Gender politics revisited

Turns out that differences in pay for women versus men aren't just a matter of women failing to be assertive enough. It seems that women may be accurately anticipating the "she's a bitch" effect. :)

The horrifying depths of my procrastination

As if my plethora of blog posts weren't enough, I just, a few minutes ago, came _this_ close to registering the "www.nosheepies.org" domain name.

For the unenlightened, this is an Overlord reference. At some point I don't remember, one of the minion asks, very dejectedly and disappointed that there are no cute livestock available to massacre,

"No sheepies?"

This is rapidly becoming my catch-phrase for surprised disappointment.

...

Look, you just have to play the game to understand, ok?

When you like air travel a little too much

Please shoot me if I ever become this obsessed with flying.

Cheap Bible shot

I couldn't resist...

Clinton's boobs: the ironies abound

There are so many ironies here, I don't even know where to start...

Sigh. Okay, first, I read this article on how the Clinton campaign is getting its collective panties in a twist (sorry, I couldn't resist given the subject matter) over an article in the fashion section of the Washington Post. Seems a certain Ms. Robin Givhan (yes, _Ms._ Givhan) wrote an article on the implications of Clinton showing a bit of cleavage on the Senate floor, something she apparently hasn't really done before. Clinton's seems to think that this is part of a larger conspiracy by...the world, I guess?...to dismiss Clinton's ideas because she is a woman and, therefore, merely a sexual object.

Where do I start? I could start with the horrifying idea that we're all too busy lusting after Clinton to pay attention to her ideas. I have only one thing to say about that: *shudder*. But let's start with Givhan and her article. First of all, Givhan is herself a woman. And black. And did I mention she has won a Pulitzer Prize for her fashion commentary? Because she did. Last _fucking_ year. In fact, the Pulitzer was, "Awarded to Robin Givhan of The Washington Post for her witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism." So you can see why Clinton would assume that such a person talks about female politicians' boobs out of shallow, sophomoric titillation. (hee...I said "titillation"...)

So, pray tell, what was the point of Ms. Givhan's article? Well, read it yourself. Her point is, essentially, that Clinton's willingness to show a little skin is an indication that she is confident enough in her own authority, intellect, and presence to not be worried that a little air of sexuality will overshadow that. As Givhan writes,

"Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed."

So, let's review: Clinton's reaction to an article praising her willingness to embrace her femininity at the same time that she commands authority and insists on being taken seriously because she isn't afraid that such a display will overshadow her ideas and her message was to, essentially, freak out and immediately assume that her ideas and her message were being ignored because everyone was suddenly focusing on her sexuality.

*brain explodes*

The more I learn about Clinton, the more I dislike her. It pains me to think that she'll probably get the Democratic nomination.

Emoticons: useful or abomination?

Little blurb in NYT fashion regarding the modern use of emoticons. Cute quote:

“I mean, it’s ludicrous,” said Ms. Feldman, 25. “I’m not going to feel better about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars because someone puts a frown face to regretfully inform me.”

Personally, I'm a staunch defender of their use. Emails can be wildly misinterpreted due to their lack of body language and tone. Emoticons are a very succinct way of making the intent of a message clear.

That said, I'm not entirely clear why the world needs a Ronald Reagan emoticon...

Pet peeve, anyone?

Sometimes Nick get angry!!!...

(bleeding heart liberal my ass...)

Also, the first comment had me laughing out loud. :)

Diary of a video store clerk

What it's like to deal with customers who regularly rent porn.

Kitty...of dooooooom!

...But the face of death is so furry and adorable!

Goddamn buttons

Did Steve Jobs endure a traumatic event involving buttons as a child?

UW web integrity checker

Hey! Go us.

Sometimes regulation = better competition

Turns out the United States is lagging badly behind many other industrialized nations in both percentage of people with broadband access and speed of broadband access. The problem? Telecoms having essentially a monopoly on wiring going into your house and thus having absolutely no motivation to improve their service, and an FCC that blabbers about the "free market" without having any fucking clue what they're talking about beyond a talking points memo from the Cato Institute...

*grumble*

*humbled*

Depressing events in one's life: when your biologist girlfriend comes up with a better solution to a problem you're working on than you did.

*sigh*

Fortunately, smart = sexy. ;)

Hyperbole

I mean, I'm no fan of Tom Cruise either, but...Goebbels? Really?

T-shirt hell

These baby shirts are priceless. Actually, the whole site is priceless.

Personally, because the "daddy drinks because I cry" is old, I'm going to have to go with the "They shake me!" and "Are you my daddy?"

:)

Ow.

I...I made the mistake of trying to watch some more of the Half Hour News Hour on Fox News.

Ow.

Ow ow ow ow.

Have you ever been around someone who's so stupid it physically hurt you?

Things my brain thinks to itself instead of doing useful work

"You know, if I believed in reincarnation, the inscription on my tombstone would _totally_ read, 'brb...'"

God's inbox

Have your computer tell you who to vote for

Unscientific, but amusing.

My results below. Of course, it asked my opinions and not the views I think an electable candidate could hold without committing political suicide. (btw, the topics listed under each person are the areas you disagree with the candidate about)

I'm curious what results my conservative friends get since almost all the questions are on social questions rather than economic ones. The only economic question I remember is regarding the minimum wage.

-----

Kucinich 82
No Child Left Behind, Border Fence

Gravel 71
(you have no disagreements with this candidate)

Clinton 60
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action, Same-Sex Marriage

Edwards 56
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action, Same-Sex Marriage

Obama 56
Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Same-Sex Marriage

Dodd 55
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action

Richardson 50
Death Penalty, Assault Weapons Ban, Patriot Act, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action, Same-Sex Marriage

Biden 47
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Same-Sex Marriage

Paul 3
Abortion Rights, Embryonic Stem Cells, ANWR Drilling, Kyoto, Assault Weapons Ban, Guns - Background Checks, Citizenship Path for Illegals, Border Fence, Net Neutrality, Minimum Wage Increase, Same-Sex Marriage, Universal Healthcare

McCain -15
Giuliani -24
Thompson -27
Brownback -44
Cox -47
Huckabee -60
Tancredo -72
Romney -79
Hunter -80

Spider-Pig

I'm sure everyone's seen this by now, but I would go to the Simpsons movie just for these 30 seconds if nothing else.

"Can he swing...from a web?...No, he can't...he's a pig..."

This may well be the coolest thing I have ever seen

I'm...I'm speechless. Frankly, they might as well shut down the Internet. Nothing...and I mean nothing...can possibly top 1500 inmates of the Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu, Phillipines re-enacting Thriller.

Nothing.

10 Things I Hate About Star Trek

This is probably only funny if you watched Star Trek obsessively like I did, but still...

Everybody move to the back of the (air)bus...

Turns out the crap seats near he toilet on an airplane give you better odds of surviving a crash. How amusingly ironic.

An important lesson from John Wayne

This is the kind of thing you wouldn't think you would have to tell people, but, umm, don't shoot a movie in the same desert where they've tested 11 nuclear weapons. It won't end well.

Dood

There's no way they're the same. No goddamn way.

(Stupid brain...)

Baratunde Thurston gains column in The Huffington Post

An old friend I largely lost touch with from Harvard (few years up), Baratunde Thurston, has been gaining some celebrity and recently landed himself a column at The Huffington Post. You should read him. Read him!!! *threatening fist shaking*

D'oh!

Badly juxtaposed ads indeed...

Apologist rant

A response to an apologist's op-ed in (where else?) the Wall Street Journal dismissing the "New Atheists" (e.g., Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.) Started as an email, but got too long and became a more suitable blog rant:

-----

Several points in no particular order because I don't feel like organizing my thoughts:

1) It's clear if unspoken that most of the spat of recent books on atheism are directed towards the surge in batshit fundamentalists who seem to have taken over not only government but public discourse as of the beginning of the Bush administration. These are people who believe in a frighteningly literal interpretation of the Bible and, moreover, believe that anyone who doesn't share the specifics of their belief is evil. This is why people like Hitchens devote time to ripping apart literal interpretations of the Bible. Yes, we knew that the Bible can't be taken as anything other than allegory, and it's nice that Berkowitz takes that fact as a given to anyone with half a brain and half an education, but there's this purportedly giant population that doesn't seem to get that, particularly the ones running the government of the most powerful nation on earth. Therefore, it's worth re-hashing.

2) "And it begs the question of why the 20th-century embrace of secularism unleashed human depravity of unprecedented proportions."

This is an inaccurate and, frankly, stupid statement. Ignoring the fact that correlation doesn't equal cause even if the 20th century were particularly secular, what about the religious rebirths of the 20s, the 50s (remember when we put "under God" in the Pledge?), and, of course, the one we're currently suffering under that began, roughly, in the 80s after Carter? Sort that all out, then come talk to me.

3) The "the atheists are being dogmatic too!" argument is becoming a pet peeve of mine since it betrays a profound misunderstanding of the issue. There is an important distinction between dogma and vigorous defense of a position. Dogma is an unsubstantiated belief. It is a belief held not just in defiance of evidence of the contrary, but in fact belief that is held no matter what. There is nothing, even in theory, that can shatter it. Thus, just because your opponent isn't swayed by your arguments does not make him or her dogmatic. It might, for instance, mean that you're a crappy debater, or you are full of shit, or both. Or, it might just mean that while your arguments are good, he or she is simply not swayed by them.

In contrast, dogma is all about unsubstantiated belief, and let's remember, the whole point of (most sects of) Christianity is belief. Belief itself is an a priori good. It is central to the religion. "You just gotta have faith!" The objection people like Hitchens and Dawkins have is that faith and dogma are held as virtues in and of themselves. It's not so much that "believers" are not swayed by logical arguments (although that is, of course, a problem too); it's that the principle of not demanding evidence for things is itself valued. It is in that sense that a believer in organized religion is dogmatic in a way that an atheist is not.

(yes, to have no dogma is itself a dogma just as the statement that "there are no absolutes" is an absolute, but please, let's not go there...)

4) I'm also tired of the "religion provides the underpinnings for the moral foundation of the Western world and atheists have no reasonable alternative" horse shit. I will, however, spare you a rant on it for now. Suffice it to say, nobody woke up one morning and said, "You know, I'd really like to rape, murder, steal, and perhaps sodomize my dog, but you know, the Bible said I shouldn't, so I guess I'll be a productive member of society instead."

5) Berkowitz seems to conveniently not "get" that the mass-murderers of the 20th century, e.g., Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, though not strictly members of any particular organized religion, themselves created or led deeply dogmatic endeavors, often with weird mythologies associated with them (how do you _not_ view Hitler as advocating a dogmatic mythology?), and that these are the qualities Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. object to in organized religion. To claim that Hitler, and Pol Pot, and Stalin were atheists and to use that as an indictment of atheism misses the point entirely (not to mention the fact that, even if they were strictly atheists, there's nothing to say there was a causal relationship there...after all, Hitler despised communists, but I don't see anyone suggesting his dislike for communists [a quality he shares with pretty much every American] led him to murder millions of Jews).

6) All that said, I totally agree that Christopher Hitchens is, at core, an asshole, and frankly, I don't really like him much. Among other things, he believes that invading Iraq was a good idea. He's a fucking British dick who is more concerned with his own self-righteousness and the amusement he gets out of condescension than anything else. He's a shitty model for atheist ideology. There's a critical piece of compassion, empathy, and respect for people's right to believe whatever crazy shit they want to that seems lost on all of those guys, and having them become the poster children for secularism and atheism is ultimately detrimental.

Owning your shame

See? There's something liberating about owning the derogatory terms thrown at you. Yes, I realize being black in America is very different from being a nerd in America. Still...I think there are nonetheless valid parallels regarding marginalized social groups.

"That...can't be good."

If There Were a God... (7/14/07)

If there were a god, she would reserve a special area of torture in hell for the fucktards who go up to gate agents with their 17 children and seem, inexplicably, to be trying to book an entire Carribean vacation on the fly, thus occupying said gate agent for a good 40 minutes shortly before the departure a major flight.

An area of similar suffering should be reserved for the gate agents who allow this and who seem to have the capacity to process ordinary passengers at a blistering rate of one every 15 minutes. How fucking hard is it to enter a name, pick a seat, and enter a "1" in the "number of checked bags" box?! Jesus christ...

Statistics _can_ be fun!

Really, really, really fascinating set of TED talks (a kind of ridiculous, self-important concept, but we'll ignore that for the moment) on world health and poverty. 20 minutes each, but very much worth watching.

Apple pulls a Microsoft

Just when you thought Microsoft had the lock on stupid UI bugs, Apple pulls the "let's fuck up URLs you send in email for no good goddamn reason!" bug.

To those of you getting emails from me with weird, broken-up, un-clickable URLs in them, well, I'm sorry. I didn't know. You have to tell me these things!

From now on your URLs will be enclosed in happy little angle brackets, which I'm told fix the problem. And if I don't, well, I forgot. Fuck off. You're lucky to hear from me at all.

Thanks for dying, Jesus!

Burn all the books!

"My oldest son doesn't believe in God," she said. "I guess he kind of thinks I'm stupid."

That's because you are, dear...that's because you are.

Two words that should never go together

"Nuclear" and "oops."

My current pet peeve

Some idiot decided it was a good idea to route calls to customer service based on the area code of the incoming phone number. Clearly this person was an old fogey who was unfamiliar with mobile phones. See, people in their 20s have this tendency to hang onto the phone number they got either in high school or college no matter where they move. 'Cause, you know, the phones are _mobile_. They're not wired to a house any more. Area codes are meaningless, especially when long distance is free. Consequently, there are lots of us out there who have cell numbers with an area code in a completely different part of the country from where the live. If you live in Seattle, for instance, you end up talking to some schmuck in Boston.

It would be one thing if they could just transfer you to the correct call center. But, of course, they can't. A global internet, ubiquitous access, voice over IP, and all the wonders of the communications age, and those fuckers managed to configure a system that can't even complete a correct phone call. Even _with_ human intervention.

AND THEY BUILD PHONE SYSTEMS FOR A LIVING!!!!

A disturbing truth

The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money.
- David Richerby

Er...oops?

I'm trying to be surprised that it was a Republican. I really am. Probably liberals' fault though, somehow. Tempted him. Or something.

I want to work for the Bush administration

Brilliant. :)

Michael Moore rips Wolf Blitzer a new one

You know, the sad thing is that Moore is absolutely right. About pretty much everything. CNN, and the rest of the major news organizations, didn't ask the hard questions about the war in Iraq. They didn't do the investigative reporting that would have shown very clearly and easily that the administration is full of crap. And yes, their ridiculous attempts to counter-balance a perceived skew in Moore's films are shallow and misleading. He has every right to be pissed off.

And yet, he does a disservice by allowing himself to go into a hysterical rant. He comes off looking like a loony-toon, which ultimately affects his credibility. The same thing happened at the Oscar's. He ultimately did more damage than good. It's really sad, because he's one of the few people out there actually asking the hard question. I have to imagine that the same drive and outrage that energizes his documentary efforts makes him trip over himself when he actually interacts with the rest of the world. It makes it so easy for right-wing pundits. Look at what happened to Dean just because he let out an excited yell too close to the microphone, for god's sake. And that was just one incident!

Imagine how different it would have been if Moore had said essentially the same things he did but in a calm and composed way. It would have been profoundly more effective.

And actually, the point he should have (calmly) made is something along the lines of the following:

"Wolf, the news organizations have become hostage to this concept of balance. The idea is that a news organization dispassionately gives equal airtime to both sides of an argument and thereby remains objective. That's why you had Gupta's piece on before me to "balance" what I presented in Sicko. That's why you showed a clip of Guiliani and asked me to respond to it.

It sounds nice, but there is a deep, deep problem with it: balance has nothing to do with the truth. And the truth is far, far more important than balance. Think about it: what happens when one side is telling the truth, and one side is lying (as this Administration has been from day 1)? Where is the balance? Halfway between truth and lies, Wolf, are half-truths. At best. And those aren't truths.

I'm telling the truth. It's a truth born of facts that anyone can go verify. They're lying. If you look at the facts, it's quite evident that they're lying. But the news organizations have been too afraid to actually seek the truth because sometimes the truth actually contradicts one side of an argument (as it does in the case of the Iraq war, and as it does in the case of our health care system).

That's why I'm frustrated, Wolf. The whole point of the freedom of the press is to allow it to find the truth and report it. When you turn on the news, that's what you're looking for: the truth. Not competing sound bites: the truth. And if you're not going to report the truth, you might as well not be here. We can just have two podiums in the center of town, and our two political parties can stand there and yell at each other. And everyone else will have no idea what to believe. Probably, they'll believe the more attractive guy. Or the guy who is the most eloquent speaker. But they'll never, ever know what the truth is. And that's a damned shame, Wolf."

Man, I should be a speechwriter. ;)

Nigger

The NAACP apparently just buried "nigger." Well, thank god. I'm glad that issue's over and done with.

Seriously, I'm getting really sick of this issue. Of all the things that the civil rights community could get hung up on, _this_ is the one they fixate on? People's choice of fucking verbiage? This is more important than raising money for inner city schools? More important than poverty? More important than gangs? More important than scholarships? Really??

Language changes. Words gain and lose meaning. "Yankee" used to be a derogatory word for Americans used by the British. We latched onto it and owned it. Now most of New York cheers every year for the Yankees. The meaning changed. And while I'm not suggesting we create a major league baseball team called the "Niggers" (I'm thinking home field in Mobile...what do you think? Also, have fun imagining what their mascot would be...), I am suggesting that turning the term into something people affectionately call each other might not be such a bad thing. I might even go so far as to suggest that it's the best possible way to drain the power from the word.

(side note: only the BBC and Reuters seem to have had the balls to actually print the word in question instead of pussying out and printing "the N word." Politics aside, it's just bad journalism to assume that your readers know what you're talking about if you write "the N word." It's like writing "hoo ha" instead of "vagina" in an article about gynecology. Fucking grow up.)

Skippy's List

A classic that seems to be enjoying a resurgence. :)

Personal favorites:

29. The Irish MPs are not after “Me frosted lucky charms”.

31. Not allowed to let sock puppets take responsibility for any of my actions.
32. Not allowed to let sock puppets take command of my post.

33. Not allowed to chew gum at formation, unless I brought enough for everybody.
34. (Next day) Not allowed to chew gum at formation even if I *did* bring enough for everybody.

36. Can’t have flashbacks to wars I was not in. (The Spanish-American War isn’t over).

54. “Napalm sticks to kids” is *not* a motivational phrase.

65. There are no evil clowns living under my bed.

79. I am neither the king nor queen of cheese.

99. A smiley face is not used to mark a minefield.

100. Claymore mines are not filled with yummy candy, and it is wrong to tell new soldiers that they are.

129. The Microsoft ® “Dancing Paperclip” is not authorized to countermand any orders.

145. I should not drink three quarts of blue food coloring before a urine test.
146. Nor should I drink three quarts of red food coloring, and scream during the same.

191. Our Humvees cannot be assembled into a giant battle-robot.

Google censorship

I hadn't quite realized the degree to which Google "fine-tunes" their results. It appears they do, in fact, exercise a certain degree of censorship, which is kind of disturbing. Observe Zittrain and Edelman's preliminary study comparing the results of google.com versus google.fr and google.de.

The issue is actually a rather interesting one that cuts to the heart of the Internet age. The reason everyone is salivating to invest in Google is that they seem the best positioned company to serve as the portal through which everyone gets to the Internet. AOL tried to do this, in their own way, and this is part of why they were a darling of the tech bubble. But, of course, they failed. They were overly ambitious: they sought to actually reshape the internet by creating a veneer over it. They wanted AOL to _be_ the Internet. Problem is, the Internet doesn't want to be controlled by AOL. Enter Google.

Google had the much more workable idea of simply being a directory for the Internet. They have no interest in controlling every last inch of cyberspace (per se). They just want to be the resource you go to to find what you're looking for. Turns out, this is pretty much just as powerful as controlling the Internet as a whole, and yet it still allows the Internet to grow independently.

However, that power is exactly the trouble. Think about how often you use Google to find what you're looking for. Hell, half the time even if you know what website you're going to, you still go to Google to pull up the actual URL for you because you're lazy. Think about the power that gives them. They control exactly what you can and cannot see. If they choose not to list your website, you may very well never see it! Even if you do, 99.999% of the rest of the population won't (because they're not as tech savvy as you are, you clever dog).

Think, for a minute, what would happen if the government owned Google. What if the government had that kind of power over what information you could and could not find? Wouldn't that freak you the fuck out?

And yet, there are at least some checks on government. You have the power to vote elected officials out of office if they piss you off. You essentially have no such power over Google. You have no say. And there are no laws governing what Google can and cannot list, really. They're completely lacking in oversight. The only thing that's there to keep them honest is whether they can continue to get ad revenue. As it happens, that does tend to keep them somewhat honest, and yet...it should still make you supremely uneasy.

Anyway, here's a list of other sources from someone on the Harvard tech forum mailing list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-03-02-n19.html
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/google/
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
http://www.sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship.php
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Google_removes_German_BMW_from_search_results
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/27/google_doesnt_censor/

More sex is safer sex

Really fascinating article on why sexually conservative people should have more sex.

I think it's actually a beautiful example of why so much of economics is utter horse shit (making unjustifiable assumptions about human nature), but it's still interesting.

Your daily douchebag (7/6/07)

Today's Daily Douchebag goes to Mr. Jerry Bowyer, a columnist for the partisan rag National Review. Not satisfied with the Right's existing attempts to associate the conservative pet cause du jour with the fear of terrorism, Mr. Bowyer chose to, well, kick it up a notch. Yup, it turns out that if we nationalize health care, the terrorists win.

Wow. Your douchebaggery, sir, truly stands unrivaled...

The unintended effects of tight immigration quotas

Hi! I'm globalization. Have we met?

Clinton hypocrisy

Much as I cringe at the idea of agreeing with anything the Bush administration claims ever, I do think there's a degree of hypocrisy in either of the Clintons criticizing Libby's pardon. Yes, there's a big difference between pardoning a guy lying to investigators to protect a breach of national security and pardoning a sleazy friend of yours engaged in some shady financial deals, but still...either justice applies even to the friends of the powerful or it doesn't. Pardons, like impeachments, shouldn't be handed out like "lollipops" (as the duplicitous douchebag Romney so eloquently put it).

Of course, I don't understand why this is a _defense_ of Bush's pardon of Libby. It's a good but ultimately irrelevant point.

Yay Microsoft!

Woo hoo! Every so often Microsoft isn't completely useless! My xbox is saved!!

Reasons that Transformers was awesome that I didn't know include

Turns out that Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime in the latest Transformers movie, was also the voice of Optimus Prime back in 1984. According to Cullen, he probably got the part in large part due to lobbying by fans.

I knew the movie was weirdly evocative, and now I know part of why.

*gets a little misty-eyed*

Apple as shameless ripoff artists

Interesting little bit on all the stuff Apple has shamelessly ripped off. I like Apple's hardware and software, but let's not forget that they are, at core, a shameless, profit-driven company just like everyone else.

...and you party, laying bears

Well, what the fuck do _you_ think it says?!

I am the most immature person on the planet

The fastest supercomputer in Japan is located at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

...whose acronym is TIT.

Hee.

Hee hee hee.

Transformers

...was awesome.

Not a good movie, per se, but nonetheless awesome. It had explosions and dueling robots, and that's all I wanted. It didn't dick around with the pretense of plot or character development. Just got right down to the robots shooting at each other. That's all I asked.

In other news, my roommates report that my xbox 360 died. Just out of warranty. Fan-fucking-tastic. Sadly, probably not worth my while to get another one. Boo Microsoft. Apparently I'm joining a disturbingly high number of other people with 360 hardware failure problems.

Uh-oh...

Remember that iPhone rant I went on? Well, I just found out that whereas my current data plan is $40/month, the iPhone data plan is $20/month. So really, it would effectively pay for itself in less than 2 years...

...

I think I'm safe, though. For all its fanciness, the iPhone won't be able to connect to my bluetooth GPS receiver, which is dumb. There are (totally unsubstantiated, probably wrong) rumors that the next generation, due out in spring '08 (maybe?) will have GPS built in. Regardless, guess I'm stuck with Windows Mobile for a while. Sigh.

Sentences I never thought I'd read

"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police say they've collared the man they believe administered a fatal beating to a peacock because he thought it was a vampire."

*shakes head sadly*

Apparently Ann Coulter is approaching the level of being a great American.

And, in the slow, evolutionary sense that a cockroach is slowly approaching being a human being, yes, I suppose that might be true...

Quick!

Act surprised!

Yes, clearly 2 1/2 years is far too harsh for what amounted to treason. You get 16 years for marijuana, 0 for treason. That totally makes sense.