No global warming

Apparently this shit is just normal geologic fluctuations. (Horse. Shit.)

109?! In the bay area? Are you kidding me? We beat the previous high for the day by 15 goddamn degrees! And the low was only six degrees below the _average high_. _Fuck_.

(if that link is broken, which it almost certainly is, try to find the weather report for July 22nd, 2006 in zip code 94403)

Fucking inexcusable

This administration is fucking shameless. They can't change the law, so they're going to undercut enforcement.

We don't need to protect the planet, apparently

Latest neocon jackass move: changing the mission statement of NASA.

Mirror, mirror, you useless floosy/What's the temperature of my jacuzzi?

For those just a little too obsessed with fairy tales...

An Organic Pun-fest

I'm mildly embarassed that I watched the entire thing.

Portal

I found this here video at Penny Arcade, and I must say I'm intrigued.

At first, the idea seems kind of boring. And depending on what the ultimate game ends up being, that may in fact be the case. But still...though simple at first, by the end of the video you begin to grasp the kind of really weird shit the game concept could allow you to do.

Apparently the basic idea came out of an experimental design called Narbacular Drop. One of the more interesting things about Narbacular Drop is that it arose out of DigiPen. Which, you'll remember, is a video game university.

Ow.

Perhaps the most appropriate headline ever.

That's...that's just sad. Like, torturously sad. At what point is Wal-Mart going to figure out that the only things it's good for are selling things to poor people at low enough prices that they're able to afford them on their Wal-Mart salary, and serving as a place for bored, upper-middle class white kids to go late at night in order to ride the Power Wheels and play with the bouncy plastic balls until they get kicked out.

Of dubious utility

Look, I'm as eager as the next guy to pounce on news that objective studies have found CEOs a) useless, and b) overvalued, but this study seems, from what I can tell, to not say anything at all about the actual deservedness of executive pay. At the very least you should be grouping companies by market cap, and frankly companies like Microsoft are in a league of their own and shouldn't really be compared against other companies in this respect. Microsoft shares have dropped by 20% in the last 6 months. So? That doesn't mean Microsoft is doing _badly_, per se. They're fucking huge. They still make more money than Google does in a day (I'm talking about revenues here, people...not imaginary, stock market, "we're going to buy Google's overvalued stock because we didn't learn a goddamn thing from the tech bubble" money). Do you really think you can get significant growth out of a company that already makes money on nearly every computer sold anywhere in the world? No. Frankly, you're doing well if you maintain your position in the market.

I'm sure CEOs _are_ largely overpaid. Their judgment is questionable, and company boards are both nepotistic and don't get objective guidance (I can't find that link about how firms that recommend CEO salary are often in a position to then get lucrative contracts from the CEO). But this study doesn't tell me anything useful.

There goes my retirement plan

Goddamn government red tape...what happened to good old fashioned entrepreneurialism?!

Just in case you were running low on reasons to despise Bush and the religious right

Here ya go!

(That's just fucking appalling...there's no greater sin in my book than providing purposefully inaccurate health information. Also: go Waxman! It's nice to see someone in government doing something actually useful!)

iPods don't fix everything

Turns out exercising still sucks even with an iPod.

I feel betrayed.

Wikipedia vindication

Proof from the field that Wikipedia's claims of accuracy are, in practice, horse shit.

Sweet real estate opportunity

Hey, want an island? It's undergone some, umm, minor use.

(Memepool article at the top)

My continued yuppification

I finally caved and bought a pretty new black 4GB iPod nano (one of the benefits of keeping only music you like rather than every piece of music you ever came across is that your library fits in under 2 GB). I found someone on Craigslist selling a new, unopened one for $200 (as opposed to the usual $250 the 4GB version usually is), so really, how could I pass that up? Especially with no tax.

I justified it to myself in two ways:

1. I realized I could fairly easy hook the thing up to my car stereo and thus have my entire music library in my car so that I don't have to suffer through the shit that passes for modern music radio, and
2. I'm less lazy about exercising if I have music. And I'm in danger of becoming fatass. So really, the iPod is an anti-fatass device. Wouldn't you pay $200 to not be a tub of lard?

Incidentally, I find myself really impressed with the iPod interface. I hadn't played with it much, but now I understand the hype. It's really easy to use the touch-spin wheel to go through songs even if you have a fuckload of them (which everyone these days does), and it makes the stuff you often want access to (like volume) available by a single touch. They have, effectively, only 6 controls on the thing, but you pretty much never feel limited.

Apple really gets their UIs right. Why is this so goddamn hard for Microsoft?

The state of our government

This is what we've been reduced to: a Republican President vetoing a bill signed by an overwhelmingly Repulican Congress.

On choosing to go to graduate school

I noticed this "Top 10 Reasons to go to Graduate School in the Modern World" thingy on Slashdot, and since my alternative is doing real work, I wanted to respond to it. I'll start by dealing with the points made individually:

1. You get to meet and work with people who are pretty clear about what they want.
   
   Utterly false. Most people in graduate school have no idea what they want. They're there because they couldn't think of anything better to do.
   
   
2. The rest of the world suddenly takes you more seriously.
   
   Only partially true. Yes, having letters after your name potentially makes people not immediately blow you off, but that's about it. It generally doesn't translate into more money or help you in any way when it comes to actually getting people to do stuff that involves resources or money. Moreover, we're in the midst of an anti-intellectual backlash, and in a lot of circles, having a PhD = "being out of touch with the real world." People holding this opinion are often referred to as "conservatives." (I'll resist the urge to digress into another rant here...I will say that, at the very least, the non PhDs have proved that they, too, have no concept of how the real world works. See Iraq.)
   
   
3. You can use graduate school as an ideal environment for beginning work on a startup.
   
   Horse puckey. Yahoo, Google, and Sun were given as examples of startups started by graduate students. Let me point out that 1) all of those were in the lead up to or in the midst of the dot-com era, and as such shouldn't be taken as general examples of, well, anything, and 2) I suspect those startups were started in part because their founders were fed up with grad school and wanted to do something "real."
   
   Most good startup ideas in tech don't require state of the art research. They just require applying known techniques in a clever way and presenting them in a compelling, useful-to-business light. If you want to do a startup, go do a startup. Grad school isn't "pre-startup" world. (An exception to this is biotech, where almost all novel research can end up being applicable to somebody, somewhere with a lot of VC funding).
   
   
4. You can use graduate school as a pivot to change your career.
   
   True insofar as you want to pivot towards something vaguely academic (i.e., either academia itself or an industrial research lab). Won't help you much elsewhere. Some people will, in fact, not hire you in lower-level technical positions because you'll suddenly be overqualified.
   
   
5. You get to pick your choice of work and your work hours.
   
   Ha! Not quite. More flexibility than a corporate job, perhaps, but come a paper deadline, your "choice" of hours will amount to choosing whether to sleep between 4 and 6 am or between 5 an 7 am.
   
   
6. You can get involved in projects that can actually impact the real world.
   
   Utter horse shit (most of the time). Research is about exploring "what-if's." There's a reason those are what-if's, and it's because they're ostensibly _not_ "actually-are's." Studies occasionally have impact (UWashington's spyware study, UCSD's Diebold security analysis, etc.), but most of the time the path from research to something that vaguely even touches reality is very long and very winding, and quite often doesn't even connect. This is one of the fundamental things you need to be at peace with before even considering a graduate degree. :)
   
   
7. You can get involved in projects that have absolutely no impact on the real world.
   
   There we go. Much better. This one I wholeheartedly agree with. Not having to deal with idiot business-folk is fan-fucking-tastic.
   
   
8. You can do things that you missed out on in your undergraduate school. It’s a second chance.
   
   No, it's not. It really isn't. If you're expecting this, you will be disappointed. Graduate school is a very, very different endeavor. Undergrad is about giving you a base of knowledge and a basic set of analytical tools. It's about breadth. It's also, in the US at least, an exposure to peers who come from wildly different backgrounds and have wildly different interests. Graduate school is about depth. You try to learn as much as you possibly can about a particular area, and you even try to push the boundaries of knowledge within that area. You are surrounded by other people who are interested in roughly the same thing you are, and those people have much more varied ages. They may not interact with you at all if they have families.
   
   
9. If you’re good at what you do, you can count on being invited to travel around the world to conferences and seminars.
   
   If you're good at what you do, _and_ you're lucky, your papers will get into prestigious conferences, and then you'll spend your time scrambling to find the money to actually attend said conference. Also, once you get there, you'll likely spend all your time in a windowless conference room being bored by most of the other work presented.
   
   (depressed yet? :))
   
   
10. You get to be the TA this time around.
    
    Alternatively: you _have_ to be a TA this time around. It's fucking hard work, man!
    

All that said, I'm really, really looking forward to grad school. You're surrounded by really bright people, not weighted down by business demands, PR departments, and assinine corporate policies. You can study whatever you want to, and you have the freedom to tell the rest of the world they're full of shit (just don't say that to your advisor). And to some degree, yes, you can just get up on a Wednesday and decide, "You know what? I don't fell like working today. Fuck it. I'm spending the day in front of the xbox." Now, that might mean you spend your weekend making up for that sloth. But hey, at least you can do it.

Basically, you just have to know why you're going and what to expect. If you do, it can be a fantastic experience.

Grrr.

How fucking stupid and brainwashed do you have to be to pull this sophomoric shit? What exactly was the thought process?

"Well, if I send them something that looks like anthrax, then they'll realize that they could get anthrax, and then they won't talk about the government, and then there won't be any more anthrax!"

Idiots.

Bye bye Bruthe!

Bruthe hath been thummarily dithmithed.

You had to see that coming.

Random me trivia: long, long ago, I went to Arena's soccer camp at UVA. I got the "most improved" award.

Yeah.

There's a reason I don't talk about that much...

Gays can't get married because straights are such big fuck-ups that they need to be bribed with marriage

Huh? Run that by me again?

You've got crabs!

Why is this a problem? Fish the fuckers! They're overpopulated, and they're delicious. I would think the solution is fairly obvious.

Poor India

Really not a good day for them...blown up bus, failed missile test, botched satellite launch...

Santorum

Aww...Santorum's having trouble being re-elected?

Ask me how bad I feel for him.

Ask me how much of a crock of shit his "I'm a moderate, really!" campaign is.

Ask me if I think he's a hypocrite and a douchebag.

Ask me if, as a founding member of the K-street Project along with his good buddy Tom DeLay, he's one of the most poisonous influences on Capitol Hill.

How the Japanese entertain themselves

Ever wondered how big a fish a cat can carry?

Not only are Republicans douchebags, they're hypocrites! Yay!

States rights is apparently only a useful principle when it doesn't interfere with your legislative agenda.

Quotes of jaded idealism

Was reading something that evoked several quotes from different sources to similar effect...thought I would jot them down:

We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

-- Hunter Thompson via Raoul Duke
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

...San Francisco and its ghosts. San Francisco and its frozen revolution. Once again a time in San Francisco, the city of all excesses and the wildest orgies -- the city, too, it should be said in passing, where, in one night, in a former garage at the intersection of Union and Fillmore, the literary generation was born that, from Kerouac to Lamantia, from Michale McClure to Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder, most transformed America, and thus the world, for half a century. Now this city has become a conservatory of audacity, a museum of successful liberations, a tomb for 300,000 activists, escapes from the merry apocalypse of the sixties -- the proof, again, that the time has come in America to choose between reality and commemoration, between the position of the living and that of the survivor.

-- Bernard-Henri Levy
American Vertigo

What I feel is a sense of betrayal by my species and by my culture -- that they lost their way and misled me, too, to a degree.

-- George Carlin, interview with Salon

Top 99 Most Desirable Women

Some of the orderings here are very weird. Kournikova as 99?! Please.

I gotta say, very few of the women really took my breath away. More often, the reaction was, "Eww." I bet they'd all look better with some less ridiculous clothing and hair. And some of them, frankly, need to _gain_ weight.

Indirect fame

In a NYT article on Google's infrastructure:

"Mr. Gates acknowledged that MapReduce was a significant technology, but he asserted that Microsoft was building its own parallel processing software, opening another front in the technological war between the two companies.

"They did MapReduce; we have this thing called Driad that's better," Mr. Gates said. "But they'll do one that's better."

Woo hoo! Dryad (they spelled it wrong) is a project started in my lab, and I was the one who named it! Wheeee!

A good idea from our government?!

I suspect this is the only piece of legislation sponsored by Coburn that I'll ever think is a good idea.

Google antitrust

Oh, the irony is delicious...

Real life pac-man

Brilliant prank. :)

Freedom of the press

Kind of sad that the American public has to be reminded why freedom of the press is a good thing.

Sandcastles

My sandcastles have clearly sucked.

World cup chances

I just realized...at 26, my prospects of playing in a world cup are really starting to dim.

Fuck.

Mmmmmmm hmmm!!!

"Girl, he craaaaazy! He a low-down dirty dawg!"

Knee-jerk Republicans

A nice op-ed on the ridiculous of the Republicans, and to some degree their critics, on the bank transaction surveillance.

Yet another personality meme

My personal DNA. From Lisa.

Unnatural

Okay, I just woke up. Please note the time.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Also, happy half birthday to me. Woo! Woo.

More Craigslist shenanigans

My most recent Craigslist posting:

-----

Hey...I'm moving to Seattle (back to Seattle, as it turns out) from California to start grad school at UW at the beginning of September, and I'm hoping there are some other souls wandering around the great Craigslist housing limbo who might be in a similar situation and either searching for housing themselves or have an imminently vacated or otherwise unoccupied room they're looking to fill.

I've browsed through most of the other entries on here, and I gotta be honest, people: weak. Very weak. You have managed to differentiate yourselves from the occupants of Riker's Island, Arcum Asylum, and the defendants of the war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Otherwise, I'd be hard-pressed to choose the 5-foot-two albino nursing student with a Smurf fetish from the six-foot-three Ukrainian baritone who secretly longs to pursue a career as a jockey amongst you. You can do better! You are unique! You are special! In both the good and the bad way...

As for me, my ideal roommate is:

- absolutely filthy
After all, haven't many important scientific discoveries been serendipitious? For all you know, that decomposing pizza box may well contain the cure for cancer. Others may call it a slovenly, slothful, and a negligent failure to maintain even basic third-world health standards, but you, my forward-thinking friend, call it iconoclast scientific inquiry!

- likes doing hard-drugs
If God hadn't wanted you to do intravenous drugs, he wouldn't have put the veins in your arm so close to the surface. Alcohol is for pussies, and when you pursue alternative perceptions of reality, you don't fuck around. If an enema full of methamphetamines and paint thinner is wrong, well then goddamnit you just don't want to be right.

- totally unreliable
You wake up every day striving to bring some excitement to my life. You understand that were you not to go missing for weeks at a time, I might take you for granted. And rent? Don't get you started. If I want to be The Man's bitch and pay my rent "on time" and in "US dollars," well, that's my decision, but you won't be tied down like that. You pay your rent when _you_ feel like it, and if I won't accept your frequently updated list of celebrities who are "fucking queer" as your contribution to supporting the apartment, that's just my problem.

- likes drama
You are an emotional time-bomb waiting to go off. Willing to fly off the handle at the most miniscule provocation, you ensure a healthy dialogue with your roommates by surrounding them in a warm, nurturing ambiance of passive-aggression. Was the beanie-baby with a fork stuck through its eye left in front of my bedroom door as revenge for forgetting to wash your favorite plate, or for failing to compliment you on the new Prada bag you got that's currently covering the final notice from your credit card company? I'll probably never know, and that's why living with you is such a unique and educational experience.


Anyway, drop me a line if you're interested in teaming up for housing (seriously...I do actually need to find a roommate; I'm not just being a wise-ass :). I'm more interested in finding good roommates than beholden to any particular area.

And if I'm not your cup of tea, good hunting. I'm sure you'll find the "cool, laid-back" roommate that's right for you. ;)

"Oxygen bars"

There's an oxygen bar in the hotel we're staying in in Frankfurt (airport Sheraton). I knew such things existed, but to actually see one just reminded me how fucking stupid people are. If you're not familiar with the phenomenon, these are bars where people can "purify" their bodies by sitting in a ridiculous-looking seats and breathing pure oxygen. Now, it would be one thing if we were in La Paz or some other god-forsaken remote mountain location that exists despite nature's best effort to make it inhospitable to human life. But we're not. We're at fucking sea level. I assure you, there's more than enough oxygen hanging around. And yet, there are some idiots out there who will pay. FOR AIR. Water I could almost understand given how much shit is in the drinking water these days, except for the minor detail that things like Desani are just tap water from some other polluted tap besides yours. Random useful fact: the water in Desani is exactly the same water used to make Coke and Sprite, bottled at exactly the same plant. Next time you're at the store, look at the relative prices of the two. Then feel retarded for ever even considering buying bottled water.

Anyway. Air. People are paying for air. Fucking AIR. Have I mentioned that people, supposedly in full control of their faculties, walk in, pull out their wallets, and say to the clerk, "Hi! Here's some money. Do you happen to have some extra air? I'd like to purchase some." And being the clever businessmen they are, the oxygen bar owners don't say, "Are you fucking retarded? You want _air_? Have you looked around, you fuckwit? You're surrounded by it!" Instead, they say, "Why yes! We happen to have just gotten a fresh shipment in! You're in luck!" And then the customers walk in, self-satisfied and...breathe.

Not only is there a bar in the hotel, but there's a little oxygen breather in the minibar. Now, normally, I wouldn't care as I don't touch the minibar anyway, and if they can get some idiot business traveller to actually pay six goddamn euros for air...I still can't believe it's fucking AAAAAIIIIIIRRRRRR!!!!!...more power to them, but in this case they idiocy and gullability of other people has caused an otherwise upscale hotel to put a fucking bomb in my minibar. Pure oxygen is flammable, boys and girls. One errant spark and yours truly would find himself splattered all over the roof of the Frankfurt flughafen train station.

And I would have been blown up by stupidity. And that's just not how I want to go. I want a dignified death, like having a heart attack during orgasm.

The Europeans like their nuclear power

My DNA felt all tingly as we went by.

A sea of orange

This is what it's like to go to a world cup match involving the Netherlands:

*slap*

Oh, grow the hell up. It's not MySpace's fault you're retarded.

Stephen Colbert is a genius

"Social...social..."

Earth sandwich!

If you were to take two pieces of bread and place them on exactly opposite ends of the earth, where would they have to go?

Man vs. Toad

The US is fighting insurgents in Iraq, and Australia...well, Australia has a slightly different battle on their hands...

Week of the ironic headline

As my mother commented, "Capitalism's dream of perfection!"

Civil liberties for everyone...but us

This has to be one of the more surreal controversies to have surfaced in a while...

The lesson

This op-ed just makes me all the more terrified of marriage and child-rearing.

Shockingly, arbitration isn't fair

I fucking hate those mandatory arbitration clauses. I hate more that the Supreme Court has ruled them enforcable. It's a goddamn blank check to put into every contract, "Oh, and no matter how badly we screw you, you're not allowed to sue us, ok?"

World cup schedule

...now that it's somewhat useless if you don't already have it. Nonetheless, the World Cup TV schedule in iCal format (right-click->Save Link As).

Brain...dying...

I tried to watch a few minutes of Access Hollywood today. Not really on purpose...I just kinda left the tv on, and it appeared.

They started talking about the supposed tiffs between Avril Lavigne and Hillary Duff, Martha Stewart and Donald Trump (who is, incidentally, a fucking useless, petty dick), etc. I was on my computer at the time, not even fully listening to it. And I could feel myself getting dumber. I mean _viscerally_...like, I could almost hear the brain cells screaming and then imploding.


"Today, Marth Stewart responded to Donald..." *BAM!!!*
"But yesterday, Avril fired back at..." AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!....*thwap!*

I quickly found Apocalypse Now Redux on Bravo, and I'm pretty sure my entire body relaxed. Don't ask me why watching about a homicidal maniac in the middle of a horrific war is more soothing, but it is.

Bad sports day

So, the US was fucking gyped in their game against Italy. I didn't see the second red card against the US, but the first was fucking bullshit. _At best_ it was a yellow. Certainly not a red. Contrast that against Italy's red card, which was one of the more deserved red cards I've ever seen. McBride's face was _drenched in blood_, for fuck's sake. I'm told that that same ref made a bunch of similarly questionable calls in the '98 world cup, and didn't participate in '02 for that reason. So now he's back. Hey, great.

Now Carolina is down 0-2 against Edmonton, but that has been their own goddamn fault. At the moment, they're being decimated by the Edmonton defense. They get literally slammed every time they step foot in the Edmonton half.

I think I shouldn't root for teams any more. It seems to be bad luck.

(incidentally, I'm now watching something like the 3rd Edmonton power play in about 10 minutes...oooh! Brawl!...bah...didn't last very long)

I am neglected

The results are in: men have it harder.

Democracy of knowledge

...is a bad idea, and I've said so before.

Republican legislators are fucking dicks

They really are assholes, you know that?

"Hi! My name is Nicholas Murphy!"

"I'm a hemophiliac!"

Gates vs. Jobs

Veeeerrry interesting article/commentary on Bill Gates versus Steve Jobs. Guess which one wins?

Live World Cup webcast

Take a look at TVUPlayer for a decent way to watch the world cup feed. It's peer-to-peer, so it should scale in the number of users connected quite nicely.

So far it's decent...it stutters occasionally, but watchable.

Idiots on MySpace

Really, how fucking retarded can you be?

Goddamn tectonic plates

A fucking earthquake woke me up. Motherfucker.

Something new to worry about

This one's an economic indicator I hadn't even heard of.

Google = Borg | Valdemort

I really like the evil superpower analogies.

Hey, wasn't a certain other company often compared to the Borg at some point?...

Chaperone

Great for girlfriends, too!

Seeking to prove you're an asshole

Okay, if there was any doubt before, Chavez is officially an asshole.

North Korea? Really? You're going to ally yourself with an insane dictator with nuclear ambitions just because he, too, doesn't like the US? I'm pretty sure David Koresh didn't like the US either...is he a good strategic ally? What about Hitler? Would he have been a good chum too?

Oh, and re: Facebook

Something else to consider when updating your profile.

Basically, remember the shit you put on the internet is public, and the people you don't want to find it can and will.

*cough*

Fucking China.

Something to consider next time you update your friendster/facebook/myspace profile

Big Brother is watching.

Outsourced CEOs

I love it. It's the ultimate in poetic justice. And not a bad idea, neither.

Top 5 Myths about America

Interesting set of statistics, at least.

Oh Coulter

You're so adorably crazy.

From the "God that's fucking creepy!" files

Ewww...

In other news

1. I'm an idiot and forgot to vote. Fortunately, I don't actually care that much about other people, so it's ok.
2. I also forgot to put my Netflix in the mail.
3. MSFT is at a new low! Hooray! (sigh...)

Cone Juggling

How exactly does one train for juggling in a cone?

Google Spreadsheets

...and this would be why Google scares Microsoft.

Redneck weather report

California Voter Update

If you care, I will be voting:

Prop 81 - Library construction and maintenance bond: Yes
Prop 82 - Universal pre-school paid for by 1.7% tax on $400k+ incomes: Oh hell yes.
(I'll miss you, California...your proposition system is retarded, but every so often you come out with a beautiful prop nonetheless...)

As for the offices...frankly, I'm pissed. I actually give a shit about elections, and I even have the time to do research on all these fucking candidates, and even _I_ can't be bothered to go research them. This is ridiculous. I have no fucking idea what differentiates all these different goddamn people, especially when like 7 of them are Democrats, nevermind the parties I've never heard of (Peace and Freedom?).

Look, folks. There's a reason the framers didn't create a direct democracy. Among other things, it's just basic logistical simplicity. I want to vote for one guy, or one party, and that's fucking it. Let me tell you what I believe in, and then _you_ go figure out how to get it done. In the time it would take to research the voting records and positions of 95-odd goddamn candidates, I might as well go do their fucking jobs for them.

For fuck's sake...

Booster for Dean

Ditto.

Dean is absolutely right to try to make inroads in solidly red territory. It's the only way to get the Democratic party out of the goddamn electoral quagmire they're in. Scraping together an ad hoc majority out of the 2006 elections without building any kind of base underneath it is just providing ammunition to Republicans in '08 and beyond.

Now if only they had any kind of compelling message besides, "We're not Republicans!...Usually..."

Basset bling

Basset Hound Rep-a-zent!!!!

Babies always tell the truth

Yeah...I know how she feels...

Is it mid-term elections already?

I hadn't noticed.

If only a) politicians weren't so goddamned transparent, and b) most of the population weren't retarded enough to take these pandering political pushes seriously.

Your daily dose of Carlinism

"Every Child Is Special: an empty and meaningless sentiment. What about every adult? Isn't every adult special? And if not, then at what age does a person go from being special to being not-so-special? And if every adult is also special, then that means all people are special and the idea has no meaning. This embarrassing sentiment is usually advanced to further some position that is either political or fund-raising in nature. It's similar to 'children are our future.' It's completely meaningless and is probably being used in some self-serving way." -- George Carlin

Hypocrisy, anyone?

Katie Couric on news:

"Addressing the annual convention of CBS affiliates, Couric predicted that the 'pretentious era' of the evening-news anchor is going to be a thing of the past."
...
"'Anyone who watches 'Today' knows that I've done more hard-hitting interviews than any evening news anchor,' she said."


So, when does that not pretentious stuff start, exactly?

(as an aside, I do at least give her credit for this even if it is just rhetoric: "Asked by Stahl why many viewers may have lost their trust in the media, Couric said she thinks that the media are 'held captive by spin,' choosing to repeat 'two separate spins' rather than search for the facts in a story." Of course, has she done anything about it? No. But at least her heart seems to be in the right place)

Disasters are funny

Lesson #1: Never trust a "self-taught" engineer.

City slogans

I was listening to a Talk of the Nation broadcast on city slogans, and I had to share a few of the best (proposed):

"Missouri Loves Company."
"Chicago: Where Voters Never Die."
"Oakland: It's Nicer Than You Think."
"New Jersey: You Got a Problem With That?"
"Oregon: You Know It's Summertime When the Rain Gets Warmer."
"Flagstaff: Come On Vacation, Leave On Probation."
"Naples (NY): A Drinking Town With a Fishing Problem."

When nerds get pissed off

How fucking sad is this?

Disturbing precedent

The first in a string of disappointing decisions by a newly-conservative Supreme Court, I fear...

Stupid ubiquitous name

I deeply resent the fact that this is the first link that comes up when you search for "Nicholas Murphy" on Google...

Perhaps the worst idea in history

You know, some things you really should be ashamed of.

Sigh

Why is it I know the guy is a hopeless nerd purely from his pronunciation of the word, "BUT-ton"?

If only they put as much effort into getting dates...

You know what?

Cancer cells are fuckers.

Wondering why I think the PS3 will be a disaster?

Here ya go!

Cane Toad video

A cute little computer-animated comedy about cane toads (big video download). I think my favorite part is mouthing the word, "Fuck!..."

The mindless privatization mantra

I didn't need the New York Times to tell me that Mitch Daniels was a Republican. The idiocy of the content of the op-ed on privatizing Indiana roads was enough to tell me that.

I find this kind of thing infuriating. Roads are a quintessentially public good that make no sense to privatize. None. Get that through your government-phobic heads, you idiots. If Daniels had taken even the most basic economics class, he would know that.

The fact that this is a stupid idea is so obvious that I find it difficult figuring out where to start explaining why. It's like trying to explain to someone why they shouldn't jab a serrated knife into someone's kidney.

First of all, it's a goddamn toll road. It's not that complicated to operate. The fact that Indiana can't make it work speaks more about the idiots in the Indiana legislature and red-state politics than it does about the fucking toll road. The biggest impediment to fiscal solvency is less government inefficiency and more an electorate that has been insulated against feeling the costs of public services, and a Republican party that fosters that ignorance in the name of "smaller government."

I guarantee you that if anyone had even bothered suggesting an initial investment in electronic toll passes or increasing toll charges to keep pace with inflation, the goddamn red state Republicans would have jumped on them as "tax increasers" and demanded they move aside for the "belt-tightening that the beaurocrats are too afraid to do."

So what happens instead? The state pays a foreign firm to do the rate increases for them, and they have to pay the profit margins of the company on _top_ of that. Moreover, toll regulation is no longer responsive to the electorate given the binding legal contract, so the private firm can do whatever the hell they want. And all they have to do to get out of the inflation cap on toll increases is convince a politician to remove the cap in the name of "reducing regulation and red tape." And Indiana no longer has the option of converting the road from a toll road back to a normal road when they figure out that tolling is a bad idea, and they come up with a better funding model.

And don't even get me started on the idea that selling public property to foreign firms is a solution to the trade deficit. That's like selling your house to your bookie and claiming that it solves your gambling problem.

Welcome to the modus operandi of the modern conservative.

The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

PCWorld's list of "The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time" had to be shared.

1. America Online (1989-2006)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
9. Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
10. dBASE IV (1988)
11. Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000)
12. PointCast (1996)
13. IBM PCjr. (1984)
14. Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995)
15. Iomega Zip Drive (1998)
16. Comet Cursor (1997)
17. Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)
18. IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)
19. OQO Model 1 (2004)
20. CueCat (2000)
21. Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)
22. Apple Pippin @World (1996)
23. Free PCs (1999)
24. DigiScents iSmell (2001)
25. Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)

Blog links

Added blog links at the bottom right.

A mammary-based theory of gender relations

Boobs: ingeniously designed glandular dispenser of nutritious and immune-bolstering infant formula, or insidious device of male enslavement and genital inflation?! Tonight, we investigate!

All of human history and endeavor, it seems, revolves centrally around the boob. As far back as the Renaissance, the entire art world, it seemed, was boob-obsessed. Sure...art historians will tell you that the Renaissance marked a departure from an obsession with the imagery of the divine and other-worldly to a more human-centric iconography, quintessentially represented by the study of the human form in art and sculpture. But we all know, I think, that the great Renaissance masters just wanted themselves some titties.

Oh yes, my friends...they were men, and as such, they were titty fiends. They may have explained it away as a high-minded artistic exploration, but after the long Dark Ages, we finally slipped out from under the thumb of the Church (who, incidentally, controlled the populace primarily by controlling social mores that dictated the rules of marrige and tata-access), and the artists wanted them some sweater-meat. After all, what better way to get nubile young women to pose for you than to tell them you need them for an enduring work of art? Not only that, you have a perfect excuse to turn away the fuglies!

Yes, my friends, our story starts in the Renaissance, but there it does not end. Why do you think Chris Columbus set out on a perilous voyage on rickety ships into the unknown (ships, I might add, that ostensibly had few if any chicks)? That "economic incentive to find alternate routes to the spice islands" argument is horse shit. I think we all know Mr. Columbus had gotten his hands on a National Geographic, and he wanted himself some Indian bazooms. Forehead-dot Indians or teepee Indians, it didn't so much matter...just so long as he found himself some unshirted knockers. And it was his discovery (possibly with the help of Norse explorers, who liked to carve women with big-ass wooden chesticles on the front of their boats, let's remember) that ultimately led to the creation of our great, sex-obsessed modern culture. And we have simple, eternal hoo-has to thank for it. I hope you're properly grateful.

Industrial Revolution? Guys wanted machines to do their work for them so they could spend more time at the titty bar. World War I? Archduke Ferdinand told a friend he was thinking of mandating breast reductions. World War II? A poorly crafted World War I armistice left Germans malnourished and German love melons dangerously small. (The Jewish thing? Jewish jubblies are notoriously resilient, even in the face of minimal caloric intake. Like the jews themselves, jewish butter bags hoard their fat. (ed. Yes, I'm going to hell)) It all comes back to those delicious prisoners of the playtex penitentiary.

So what is it, then, that makes us so obsessed with what are simply modified sweat glands? Why is it about decolletage that leaves us drooling...well, boobs? I don't know. It's wired very deep, whatever it is. All I know is I like me some gazongas, and judging by the existence of Vegas and the internet, I ain't alone.

Deluge!

Wow...I've gotten a fuckload of hits over the past two days. Where did y'all come from?

Update: Apparently this blog comes up high in the list of results for a Google search of "Franzibald," resulting from my quoting of a Penny Arcade news post. Alas, you will find no answers here on the origins of his douchebaggery. Have a look around while you're here, though. :)

...that said...

...there is such a thing as overstepping bounds.

It's one thing to talk about company business in your blog. It's another to talk about your own personal life and to have an institution you belong to hold you accountable for it. That's bullshit.

On blogging

I take severe issue with the tone of this piece by the NYT on blogging at work.

Look, boys and girls. You don't have an a priori right to blog, and it's painfully naive and infuriatingly arrogant of you to believe you do. Companies and organizations have PR people for a reason, and that reason is that public perception has a huge, huge effect on business, not to mention any legal liabilities you might incur. Airing a company's dirty laundry, while perhaps entertaining and cathartic for you and even good for potential consumers, is ostensibly _not_ in the company's interest. So why the fuck do you expect them to go along with it happily? No one is so valuable to a company so as to overshadow its legal and public relations efforts. _No one_. And while you might try to argue that, well, transparency in a company's operations is beneficial to society so, therefore, we should protect "dish" bloggers socially, legally, etc., all that will happen is that companies will much more carefully screen who they hire so as to make sure they get positive bloggers.

And guess what? That means suddenly everyone is evaluated in terms of their PR ability, because suddenly every employee is potentially a press contact. Trust me...you don't want that. You will suddenly find yourself _very_ carefully scrutinized. That would be a corporate world that curtailed privacy and personal freedom in a way you can't even imagine.

Point being, you would be doing more damage than good. So shut up, you arrogant, self-centered pricks. The next person who says something like, "It's like, 'This is who I am. Consequences are what they are. I'll go work for someone who doesn't have a problem with it.' " gets tarred, feathered, and set on fire. And then submerged in lemon juice. Then set on fire again, just because.

Which brings me to another thing, one that I don't remember whether I have mentioned before: it peeves me how bloody narcissistic and back-stabbing most blogging is. For me, it's quintessentially assholic to say something about somebody else in a blog that you wouldn't say to their face. In fact, it's even worse than talking about them behind their back because, instead of your comments being limited to a select few people, they are being broadcast across the entire internet for anyone and everyone to see. It's shitty. Moreover, a lot of blogging really is just journalling. And if you want to journal, keep a journal. There's no reason for it to be public. What kind of self-centered asshole thinks that the world wants to read about your feelings about your wardrobe? Or your breakfast?

What about this blog? Well, I hold out the hope that it is, in fact, amusing and entertaining and not at the expense of others or by means simply of gossip. Y'all seem to keep reading it. But probably that's more due to boredom than the quality of the posts here. :)

Oh, and as for the people who were surprised when their employers got upset with their blogging about internal company matters, well, frankly, how retarded are you? What kind of oblivious fucktard doesn't consider that? After all, it's no different than telling all of your friends a secret somebody shared with you in confidence.

"Oh, you didn't want me to tell everyone at work that it burns when you pee?? Well, shit, why didn't you tell me that?"

DVR in your living room: fine. DVR just outside your living room: gross violation of copyright?

The entertainment industry's suit against Cablevision is ridiculous. I can only hope that it gets properly thrown out.

The particular method of implementing a DVR shouldn't be relevent to copyright law. So long as the effect of the service is no different from having a DVR in your living room, there should be no legal difference.

The real issue, as the article points out, is that entertainment companies hate DVRs because they steal advertising revenue, and they want to be able to intercede in its further adoption.

Fuckers. Although, at the moment, people who don't have DVRs are essentially subsidizing those who do (because they actually have to watch the advertising that funds the content, whereas I don't). So maybe I should be cheering on the entertainment industry. Except not...they're just stalling for a way to milk new revenue out of DVR technology.

Confused yet? :)