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Today is Festivus!
Sunday, December 23, 2001
So drag your aluminum pole out of the crawlspace! Be sure to list your grievances in advance so you can tell your friends and loved ones exactly how much they've disapponted you in the past year! Don't forget to stretch before the Feats of Strength!
Send out those e-cards!
Even insects are getting into the spirit!
Those wacky computer nerds. Code! Code! Code!
Arrrgh! Even fake holidays get commercialized!
Frank Costanza would not be pleased.
Trebuchet.com
Friday, December 21, 2001
Dig that crazy catapult watch.
Careful, you could put an eye out with that!
Flinging children to their doom is fun too!
'Mystery' squid delights scientists
Friday, December 21, 2001
Remarkable squid with seven meter arms caught on film.
The Human Identity Chip: No Longer Science Fiction
Friday, December 21, 2001
A surgeon in New Jersey has embedded under his skin tiny computer chips that can automatically transmit personal information to a scanner, a technology that his employer hopes will someday be widely used as a way to identify people.
A Chip ID That's Only Skin-Deep
Although this technology is still in its infancy, I wonder how long it will be until we're all implanted with chips and tracked from cradle to grave?
Might be a couple of decades away. Could be a lot sooner.
Thanks, one.point.zero and Quiddity :)
Using Multiple Mini-Sensors In Surveillance System
Something moves, and what looks like a dime-sized pebble "wakes up" in a vast desert landscape. The pebble sends a signal to another small stone just 20 yards away. It too is awake.
Will this technology be used to spy on private citizens? I suspect so. These devices will be far more difficult to spot when they are reduced from the size of a pebble to the size of a grain of sand.
Stop looking at me like I'm paranoid!
Officials Back Low-Yield Nuke Strike
Friday, December 21, 2001
Spray dirty fallout everywhere? Fine with the Bush administration as long as it's in some poor third world nation not too close to home.
More nuclear proliferation? Yes please!
Mini nukes?
Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons
Adios In Deep Space
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Successful Deep Space 1 mission ends.
Godspeed, little space probe!
How about a vodka chaser for that purple pill?
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Must have pills. Must have pills. Must have pills. Ironic that these are the same folks who give me shit for smoking a joint.
The New McCarthyism
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Gestapo/NKVD (in case you don't know, the Gestapo was the secret state police of Adolf Hitler; the NKVD was Stalin's secret police force - they murdered many thousands of politically objectionable people) style thought control is coming to a neighborhood near you:
Katie Sierra is a fifteen-year-old sophomore at Sissonville High School in West Virginia. On October 22, she notified her principal, Forrest Mann, that she wanted to form an anarchist club. He denied her request. It was the only club he has ever disallowed, according to the lawsuit Sierra and her mother filed against the school.
The next day, Sierra came to school with a T-shirt on that said, "Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, I'm So Proud of People in the Land of the So-Called Free." The principal suspended her for three days.
On October 29, she was told that before she could come back to school, she would have to provide the principal with authorization to obtain her medical records, she would have to meet with a school psychologist, and she couldn't wear T-shirts like the one she wore or organize her anarchist club.
At a school board meeting on October 29, the school board president, Bill Raglin, said, "What in the hell is wrong with a kid like that?" Another school board member, John Luoni, accused her of treason, according to her court papers.
To make matters worse, says Sierra, Principal Mann mischaracterized her T-shirt in the Charleston Gazette, falsely stating it included statements such as "I hope Afghanistan wins" and "America should burn."
Say anything against the government's policies?
In this climate, you will be labeled a nut and you will be slandered.
Speaking out is never easy. Be prepared for anything.
Free speech? Enjoy it while it lasts.
Courtney On The Net
Thursday, December 20, 2001
I'm fascinated and repulsed by Courtney Love if only for the fact that most people seem to consider her the Bride of Satan and blame her for Kurt Cobain's death.
Who knew she was such an early adopter?
(For the record, I thought Kurt and Courtney was a severely lame tabloid "documentary".)
Professional gluttons can earn up to Y10 million
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Japanese game shows pay off for professional gluttons.
I hope this doesn't spread to the U.S.!
Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army's Stocks
Monday, December 17, 2001
Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests.
Another refutation to all those who insisted that the anthrax attacks simply must have originated from a foreign source.
Thanks, Unknown News :)
LEGO THX-1138
Monday, December 17, 2001
A LEGO interpretation of George Lucas's most important film.
More interesting LEGO stuff here.
The NRC: What Me Worry?
Monday, December 17, 2001
You think the one place we'd have good security is around our nuclear reactors. Think again.
We reported in 1986—and it is still the case today—that NRC regulations require nuclear reactor operators to protect against no more than a single insider and/or three external attackers, acting as a single team, wielding no more than hand-held automatic weapons.
Security personnel at power reactors are not required to be prepared for:
• more than three intruders;
• more than one team of attackers using coordinated tactics;
• more than one insider;
• weapons greater than hand-held automatic weapons;
• attack by boat or plane; or
• any attack by “enemies of the United States,” whether governments or individuals.
Barry and Levon
Saturday, December 15, 2001
Baby that's what I do every night. I cook, and then I chill.
Aw yeah!
KurzweilAI.net
Saturday, December 15, 2001
Artificial intelligence, mind uploading, nanotechnology, virtual reality, that sort of thing. (This is the non-flash version. If you use the flash version prepare for browser hang up.)
Death and Morons: The Jhonen Vasquez Story
Saturday, December 15, 2001
It's a chat transcript, but there's some good tidbits, especially on reactionary network censors:
JhnenV: We've managed to save two of the best, most recently an episode named "the Girl Who Cried Gnome". They felt it was offensive because it showed rescue workers trying to get a girl's foot out of a gopher hole. I mean, that's just sad.
Environmental Group Sues for Energy Task Force Records
Saturday, December 15, 2001
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) yesterday filed suit in federal court to force the Department of Energy to produce documents relating to the development of the Bush administration's energy policy.
The left-leaning environmental group now joins the conservative watchdog organization, Judicial Watch, in an effort to gain access via the courts to information they say should be public.
Guess what Dick? Not all of us have forgotten about your back alley dealings with people like your dear friend Kenneth Lay to sell off our wildlands wholesale. One hand really does wash the other, doesn't it?
The public may be distracted by your phony war, but we aren't.
Bush Halts Inquiry of FBI and Stirs Up a Firestorm
Saturday, December 15, 2001
Even Republicans are getting pissed:
"You tell the president there's going to be war between the president and this committee," Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who heads the House Government Reform Committee, told a Justice Department official during what was supposed to be a routine prehearing handshake.
Growing Conflict Over Presidential Powers
U.S. Missile Defense Booster Fails in Test Launch
Friday, December 14, 2001
A prototype rocket booster that would be used in President Bush's planned anti-ballistic missile defense failed in a test on Thursday, the same day the United States formally notified Russia it was pulling out of the 1972 ABM Treaty.
Does anyone with half a clue believe that Bush's withdrawal from the ABM treaty is anything but a colossal corporate welfare program for the aerospace and defense industries? Boeing, for example, has had it's ass kicked by Airbus for years because Airbus makes more competitive commercial jets.
Now, The Pentagon will spend hundreds of billions of dollars (cost overruns are a given with crooked defense contractors, don't forget the infamous $7,600 coffee pots from the 80's) on a system that won't protect us from much of anything.
Where's is this supposed missile threat? Do you think that Iran, North Korea or Pakistan would be stupid enough to fire ICBMs at us, even if they had the capacity to do so, which they don't? A limited missile defense system will be completely useless against a large scale nuclear attack from China or Russia.
Let's not forget about terrorism, a far more cost effective weapon than a ICBM. Remember that thing in New York and Washington that happened a few months ago?
U.S. technology didn't keep a few determined psychotics from crashing three airliners into buildings and killing thousands. It would be very simple to smuggle a nuke onto a freighter headed for New York, Miami, Los Angeles or Seattle (just to name a few coastal cities)? Sneaking one across the porous U.S./Mexico border would be a snap as well.
This will be the biggest military boondoggle since the Maginot Line. The fact that's it's total waste of money goes without saying. Don't worry though, Bush will find the money. He'll just kill more social programs, raid Social Security, eliminate humanitarian foreign aid, you get the idea.
Welcome to a more dangerous world.
Sidewise link via Follow Me Here :)
(I refuse to link directly to pages that force you to log in, like the New York Times site.)
"No medical explanation" for near death experiences
Friday, December 14, 2001
Medical explanations cannot account for near death experiences (NDEs), according to the results of the biggest prospective study to date of patients who were resuscitated after clinical death. However, patients who reported an NDE were more likely to die soon afterwards.
Science can't prove the existence of the soul either.
Now another island group sinking into the Pacific
Friday, December 14, 2001
Polynesians first victims of global warming:
"I asked a few people: 'Will you go, will you stay?' The older people said they wanted to stay and I asked them what would happen when the island was underwater. They said 'I will die'."
Out To The Horizon Of Sol
Friday, December 14, 2001
The Pluto-Kuiper saga continues.
It's cancelled! No it isn't! Is too! Is not!
Female Celebrity Smoking List
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Comprehensive to say the least. The smoking fetish is one that I don't really get. Personally, I find women who smell like tar to be a bit of a turn off (cough, cough).
Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark
Thursday, December 13, 2001
A solid and comprehensive rebuttal to Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. Conservatives and anti-environmentalists have been excitedly wetting themselves for months over this book, which says: "Hey, the environment is in great shape! Don't worry about it, just keep consuming!".
Also see The Tabloid Environmentalist:
Conservatives love Lomborg's message because it suggests that the status quo is pretty good. The Cooler Heads Coalition -- a group spearheaded by the Competitive Enterprise Institute which seeks to "dispel the myths of global warming" -- helped kick-off The Skeptical Environmentalist's U.S. release by sponsoring Lomborg's very own Capitol Hill briefing on October 4th. Not surprisingly, conservative columnists have heaped praise on the book.
If that doesn't convince you that this is not a fair and balanced book, I don't know what will.
Thanks, Tidepool :)
La. School Prayer Law Ruled Illegal
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Louisiana's school prayer law, which evolved from allowing a moment of silent meditation to permitting spoken prayer in public classrooms, has been declared unconstitutional by a federal appeals court.
Sidewise link via randomWalks :)
(I refuse to link to the crappy CNN website anymore.)
Wham, Bam, Thank You Spam
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Is it possible to sue spammers out of existence? In my humble opinion, probably not, but it sure must be satisfying!
Bush Invokes Executive Privilege
Thursday, December 13, 2001
More New Stalinism from the White House:
President Bush invoked executive privilege for the first time Thursday to keep Congress from seeing documents of prosecutors' decision-making in cases ranging from a decades-old Boston murder to the Clinton-era fund-raising probe.
"I believe congressional access to these documents would be contrary to the national interest," Bush wrote in a memo ordering Attorney General John Ashcroft to withhold the documents from a House investigative committee that subpoenaed them.
Secret British Report Calls For Nuclear Power Phase Out
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Nuclear power may have had its day. The best way to cut carbon pollution and tackle global warming is to replace oil and coal-fired power stations with renewable energy sources, says a draft British government review leaked to New Scientist. Nuclear power is simply too dangerous and expensive.
A glimmer of common sense from the British?
Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see.
Germany signs end to nuclear power
Biological weapons treaty in disarray
Thursday, December 13, 2001
The treaty banning biological weapons is in disarray, after the US disrupted a meeting of treaty members in Geneva with a last-minute demand it knew other governments would reject.
European Union countries, stung by US failure even to warn them of the move, will now be questioning whether they can continue working in alliance with the US on international arms control treaties.
Our objective is to fashion an effective international approach to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. The ideas we propose do not constitute a complete solution to the use of pathogens and biotechnology for evil purposes. However, if we can strengthen the Convention against the threat of biological weapons, we will contribute to the security of the people of the United States and mankind as a whole.
George W. Bush - November 1, 2001
I'd like to think hypocrisy speaks for itself.
I say let's quit with the bullshit. Why bother to send U.S. representatives to conferences for treaties that we have absolutely no intention of signing (see Kyoto, ABM, etc.) in the first place?
It's a colossal waste of everyone's time.
Anti-depression 'pacemaker' demonstrates benefits
Thursday, December 13, 2001
This uses direct nerve stimulation instead of drugs.
The DOOM Zoo
Thursday, December 13, 2001
This is cool, especially since it dates all the way back to 1996. There's so much great computer game art that get missed when we're playing.
Are there any other sites out there like this?
What about viewing software?
Let me know. Got to do some more Google digging.
Russia hears calls for nuclear buildup after ABM decision
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Russian lawmakers said Wednesday that Moscow was free to stock up on nuclear warheads to Cold War-era levels following a US decision to scrap the 1972 ABM treaty in the face of Kremlin efforts to save the disarmament pact.
Deputies argued that Russia now had little incentive to live up to other disarmament commitments and would likely rely on heavy multiple warhead missiles that offered a cheap alternative for preserving nuclear parity with the United States.
I swear George Bush has the delusion that he's Ronald Reagan.
Don't underestimate the Russians. They're a lot more resourceful than Westerners think. It goes without saying that we'll also have many more Chinese warheads pointed at us in the future.
Court: Online Scribes Protected
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Score one for free speech:
The Bank of Mexico -- also known as Banamex, now part of Citigroup -- initiated its lawsuit against the drug-war investigative reporting website in New York state court last year, when Narconews published reports linking Banamex's then-president with narcotics trafficking. Banamex charged these allegations were false and libelous.
In its decision, the New York Supreme Court threw the case out before it came to trial -- specifically because it found Banamex could not meet those higher standards.
Sweatshop Stars and Stripes
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
A lasting symbol of the war on terrorism, for many Americans, will surely be the SUV or minivan all aflutter with the Stars and Stripes. The plastic "car flag" has emerged as the finest marketing revolution of the war. A patch of red-white-and-blue on the end of a plastic stick that clips to a car window, it has sold by the millions since Sept. 11, and nearly all come from China.
These flags cost pennies to make, but major retailers sell them for up to $12 each, and already they're littering the highways, their tiny masts having snapped easily in the turbulence that surrounds a two-ton SUV at 80 mph. I've seen them abandoned in gutters and skittering across traffic lanes as the oblivious hordes motor by to the next shopping destination.
Nearly all these car flags are flown in violation of the U.S. Flag Code. Among other things, the code states that the flag should never be flown in a tattered, ripped or soiled condition. It should be kept clean and safe and be lit at night. Also, car flags should be flown from a front bumper, not a window, "because the flag must always lead, never follow."
Thank heavens that China can support our flag waving needs.
Thanks, Booknotes :)
now Surreal
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
A tad commercial for my tastes, but this looks interesting.
Sec. Norton's contempt trial opens in Indian money case
Monday, December 10, 2001
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth must decide if Norton and Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb should be fined for allegedly lying to the court about the security of the trust fund which handles $500 million each year.
They are also accused of concealing repeated failures of a $40 million accounting system for the Indian money and deceiving the court about the status of an accounting of the money squandered by more than a century of government mismanagement.
This is supposedly why all of the Department of the Interior web sites are offline. File this one under "important story likely to be ignored by the mainstream media" for this week.
Meanwhile Norton's up to the old bait and switch.
Interior Dept. Sites Still Down
Afghan Women's Group Gloomy on Post-Taliban Era
Monday, December 10, 2001
'"he people of the world need to know that in terms of widespread raping of girls and women from seven to 70, the track record of the Taliban can no way stand up against that of these very same Northern Alliance associates," the RAWA statement said.
My Fellow Americans, it gives me great pleasure to present our new terrorist, uh, I mean freedom fighter, allies: The Northern Alliance.
Surely you aren't so clueless as to think that things will be better now that the Taliban are gone?
Life in Afghanistan will still be a nightmare.
Warlord butchers will still run the country.
The West doesn't care. The media spotlight will shift to Somalia and Iraq soon. As far as I can tell most people are bored with the whole thing or are so fed up with all of the lies on the evening news that they no longer pay attention (see the words of Adolf Hitler below).
Report Predicts Major Forest Loss in South
Monday, December 10, 2001
The South is expected to lose more than 30 million acres of prime forestland to urban development over the next four decades, increasing the threat to wildlife and water quality, according to a federal study that takes the first national look at the forest resources of an entire region.
If there's one thing that Southern developers love to do it's bulldoze forests, kill every living thing that lives there and put up strip malls, cookie cutter suburbs and paper pulp farms.
Try to explain such concepts as conservation and sustainable development to them? Might as well try screaming at them is Swahili.
A Conversation With Jhonen Vasquez
Monday, December 10, 2001
An interview with the creator of my current fave 'toon, Invader Zim. You might want to dig around a bit on the AWN site.
Lots of interesting stuff including an article on Waking Life, which I'd love to see but is guaranteed not to air within a hundred miles of here.
Why did the salmon cross the road?
Saturday, December 8, 2001
The poor bastard was just trying to get to the other side.
Teacher Banned for Spilling the Beans on Santa
Saturday, December 8, 2001
It's official. I hate Christmas.
Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus.
Guess what kids? There is no Santa Claus. Your parents are lying. Get used to it. Parents lie all the time. Don't worry, someday you'll have your revenge by lying to your own children.
It is ironic that a season that is supposed to bring out the best in people causes such stress, mean spiritedness and downright idiotic behavior. Don't believe me? Go to your local mall on Christmas Eve.
Christmas is nothing but a socially indocrinated commercial enterprise (it's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know) designed to prop up the retail sector for another year. More grease for the gears of capitalism. I guess that's why Randians love it so.
Anyone who tells you different, is either very naive or probably trying to sell you something. Go ahead, keep denying it! :)
Christmas: A $157 Million Hangover
Propping Up The Mythos
Saturday, December 8, 2001
If you've ever had a hankering to make your own Lovecraftian horrors, like this Deep One in a jar, this is the site for you.
Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Critics Aid Terrorists, Ashcroft Argues
Friday, December 7, 2001
"To those who pit Americans against immigrants and citizens against noncitizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve," he said. "They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."
Welcome to New America.
The Constitution and all other civil rights are suspended.
Martial law is in effect for as long as we see fit.
Dissent is now a capital crime.
All behavior contrary to the goals of the Party must immediately be reported to the Office of Homeland Security. Citizens who fail in this duty will be punished severely.
We are watching you.
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.
The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
God Bless New America. Sieg Hiel.
I'm exaggerating for effect. Duh. Let's not forget that Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party did not take over Germany overnight, as if by magic. It was a carefully crafted and gradual process that took years.
rec.guns FAQ - Movie Gun Mishaps
Friday, December 7, 2001
Yes, it's movie errors dealing with firearms (and you foolishly thought that only sci-fi fanboys were nimrods).
3-Wheelers.com
Friday, December 7, 2001
Forget IT and check out these three wheelers instead.
Be sure to take the A to Z tour.
This site led me to the Amphicar on steroids LandShark.
Make mine black please!
(The name sucks though. I'd have called it the Komodo.)
Note to readers: Thanks to those of you who sent suggestions about weblogging options. Pitas.com is still a joke during late afternoon and evening hours (EST). I'm trying to improve my poseur computer skills, but it's going to take some time for me to figure something out.
I'm still open to suggestion. :)
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