch Beer title, but it just ocurred to me that we could have a proper classy banner graphic up there.

So howsabout a fark.com-style photoshop contest to design the new BpB banner? I reckon they should be about 600 wide and not too tall, and should still look good with our variable description text underneath.

Let’s post them in this thread and discuss and vote for our favorites or for none at all. You can also just propose some ideas if you lack follow-through.

Also, if anyone knows any examples of good designs on MovableType blogs like this one, I’d like to see some.

High Tech ATM Robbers

All you Austinites should check out this UTPD article describing how high tech thieves are stealing ATM card numbers and PINs. (and you non-Austinites might want to keep an eye out, too.)

Bad Album Covers

Another bad album cover site has popped into my radar. It’s got a lot of duplicates from other sites, but this is a new one for me.

I want to know why Tony Tee is lifting such light weight and why he needs someone to spot him for it. Does he have a debilitating muscle disease? or is he just extra extra careful when it comes to gym safety?

British Slang Word of the Day: Blag

Telegraph offeres up this story about an Oxford engineering student who was asked to lecture on economics in Beijing…because he was mistaken for an expert professor from New York University.

He said: “It became clear to me that my audience was not students, but people from the world of commerce studying for a PhD in business studies having already gained an MBA.”

Conflicted About Running

I just returned from seeing Dr. Spears and I don’t think I’ll be able to run the marathon next year as challenged. Due to genetic and physiological factors, it turns out that I’m not built for running. Dr. Spears said if I was willing to invest a lot of time and money that he could have me ready to run a 5K or maybe a 10K in 4-6 months. He didn’t have a lot of hope that I would be able to run a marathon, but said there are a few people with my condition who do. Doc suggested biking or swimming would suit me just fine, though, so maybe I should start training for BASH this year — though that may be a little early.

Lust

So, with moving back into a home of our own just around the corner, and mere weeks instead of months left before Missy and Jake move up, I’m looking down the road to getting back to the serious business of being a husband, dad, and general middle-class guy with simple tastes.

Translated: It’s time to build another boat.

Chesapeake Light Craft’s Chester Yawl:

Pygmy Boats’ Wineglass Wherry

I’ve got the kayak, but a little bit of observation convinces me that
a. it’s only got one seat; and
b. kids under the age of 7 or 8 need a little bit more room to bounce around

So I’m looking for a pulling boat-type kit. I’d like something easy to build, I’d like something reasonably priced, and I’d like something that doesn’t require that I g3t an entire new set of traditional boatbuilding tools. I’d also like something light enough to throw on the roof of the car in the evening to take down to the river for a quick row before bed. The option to add sail at a later date would be welcomed, but I’m primarily interested in something to row.

WSJ sticks up for LBJ

So sometime back in November, the History Channel ran a documentary alledging that LBJ had JFK knocked off at the TSBD. Lady Bird is, obviously, pretty miffed.

The Journal’s out swinging at the History Channel today; noting another couple quality conspiracy theories that I missed. My favorite? That JFK was knocked off because he was going to tell the unwashed about LGM.

Movie Quote

From Castle Keep - You find me degenerate, perhaps even French…

BTW - the movie’s about the most interesting take on a war movie I’ve ever seen… Gotta love AMC.

DoD looking out for reservists

Improved medical insurance coverage for reservists. The first provision covers members and their families for up to 90 days before being called to active duty. The second provision extends coverage for members and their families for up to half a year after being released from active duty (I got 120 contingiency days back in May, though my employer’s coverage picked back up as soon as I started working again, but only because I had several years on active duty)

Lastly, and the most interesting to me: The third provision temporarily extends Tricare medical benefits to Reserve component sponsors and family members who are either unemployed or employed but not eligible for employer-provided health coverage.

Sounds like a page out of Starship Troopers.

Oil for anti-war support?

To garner ire from everyone on the porch, I’ll use Reeder’s pet peeve: I would have avoided posting this, ‘cept for the fact it comes out of the London Guardian, which can hardly have been considered a pro-war or pro-Bush rag:

Money illicitly siphoned from the UN oil-for-food programme by Saddam Hussein was used to finance anti-sanctions campaigns run by British politicians, according to documents that have surfaced in Baghdad.

…Our investigations in Iraq, New York, Paris, Moscow and London indicate the new British-related documents are authentic, although their meaning is not always clear.

…Mr Galloway (Vocal anti-war Member of Parliment) said he was unaware that his financial sponsors were getting oil cash from the UN programme. But he accepts that he knew his supporters had links with Saddam’s regime, and regarded that as an inevitable price to pay.

The WSJ’s Best of the Web Today from yesterday ran this as ‘Antiwar’ is Pro-Sadaam. I think that’s excessive; I don’t doubt that many protestors were truly and committedly anti-war. (As a general principle, I’m anti-war, much in the same way I’m anti-poverty) But Saddam, apparently, saw them as useful idiots.

PS - I came across the last link googling for a source that cited Lenin (not Lennon - Yoko, you broke up the band!) as the source for “Useful Idiots”. The site’s pretty interesting - libertarian bordering on anarchic (Makes me feel like a facist), with a few conspiracy theories thrown in for leavening.

Letterscapes

Another cool interactive animation site called Letterscapes which pulls up 25 letters and has a different animation for each.

Snow Dell

Note: I did not take this picture.

Austin rarely gets snow so this picture is fairly unique.

Off-Politics

Getting off taxes & politics for a minute… we all know JRO enjoyed ‘The Passion’ at BNAT. I’m looking forward to seeing it, too, if I get to it (just saw Two Towers for the first time last night). But I’ve seen Mel Gibson in a couple of interview blurbs looking a little psycho. Here’s an article on Salon about his conspiracy theories and whether or not he’s (1) a brilliant marketer, or maybe (2) a little ‘off’.

The Unscientific Method

What happens if you make 100 generation copies of a CD? You and I can easily answer that question (or at least I can, you I’m not so sure of), but this guy decided to put the question to a test. A very unscientific test. On top of attempting to defy the common sense of copying CDs, he puts together what is possibly worse than most second grade science fair projects.

Schmay-be

In the tradition of Charlie Brown, Mutts is a generally unoffensive but somehow still clever comic strip. A few times a week it makes me chuckle out loud.

The Sanctity of Divorce

Hee-hee. That Tom Toles is fun-knee!

A Trillion Dollars

JRO throws up Salon - I throw up NRO. Some figures

Total federal outlays in 2002 were $2,010,975,000,000. In the year I first came to this country, 1973, they were $245,700,000,000, which adjusts up to $862,100,000,000 in 2002 dollars. So (and I am sticking with 2002 dollars throughout here) the 2002 feddle gummint spent about $1.15 trillion more than in 1973. …

It’s not just the feds, either. The governor of my state — New York, pop. 19,011,378 — plans to spend $100 billion in 2004-05, up $8 billion from last year. That’s an 8.7 percent increase, $421 per New Yorker, $1,684 for my little family here. Will my state services improve 8.7 percent in quantity or quality? Shall I be getting 8.7 percent more courtesy from the highway patrol? Will state courts be processing cases 8.7 percent more quickly? Shall the Derbyshires be getting anything at all from our state government equivalent to what we might have got by spending $1,684 in the private sector? I’m not betting on it. And even that $100 billion is attained only by pushing every conceivable expense off the state’s books and on to those of the counties and municipalities. Upstate in Broome County, Medicaid … was absorbing 78 percent of the local property tax last year. The county’s projection for 2012 is 200 percent!

As a reminder, ‘73 was the year the US pulled troops out of Vietnam, so military operational spending may have dropped that year. Not so much to reconcile a 125% spending increase, but it’s at least somewhat of a factor. We did put a couple of folks on the moon in ‘73, AIR.

Just when all hope appears to be lost

ESPN comes back and saves my respect for the network.

I’d been meaning to change my browser homepage to something other than ESPN.com, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Then tonight, after catching a late supper with a couple of the guys from the office, I fire up Mozilla one last time before heading home and what do I find?

March Madness. Yeah, baby. The sweetest month of the year.

We’d been sitting in the resturant halfheartedly not following TCU/Louisville and MSU/Purdue, but work and life had taken the front seat leaving basketball somewhere in the background. Plus, one of the guys went to CanoeU, and isn’t exactly into hoops (Not that the two are related - it’s just reflex to remind Academy grads that they haven’t gone to college yet).

But I fire up the world-wide leader in sports, and get the clip above smacking me in the face. And somewhere I know that all will be well in the world again, and soon. There’s hype, there’s good games, and there’s the Frogs blowing the lid off of a team that used to be a potential 3 seed. And then buried in a story on A-Rod going to the Yankees, is a pic of Ben’n’Jen with the caption “What’s worse than losing J-Lo? How bout (sic) A-Rod to the Yankees?”

(Side note - In hindsight, couldn’t the New York/Boston thing have been a sign that Affleck and Lopez would never work out in the long run? I can’t remember if she’s from Brooklyn or the Bronx. If she’s from Brooklyn, she may be a Mets fan, but aside further proof - what the hell was Ben thinking? And if Hollywood could do that to Affleck, what hope is there for the Sports Guy now that he’s on the left coast? Page 2 could continue its slide. But I come not to bury ESPN.com, but to praise it.)

((Note to the sidenote: Christian says that J-Lo is indeed from the Bronx. So it’s obvious that Ben was only thinking about one thing, and it wasn’t baseball))

Bubble Chamber

Using “a programming language and environment built for the electronic arts and visual design communities” from Processing, j. tarbell wrote Bubble Chamber. Set up one of these windows to run in the background, then stop in and check it every couple minutes.

Flynt Starts Bush Fire

Larry Flynt is poised to start trouble for Bush.

“I’ve talked to the woman’s friends,” Flynt said. “I’ve tracked down the doctor who did the abortion, I tracked down the Bush people who arranged for the abortion,” Flynt said. “I got the story nailed.”

This seems like more of the long-ago history that wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for Bush having so many Christian Coalition supporters.

p.s. how ‘bout that headline? not a single journalism lesson!

Shut Up!

I had no idea that Bill O’Reilly wrote a novel.

It’s about a TV news personality who becomes a serial killer. When it came out in 98’ Kirkus Reviews described the language as “wooden,” which is one of my all time favorite criticism adjectives.

Anybody read it? Becky’s Book Club Members look out — I’ve got my suggested reading for April!

Do Not Shake

It is official and from the source. No matter how much you like the new Outkast double album, do not shake it like a Polaroid picture.

The short answer is no, you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) “shake it like a Polaroid picture.”

Name That Tune

So, we’re driving back from the new Austin Wings n More — I gotta remember to add that place to my restaurant reviews and Episode 3 of WDYLIA — and we catch this soundclip on the radio. As the song fades out, I correctly identify it and my co-worker in the backseat lays into me insisting that not only am I wrong, but that I couldn’t name a song just by hearing the last 7 seconds of it. I take this as a personal challenge, of course, and will be dueling with said unnamed co-worker as soon as I can dig up a copy of Name That Tune on CD-ROM. Until then, I want to drive my point home by making it clear that recognizing this particular clip is not that challenging.

So, BPBers, without cheating Name That Tune! (You can even make it hard on yourself by just playing a snippet of the song, seeing how long a snippet it takes you to guess it.)

Short list of potential runs for Jank

So hearing about Becky and Matt really has me jonesing to finish a marathon. Missy and I were on track to do Disney back in 2000, but then Jake happened. I kept training until October/November, got up to about 15 or so miles on a long run. Then cold (we were still up in CT) and sympathy pregnancy (Yes, it really does happen. I’ve got pictures to prove it. Not just of me, but of others, too. SonO would agree) intervened, and I slacked off.

Ah, but after surviving a layoff, move, and soon another mouth to feed, I need a challenge for the summer and fall.

I’ve already put my name in for the draw for the NYC but kind of doubt it. I’d try the Marine Corps, but have previous engagements that weekend and 13-14 November. There may or may not be a hunting trip in early October, but my current short list is:

• Hartford - close to home and open registration
• Mount Desert Island - It’s in Bar Harbor, and I happen to have a buddy who brews his own up there. Plus, Bar Harbor’s about as staggeringly beautiful as any place I’ve ever been. So between painkilling suds and breathtaking scenery, this gets the nod. Assuming I can con Melissa to spend several hours in the car with two screaming kids to head up there. Or get a weekend kitchen pass (fat chance).
• Stowe - Up in Vermont, but it’s early (mid-September), and at at least a little bit of elevation.
• Mystic Places - Most likely option, although, suprisingly, it happens about 15 miles away from Mystic.

I’m open for suggestions. Runner’s World Magazine has somewhat of a meta-list in case anyone else is interested.

Textile 2

Behind the curve as usual, I have updated us here in the Backporch to Brad Choate’s Textile 2 plugin.

For those of you who don’t remember, Textile allows us to do some pretty cool and easy formatting when posting or commenting on this site. For those looking for an in-depth manual on what can be done, here is Brad’s manual on his website.

For the lazy, here’s a few key update features:

- starting a new line with *bc. * lets you have block code. (there is a space after the “.”, btw)

 This is different than "bq.  " which just indented the text 
because it forces the browser to use a font that is 'lined up'.

- using >, <, =, <> at the beginning of a line set justification. (can anyone show me how this works? I don’t get it…)

- I always forget that using == around a section of text turns off Textile. Now, you can also use [ and ] to squeeze Textile formatting into the middle of a word like this.

- The links feature was expanded to allow defining “shortcut names” for links early in a document, then using the shortcut each time you want to re-use the link. (See the bottom of the links section for more details.)

- The updates to the images feature allows us to redimension an image using picels or percentages.

- Character replacements have been expanded to inclue ¢, £, ¥, Á, ä, ¼, ߦ, ☺, ☹ and several undocumented ones…

- Lists now expand on single level lists (which used the * at the front of the line) to include multi-level lists (using **, ***, etc.).

• Fruit
  • apples
  • oranges
• Vegetables
  • corn
  • carrots

- Simple and complex tables can be created using just | or the table tag.

- This site could certainly make use of the footnotes feature.

- using {style rule} and (class) changes the CSS style of text. This is really advanced stuff and I admitedly don’t use CSS styles much but I know some people here do.

Babies Are Stupid

Here’s one more stick to put on my “why not to have a babies” pyre. It turns out that babies are so stupid that it’s not even funny.

Another test, in which the infants were placed on a mound of dirt outdoors during a torrential downpour, produced similarly bleak results.

“The chicken, dog and even worm babies that we submitted to the test as a control group all had enough sense to come in from the rain or, at least, seek shelter under a leafy clump of vegetation or outcropping of rock,” test supervisor Thomas Howell said.

p.s. Is it a blogger’s sin to post Onion articles?

Cousins Bush and Kerry

It’s not surprising at all to the Deaniacs or Edwards-iacs (do they have a cute name? no wonder they aren’t winning or losing dramatically!) that GWB and John Kerry are actually cousins according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Bruce and Kristine Harrison, publishers of historical databases, traced back the family histories of Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
…
Well, 16th cousins, three times removed, to be exact. But cousins, nonetheless.

And they are both related to Walt Disney and Marilyn Monroe. The shameless histories of their families are revealed!

Today's Funny Cartoons

Instead of doing funny strips onesy-twosey, I thought I’d wrap ‘em up into one post.

It’s best to get the funny stuff out of the way before I dive into berating jank for his blind faith in anyone wearing an elephany pin on their lapel.

The 2wenty

I’ve been seeing a little flack about “The Twenty” — Regal Cinema’s new digitally projected commercial block that starts twenty minutes before the featured presentation — and I have to agree with this group of cinema activists that it seems like a good idea to me. Click through to hear the marketing response to CMPAA’s letter to Regal Cinema.

We have been running a web site that has called for a re-evaluation of the practices of running TV-like commercials before the start of movies shown by Regal theaters. … The presentation called “The Twenty”, shown twenty minutes before advertised start times with house lights up and at comfortable volumes, seems to be a more acceptable format.

We started to experience “The 2wenty” at a recent viewing of In America which ended abruptly following the Jon Bon Jovi AFL commercial. As the computer running the show rebooted, it flashed a COMPAQ logo on the screen to the boos of audience members. (This is Dell country!) At first I was perturbed, but I quickly resolved my ire by recognizing how many Regal Cinema viewers would have the pleasure of realizing the fallability of COMPAQ computers nation-wide.

p.s. Reviews of In America and The Triplettes of Belleville are forthcoming.

My Marathon Wife (aka Run Becky Run - 2/15/2004)

Becky completed her first marathon yesterday (yay!) and the results are in. In her gender/age group (Women 25 to 29) she placed 168 out of 382 (and 926 out of over 2000 timed women runners) with a Chip Time of 4:29:43.2, which paces her at 10:18 per mile. This is an amazing improvment over her 30K pacing of 10:31. Her total time is less than two hours behind another 27 year old runner who won the race, so it should be no time at all before she’s able to win these things! ;0)

Jank’s brother (and BPBer when he has a break from Law School), Matthew “Doc” Jankowski, paced just ahead of Becky. Doc hit 197 out of 303 in his gender/age group (Men 25 to 29) with a total time of 4:22:45.0 and a pace time of 9:50 per mile. His overal ranking in Men was 1801 out of nearly 3000 timed men runners. Go Doc!

If you can get up that early and brave whatever weather is available, I highly reccomend you check out a marathon. The fans of competitive long distance running are very energetic and supportive (and if you can find a “Rock-n-Roll” marathon you’ll get to hear music while you cheer on the runners.) It is one of the best people watching experiences you will find. So many people who are earnestly working for such an inspiring goal are mixed with several folks who, at varying degrees, are masking their earnest exercise with a “running” gag.

My favorite runner (other than my wife, duh) on the course was a very large (muscular) man who ran shirtless for most of the race. He would have been considered generally not attractive were he in a suit and tie, planted in a cubicle, but he was pushing a baby stroller with what I assume are his three smiling, laughing and waving children for the entire race — and it made him the sexiest man I have ever seen in person. (My second favorite was the patriot-inducing man who ran in fatigues and GI boots for the whole race.)

Pictures of the day’s events will be posted as soon as I get a roll developed and Carrie emails my copies of her pics.

Strong Encryption goes overseas

File under parinoia.

OK, rephrase that headline - non-US strong encryption schemes have been available for a while, but the Commerce Department has overturned a Clinton-era policy forbidding US companies from exporting encryption schemes stronger than 56-bit keys.

So what does this mean to you and me? Eh, not much, ‘cept maybe an admission that the NSA can now decrypt 128-bit keyed messages. Either that, or the feds have realized that the export restrictions were hobbling US companies, and want to spur tech job growth ahead of the election.

In either case, it’s a sign that the Bush Administration is slightly more tech-savvy than they’re given credit for.

This horse is still dead

But Ben Cohen, of True Majority has jumped on and begun flogging.

Cohen’s campaign does have an apt name (The Computer Ate My Vote). In 2002 in North Carolina, voting officials discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems & Software had lost 436 absentee votes. State officials only caught the error by luck because the devices had no auditing mechanism. The voters had to cast their ballots again.

As always, when the left and the right concur, there’s apt cause to be worried.

What a load of horsecrap

Sure, it may not be run by the moonies, but the Wash Post runs some dubious stuff. “Your toothpaste should have an agenda.”

No, it should work, which Tom’s does. I started using it a couple of years ago on a whim, and found that toothpaste without sweeteners really does taste better, and leaves my mouth without that artificial, sticky aftertaste that regular brands do. Pshaw.

Men's Journal Is Liberal Media

A couple hits from the sidebars of “The 25 Toughest Guys In America” column in this month’s Men’s Journal:

• 10 Wannabe Tough Guys: #5. Bill O’Reilly - Macho debater’s knockout punch: “Shut up!”
• Honorable Mention: #25. Hillary Clinton - Is there anyone who doubts that the toughest penalty Bill paid for the Monica scandal was at home?

Il pirata è guasto

He hasn’t been a factor for a couple years, but Marco Pantani has turned up dead in an Italian hotel.

He won the ‘98 Tour de France and won the Giro d’Italia a couple of times. But he always had doping allegations surrounding him, and was removed from the ‘99 tour (the first one Lance Armstrong won) due to high levels of hemocrit (red blood cells), signs of taking EPO (The entire Festina team was disqualified from the 1998 tour after this and other doping agents were found in their trainer’s car).

He’ll be missed. Pantani was, at one time, a fabulous rider, and proof that there’s hope for small folks in sport. He never missed a chance to mouth off, although for the last couple of years, the jawing never squared with the results. A much better tribute is here

A Third Way

While killing time, I came across an old NRO article by Harry Brown, the 2000 Libertarian nominee for PotUS. In hindsight, there were a couple of warning signs I should have caught (Even though you can’t blame me for GWB, I voted for Nader):

If you really do believe in individual freedom, we invite you to join us, the Libertarians. You won’t have to make excuses for your votes — claiming that you’re “buying time,” or that you’re just being “realistic.” You don’t have to pretend to cheer a president who’s pushing for the opposite of what you want — who’s really just Bill Clinton in drag.

You can vote for what you really want and abstain from voting when no choice satisfies you.

Sure, we Libertarians aren’t winning many electoral victories yet. But neither are you — not if you believe in individual liberty, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and small government. It’s no victory to elect a man who wants to increase subsidies to the destructive education system, who wants to enlarge the disastrous government health-care system, who wants to add religious charities to the list of institutions hooked on government aid and control, and who claims that government (an agency of coercion and bureaucracy) can be “compassionate” so long as he is the one running it.

My guess is that I’ll vote for GWB in November, but it’s kind of spooky how Mr. Browne foresaw the ballooning of government under 43.

Useful Tool

So, in my endless mucking about with OS’es, which is not nearly so much fun as mucking about in boats, I ran into a quick connundrum.

I swung by the office today to do a little bit of work to get ahead in hours on the chance that Nate decides to arrive this week (looking extremely possible) and I am off to Houston at the end of the week for the blessed event, and decided to download Debian. My connundrum, once I’d pulled the ISO’s was that XP does not support burning CD’s from disk images. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind since OS X does it transparently. Darn you Redmond!

A little bit of googling and a couple of downloads landed me with CD Burner XP Pro, a bit of freeware from Sweden. Works fine, lasts long time. Easy to use interface, did exactly what I needed with no fuss. Not sure if any of y’all have need of such a product, but if so, check it out.

You can donate w/ paypal if you really like it, but it’s fully functional as freeware.

Strangely enthralling

Better than the clock following your cursor, it’s floating brown guy.

Linux overtakes Mac

More Linux boxes on desktops than Macs.

And Microsoft’s going to start developing applications for the penguin.

Perception

So I took a couple minutes to go for a jog before settling back into my desk to work out the evening. Nothing serious, just a quick run from the office (red line) to watch the sun set. (And to send some seriously happy running karma to Becky and Doc prior to the Motorola. You go girl and boy.)

As I rounded the corner to head back into the office, the VU’s “The Gift” was playing. One of my favorites, from White Light, White Heat, another favorite.

It’s the story of Walter Jefferies, a lovesick loser. It’s mixed with John Cale reading a short story that Lou Reed had written earlier out of the left channel, and with the band playing a riff on a typically good hook, with Mo Tucker happily pounding on the drums to anchor the timing. I’d love to know if they recorded the spoken word and then jammed while it was playing, or vice versa. In any case, freakin’ phenomenal. ‘Specially when you think of the legend that the album was recorded in a single day.

While I was running, the separation of the channels was perfect. Somehow, I could concentrate fully on both the story, with all its tragic implications, and the music.

I huffed back to my desk after the run, pulled out the headphones, and plugged my PC speakers into the port, and suddenly the song was unrecoginizable muck. Which is somewhat suprising - the new Dell from the company came with a shuwheet set of Harmon/Kardon’s and a thumpin’ sub, which do a fine, fine job with most tunes. WEFUNK comes through especially nicely.

My guess is that the “mixing console” (for lack of a better term) in my brain doesn’t have much crossover at all. While all my respective ears were receiving was a single channel, it was not difficult at all to process the channels simultaneously, but despite having good physical separation on the desktop speakers, there was enough bleed over on each ear to make the process more difficult.

But they’re still the Velvets.

And I wish I could turn them up until my ears bled.

Arcade/NES

Mmmmm… Ducks

There are others, too - Pac Man, Asteroids, etc

V-Day Wishes

For those who don’t so much go for the Hallmark style…

Can I get a wha-wha?

Witness!

Maybe not so AWOL after all: “I saw him each drill period,” retired Lt. Col. John “Bill” Calhoun said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press

Calhoun said he contacted Texas GOP leaders with his story in 2000 when the issue was raised just before the November general election. “I got on the phone and got information and called Austin, Texas, and talked to the Republican campaign. They said I was talking to the campaign manager,” he said. “I told him my story and said I would be glad to provide information to that effect. At that time they said … The story is not true. And we don’t think it’s got enough weight to stay out as a story.’ And they said, ‘But if it does we’ll call you back.’ And I never heard from them again.”

More Republican in-fighting

This time charging Mayor Bloomberg is killing off New York’s charm:

The mayor’s latest crazy scheme would turn the City That Never Sleeps into NYZZZzzz. Bloomberg wants to license most bars and clubs that play music above 90 decibels. Without licenses, such establishments would go dark at a puritanical 1:00 A.M. …

“This is turning the entertainment capitol of the world into Salt Lake City,” says Pete Fogel, former music booker at Le Bar Bat, a Manhattan nightspot I patronized. Litigation expenses and sluggish revenues shut its doors December 21. Fogel called Bloomberg’s smoking prohibition “probably 50 percent of the reason that it closed.” He estimates that smoking restrictions halved the club’s sales. …”Bloomberg is making a joke out of the city,” Fogel adds. “With a capitol J.”

His 25-percent property-tax-increase proposal gagged even Gotham’s leftist City Council. They approved only an 18.5-percent hike.

What reason does the Nurse have for taming NYC? Michael Bloomberg is a mole who is sabotaging Gotham from within, pro-bono Beantown.

Couple of notes: I have spent part of an drunken evening in Le Bar Bat. I think I puked in a stoop across the street from the door immediately after stepping out of the cab that was dropping us off.

I also liked the following about Boston’s bar laws: “(T)here is no such license (regarding noise in Boston),” a senior Massachusetts official tells me. “Mayor Mennino is asking for special legislation to move the nightclub closing time from 2:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M. — but just during the Democratic convention, so delegates can stay inebriated.” Yeah, baby, that makes me proud to be an American - drunks selecting a major candidate for president. (That’s not sarcastic - there’s a fine, fine tradition of Americans making decisions about the country’s future while potted - Teddy Roservelt forming the Rough Riders in the bar at the Menger Hotel springs immediately to mind)

I had to check it out...

Last night JRO and I had a very brief discussion about Cheney and whether or not he has any financial interest in the future of Haliburton. I asked him to check it out and post something if he found it. I know he’s busy, and I was curious - so I looked. Looks like the answer is no.

“Assuming he has divested himself of all stock holdings in the company,” Stives said, “it is accurate for Cheney to say he has no financial interest in Halliburton.”
…and…
The Cheney aide said that on January 18, 2001 — just before being sworn in as vice president — Cheney assigned all of his Halliburton stock options to a charitable trust. “He legally and irrevocably assigned them and he receives no tax benefit from them,” the Cheney aide said. This aide said the trustee of the trust decides when to sell them.

You can say that he still has buddies there and all that - but it remains a fact that he has no direct financial interest in the profitability of the company.

Microsoft done been hacked

Go get your Windows source code somewhere.

Kind of interesting, mostly inevitable … go figure. It looks like the leak was minor, about a CD’s worth of code for NT and 2K. The discussion on /. is pretty interesting, if mostly over my head. Loved this:

Because every idiot skr1pt k1dd13 and their lam0r grandmother can code winDOZE viriii, but only 1337 H4XX0rZ can ownzor teh LiNuX and MaC BoXxEn!!!1!!

More interesting from an intellectual property point of view are the comparisons between SCO and their attempt to sue IBM for copyright infringement:

For a very practical example, consider Samba. If a person who had seen the Windows source were to contribute to Samba and it were later to come to light that the contributor had seen the Windows source, in the name of safety every piece of code that person contributed would have to be ripped out and replaced. Worse, to guarantee that there was no trace of taint, it would probably have to be replaced by people who had not only never been exposed to the Windows source, but who had also not seen the contributor’s tainted code. In short, it would require the recruitment of people who had never worked on the project before, or even read the source. Finding those people would not be easy, to say nothing of the time and credibility that would be lost.

It seems at the very top of the (warez) scene, in the irc channel im in, curries and siteops are making a moral arguement NOT to move the source. When I asked what the big deal was, the siteop responded, “think about it, by downloading that you think its okay for people to search through it to hunt down ways to fuck people over.” So anyway i was just facsinated by the sudden display of morals in the warez scene.

that’s exactly why I won’t even consider downloading this. I make a living as a programmer, and if I have access to this source Microsoft, with the resources they posess, could make the rest of my professional life a nightmare.

And that, more than anything else, is why this code leak helps the black hats far more than the white hats.

Goes both ways:In Microsoft’s closed source world it would have been tough to know if someone had included code that was similar to something they had seen in the Linux ( or any other opensource) codetree. It will be interesting, if this windows code release (escape?) proves true, if any suspicious code is found.

This bubba’s probably a Saggitarius, the most philosophical of all the signs:If you take this to its logical extreme, any file is simply an extremely large digital number (millions of bits). How do you copyright a number? So it is then not possible to copyright ANY digital work.

Oh, crap

Just when you thought the election was going to be ugly, it becomes ackward-morning-after ugly:

Drudge is reporting that Kerry was boning an intern and has recently asked her to leave the country. “A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST, THE HILL and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked.”… “Chris Lehane (clark press secy) has shopped around for a long time — it was one reason the Gore vetters in 2000 shied away from Kerry as a running mate choice — their conclusion that it wasn’t bad enough to disqualify him, except for the fact that they couldn’t risk it as they were trying so hard to distance themselves from Clinton’s personal failings”

Much like with Clinton, the issue isn’t that Kerry was getting a little somethin’-somethin’ on the side, but that he asked her to leave the country to avoid the scandal. The cover-up, much like many of the “issues” with Bush, is the scandal. If Kerry doesn’t make a public statement on this soon, he’s toast with conservative leaning-moderates.

Useless song lyrics

So - for the last couple of months, I haven’t been able to get “Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs, I gots more rhymes than the Bible’s got Psalms” out of my head. Just that one line, not the whole song.

Anyone else got something similar rattling about?

Versions of John

I really like the addtion of personalization in video games. A couple weeks ago I started working my way through Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 playing as myself. That’s right. It’s me up on the screen. Using about 20 different settings I customized the avatar on the screen to look as much like me as the game allowed.

Then yesterday I finally cracked the cellophane on my copy of Tiger Woods 2004 and was ecstatic to find the game face interface which has 3-4x as many feature points. It’s a little creepy, but I really think this feature will improve my real-life golf skills.

For those who haven’t invested (or whatever the opposite of investment would be in this case) in a game system, the folks at Sout Park Studios offer this make a South Park you flash application.

Return of the Yeti

This time he’s throwing snowballs at breaching penguins and there is little doubt that the Yeti is back and just as fun as the last time around.

It just works (people up)

Wow. These folks need to get a freakin’ life. This is even uglier than the election will be:

“I hope your PC blows up and leaves your miserable face disfigured forever,” read one. “You will surely burn in (heck) for an eternity for this one.”

Another said Andy should be hung by his testicles and set on fire.

“Turning a perfectly good dual G5 into a (crummy) PC was the ticket that got you to (heck),” wrote another, citing the common eternal (darn)ation theme. “And if you were in front of me I’d pop a corn-born Teflon bullet from my Glock in your (fornicating) face.”

More in Wired

BTW - I thought I was somewhat of a gun nut. I understand the “Teflon bullet”, but what, praytell, is “corn-born”?

It just works (Kinda)

But according to Computerwoche and other reports, the city lacks the funds to invest in the planned testing and development of an open-source solution. IBM and Germany-based Linux distributor SuSE are expected to help offset the costs of the migration by supplying technical support and conducting some of the studies that the Munich city council has requested.

Reports in Computerwoche also stated that local vendors who currently code applications for the city were experiencing problems in developing applications for the open-source operating system, since they are more familiar with Windows than Linux.

Good luck to the Krauts. Steve Balmer of Microsoft tried to pitch Redmond’s product at steep discounts, but the folks in Munich are spending an extra $12 million or so to give Gates the finger.

More annoying than Fran Drescher

Stinkin’ cell phone walkie-talkies.

“Beedeep!”

“Yeah?”“Beedeep”
“Beedeep”scshs”I’m a blathering idiot.”
“Me too. BTW, I’m going to stop on my way home to molest sheep…”“beedeep”
“beedeep”schsh”Wow. Sounds like fun. I’ll meet you there.”
“Roger.”“beedeep”

Now, Motorola wants to sell more of them.

Great. Now all public places will become my own personal hell. Hearing one side of a cell phone conversation is bad enough. Now, not only do I get to hear both sides, but I also get a distracting electronic noise so I can know exactly when to listen for calls to bring home more vasoline. Thank goodness I’ve got an iPod for airports.

Time Kill

Dictator or Sit-Com character. Here

Somewhat painfully slow. But biased towards South American dictators and sit-com characters. Took freakin’ forever to realize I was Stalin.

Speaking of boobs

Did you realize there’s Ivy League p0rn? Harvard is launching the H Bomb , and Vassar already runs Squirm. I’d see if Squirm were already on the web, but somehow think that the firewall may slam shut if I go poking around (pun intended).

Your representatives at work, again.

Congress is holding hearings on boobs and the Superbowl.

So remind me: Why do we pay for the FCC if Congress is going to step in whenever there’s a dispute?

We the people

Well here it comes.

I think amending the Constitution is an example of a “big NO”, and I think we should be saving those for saying no to governmental interference with citizen’s rights, not enhancement of them.

Even worse is that this talk of an amendment, which is serious business in my book, is really all about … (take it Jim Jordan, Democratic strategist and former Kerry campaign manager)

“When Republicans are in a pinch, they always look for the cultural wedge issue.”

So the idea is that

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

Will be up there alongside

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …

and

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States …

And let’s all get briefed on what this would involve.

Two thirds of both houses have to call it (or two thirds of state legislatures) then three fourths of the states have to approve it through their legislatures or conventions.

It would be interesting to watch, I’ll give you that.

Paranoia strikes deep

Not quite sure why, but I’ve been deeply affected after reading Cryptonomicon, I’ve developed what is probably a healthy paranoia about infosec (information security). There is so little going on in my life that is interesting enough to be encrypted, but the tools are becoming ubiquitous, so it’s probably time to embrace them. File Vault was the first step. I’ll most likely check out clients for Mail as soon as I get the LAN up in the house.

There’s more featuring your tax dollars at work.

Patriot Games Continue In Florida

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune and 29 other Florida newspapers sent several of its employees to request publicly available documents to test Florida’s compliance with state constitutional law. Forty-three percent of the agencies approached, including Jeb’s office, did not comply with the requests.

Public officials lied to, harassed and even threatened volunteers who were using a law designed to give citizens the power to watch over their government. In six counties, volunteers were erroneously told that the documents they wanted didn’t exist. …

…Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj said the governor has no authority over the local agencies included in the audit. He can’t force sheriffs or municipal and county governments to train their employees, she said.

Can someone explain to me how the governer’s office has no influence over local agencies?

I would hate to be investigated on this kind of thing, especially if I had been rude about breaking the law.

Roger Desjarlais, the Broward County administrator, threatened a volunteer by saying, “I can make your life very difficult.”

After insisting that the volunteer give his name, Desjarlais used the Internet to identify the volunteer, find his cell phone number and call him after work hours.

Even worse if I had just been stupid, though.

In a post-audit interview, Taylor County Superintendent Oscar Howard said his district was hesitant to produce his cell phone bill because the volunteer wouldn’t give his name.

“He could have been a terrorist,” Howard said. “We have to ensure the safety of children.”

Howard couldn’t explain how a terrorist might use his cell phone bill to harm children.

Conspiracy theorists would say Florida was under attack leading up to a decisive vote in the fall.

DIY Peeps(c)

Wham-O (the frisbee and toy maker) has joind forces with Just Born to bring make-your-own-Peeps to a toy store near you.

Awesome.

p.s. Do I have to mention that my birthday is only two months and 19 days away?

McBushey's

McSweeney’s has a Bush or Palpatine quiz up.

8. “You will pay the price for your lack of vision.”

9. “Delaying a vote in [Congress or Senate] would send a message that the [Republic or U.S.] may be unprepared to take a stand, just as we are asking the [international community or universe] to take a stand.”

Asking Candidates The Important Questions -- Only At A Real Network

VH1 premieres the show News
Presents - Presidential Pop Culture Quiz where the candidates answer the truly important questions.

Kerry on Pop Quiz:
Kerry aced the 4 questions he was given.

- he knew Justin Timberlake was a member of N*SYNC
- he knew Bruce Springsteen was The Boss
- he knew Arnold starred in ‘Total Recall’
- he knew Lebron James played for Cleveland

See Sixty-Four Three Stooges

I can’t explain why, except maybe because I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, but I was struck suddenly while in the shower this morning with a memory of the digitzed voice in the “Commodore 64”: game “The Three Stooges”.

“Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard”

p.s. Don’t go hogging that website until after I get home and have a chance to grab a C64 emulator and a Three Stooges rom.

Perhaps now we'll see

What really happened with the prez and the TANG.

Plus - check out John Edwards and his version of the Carrier Photo Op. :-)

Holy O'Reilly Freakin' Cow

O’Reilly has never apologized for so many things, yet this he comes clean about.

…he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.
“I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this,” O’Reilly said…

However he still gets it wrong in the end.

O’Reilly said he did not think the president intentionally lied. Rather, O’Reilly blamed CIA Director George Tenet, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.
“I don’t know why Tenet still has his job.”

Of course he blames Clinton. What an ass.

The Rocket's Loving it

Spurs/Rockets on TNT this evening, at the Toy in Houston. Three out of five Western Conference All-Star starters (Yao, Francis, and Duncan) on the court - Hoops doesn’t get much better than this. The only thing lacking was Calvin Murphy and Bill Worrell doing the play-by-play.

During the 4th quarter, they have a sideline interview with new Astro Roger Clemens, asking the Rocket how he’s enjoying watching the Rockets (ha.) The keystone exchange went something like this:
Announcer: “So, what got you to come out of retirement to sign with the Astros? I understand you turned down another Hummer from a local dealer..”
Clemens: “Well, Mama Rocket got the Hummer…”

Clemens needs to be in Houston. Calling the old lady “Mama Rocket” on national television, with the kids holding bags of souvenirs, and flashing your NYY World Series ring. Almost makes me wish I were in Houston for the Baseball season.

Pitchers and catchers report next week.

ESPN Jumps the Shark

Page 3

Is there any argument that Page 2 has headed steadily downhill since they canned Greggggg Easterbrook? I’m just not lovin’ it.

(I am loving I Love This Game - scroll down during hoops games, though.)

Don’t you somehow miss the good old days when ESPN was carrying Outlaw Racing between the midnight and 6 AM SportsCenter?

Sad Sad Sad

I realize that I am about to cause this forum to become even more politicized, but did anyone else see Bush’s interview with Tim Russert on Sunday?

It started with half an hour of discussions on Iraq that will not change anyone’s mind about that war. (I still think that it was a dumb move, Jank and lots of other people disagree. Move along. Nothing to see here.)

Where Bush seemed to go off the deep end was the discussion of the economy and, more specifically, the fiscal health of the country.

After refusing to take any responsibility for the economy’s loss of jobs during his term, he went on to say that discretionary spending has decreased during his watch. As Slate and Andrew Sullivan note, what a load of crap.

Either this guy is completely out of touch with his own administration, or just cannot stop himself from telling bold-faced lies. Either way, I am disgusted.

The Creativity Machine

I am terrified and mesmerized by the software discussed in this article about Stephen Thaler’s Creativity Machine.

“His first patent was for a Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information,” the official name of the Creativity Machine, Miller said. “His second patent was for the Self-Training Neural Network Object. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One. Think about that. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One!”

…

On Christmas Eve 1989, Thaler typed the lyrics to some of his favorite Christmas carols into a neural network. Once he’d taught the network the songs, he unleashed the Grim Reaper. As the reaper slashed away connections, the network’s digital life began to flash before its eyes. The program randomly spit out perfectly remembered carols as the killer application severed the first connections. But as its wounds grew deeper, and the network faded toward black, it began to hallucinate.

Intelligence Failure...at the top

Don’t miss this Special Report Iraq discussing the way intelligence was really mishandled by Bush, from the Guardian. I’ve posited that Bush was directly responsible for ignoring the standard processes for intelligence vetting and this article supports my idea by extending it as Bush’s desperate ploy to invade Iraq.

The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail, but presented correct assessments and warnings, that were overridden and suppressed. On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.

Bush's Blame Game

p.s. “pokin’ atcha, pokin’ atcha…”

Caucus Fracas

I tried to vote yesterday, but my despotic, secretive party wouldn’t let me. I can’t really place all the blame on them. See, I was completely unfamiliar with what a caucus is and how it works. I thought it was some kind of democratic process where you get to vote for who you think should be your party’s candidate. Wrong! Here’s what I found out:

a. The statement on your notice reading “you may vote between 3pm and 5pm” means that you must be at your appointed polling place at 3pm sharp, where you will be locked inside the polling place and forced to listen to speeches before you actually place a vote sometime around 5pm.

ii. No explanation will be given to those many stragglers who naively think that they can show up between 3:01pm and 5pm and cast their ballot. Pounding on the door of the polling place and yelling “let me vote, let me vote” will not help.

3. Voting on The Lord’s Day is just plain wrong and He shall smite you for it.

Really, though, these Mainers are wicked bad at disseminating information, which goes far beyond this thing. It felt like they already knew our paltry 2 delegates to the convention won’t matter much in the whole scheme of things anyway. Next time I’ll know.

Here Comes *Dr. Tran*

We went to Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Fest 2004 on Friday night. It’s not a bad show (and we did get to see the boobies on one of Wee Man’s entourage), but the best thing — the thing that all by itself makes S&M’s S&T AF worth seeing — is Dr Tran . Do everything in your power to get to see this baby. It’s one of the funniest things I have ever scene. Becky, Zack and I were in tears from laughing.

We promise to try really hard not to quote from it over and over again, but we’re not that good at keeping promises over something this cool.

iPod On The Road

There a pretty good article at Crutchfield Advisor discussing using an iPod in the car including a new accessory I saw for the first time in the store last Tursday, Belkin’s TuneDok.

I think I’m gonna hold out for this baby from Alpine.

Mystery of Time and Space

A point-and-click game called LOGAN’s Mystery of Time and Space Adventure features simple graphics and interface, but is pretty clever. I especially like the attention to detail with features like an associated chat room (for hints and such) and the clocks reflecting the current time.

Soldier Lessons From Iraq

This is a great article on learned lessons from Iraq at the Washingon Post. It discusses the use of ‘the web’ to disseminate information from experienced soldiers in Iraq to incoming soldiers.

The big deal, socially speaking, about Viet Nam was the immediacy and graphic depiction of war due to technology advances in the media. It is becoming quickly apparent that the internet, and blogs specifically, will be the big deal in this conflict. Increasing the immediacy of information from the battlefield will certainly have an effect on dessert-bound soldiers — hopefully for the better. It will give them a more honest view of upcoming battles than the WWII-aligned training they get in boot camp.

Morgan also emphasizes to incoming soldiers that they need to be ready to kill quickly yet precisely. “If an enemy opens fire with an AK-47 aimlessly, which most of these people do, you should be able to calmly place the red dot reticule of your M-68 optic device on his chest and kill him with one shot,” he admonishes. “If you do this, the rest will run and probably not come back.”

One of the lessons I see in this is the loss of value in much of the high tech weaponary our tax dollars buy. If the battles we face as a society continue to be in the vein of Afghanistan and Iraq, there is little a missle defense system will do for us. A repeated theme in these posts is debunking the idea that Saddam Hussein, Al Quaeda and Osama bin Laden are/were able to fund high tech attacks. This is a war against clusters of poorly-trained and ramshackle armed clusters of unhappy citizens.

Lt. Brendan O’Hern, a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne, writes that after one of his best soldiers was killed in a barrage of rocket-propelled grenade fire one hot day last summer, “I did not really eat or sleep for six or seven days, but just laid around blaming myself in private.” Eventually, he adds, “I hit a very low point and realized I’d better get some help or I would be in trouble.”

Instead of (or maybe in addition to) more dollars thrown at the military, we need to focus on revamped training and increasing the amount of psychological support troops are offered. This would, also, have to include a resocialization of the troops encouraging them to accept therapy as a neccesary tool for dealing with their situation. I have been ranting for years that we live in a mental dark ages — that we are curing society’s ills the best we can with the tools we have: prisons, etc. — and what we need to break the next age of man is a better understanding of sociopathy and dementia. So many innovations have come from military investements. The next societal revolution could come from “Therapy for Troops”.

Bi-Partisan Group Hug Over Bush's 2005 Budget

The DNC is focusing on Bush’s 2005 budget — calling it A Deficit Disaster — including a special sidebar showing how the budget affects your state.

Texas loses an estimated $2.1 billion under the Bush budget. Lost funds include:
* $134,605,643 in housing assistance for families.
* $73,124,352 in funding for Title I education.
* $11,878,905 for community development.
* $7,866,371 to help keep our water clean and safe.
What’s more, the average Texas taxpayer’s share of the Bush deficit is $1,660.

They have special articles on deficit impact, Bush’s tax cut binge, and they borrow our favorite poorly-selected maxim Spending Like Drunken Sailors: Bush Is Increasing the Deficit — plus a very special article highlighting Republican dissatisfaction including quotes from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-OK), House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-IA), the director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute, and the senior analyst with the Heritage Foundation.

Tax Cuts Caused 56% Of Deficit In 2004: In 2004, Bush’s three tax cuts over as many years reduced revenues by $270 billion. In 2003, Bush’s tax cuts caused 44 percent of the deficit; the tax cuts reduced revenues by $166 billion in 2003 under a $375 billion deficit. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 10/21/03]

This is what I consider one of the most damaging statistics. There was very little question in Bush’s very first year that this country was headed for a recession — that tax revenues would be drastically reduced from previous tech-boom years. Yet, George W Bush decided it was better to follow-up on the cult-like GOP mantra of tax cuts. When he wins re-election and starts reversing tax cuts (like his father did) the conservatives will be even more upset.

Deficit Will Decline Only If Tax Cuts Expire: The CBO projects that the deficit will decline only “if the [2001] tax cuts… expire as scheduled, growth in discretionary spending continued to be limited to the rate of inflation, and other policies stayed the same.” [CBO, Budget and Economic Outlook, 1/26/04]

The thing that most troubles me is a cut mentioned in the referenced LA Times article about “Education Programs Face the Ax”.

The projects Bush would eliminate included … programs that help gifted and talented students…

It’s selfish of me, but the gifted/talented program in Louisiana saved me from ruin. Seriously, about a year before I left regular public school classes and started receiving g/t tutoring I was headed to a bad place. My grades had dropped from straight A’s to C’s and D’s (and an occasional F). I had my eyes on my future (at Northwood) and in hindsight was fashioning a life very similar to the one portrayed as Ron Slater or maybe Kevin Pickford in Dazed and Confused .

As a fiscal moderate (leaning toward conservative) I think these programs should be funded and managed at the state level, but I think when the states are having fiscal problems the feds should step in and help. All of the programs in this article are ones I support and if they are pork, I would prefer this cut of pork over most of the military pork the GOP likes to fatten-up.

NASA Involved In Marsive Cover-up

This nutzoid’s website has photographic evidence that NASA is (literally, with it’s own Mars rover) covering up evidence of organic-looking objects on Mars.

Questions To Ask the PotUS

I like this article at The Nation especially because it’ll make my America-hating Republican friends so angry. Seriously, though, Q2 on the list intrigues me:

…you said, “We do not know whether or not [Hussein] has a nuclear weapon” …the National Intelligence Estimate said that he did not have a nuclear weapon … Was it not misleading to tell the public that “we don’t know” whether Iraq had a nuclear weapon, when, in fact, we did know?

We all know that politicians use this ‘technique’ in push polls to slander their opponents. I wonder if it’s a valid tool for the President to wield with the American public. In response I’ve decided to write a series of essays on the following topics:

• No one has verified that George W. Bush has stopped his cocaine use. Should he be forced into rehab?
• Would video of John Ashcroft speaking in tounges harm his image of impartiality in seperation of church and state?
• We do not know whether or not Condeleeza Rice buffs George W Bush’s buttocks with Dr Zog’s Sex Wax, but should Laura Bush allow such behavior?
• There is no proof that government doctors used alien technology to keep Dick Cheney’s heart pumping. Should there be an ethics review?

DIY Electoral Map

Using this electoral math map from the Edwards for President website, I’ve determined that if the Democrats can carry every state but Texas, Florida, Alaska and Rhode Island then they’ll win the presidency with an inarguable margin.

You can not deny my electoral math.

p.s. I wonder why they don’t have an option to turn a state Green …

Throw Rocks at Boys

I realize this game is not target-marketed to me, but it’s nice simple fun — and I can certainly understand that some boys are icky. The best part is that you can take your frustration out without really throwing rocks at boys (since that’s a no-no.)

FFL Tournament Kicked Up A Notch

It’s not a particularly new or original idea, but the winner of our annual Fantasy Football League kicked things up a notch this year. He took his winnings and invested in the braggin’est braggin’ rights of them all: the trophy.

Give up the funk

Starting in middle school, where I would retreat over to Brad Wilkerson’s house to play Decathlon until our palms bled while listening to Licensed to Ill and continuing in the hallowed halls of good old TU, I developed a huge taste for funk. The thump of B-A-S-S bass, the tweet-tweet of random noise, and the obligatory shaking of one’s rump - man, it just don’t get any sweeter.

In any case Clay Shirkey over at Urban Desires pulls off a deconstruction of “Tear the Roof Off”, one of many Parliment/Funkadelic greatest hits albums. He’s a bit excessively harsh, but I’ll give him a slide for an interesting article.

Better to have funked without true enlightment than never to have funked at all.

President Match

I have got to do more research on Kerry. At a peripheral glance I had decided he was the last Democratic candidate I wanted to support — Ok, he was tied for last with Sharpton and Kucinich. Then I take this quiz and discover that according to these nutzoids my top three candidate matches are…you guessed it: Kerry (100%), Sharpton (96%) and Kucinich (95%).

wtf.

President Match

I have got to do more research on Kerry. At a preipheral glance I had decided he was the last Democratic candidate I wanted to support — Ok, he was tied for last with Sharpton and Kucinich. Then I take this quiz and discover that according to these nutzoids my top three candidate matches are…you guessed it: Kerry (100%), Sharpton (96%) and Kucinich (95%).

wtf.

Trailers

So is UHaul the only company that rents trailers for moving any more? I checked Ryder and Budget and can’t seem to find another company that does one-way trailer rentals.

Happy Birthday

To the Gipper

House 'Pubs give Rove an earful

“I would say 97 out of 100 of our members who asked questions laid into him pretty good about spending and the lack of discipline on the administration’s part,” Mr. Feeney (R-FLA) said.

“I felt like the message had been sent from the people [that Republican lawmakers] had relied on for votes — not just from disgruntled conservatives in the conference,” Mr. Feeney said. “The conference has deep concerns about the Medicare prescription-drug benefits

More

Calendar UI

Microsoft does a lot of cool UI things (admittedly by using other people’s research) and this is one of the coolest innovations I’ve seen. The two coolest feature of DateLens are (1) a fisheye type zoom on the calendar and (2) using an expandable slider. Be sure to click through to the WMV to get an animated look at it.

Pick The Fake Smiles

The BBC Science website has another hit on their hands with a Spot The Fake Smile quiz. It’s that easy: play the clip, then pick whether the smile is fake or genuine.

Port Knockers

You geeks will love this. A security process that monitors closed ports for a secret knock within a specified time window, then opens a previously closed seperate port for a short time window. So, it could look for an IP address trying to access ports 123,101,1026,1027,744 in that order within a 5 second window, and opens up port 80 for 10 seconds after it receives the secret knock. It almost seems foolproof.

[ stolen from this Slashdot article ]

Cool Tools

Here’s a site I check in on occasionally. It’s compiled by Kevin Kelly, who is one of those old-school ‘net geeks (gray beard-having, San Francisco-living, Wired magazine-founding, crunchy granola WELL member) and is an occasional (usually a couple of times per week) review of just about anything he or other contributors find useful or cool.

He has a particular interest in lightweight camping — today’s update features a camp stove made from a Pepsi can and a Guinness can.

Becky's Favorite Food: Bacon

This Danish Bacon Calendar converted into a website features some bacon-oriented foodstuffs that even I am frightened of.

Be sure to check out the Danish Bacon Mousse — the best of them all.

CBS and Fox Merger Continues

Out last discussion on CBS’s ad policy generated so much discussion, I thought this bit of information sent from El Pariser of MoveOn.org a new post. My biggest complaint in all this is (a) $13 million taxpayer-financed TV campaign and (b) if Bush’s Medicare ad is intended to function as a campaign ad (and that clearly appears to be the case) then this may constitute a criminal election law violation.

Dear MoveOn member,

We didn’t think the hypocrisy at CBS headquarters could get any worse. But it just did.

As you know, CBS refused to run MoveOn Voter Fund’s “Child’s Pay” ad — perhaps the most tasteful and uncontroversial advocacy ad in history — during the Super Bowl. CBS executives claimed they had a blanket policy against all so-called “issue” ads.

Yesterday, we learned that the network plans to broadcast an ad promoting the Bush Medicare prescription drug law. This is part of a $13 million taxpayer-financed TV campaign to take the heat off the White House for pushing through a drug plan that benefits drug companies and insurance companies more than Medicare recipients.

The White House ad features the tagline “Same Medicare. More Benefits.” But a report by Consumers Union last month said that most people covered by Medicare will wind up spending more for prescription drugs, as a result of the provisions in the law which favor drug companies. According to the Washington Post, the campaign is intended “to counteract Democratic criticism that changes to the (Medicare) program will harm older Americans.”

If that isn’t a controversial issue ad, we don’t know what is. But since CBS appears to be changing its policy, our Voter Fund has submitted our own Medicare ad which exposes the facts behind this spin campaign to run on CBS. So far, we haven’t heard back. Please give CBS a call today to let them know that they need to either pull the White House ads or run ours.

You can reach CBS at:

Phone:
CBS Comment Line
(212) 975-3247

Email:
newmediasales@cbs.com

Web form:
http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.shtml

We’re spreading out the calls across a number of relevant CBS numbers, so hopefully you won’t get a busy signal. Also, we have no quarrel with CBS News or any CBS journalists, who have actually given fair coverage to CBS Corporate’s unfair decision. Please don’t call the CBS news desk.

There’s another issue involved here that needs to be taken very seriously: if Bush’s Medicare ad is intended to function as a campaign ad (and that clearly appears to be the case) then this may constitute a criminal election law violation. In fact, the ad company which made the ad which will air on CBS also works for the Bush/Cheney re-election committee. We’ve put in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Health and Human Services to begin the process of establishing the facts in this case.

For now, help us hold CBS accountable by asking them to stop running the Bush Medicare ad — or to accept ours.

Sincerely,
—Adam, Carrie, Eli, James, Joan, Laura, Noah, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn.org Team
February 5th, 2004

P.S. Our friends at the Center for American Progress have done an incredible job documenting the links between the Bush administration, the ad company which is creating these Medicare ads, and the drug companies. Today’s Progress Report is online at:
http://www.progressreport.org

The Progress Report is a free, daily e-mail by the Center for American Progress. You can subscribe here:
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=3750

White House Bills HHS For Fund Raising

I’m trying my best to dial back the rhetoric, but I have to post this: Bush Tapped HHS Funds for Trips

The White House has billed the federal Office of Family Assistance $210,000 to help pay for five trips in which President Bush promoted welfare reform at official events and made separate fundraising appearances for GOP candidates.

My favorite part of the article is this:

“The president has the right to campaign 24 hours a day, seven days a week, if he wants,” said Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). “But he doesn’t have the right to charge these trips to the taxpayers. The Republican National Committee is loaded with money. Let them pay for it… . If Clinton did this, then Clinton was wrong. You can’t justify thievery because somebody else did it.”

Big Box Not So Bad

Is this only funny to cat owners?

Is it etrigan’s comic strip day?

R.Kelly Rip'd

Two great Boondocks strips in the same week!

The Smiths / Princess Di Conspiracy Theory

This kind of thing always fascinates me. Here’s a guy suggesting that Morrisey predicted Di’s car crash on The Queen Is Dead.

Morrissey’s lyrics to THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT from THE QUEEN IS DEAD concern:
two people
on a date
at night
in the city
driving in a car
fantasizing about getting killed in a car crash
gripped by fear in an underpass

Over a decade later we have Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed:
two people
on a date
at night
in the city
driving in a car
getting killed in a car crash
in an underpass

Ouch

Speaking of too much time on one’s hands -

The H-Wing

No.

Way back in the Reagan era, I used to get in trouble in school all the darn time for reading books under my desk after I’d finished my homework while the teacher was giving the lecture from which I was supposed to learn how to do said homework. One of my favorites was The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids

It’s out of print, and my memories of it are probably seen through almost twenty years of rose colored glasses, but in a lot of ways the book had more to do with setting my world view than anything else I can put an immediate finger on. (Well, there’s the whole Dad Jank refrain of “the world’s not fair”, but that’s a different rant entirely)

The rough synopsis of the book is that zero tolerance gets out of control at a school (though this was written when the idea of “zero tolerance” was inconcieveable, instead of the norm). The kids declare war, and their leader, Skinny Malikiny ends up fighting the principal to the death (or something along those lines). Ultimately, plot is not what makes the book memorable.

What got me is a section in which Skinny is talking with the school janitor. Skinny asks the janitor how he can stick his hand into the toilets every day to clean them, how come he doesn’t just say “no.”

The janitor comments that he could say “no”, and could understand how someone else could say “no”. But, continues the janitor, Someone’s got to clean the toilets, and if the janitor spent one of his little “no”s on getting out of cleaning the toilets, it’d be wasted when the time came to give a big “NO”.

Skinny asked how he’d know when it was time to give the big “NO”, and the janitor channeled Justice Potter Stewart and advised Skinny that he’d know it when he saw it.

Ultimately, this struck me as the ultimate expression of laissez faire (though at the time, I couldn’t tell a laissez faire from a c’est la vie). Government intervention in the lives of citizens is the ultimate big “NO” - something to be avoided until all other options have been exhausted.

Big Dig = Big Donation

My personal opinion - this kind of stuff will definitely heat up. Word on the street is this is one of the most corrupt multi-billion dollar overruns in history.

Broadside

Here’s a bit I’ve filed away as kind of a personal touchstone. Note, it’s a pre- 9/11 column, and at the time I thought it was a bit over-the-top. Revisiting it almost three years ago, I can honestly say that it’s had a huge role in shaping my views on America’s place in the world.

What he really has in mind… (is) a world in which nobody is militarily dominant. That’s a lovely idea, but … (it) is not going to happen. As for “not just one but many arms races,” well, … we’ll just have to win, won’t we? As we have won all previous arms races … while simultaneously creating the greatest, freest economy the world has ever seen.

… “I see no reason why we can’t go well below 1,000 warheads,” Richard Perle told Newsweek. But then a 95 percent incapacitating attack would leave you with less than 50 usable weapons. 50 nukes may still seem pretty scary to you, but it is not clear that they would deter a lunatic like Mao Tse-tung, who was in charge of China just 25 years ago, whose portrait still looks down over Tiananmen Square, and who boasted to Nikita Khrushchev that China could lose a hundred million people without noticing.

As for “The Russians aren’t going to use theirs, either” — well, how does Mr. Perle know that? Russia is profoundly unstable, and not even her own leaders know what she might or might not do five, ten or fifty years from now. Implicit here is the “end of history” frame of mind. The mad despotisms of the 20th century — Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism — are all in the past, according to this way of thinking, and nothing like them will return to trouble our hedonistic dreams, ever again. Markets have won, liberal democracy is the wave of the future, what everybody all over the world wants is just to get a job trading financial futures, chatter on a cell phone and dance to Madonna records. Excuse my irritation, but what a heap of dog crap. It’s not as if this kind of wishful thinking is anything new. Anyone remember the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which actually outlawed war altogether? That was in, let’s see, oh yes: 1928.

Here’s how I feel about the matter. This nation is the vanguard of civilized values in the world. She must prevail in any conceivable conflict. She must, in fact, keep a military profile so large and forbidding that no other nation will even think of attacking us.

It’s an ugly proposition, but let’s face it, we live in a world that continues to be ugly. Such pillars of the world community such as France, Russia, and Germany were as recently as six decades ago wrapped up in totaliarinism and communism. We haven’t had an unblemished record on the human rights front, but be honest - compared to any alternative, this country is head and shoulders above the rest of the planet. “A shining city on a hill” to tread out an apt metaphor.

What we fail to remember as we beat each other around the head over being “bleeding hearts” or “rabid right-wingers” is that from top to bottom, everyone in this country enjoys a special place in the world. With great power comes great responsibility, and it’s only now that the Cold War is ended, with American Democracy (I’ll even drop “Western” from this - let’s face it, the prosperity in Western Europe and much of Asia is due in large part to American intervention) resplendent that the US has a chance and a duty to truly influence world events.

Yes, there are certain exceptions to the idea that American Democracy is the only long-term solution that provides for adequate human rights and a decent standard of living for the vast majority of citizens, notably the socialist societies of Northern Europe. But these are exceptions that prove the rule - small, nearly mono-ethnic, mono-cultural societies.

One of the dangers I see in the current venom-filled political climate is a loss of the big picture, the loss of a constant sense of awe at the society that the country’s founders were able to cobble together. Two hundred and twenty-five years with only one wide-spread civil war, and a continual peaceful transfer of power. Plenty of political venom sprayed from coast to coast, but always a deep and overwhelming pride in “America”, the theoretical amber waves of grain, and the abiding knowledge that someday God would “Crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”

Folks, the Porch is in many ways a throwback, a conservative (in the small-c notion of the word) holdout in a polarized world. It’s a meet-up of minds, unlike in alignment but civil in a rude world. But it bypasses the increasing stratification of almost all other aspects of the culture. We are being fragmented into increasingly small interest groups, frequently violently opposed to each other. The lesson that is constantly hammered home is that like people are the only folks upon which one can count.

It just ain’t so. To quote my lovely wife, declaring her undying love for me - “We’re stuck with each other.” Me, JRO, even BritKnee Skeers (I’m making a bold assumption that she’s American, though on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog)- each and every one of us has a vested interest in seeing the US continue to prosper. We need to foster discussions such as this one. We need to encourage folks to take the time to listen, to re-engage and learn to trust each other again.

And then we need to continue to export that discussion abroad. To do that, we will deal with unsavory characters in every dank corner of the globe, characters who may be able to speak with the world’s diplomatic corps, but who ultimately only understand completely overwhelming force. Teddy Rooservelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick” implied occasional rapid and violent use of the stick, not just the carrying thereof. Patton was fond of saying that “The best is the enemy of the good. By this I mean that a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.”

We as Americans know what works. It’s bold, it’s bragging, but it’s backed up by 280 million people and the engine of the world. Leave the navel gazing to the Europeans and the folks who we have already freed from the yoke of history.

At least he's still sympathetic

to the ChiComs just like when he got back from Vietnam.

John Kerry took ten large from Johnny Chung on behalf of Chinese intelligence back in 1996.

Chung came to Kerry’s office in July 1996 to seek help in getting a Chinese official in to see a Securities and Exchange Commission official, and within a week, Kerry’s staff wrote Chung asking him to host a Sept. 9 fund-raiser.

Scenes from Iowa

Turns out a frat boy buddy of mine (a few years behind me) spent some time working for Dean in Iowa. His pics from the trip are here

Full time he hangs out in Austin working for a Americorps organization that provides small business loans. If any of y’all lefties are interested, I can put you in touch with him.

Play Together - XBOX

The interface on this presumably XBox related website is wonderful. (Of course, I love mice. Some people don’t.) Be sure to click through to the movies section and check out Champagne — it’s awesome.

DMT(Dimethyltryptamine)

I used to know this guy who was really interested in DMT and did a lot of reasearch about it. I always hoped he’d get his hands on some so we could try it, but no success was to be had.

The molecule DMT is a psychoactive chemical that causes intense visions and can induce its users to quickly enter a completely different “environment” that some have likened to an alien or parallel universe. The transition from our world to theirs occurs with no cessation of consciousness or quality of awareness.

Here’s an interesting section of the article:

DMT is also naturally produced in small quantities in the pineal gland in the human brain. The pineal gland appears in the developing human fetus around 49 days after conception. Perhaps an embryo should not be considered human until DMT production commences. Note that “zygotic personhood” (the idea that a fertilized egg is a person) is a recent concept. For example, before 1869, the Catholic church believed that the embryo was not a person until it was 40 days old.

Escape!

Why are the simplest games often the most intriguing. All you gotta do is keep the red square inside the black square while dodging the blue squares.

So far, I’m only up to 20.341 seconds.

Uh, Coach Mike?

So my personal moment of outrage at the Superbowl was the Ditka ad where he implies that “Baseball could use (an erectile dysfunction drug)”. (More here )

Another sign of the declining intellect of America is the trend away from baseball, the thinking man’s game, to football, the fat, lumbering, sweaty man’s game. In baseball, coaches have little to do with the outcome of a game (arguments could be made here for knowing when to pull pitchers and pinch hit), and everything to do with both the mental struggle between batter and pitcher, and the subtle shifts the fielders and baserunners make on every pitch.

Maybe baseball’s a little slow, but girls - whadda you want? Do you want a lover who pounds it out like football, or do you want a man with a slow hand/… a lover with an easy touch/… somebody who will spend his time, not come and go in a heated rush…?

Not Your Mother's Cookie

I had to set my cabbie roommate straight and I’m gonna head you guys off at the pass before you cross me, too. I know when your mother baked cookies for you, she served them soft and hot from the oven and you loved it. This is not your mother’s cookie.

Thin Mints are served best straight from the freezer, Samoas and Animal Treasures from the fridge. The only reason the box should be outside of the fridge/freezer is to get more cookies or to toss it in the trash after it’s empty.

These cute and friendly little girls may grow up to be mothers some day, but trying to force them and their cookies into your oppressive standards for feminine baking has to stop.

p.s. Yes, they are still called Samoas in my house. Anyone who would be insulted that the second-best selling Girl Scout cookie® of all time is named for their country/heritage/culture is just nuts.

Mystery of the Abbey

I have seen Name of the Rose but I have never read the book. (Although I have read the supposedly most bought, least read Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco.) Here’s a review of the game Mystery of the Abbey based on the book. Summary: It is a more challenging/complicated version of the game Clue©.

Roadside America

Roadside America features a searchable database of out-of-the-ordinary attractions, like this Cathedral of Junk in Austin. I’ll have to check this out next time I’m going on a trip.

Flame Bait

Republicans suck!

So, there.

Microsoft Not the Problem

Tim Mullen writes a piece at The Register suggesting that Microsoft is not to blame for the new email worm that’s flooding the internet.

Was the vector some l337 0-day ‘sploit? Nope. Was it a complex multi-layer program leveraging several unpatched vulnerabilities? Nope. It was — wait for it — an executable attachment in an email. What genius! The author of Novarg (or MyDoom, or whatever you want to call it) really put his noodle to the test when he cooked this one up, huh?

While some of his arguments are specious and I don’t think abandoning support for older software is going to help the problem, he makes one very good point. The problem is not a hole in Microsoft’s software or a lack of effort on the part of anti-virus applications. People who don’t know any better will always fall into this trap. And don’t go all ‘Linux rules’ on me, because we all know that if the world suddenly switched OS’s the virus those same ignorant people would just be clicking Linux executables sent to ther Inbox.

Scrabble Practice

Here’s a nice little practice Scrabble board.

Encyclopedia Obscura

Check out Encyclopedia Obscura for a good time waster. It’s full of bizzare geek oriented articles like a review of a Bugs Bunny rip-off NES game, a piece discussing Donald Duck during war times and bizarre comics made with old action figures — good stuff!

Intelligence Failure

Tee-hee.

Children Held at Guantanamo

This is just wrong. Someone in the military chain of command either dropped the ball (making them criminally negligent) or held these children for about 2 years out of misguided malice (making them simple criminals).

Three Afghan boys freed last week from US custody in Cuba are back home with their families.
The boys - thought to be aged between 13 and 15 - were the youngest detainees at the controversial Guantanamo base. …
In August, the US general running Guantanamo agreed they should be released, but said he was awaiting orders from senior defence officials.

Tune Recycler

I know that everyone here on the Backporch is already thinking they’re gonna make the switch to Pepsi so they can start collecting iTunes credits, so this link may be moot.

With the Tune Recycler, you can send us your unwanted iTunes bottlecap codes and we’ll use them to support independent music. Easy for you, and good for musicians.

Besides, if you get a free iTunes thing from Pepsi, you could just send it to me since my whole point in posting this is to not see iTunes credits go to waste and I would put it to good use, too.

Watch for my upcoming review of the Assylum Street Spankers show that I saw Friday night with opening songwriting genius Matt the Electrician. The new ASS will be available on iTunes in a week or so, according to rumor.

Pepsi expects to only pay up on 20% of these, btw.

Super Bowl Controversy

Looks like the Feds are looking into JT and JJ’s Super Bowl half-time half-dressed bawdry show. (As good protesting citizens, we were tuned to CNN during the climax, but I had it all downloaded before the 4th quarter.) I think they need to take a few steps back, though. As we pointed out to Steve and Betc, who had brought over their two lovely little girls, during the very first minute of Miss Jackson’s (yes, I’m nasty) opening number: “Do you want to explain to your daughter what a ball gag is?”

Quack Quack

Of course I have my own opinions on this (read: it’s bad), but does anyone think that this is okay?

I suppose one could make the argument that in a civilized society we can’t tell people what to do with their free time. (Or who to spend it with for that matter). I’ve never been duck hunting, but I think there’s probably a lot of down time spent chatting (usually with beer). But it just seems like such a conflict of interest. 2 men, alone, in a tiny wooden box in the middle of nowhere — you can’t tell me they don’t talk politics.

Secret Squirrel in This Modern World

Tee-hee. Secret Squirrel has a guest spot working for Bush for this week’s episode of The Modern World. There’s a 50% chance Tom Tomrrow hit the nail on the head, but I’m more expecting Bush to decide that destroying the U.S. decades-old intelligence processes was more beneficial (for us) than the damage (to fur’ners) created by acting on bad intelligence.

BackPorch in the day

I was throwing out some old papers and came across an exciting piece of Backporch history.

(full-size ~300K)

This was an article The Shreveport Times did on porch-sitting that featured the original Backporch with a large photo of same. As notated by TreyLa (a librarian defacing historic documents!) the porch was staffed that night by Jank, Gordo, TreyLa, Jeff H, Lauren (can’t remember her last name), and me.

Relevant excerpt:

And a New generation is learning to appreciate porches. [Gordo], 22, and his pals regularly congregate on his front [ed note — actually it was the back] porch on Centenary Boulevard.

“We just start pulling chairs on it and people come,” he says, adding that the appeal is “just sitting outside and enjoying the outside, nature itself. I think people get tired of sitting inside so much. We can go from (talking about) politics … to talk about friends, each other, things we used to do. A lot of us are in college, wondering what our lives will be like when we finish.”

I guess things don’t change too much.

The Dean Scream

Here’s an interesting item. Not so much interesting in itself, but interesting that it exists. It’s ABC explaining that the Dean scream soundbite was only funny (ha-ha AND strange) because it was taken out of its aural context — like Linda McCartney’s infamous isolated mic — and that the media went overboard by playing it 700 times.