Living in fear is no good to anyone.

Cheney's Levers:
http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20070410.html

There are some quite good songs in this week's Contrast Podcast.
One instance is Cinema du Lyon's "Thank you Mr. Spell," which has a bunch of good samples in it. I picked out some from "Phonebooth", "Blade Runner" and "Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory," though there are others I didn't know the provenance of.

Peep Dioramas (The Lloyd Dobler bunny is awesome)

Congress votes to place a limit on the time that we occupy the quagmire known as IraqNam. The Senate votes to place a limit on the time that we occupy the quagmire known as IraqNam. Both bills provide $100 BILLION in new money to feed, house, arm, train, replace, treat, armor, protect, and destroy the troops throughout 2007.

In response, the President threatened to veto the bill. According to the today's White House Website, he said, "Congress's failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. And others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to."

So, according to Bush, by passing legislation that funds the troops, we are actually causing the occupation to last longer BECAUSE WE PUT A LIMIT ON THE length OF THEIR OCCUPATION OF A FOREIGN COUNTRY?

Wrap your head around that one for a bit. Only within the delusional world inside the Bloatway would anyone even consider making such an illogical, nonsensical argument.

I don't like Kezelis' use of silly words, but that doesn't make him wrong. (All emphasis in the quote above is the author's.)


I won't pay for television service specifically because of crap like this:
When tacky trumps substance

Comics:
Something a little... different.
Anniversary Gift
Sometimes himynameisjamie is fuckedupawesome: http://filthhole.com/?p=50 (NSFP)

Movie night was very crowded. The fried chicken came out good and was all eaten quickly. There were a bunch of friends of Omni's that few others knew. Most of them didn't really seem to fit in or enjoy our crowd. Things didn't quiet down until about 0330 when most everyone went home.

Saturday, lalabob11 and I drove out on US-60 East and up into the Manzano Mountains. I had planned a route, but part of forest road 422 was still closed for the winter, so we ended up having to backtrack to the highway. I took some photos of a deep wash while we were exploring. The photos will be uploaded to Flickr eventually. We then went up NM-55 and NM-337 to Tijeras. From there we had planned on going up to Sandia crest and watching the sun set, but instead decided to go to Hobby Lobby and buy crafty things. I got a couple of sun-catchers to put together and bake and lalabob11 got some point protectors for double point knitting needles. Then we went to visit her sister and see the new baby (I hadn't seen him in person yet). After that we had dinner at Shogun Sushi which was relatively cheap and reasonably good. The scallop sushi wasn't the freshest I've had, but it had especially tasty seasoning, so it was the overall best scallop sushi I've had. On the way back to Socorro we stopped at Walmart to see if they had the pocket knife lalabob11's been wanting. They couldn't be bothered to have someone come to the back and open the cabinet to see if they had the knife, so we couldn't get one (jerks). I ended up getting a set of two cast iron pans that I've been thinking about that were ~$5 cheaper than at the Socorro Walmart. The pans are both about 10 inches in diameter, but one is deep (3 quarts) and the other is shallow. The cool thing is that they can be used as lids for each other.

Sunday I was around the house all day, doing random stuff. I did some dishes, made turkey mole, baked a rich chocolate cake, set up and used the Roomba Sage that I ordered that arrived the other day (it vacuums pretty well and is relatively quiet, but it's not good at edges) and I made the sun-catchers. One is a planet with rings and the other is two frogs sitting on a lily pad. It's hard to find these sorts of sun-catchers in stores, but the company that makes them has a website, so I think I can order more directly if I want.

If you cross the U.S.-Canada border with a computer, you may be uselessly accosted.

Many Mennonites are leaving Missouri due to new ID requirements.

Only on Tuesdays

Smith v. Smith (scroll down a bit) is an interesting case regarding child custody and the gender identity of the child

In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith spoke out against McCarthyism with this speech. There's good material to learn from there.

...the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.
--James Madison

GTA4 will be awesome. (HD wmv video)

Being a Yes and Michael Jackson fan, I think this violin performance is pretty awesome.

Puppies are dangerous.

This joke is terrible/great/the-right-word-doesn't-exist:
http://xkcd.com/c241.html

The new Catbank shirt is awesome.

I used the word awesome a bunch up there. I guess it's just awesome.

This paper on the law of confidentiality looks interesting.

This quiz is kinda lame but kinda ok:
( Polyamory Quiz )

Poll #951893 The End Times
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

Which side would you be on?

The "War" on Women

There is movie night tomorrow. I'm going to make green carne adovada. I don't know how it will come out as I've never tried making something quite like this, but it should be tasty even if it is totally "wrong". I'll have tortillas, cheese, and some rice to go along with it.

The other day chamewco posted about poetry. I don't have exactly the same "block" he talks about, but I often don't notice poetry and lyrics. With songs, for instance, I usually don't hear the words until at least the third time I've heard the song. The sounds are much more important to me than whatever the words may be saying. If the song sounds bad to me, I won't care about the lyrics.

I found a fun comic I'd never seen before, ( The Warehouse )

This is an interesting bit of code I encountered today. It's both straightforward and complicated at the same time.

while((bFirst ? 
       FProcess32First(hSnapShot, &processInfo) : 
       FProcess32Next(hSnapShot, &processInfo)))

"The report isn't specific on this last point, but it's clearly present in the subtext. Pedophiles are writing messages to your kids using their dicks."

It's unusual for me to wake up on my own at 0500, but I did. The dream about killing very large, three-winged, kitten-torsoed insects on the back patio of my parent's house, while it still had the red stairs and not the second deck, with Brian T, by crushing them under milk-cartons full of sand might have helped wake me. Whatever. I'm at work early. Whooo...

This is interesting (read the whole front page or you won't get it):
http://www.wa-doma.org/
A friend of mine described it like this: "It's tricky, because it SOUNDS like one of those 'OMG TEH FAGZ SHULD DIE' laws, but it's a cleverly crafted bit of legislation."

Macro-scale power distribution failures explained.



Panel 3 is very "important".

I had Indian Cooking Class for the first time last night. There will be at least 3 more classes. I'll post all of the recipes we make.

Dahi-voda (donuts of dal dough, served with a yogurt sauce):
( Dahi-voda Recipe )

Mango Lassi:
( Mango Lassi Recipe )

Last Saturday, I drove the jeep to Albuquerque with lalabob11. We didn't drive on I-25 at all. We took dirt roads all the way from Socorro to US-60 between the Blue Springs and Mountainair and then up various back highways until we got to the cement factory on I-40. It took us 7 hours to get up there, but was fun, and that was the point. It'll be a much more fun drive in the summer, with the top down.

On Sunday, houdini_cs and niap_si_efil came over and we did some maintenance stuff to houdini_cs's WRX, installed his front strut brace and also put the air compressor in my Jeep. Now I can air-down and air-up my tires out in the middle of nowhere if I need to. :)

I've taken the first step to deal with my sleep apnea: I have an appointment with my GP tomorrow afternoon so I can get a referral to have a sleep study done. Wheee.

I pretty much back this position:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news2/2007/01/time_to_remove-print.html

"They helped us load our van," Kutz said. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters.

The undercover buyers received phone calls from the Defense Department asking why they had no Social Security number or credit history, but they deflected the questions by presenting a phony utility bill and claiming to be an identity theft victim.

Elementary teacher Derek Porter witnessed 15 different car collision on icy roads outside his Portland apartment Tuesday morning and caught several on home video.

niap_si_efil posted this the other day:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040405fa_fact?040405fa_fact
It's a really interesting article about average human heights over time and why the U.S. height average isn't going up.

This service looks neat, but is only available in the Seattle area right now. There might be something similar out here in NM, but probably not in Socorro.

Webcomics: Lunchbox Funnies

I've met this cat:
http://www.stuffonmycat.com/index.php?itemid=2904
It's milkmandan's cat Aleph.

http://natazilla.livejournal.com/171028.html

Because the movie is ~3 hours long, the movie will start promptly at 8 p.m. tonight.

This is awesome:
( The wind )

This is even more awesome, but in a very different way:
President Bush -- quite frankly to general surprise -- has ordered that at that moment all classified records more than 25 years old and of historical value "shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed."
I'd be even happier if the cutoff number of years was lower, like 15 or even 5 years, but 25 ain't bad.

There will be a movie night tomorrow (Dec 22), but not one next Friday (Dec 29th). We will be watching Terry Pratchett's Hogfather tomorrow, assuming I can get it to play on my DVD player.

"Christmas makes things sadder and strengthens the cheap plastic crap industry. It's supposed to be about Jesus, and if it truly was, I'm sure I'd have a problem with that too."

Of all the tragic aspects of this national disaster, this is worst: The people who have been catastrophically wrong about everything are still in charge. And a year from now, when things are even worse in Iraq, we can be sure the neoconservatives will still be demanding that yet more American soldiers die so that Kagan and his ilk can continue to live out their increasingly destructive geopolitical fantasies.

Bush's actions don't border on criminal. They are criminal. He's a lunatic with keys to the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world, a madman with heavy artillery, a nutcase with military might.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

"What If All the Ice Melts?" Myths and Realities

Fork Art

Furries, cute-junkies and potheads will like this safe-for-work animation:
http://www.machwolf.net/flash/puppies.swf

There will be a movie night tomorrow. I'm not going to make dinner, but I will obtain some manner of food for general consumption.
( Very Silly 12 Days Meme )



flemco and takhisis, the authors of Two Lumps, put up a crazy Christmas tree.

The cuteness is almost overpowering:
http://www.silentkimbly.com/

George W. Bush: A dangerous, cornered, rabid animal
Bush cornered himself in an Oval Office
Some of the comments to the first article are insightful.

I has snow. and other cats.
Death, Kitty and the Fat Man

At very least, baronj and omnipaul will like this:
http://xkcd.com/c123.html

Sesame Street Clips:
Making Crayons
Lost Boy

Silly Butt Cookies

( Hammer Time )

The LJ update page is totally different from yesterday. I'm not sure if I like it. I wonder if it still works on my widget.

At some point, someone somewhere will have to stop talking about what we should do in Iraq and, instead, just do it.
While the politicians, pundits and experts pondered the release Wednesday of the Iraq Study Group's long-awaited report, 11 more American soldiers died in that stupid war launched by a mentally-ill President under false pretenses.

A boots-on-the-ground look at the Iraq war
Make sure to read comments.

( Lighthouse )

Penis (not the same one scoffeepie posted).

Legend of the Vampicorn

The MPAA are criminals, but most of us knew that.
"Remember pretexting? It's the cute name given to...well...fraud. It's when you call someone and pretend to be someone else, in order to get information. Or when you go online and pretend to be someone else, in order to get something."

Separating Data Ownership and Device Ownership
An alternative for when copyright fails.

I still don't like the fascist overtones, but this is far preferable to me than the various anti-smoking ordinances cities have passed (regulating the restaurant is preferable to regulating the patrons of the restaurant).
New York becomes first U.S. city to ban trans fats
NYC health board bans trans fats at restaurants

Safe for work spoof educational videos

superhappy failed at making me not want to read xkcd.
Perception: http://xkcd.com/c32.html
Sister: http://xkcd.com/c49.html

Ages 5+

lamasong bought one of these for milkmandan_rss for his birthday. It looks pretty cool.
http://bigcrazystore.com/pro806390.html

Need to spice up your sex life? Roleplay as George W. Bush fucking America

Notes On A Fridge [On a Spaceship] (Serenity to be specific)

( Read more... )

I meant to post this last Wednesday. Then on Thursday I realised I hadn't posted it yet, so I added to it and promptly forgot to post it again. The same happened Friday. Today, I haven't added anything to it other than this intro, but I'm actually remembering to post it now.

Rather than going to Congress and trying to negotiate changes to the law that regulates such activities, the administration simply grabbed that authority for itself, saying, in effect, "Trust us: if you knew what we know about the threat, you'd be perfectly happy to have us do what we're doing." In other areas, like the holding of prisoners in Guantanamo and interrogation methods used there and in the Middle East, one can only quote Moynihan on an earlier era: "As fears of Communist conspiracies and German subversion mounted, it was the U.S. government's conduct that approached the illegal.

Both political parties consider truth an expendable commodity in the pursuit of power. Neither party gives a damn about what's best for the country because the overriding consideration is always what's best for the party.

Need an election rigged?
http://www.fixavote.com/





Paint-spolsion commercial
Behind the Scenes commercial

Can't sleep? (totally safe for everywhere)
http://allenec.livejournal.com/93780.html

I got support points. Wheee!
http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=650251
I'm not really into doing the support thing, but I do use some the more complex mobile features, so I answer questions when I can. This is the first support request where my answer was unscreened and the user closed the request, awarding me the points. The only other unscreened answer I have is awaiting close. The user may ask another question instead of closing the request though.

I've made two new icons recently:

   

This comic is silly:

I don't often read Wonkette, but this one about the Iran War (yes, Iran) is particularly interesting:
http://wonkette.com/politics/iran/war-all-the-time-204928.php

I sent Ronald L. Rivest an email today and had to deal with his spam filter:
http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/rsf/
It looks interesting, though I don't think it would easily work for me. I would definitely like to see the code whenever he releases it.

"Wombat Land" is a cool shirt:

I'm trying to remember where these (or very similar) lyrics are from:
"...gonna have a party, have a real good time."
They were used in a recent song, but they're also from an older (60s, 70s or 80s) song. I wasn't able to find anything useful with Google other than another group of people trying to find the older song. I poked some of the other search engines, but they didn't help either. I'm hoping someone out there might know what song it is.

Issues:</a>
Sky Marshals Name Innocents to Meet Quota:

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.
"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.

Random Entertainment:
The Fairy of Actual Nickels:
http://wigu.com/overcompensating/2005/03/fairy-of-actual-nickels.html

Monty Python:
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/323

Just for Laughs Gags - "Protester Leader" video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NFFbmDkDV_c

While My Guitar Gently Weeps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8oxlPoZNbU

wolf359nmt will love this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0neAHeBc_Zc

Personal stuff:

Does anyone know/know of any NM attorneys experienced with poly and/or gay partnership legal issues?

There is a movie night tomorrow. lalabobo11 already picked the movie we'll watch, but I forget what it is called; it's something with Angelina Jolie that was made after Hackers but before she was really famous. We'll be making empanadas for dinner. Some will be spicy beef, some will be mild beef, a few will be mild apricot and a very small number will be spicy apricot. People bringing food to share is always welcome too.

I bought plane tickets and reserved a rental car for my trip to WA next month. I'll be flying in on August 24th and leaving on September 2nd. I've got a hotel reserved for Aug 24th through Aug 29th checkout. I'll figure out the other nights as the time gets closer (I have a bunch of friends in the area that I can probably stay with and some of them have already been contacted). The days I have the hotel for are the days I'll be busy with Penny Arcade Expo. The rest of my time up there is there for me to visit with people and do some touristy things.

Other stuff:

According to the IRS, in 2001 (the most recent year examined) the government lost more than $340 billion in uncollected taxes. This is money that is actually owed to the federal government — not money that taxpayers have been able to legally avoid paying through creative accounting or the clever use of loopholes. This is a substantial sum. It is approximately 20 times what the federal government spends on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) each year, the main welfare program for poor families. It is 55 times what the federal government spends on Head Start and almost 100 times annual foreign aid spending for Sub-Saharan Africa. Alternatively, the taxes that go unpaid each year are 30 percent of what the federal government actually collects in income taxes (personal and corporate). This means that if the federal government could find a way to get tax evaders to pay their bills, then tax rates could be reduced for everyone by 25 percent, and the federal government would have the same amount of money.

Download Muppet Music! They've got lots of stuff, including almost all of the music from Fraggle Rock.

Also somewhat related to Muppets, a company is selling plush sex dolls that look kinda like Muppets with large breasts:
http://www.teddy-babes.com/ (NSFW)

Drawings of stereotypical fan convention attendees (specifically ComicCon):
http://storyboredom.blogspot.com/
Some of the drawings and descriptions are really accurate to the sorts of people I often have to deal with at cons.

I haven't tried it yet, but this thing is supposed to be able to figure out what song you're thinking of from you tapping the vocal melody with your space bar:
http://www.songtapper.com/s/tappingmain.bin
If it works, it would be useful if you need to find a song but can't remember anything about it but a few lyrics.

Silly:
Amazing, Margaret
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/308
My penis hurts after a big session
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/245
Bug Message
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/226
I can propose you the optimum select software
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/164
Your lover will jump for joy when you do this!
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/107
Women change your life
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/101
Today is the best day
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/82

Cute and Silly:
A shrine to Hello Shiva Kitty
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/450291.html

Cute:
Young elephant trunk comin' at ya
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/459649.html
Opossum ride
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/462342.html

A website that does it's best to post the full text of all of Bush's signing statements:
http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/TOCindex.htm

An article about signing statements and scandal that I somehow missed:
The Case of the Missing $21 Billion
Who's Following the Iraq Money?
By DAVE LINDORFF
Ths signing statements limiting the Inspector General from investigating:
http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/pressignstate.htm#2003-15
http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/pressignstate.htm#2004-14

Losing the War on Terror:

The Center/Foreign Policy team divined a consensus among top experts about terrorism and U.S. national security: "A vast majority think that the world today is more dangerous for the American people. Fewer than two in 10 believe the United States is winning the war on terror. More than eight in 10 believe we are likely to face a terrorist attack on the scale of September 11 within the next 10 years. Over half list Islamic animosity and the Iraq war as the main reasons why the world is becoming more dangerous. The experts put nuclear weapons and materials as the top threat, followed closely by weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a whole and then terrorism. Only 4 percent rank Iran as the greatest threat."

Defining Drugs:

One measure of a drug's dangerousness is the gap between the typical effective dose and the typical fatal dose. By this measure alcohol, which is fatal at a dose about ten times greater than that that produces the initial desired effect in users, is about as dangerous as cocaine and heroin, and vastly more dangerous than LSD or marijuana.

Ben Goldacre writes some pretty good, often humorous, science columns:

Imagine a two-headed monster called "The Nutrition Society". On the one hand, they are a respectable and august research body, representing some of the sharpest academics in the country, doing research work on nutrition in both people and laboratories, publishing academic journals, and so on. That's science. On the other hand, they "run" a "register" that I suspect consists mostly of those commercial "nutritionists" who make good money peddling lifestyle advice to the public. That's inviting trouble. I am trouble.

Cute, Silly: Of Mouse and Toad

I saw and purchased some silly/appropriate shirts for eparchos, greyvorfeed, two_pi_r and myself (not all the same shirt design). I need one of them in time to wear on August 18th; I expect they will all arrive much sooner than that though.

I sent a comment to Amazon today:

I am not a member of Amazon Prime. Every time I place an order, the checkout page has a bunch of ads on it telling me to become a member. I find the ads annoying. I haven't joined already because the service is not worth it to me. I get free super-saver shipping on nearly all of the orders I place. I see no need to pay for an Amazon Prime membership to get items shipped faster for "free" when I already get items shipped free and a faster arrival is useless to me. It would be nice if you could give each user an option like "I am not interested in Amazon Prime; stop showing ads for it at checkout." somewhere in their account settings.

I wonder what their reaction will be.

The pre-reg lines were heavy/crazy from before 0700 to about 1600. It should be similar tomorrow. We had a few small issues throughout the day but generally everything was chill. I bought a few gifts for some people and have an idea for another gift for someone (assuming I get her shirt size). I will probably buy a Kiki's Delivery Service cel tomorrow. The cel dealer has a bunch of new stuff since Nan Desu Kon last fall, but none of it really interests me. I chatted with superhappy for a while and also picked up my copies of his book.

Therel (my boss at the con) took Dustin (one of the other Troubleshooters) and I out to dinner at a really good, hole-in-the-wall chinese place. We had duck soup and a duck with mixed meats (pork, squid, beef) and vegetables entree, beef with garlic sauce and mu shu shrimp.

Tomorrow I'll be up at 0600 again so I can be down at the lines by 0700. Hopefully there are fewer people so things are slightly less crazy. Sometime during the day I plan on having my photo taken with Peter Mayhew. I should also see angryvirginrec tomorrow.

This heavily annotated article goes into some depth on the various issues relating to election fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election:
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Jaron Lanier on the hazards of online collectivism:

We now are reading what a collectivity algorithm derives from what other collectivity algorithms derived from what collectives chose from what a population of mostly amateur writers wrote anonymously.

The Contrast Podcast is a collaboration of bloggers all over, commenting on mainly new music, though older stuff is usually allowed. Each podcast has a theme uniting the songs people choose. The current podcast has the theme "Road Trip." It also has a contribution from me (I need to spend more time working on the intro the next time I submit something). Download the mp3 here.

While I'm on the topic of music, My Old Kentucky Blog has a post up about Murder By Death. They're a hard band to classify, but I guess rockabilly comes close. It's good stuff.

What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? (video)

MediumLarge is often quite silly:


A comic comparing the X-Men comic books with the new movie.

I read about the Supreme Court decision the other day but there wasn't a straightforward enough article to link to. No there is:

Stephen Kohn, chairman of National Whistleblower Center, said, "The ruling is a victory for every crooked politician in the United States." A person who burns a U.S. flag is protected from retaliation; a public employee who exposes waste, fraud and corruption can be fired, he said.

Everybody loves singing karaoke to Journey (Family Guy clip).

Margot & The Nuclear So and So's - "Quiet As A Mouse"
The song isn't great, but the video is a cool style of animation I haven't seen before.

A-Kon is in two weeks and the travel plans are pretty well figured out. This year I have a camera, so some of the silly people will have their souls sucked by me. Also my plans for the PAX trip in August are slowly coming together (Yay, I'll get to spend some in-real-life time with ladymarguerite (who's probably going to attend PAX) and the WA people in addition to working the most fun con I've been to).

Does anyone want to go down to El Paso and see Devo on August 17th?

The Optigan is a weird "instrument."

Do any of you have any Kate Bush albums I can borrow?

Preventing Youth pregnancy and STDs
The above link is preaching to the choir, but maybe we can find a way to affect change in the outside world with some of the info from first (or at least second) sources:
"Pierre-Andre Michaud, chief of the Multidisciplinary Unit for Adolescent Health at the University of Lausanne Hospital in Switzerland and a leading researcher in European teen sexuality, dismisses the idea--widely held in the United States--that sex constitutes risky behavior for teens."

It appears a group has started what appears to be a racing club on the runway that was turned into the Matrix:Reloaded freeway since I last looked.

"Another year passes and once again I face a terrible truth..."

This is silly and wrong: Shining

Guy jumping from roof to roof (thanks aisa0)

I wrote most of this post on Friday and kept being busy with other things and didn't post it until now.

I hadn't uploaded photos to Flickr in a while. Here are some of the new ones:
Photos of NMT 2006 Graduation.
Photos of redsekhmet's wedding

I was going up to Albuquerque every weekend for over a month a few weeks ago. I was having fun, but going crazy and being frustrated with not getting any of my projects done. I need some time without traveling. This particular weekend there's no way I could have gone up because I had already bought food for Friday, I hosted a graduation breakfast party on Saturday, I went to Commencement, and king_luddite had a graduation party Saturday evening. Overall, I need to be selfish/lazy for a while to stay sane, so I won't be going up to Abq for a while.

Detailed maps of religious adherents by county in the U.S.

Anti-abortion zealots target birth control

A group of ~80 people dress up similarly to Best Buy employees and go into a NYC Best Buy. It's silly in places and also shows us how people react to uniforms as authority.

Q. What could a boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you? A. Way too much
A simple airline stub, picked out of a bin near Heathrow, led Steve Boggan to investigate a shocking breach of security

Tyson Slocum on gas prices, Charlie Savage on Bush's signing statements. It's an episode of FAIR's CounterSpin. The interview with Slocum gives some excellent information about the price gouging of the oil monopoly.

Topato Breakfast!

There isn't an organized Movie Night tomorrow. I won't be making a big dinner for everyone. People are welcome to show up and hang out if they want though. I'll be at the Taiko PAS thing, but others should be home then. Once that's over, I'll be home.

This is a webcomic I just found that's pretty silly:
http://www.wigu.com/overcompensating/

The past few days have been some of my busiest at work. Having a lot of things to work on and having clear goals for them is refreshing (and not the usual situation for me). I don't think it'll keep up though, meaning that work will probably be trudging again soon. The alpha-version product we are shipping tomorrow for a few customers to evaluate is really cool/easy to use and does some really complicated ray-tracing stuff in near-real-time (millions of rays in a few microseconds). I'm not supposed to talk about it in more detail (trade-secret stuff), so I'll stop here.

The other day, a friend was talking about love. She ended her post with a question. I left this in reply:

How do you know?
For me, it's how I feel when I haven't been able to talk to her or hold her in over ~18 hours. She fills a hole I didn't even know was there before and now it hurts when it's empty. I'm the happiest I've ever been and it's mostly due to our relationship.

HerbieHancock-Rockit segues really well into TheHumanLeague-Don'tYouWantMe.

This will tell you how to make your LJ's calendar not show how many times you posted in a day:
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_nifty/142451.html

Political Cartoons:
"Rugged individualism is strongest when we obey"
Banana Republicans

tokyoblog is a roughly true-to-life webcomic about a white guy living in Tokyo.

Walter Cronkite wrote an essay about how "the war on drugs is a failure."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/walter-cronkite/telling-the-truth-about-t_b_16605.html

http://googlesightseeing.com/2006/03/02/flying-spaghetti-monster/

I got the IE css thing to work. I just had to add the below code snip to my pages. ieonly.css has the size overrides so the widths are correct. Non-IE browsers see it as a comment while IE parses the content between the if and endif.

<!--[if IE]>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.network-science.net/jarrod/ieonly.css" />
<![endif]-->

The reference for this IE feature is here.

I haven't gotten my trip report done yet, but it's started and I hope to finish it tonight. David Berlind wrote a good summary of the camp from his point of view as an organizer: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2621

I found a really good web comic, but it has a business model I have problems with. I don't know if I'll pay to keep reading it.
http://www.girlamatic.com/toc.php?name=mell

WTF: TSS

"Abraham Lincoln tried to pole vault
onto Optimus Prime, but they collided in the air
then they both got hit by a Care Bear Stare"
That is just one lyric from The Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny by LemonDemon. They're quite funny and have a bunch of mp3's you can download on their site.

This is the...uh...most fucked up of the Bateman365 so far:
http://www.batemania.com/bateman365/day168.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/26/192843/363

Filibuster Alito

by John Kerry
Thu Jan 26, 2006 at 05:28:43 PM PDT

Do I support a filibuster? The answer is yes.

Yesterday Senator Kennedy and I spoke with our colleagues about it. I don't have a shred of doubt in my opposition to Sam Alto's nomination. I know Senator Kennedy does not either. He has truly been a great leader in the effort to oppose Judge Alito.

I spent a lot of time over the last years thinking about the Supreme Court and who America needs on the highest court in the land. So I don't hesitate a minute in saying that Sam Alito is not that person. His entire legal career shows that, if confirmed, he will take America backwards. People can say all they want that "elections have consequences." Trust me, more than anyone I understand that. But that seems like an awfully convoluted rationale for me to stay silent about Judge Alito's nomination.

...

Here's the bottom line though and I'll just be blunt and direct about it. It takes more than one or two people to filibuster. It's not "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." I'm doing what I can, Senator Kennedy is doing what he can, but if, like me, you want to stop Judge Alito from becoming Justice Alito, we can't just preach to our own choir. We need even more of your advocacy.

Send a fax to some Senators showing your support for a Filibuster to block Alito:
http://www.savethecourt.org/AlitoFilibuster

What numbers aren't saying about the economy most live in.

Kazu Kibuishi posted a "how to" of sorts for Copper:


This is useful/informative:
http://www.uscourts.gov/courtlinks/

This is very... uhh...
SUPER RUCKY HAPPY FUNTIME FAMIRY: YOTSUBATO!

I had fun at sacra_imbri's birthday party, even though I was being weird and out-of-it. I came home and found this sitting on the table. The actual printed area is about 16 inches wide. I need to go see Todd and get it framed now. I'm going to try to sleep. Sleep was weird last night and for the past few days. I seem to roll around a lot and wake up early. Maybe it will be better if I go to bed earlier.

I started what I'm calling a "Personal Unemployment Plan" today. The goal is to eventually have 12 12-month CDs each maturing 1 month apart, so I have a 12 month buffer to find a job when/if I have to leave this one. The CDs are starting at $1000 which is more than I need to live on per month right now. I bought a 6-month, 9-month and 12-month today which will auto-renew upon maturity as 12-month. They get 3.75, 4.00 and 4.20 APY respectively, but those values should be higher next term. ING Direct is awesome. If you want to get an account, let me know (if I refer people, we both get free money as an incentive).

Last night I concluded email-ordering arrangements with an Engrish speaking girl in Japan for a really cool gift for lalabob11's birthday (Dec 7). She said it will ship on Monday and should arrive in 1 to 3 weeks, assuming customs doesn't hold it up. It was more expensive than the ones you can get here in the US, but they don't make exactly the same ones here. I'm not gonna tell anyone what it is until she gets it, so don't ask.

two_pi_r's Capitalist-Gift-Giving Day gift arrived yesterday, even though I only ordered it on Tuesday and had it shipped FedEx Ground (I won't tell you what it is either). I have ~6 weeks to devise some complicated wrapping for him to dig through. Mwa ha ha ha ha...

My family does a complicated gift-exchange thing, so lalabob11 and I won't actually be buying CGGD gifts for each other, but for random (to be determined on Dec 24th) family members of mine and we will be getting similarly random gifts from them.

I'm in a really good mood today and I don't know why. I'm bubbly like I was the day before I left for PAX. I keep doing the Wallace's "Cracking toast, Grommit!" thing with my fingers. I don't know why I feel like this, but it's nice.

For WoW cheaters or people interested in computer security:
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/34

The current issue of EFFector has too many good articles for me to link to them individually. Check it out:
http://www.eff.org/effector/

Liz Lawley (mamamusingsatom) has an 11 year old son named Lane. Lane recently started a blog (http://www.isowantone.com) reviewing products aimed at his age group. If you might be buying things for tweens, you should check it out. Here's the syndication: isowantone.

Sometimes, scottbateman is extra-awesome:


The Silent Hill Laundromat:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/riotclitshave/213812.html

My mindmap updated:

( Click here to see! )

Armin Van Buren is at Crowbar in NYC tonight. He's an excellent trance DJ. To bad I'm too far away to go.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/sobekneferu/55007.html

This icon is wonderful:


A comic:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/normallife/56777.html
A wonderful parody of said comic:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/himynameisjamie/283778.html

Nintendo is extra weird. It might make playing a FPS not feel boring and tedious to me though.
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-23521-2567-x-x-x&tag=gs_hp_flashtop_bg

You may have seen this already: "Katrina, The Gathering"
http://onlinegamers.org/ktg/

I have too many damn lj friends and feeds. I have over 1000 posts left to skim/read to catch up from going away this weekend.

I really like my new icon a lot.

I bought a pedometer today. I'm leaving for NDK tonight at ~0000. I'll blog about it while I'm there. The pedometer is mainly for use at cons, so I can figure out roughly how much I walk/run around during them. Number of steps will be included in at least some of the posts.

Charities are for suckers:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20050914/cm_ucru/charitiesareforsuckers
I agree with this article fully.

School Pledge Is Unconstitutional (W00T!!!):
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050914/ap_on_re_us/pledge_of_allegiance

Speech that facilitates crime:
http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/facilitating.pdf

I've often said the worst decision ever made by the federal government was to attack the Confederacy after they seceded. This is along a similar vein:
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012341.html

Add a Google BlogSearch to your userinfo or webpage:

< form method="get" action="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch">
< input type="text" name="as_q" size="31" maxlength="255" value="" />
< input type="hidden" name="bl_url" value="http://www.livejournal.com/users/jaberwockynmt" />
< input type="submit" name="btnG" value="Google Search This LJ" />
< /form>

Jennifer Granick now has a regular column in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68850,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

I made some icons after work today:

From Girly:


From VG Cats:


From Shaw Island:

Pre-Katrina FEMA Order (read both, in order):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html
http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/637/1/

Bush eliminated the minimum wage in most of the areas effected by Katrina:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050908-5.html

I don't know what it is, but it's very happy:


The September 5th DigitalStrips show has a really good interview with Gabe and Tycho. They talk about how they run their business and a lot about PAX and Child's Play organization. You can download an mp3 of the show here:
http://www.digitalstrips.com/show.html

Health Care:
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050829fa_fact

It reads like a conspiracy theory, but it is one, so I guess it should:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/camps.html

Mu-Fi
http://andykessler.com/wsj_philadelfi.html

Bateman has been complaining that his sites don't get enough traffic.
http://www.batemania.com/sketchbook/0078.html

This meme was one of the most interesting ones I've ever done.
( LJ Interests Meme )

White House Press Briefing: Angry Reporters Hit McClellan Hard on Hurricane, Ask if Heads Will Roll
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001055403

Why the Federal Government Should Watch PBS
http://www.drinkatwork.com/2005/09/why-federal-government-should-watch.html

I'm about to complete my objective:
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/002569.html

Baby Hedgehogs for sale in Seattle:
http://animal-talk.com/page49.html

I loved watching this show when I was little ("No Whammies! No Whammies!"):
http://www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/Press_Your_Luck/

Anti-Anxiety Drugs:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2005-09-07

I just met the guys who wrote Kingdom of Loathing. They had cool shirts. Mr. Skullhead had Sabertooth Lime shirt (black and white on green cloth) and Jick had the Sword/Martini Adventurer (white on dark grey). They gave me some fake tatoos of icons from the game.

"I'm an asshole. I never actually made any."
-Jick, talking about the participation certificates that were paid for and never received by many players (including me).

More about Venezuela:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=8572

Political animation:
http://www.batemania.com/bateman365/day009.html

Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/opinion/23tue3.html?ex=1125115200&en=27bf39d51eef9998&ei=5070

I'm surprised I missed this. It's the sort of silliness that I usually enjoy and hear a lot about. I need to make an lj icon of FSM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Bother the TSA:
https://secure.eff.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=ADV_secureflight&JServSessionIdr006=qm2e4marb1.app8a

Crack Panda:
http://www.batemania.com/character.html

Anyway, I'm off to PAX. I'll update while I'm gone. See you all later.

overheardnyc:
Thug: Paisano?...It's like "my nigga" but in Italian.
--Times Square

overheardnyc:
Homie: Yo, you see that shit on Family Guy? That nigga Quagmire be funny, son! That "giggity giggity" shit! Yo son, that nigga tied up a cheerleader and shit and always be trying to nail the little bitch.
--N train

Have zex tonight:
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/275

The Crawford Bunker:
http://www.americanpolitics.com/20050816Bisbort.html

Meer for beer!:
http://twolumps.keenspace.com/d/20050812.html

When Numbers That Don't Exist Make It Into the Story:
http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001743.asp

What went wrong in Ohio (I haven't read this yet, it's long):
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohiostatusrept1505.pdf