But, I Babble: Bafflegab!

Safe sex advice - fun too!

2011-02-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

OK, yes, I know I need to start getting more serious on this site, but sometimes there are things one just cannot resist...

The Huffington Post reports that the British group The Midnight Beast is offering the following safe sex advice:

Something to remember as a rule of thumb,
One up the bum and you won't be a mum.

Makes sense.

Classic limerick

2011-02-04T07:59:00.000-08:00

I was recently reminded of this piece of delightful doggerel, and felt an immediate urge to post it here. Can't imagine why.

There was a young man from Nantucket
Whose dong was so long he could s**k it
Said he with a grin
As he wiped off his chin
If my ear was a c**t I could f**k it!

Egypt is in Iraq - according to Fox News!!!

2011-02-01T12:37:00.000-08:00

OK, this is old news, but considering the recent worrying news in Egypt, I cannot resist pointing out that, in 2009, Fox News thought that Egypt was that country we've come to know and love as ... Iraq!!! Yet another classic Fox blunder.

(Yes, I've been bad about keeping my site up-to-date, considering events in Egypt. But, sometimes life takes over and priorities change. But no worries; I'm gonna get back to daily updates PDQ, I promise!)

The Straight Dope and beer bottles

2011-01-28T13:20:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I submitted a question to The Straight Dope, a website and weekly syndicated column that deals with weird, wacky, wonderful questions in a well-researched yet tongue-in-cheek manner. It's one of those "must-read-regularly" columns.

I just heard that my question, after thorough (and hopefully enjoyable) research on the part of the Straight Dope team, has just been published - kewl!

It concerned what I thought was a somewhat dubious claim in a TV ad where Samuel Adams claims that their beer tastes better because it comes in brown bottles, and not clear or green ones. The subsequent Straight Dope research, however, seems to prove me wrong...

Olbermann disappears

2011-01-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

Keith Olbermann's sudden vanishing act from MSNBC on Friday, during the same week that the FCC approved the Comcast-NBC merger has to make one speculate whether this was just mere coincidence...

Of course, both Comcast and NBC deny a connection, but remember that Comcast has a reputation for donating heavily to right-wing causes; could they be "cleaning house" in preparation for the merger? Right now, General Electric owns NBC Universal. After the 13-billion dollar transaction takes effect, GE will retain 49% control - like Comcast, GE is not renowned for being friendly to left-wing causes.

While I did not always agree with Olbermann's leftist viewpoints, there's no question that he was an important counterpoint to the huge onslaught of right-wing punditry that is slowly and perniciously poisoning the much-too-easily influenced minds of the U.S. populace. Balance is important, more so in this era of extremism on both the right and the left.

Rachel Maddow is the next logical target - I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Keith: While I realize that you have to adhere to whatever agreement you pounded out with MSNBC, please do not let yourself be silenced - your voice is important during this critical time in U.S. politics.

English as she is spoke - quick note

2011-01-18T13:56:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder... Now that I'm getting back into updating my site, please note that my regular sidebar doodads will also spring back to life. For starters, see English as she is spoke.

What is wrong with society?

2011-01-18T11:10:00.000-08:00

OK, so the Gabrielle Giffords story has lots of "human interest," the sort of crap that people love to see, and the primary reason the media panders to this sort of nonsense. But really, do we have to hear about her rubbing the husband's neck for ten minutes? Or lifting her finger?

I'm just waiting for the next headline: "Gabby farts and takes her first dump" - no doubt with a detailed account of the volume, length, girth, texture, color, and odor.

Ricky Gervais - good stuff!

2011-01-17T11:17:00.000-08:00

Seems that Ricky Gervais ruffled a feather or two at the Golden Globes last night - good for him! We need more of this sort of thing on U.S. TV, instead of the nonsensical pablum that is served up to us ad nauseam.

(Btw, I'm still trying to get back into the habit of updating this site more regularly. But I've been busy with, erm, other matters. Normal service will be resumed asap, as they say!)

Sarah Palin - blood on her hands

2011-01-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

Much has been said about the so-called "Tragedy in Tucson." At the risk of being targeted as a subversive, I feel compelled to point out that that while the shooter is clearly guilty of the massacre, I really feel that he is more a "victim" than a "perp." Like so many people these days, he's clearly nuts - nothing more, nothing less.

The problem is that people like this are so easily influenced by the crap that is spewed by the politicians and pundits in this country. While both sides, left and right, are guilty of this, I think we can all agree that it's the right wing that is instigating the vast majority of this bullshit. (And, it should be noted, Keith Olbermann - a leftie - immediately went on air after the incident to apologize for anything he may have said in the past, and vowed not to do it again. It would be nice to see the hate-filled right-wingers do the same.)

Nonetheless, idiots like the killer (I forget his name) are prone to listening to and believing in the agitprop that fills our airwaves. When Sarah and her ilk talk about "bullets not ballots," "don't retreat, reload," and such, not to mention publishing the infamous map on her website, what can you expect? She even listed the names of the intended targets, including that of Gabrielle Giffords (see above).

Now who's the guilty party? It's pretty damn clear to me, and I honestly believe that Sarah Palin should be charged - at the very least - with incitement to kill or whatever the official name of that particular crime is these days.

I'm ba-a-ack!!!

2011-01-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

With my (somewhat) new high-speed 'net connection, I'm now in a much better position to get back to updating my rambling without the frustration of low speeds. Mind you, there's a long story about the crappy service provided by our local cable carrier, Comcast. That's for another time, but very soon, I promise. You will definitely want to hear about the shitty company they run.

Meantime, there's just so much political crap floating about, I need to vent - BIG TIME. There'll be a new post about our friend Sarah coming up shortly...

OK, still waiting...

2010-12-27T16:16:00.001-08:00

Well, here we are and this silly blog is still not being updated. You can blame a number of companies-who-don't-give-a-rat's-ass about their customers. More on this when I have calmed down and am able to coherently deliver an update. (But, those companies will not like what I have to say, you can rest assured..!!!)

Still on hold...

2010-12-05T16:29:00.000-08:00

OK, apologies - life is crazy, v. little time to attend to my baby. Will be back asap.

Still gonna be awhile...

2010-11-23T17:17:00.001-08:00

...but getting there!!! Lots of stuff in the news, wish I had the time to post, but it just ain't happening right now. Other priorities and all that... ;-) ;-)

Heads up...

2010-11-14T12:04:00.000-08:00

...I'm gonna be offline for awhile, taking care of some changes. I will be posting again asap.

Viva! pop opera - an unashamed plug

2010-11-13T14:31:00.000-08:00

My very dear friend, Colin, is, amongst other things, a theatrical producer. We have known each other since the tender age of 11, which means we've been friends for ~45 years!!! He is currently producing a show in Bangkok - Viva!

Viva! is a pop opera group that Colin has put together, and they are doing their debut show in Bangkok, then moving on to tour South Africa. He has sent me samples of their work, and I have to say that I am utterly blown away by it. And, trust me, my opinion is not biased in any way; they really are very talented.

You can take a look at their website here. (And, pending Colin's permission, I hope to add a sample or two of their work.)

Here's their commercial, which will give you a taste:

Quick hits

2010-11-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

No time for commentary today, so I'll just point to some very interesting articles, all courtesy of the Huffington Post:

It seems our old friend George W. Bush lifted (plagiarized?) large parts of his new book from adviser's notes. We always knew he never had an original thought!
More on the Bush book: Joe Wilson, who you may remember from the scandal concerning Valerie Plame and Niger, has this to say about it.
Glenn Beck has truly gone beyond the pale this time - I have to agree with this column, where it is clear that Beck really is a disgusting, hideous person. Like we didn't know that already...
And here we get to see how Sarah Palin believes that Obama is "the most pro-abortion president ever."

Bush, Bush again, Beck, Palin ... and the list goes on. It's disturbing, to say the least.

Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's write-in candidate

2010-11-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

If you've been following the story of the infamous electoral battle between Joe Miller (Rep.) and Lisa Murkowski (Ind.), it's interesting to note that Miller appears to be getting desperate.

Briefly: Lisa Murkowski ended up being a write-in challenger, which is an incredibly difficult hurdle to overcome. Voters have to fill in the little circle, as well as write the name of the candidate. Because there was concern about the (apparent) difficulty of spelling her name correctly, the Murkowski campaign aggressively tried to educate voters how to go about doing it correctly.

Now, the write-in votes are being inspected (Murkowski, leading, has 40%, Miller 35%), and the Miller campaign is challenging votes like the ones in the picture - all of them are spelled correctly, and the liitle circle has been filled in, so it's hard to discern exactly why they are challenging these votes. An act of desperation perhaps? Follow the ongoing story here! And some fun pictures here.

America - piss-poor sense of humor

2010-11-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

Never mind my opinion - take a good look at this, courtesy of the Huffington Post. Sad, isn't it?

Strange dates

2010-11-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

Nope, not the kind you take out to dinner and then, well ... whatever!

I'm talking about the way we measure the rotation of the earth. You wanna see today's date in 280 different languages, most of them pretty obscure? Check it out here! A sampling of today's date is on the right.

This is from Curious Notions, a website with some pretty arcane and interesting stuff! For example, we all know about Roman numerals, but what about Roman fractions? It's both convoluted and fascinating...

Bafflegab at its best

2010-11-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

Oh boy. This has to be the worst press release ever (nah, prob'ly not). Besides the grammar problems, just what is it they're trying to sell?!?! (Don't bother clicking through to their website, it doesn't exist.) A prior press release from them seems rather redundant... If you can figure it out, let me know - please!

What is odd about this?

2010-11-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

I sincerely hope that Douglas R. Hofstadter doesn't mind me quoting his entire essay below, but it's kinda important that I do it this way. Full credit: it's his copyright, and you can reference it here (but don't look yet!).

What is unusual about this essay?

(Clue: Read the first and last sentences carefully. There are a few other clues sprinkled around, mostly near the end of the essay. Not to mention the title of this post...) The answer appears near the bottom of the sidebar so as not to make it obvious to my faithful readers.

Bonus: It's a portrait of his life, fascinating reading regardless of the embedded puzzle.

----------------

Autoportrait with Constraint

Vita in Form of a Lipogram

D.R.H.

Autumn, MMVIII

I was born in midtown Manhattan right as World War Two was drawing to a, uhmm... to a conclusion. My Dad was a physics prof at an august institution roughly an hour south by train, and until I was two or so, my Dad did "wrong-way commuting" to work and back. Finally our family found a flat and had a short stint living in that most Ivy of Ivy towns, but around my fifth birthday, my Dad got an alluring invitation to work way out in California, and so my folks, my baby sis Laura, and I all got into our car, took off on a cross-country jaunt, and soon wound up at Stanford. I did most of my growing-up on campus, going to junior high and high school in Palo Alto, and so it was natural that I should go to Stanford (as did most of my cohorts, in fact).

Our folks' third and last child, Molly, born in Palo Alto, was, sadly, not what anybody had thought. By four or so, Molly was visibly abnormal - not saying any words at all, nor absorbing any. It wasn’t autism; it was a profound brain malfunction, probably dating from birth or prior to birth, but what was wrong, nobody could say - no diagnosis. Molly just didn't pick up any words, who knows why, and our Mom and Dad had such anguish for so long on Molly's account, as did Laura and I. What bad luck.

I, loving math from childhood, took as much of it as I could at Stanford (calculus, groups, topology, and such topics), but I also got into studying Italian, Latin, Spanish, Hindi, bits of Russian and Tamil, and so on - but most of all, I must say, a strong and idiomatic command of français was my goal. Our family’s prior Swiss sabbatical, during which I was in "third form" in a British-run school (similar to ninth in a junior high) and had a fun francophonic pal (our voisin), did a lot toward bringing this about. Although I found linguistics intriguing from afar, upon actually taking a class in it at Stanford, I found it too formalistic and artificial, but luckily, that didn't diminish my captivation with words, sounds, grammars, and symbols, which still had a fantastic magic, pushing and pulling my young mind to its limits. I was curious about how brains (or minds, if you will!) think, and thus I found symbolic logic's rigid simulacrum of cognition fascinating; programming, too, was an important part of my multifarious mind-pursuits.

Though constantly musing about all sorts of abstract topics, I wasn’t just a lump on a log — not by a long shot. In fact, I did sports — in fact, "sports of all sorts" (as Lucky says in Waiting for Godot): running, jumping, vaulting, tossing, bowling, swimming, skating, skiing, ping-ponging, mini-golfing (plus a bit of maxi-golfing), occasional hoop-shooting, and loads of biking. Oh - how could I omit this? - a droll local adaptation of that cutthroat British sport of hitting colorful wood balls through hoops on lawns, and knocking your rivals as far away as you can. Most jolly! Of all things, though, I'd say music was my most constant companion - Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and on and on - plus lots of old jazz - Louis, Bix, Hoagy, Fats, Zutty... Also, I did a bit of piano-playing, but not a lot - mostly just absorbing music off of spinning vinyl, coming to know so many works.

As is probably obvious, I had a highly romantic soul, but sad to say, I struck out with girls; that was always a puzzling, troubling fact. Looking back at it all now, I think that Stanford's pitifully low girl/boy ratio was probably a big part of it. (It's fifty–fifty nowadays, but fat lot of good that'll do for yours truly!) Also, I was a bit young to go to Stanford - a nontrivial handicap. Anyway, my major at Stanford was math and I had basically no difficulty with it, pulling down mostly A's and also making lots of original findings. Blazing my own idiosyncratic pathways, though of minor import and mostly just in quaint, oldish nooks of math, was wildly intoxicating.

My Dad, at forty-six, won a fantastic physics award, as grand an award as our world knows, involving a trip for all our family to Stockholm in wintry snow, donning formal tails and chic gowns, strolling through classic palatial halls, hobnobbing with royalty (tricky protocol!), chit-chatting with many world-class minds, and savoring our VIP status. It was all much as in a fairy story, practically magical. And I got to bask in my Dad’s honor, not just vanish in his shadow, as many might think. Ah, glory days!

D.R.H.

Although unlucky with girls, I had many pals at Stanford from many lands, not just my own - India, Britain, South Africa, Italy, and so on - and for many vacations, a handful of my pals and I would go up with Laura and my folks to our family's ranch in Flournoy, in north California, not far from Corning, in softly rolling hills with lots of oaks. Laura had fun riding Chico, my folks had fun rounding up and branding cows and bulls, and all of us had fun chatting, hiking, skipping rocks, playing darts and "foot carroms", arranging and lighting kindling and logs, fixing roofs, tossing hay to always-hungry cows, and so on. Ski trips to Mount Shasta would also start out in crack-of-dawn dark and finish up in post-sundown dark at our cozy ranch. I miss all of that today - such nostalgia...

But from our cows, back now to our moutons. Post-graduation, I took a long vacation from school: four months in London plus a six-month stint in Scandinavia (half in Lund, half in Stockholm). Lots of longing for a fair young flickvän, but no such luck - and oh, such angst! Anyway, following that Nordic saga, back in my old stomping grounds, I took up grad school in math at Stanford's traditional cross-Bay rival, Cal. Although I thought I would do a bang-up job, I soon saw I was wrong - in fact, math grad school was a crushing fiasco. All that fancy-shmancy ultra-abstract stuff was just too arid and confining, affording my highly visual mind nothing at all to grab onto. ¡Ay ay ay! I had hit a tough crossroads. What to do?

At this point, I was practicing piano many hours a day (contrapuntal intricacy, Slavic poignancy, Gallic sublimity, a touch of polytonality, but nothing atonal!), and also I was composing a bit, imitating my idols, and so I naturally thought of music - composition in particular - as a pathway I might follow, but by light of day, that was just too iffy. My only option, so I thought, was to drop out of math and jump into physics - a daring foray, as I had found physics horribly difficult, though inspiring, at Stanford. And, in fact, studying physics in grad school (U of O in "Duckburg", as it was known, up north) was no picnic, to put it mildly. At first I found it thrilling, I admit, but bit by bit it got turgid and confusing, and finally I wound up finding it as ugly as sin. My spirits sank low, low, low. I'd blown it in math; was I now going to fail in physics, too?

Pausing for a short bit in my mostly chronological narration, I'll talk just a tad about what kinds of non-physics things I was doing during my days of physics turmoil. Still tons of music, first of all - playing piano on a daily basis, plus lots of small piano compositions, of which I was proud. Also, studying Russian (but I didn't go far). And lastly, political activism.

Having grown up with a highly political Mom and Dad (hardly right-wing, mind you!), I wound up political, too, highly conscious of moral topics. A typical outgrowth of that is this: during my grad-school days, on a trip to Italy with our folks, my sis Laura and I both put a halt to our carnivorous habits, as it was too troubling to us to play any part in killing animals, and I still hold to that philosophy today. Also during my grad-school days, with inspiration coming from such pacifistic paragons as Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. M. L. King, I did political work to aid folk not as lucky as I was. Awful assassinations - JFK, RFK, MLK - had crucial impacts, strongly sparking my political and social activism, including such things as fighting starvation in Biafra, organizing boycotts in support of a farm-labor union, participating in day camps for minority kids, saving wild parts of our national parks from mining, crusading against atomic arms, opposing that insanity known as "Star Wars", plus working towards linguistic and social parity for woman and man. I thank my family for this all-important gift of altruism.

Gplot (click it!)

But back to my physics turmoil. As it turns out, although down, I wasn't out. I stuck with it, hanging onto this wildly bucking Brahma bull, and at last, truly by luck, I hit a glorious jackpot, stumbling across a rich topic during a six-month stay in Bavaria with my Swiss doctoral advisor (during which I taught - schön!). Thus at thirty, I got my Ph.D. thanks to "Gplot", a stunning graph I'd found, involving rational and irrational Bloch/Landau functions in a crystal. Gplot had, in fact, a fractal form (zooming in on any part of it, you'll find a small copy of it, again and again, ad infinitum) - a first in physics! This visually amazing diagram was so intriguing to so many physicists that, frankly, I was probably a shoo-in for a physics faculty slot at almost any top-notch school, had I sought such a job, but I didn't.

Ironically, by that point I had truly had it with physics and its always-growing list of disappointing, arbitrary complications, such as quarks and gluons (too many "colors" and "flavors"); "charm" (distinctly uncharming); a most grungy rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick by Higgs and company (making mass from nothing); plus that Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa quark-mixing matrix (its long, gawky CaKo-phonic tag hints at my discomfort). In a word, I was so off-put that I quit, going out in Gplot's small, happy flash of fractal glory.

Luckily, though, my mind, always curious about its surroundings, rapidly found stimulation in grappling with minds, brains, souls, computation, AI, and that loopy conundrum of what an "I" is - all still abstract stuff, no doubt, but not so much so as physics or math. In fact, soon I was busy writing a highly idiosyncratic book which I thought of as my own way of "braiding" that odd batch of far-flung topics about mind into a natural unity.

At thirty-two, with my book on its way but still not out, I took a job at Indiana U. in Bloomington, thanks in part to its famous music school, and also to its florid, woodsy campus, but most of all to its warmth and cordiality. "Go for folks who go for you!", was my Dad's simplistic but catchy motto (I'm paraphrasing his words to adapt to this situation, naturally, but that was its gist) - and I took his tip, for though it was corny, it was sagacious, too.

At IU, my goal was to work in AI, most of all trying to mimic faithfully, in programs, how thought actually works. Crucial to my philosophy of computationally mimicking a mind was my constant focus on how humans think - which is to say, fluidly but also fallibly - that is, not logically, but analogically. Also, I was scrambling madly to finish up my big book - a most unusual book, flip-flopping back and forth from fanciful contrapuntal dialogs - canonical and fugal - to fairly straightforward monographical writings, and also chock-full of mind-twisting prints by an almost unknown paradox-loving Dutch graphic artist. Upon publication, my book was a surprisingly big hit and won a major national book award, assuring my job stability. I was thirty-four (or so), and still high and dry.

But I'd had a hunch that IU was promising in that most chancy of all domains, and in fact, I was right. I was oh-so-lucky to bump fortuitously into Carol Ann Brush in an auditorium lobby during a film. Carol was an Italian and art-history major doing grad work in librarianship. My oh my! Although our liaison had a bit of a bumpy start, Carol and I had a lot in common and soon hit it off in grand fashion. Thus, at long last - at thirty-six - I had a most happy romantic affair. What a turning point!

Soon I got an invitation to go to Michigan - so good that I couldn't turn it down, actually - and thus I sadly forsook Bloomington for Ann Arbor. It was in that unflappably tooting-its-own-horn town, in fact, that Carol and I wound up marrying (Carol was thirty-four, yours truly was forty); it was in Ann Arbor, too, that Carol and I took a ballroom dancing class, and that our first child, Danny, was born. Slowly, slowly, I was adapting to Michigan, but Indiana was hoping I still had a soft spot for it, and in fact I did. Upon our old school's making an outstanding job proposal, Carol and I found it most fitting to go back to IU. This was a big joy for us - no ifs, ands, or buts.

D.R.H. ambigram (flip this pic 180°)

My job back in Bloomington was, shall I say, "cushy", to put it slightly slangily. That is to say, I had no particular disciplinary affiliation (a fantastic luxury!), and thus could work on all sorts of things, ranging from AI to ambigrams (an odd kind of ambiguous calligraphy), from translation to triangular math (both passions), and also Mandarin (I was gung-ho (ho ho!)). And to top it all off, Monica, our baby girl, was born in Bloomington. Rich days! Carol and I ran a lot in Bryan Park, saw many films, on occasion had lunch chatting it up in Italian, and, whilst comparing two translations from Russian, got caught up in Pushkin's magically lilting, rhythmic, rhyming writings. All was going smoothly for our family of four.

But alas, on our first sabbatical away from IU, in an idyllic mountain-clad town in Italy's far north, as Christmas was drawing nigh, Carol was struck without any warning by a malignant brain tumor, and in but a day or two was in a profound coma. Our kids and I lost Carol that awful month. In a flash, Danny (still shy of six) and Monica (just two-and-a-half) and I had to adjust to living without a woman in our midst, without a Mom. It was tragic for Carol, and cataclysmic for our small family, now just a trio. But this ill wind notwithstanding, I didn't abort our sabbatical, as Carol had had such high aspirations for what it could bring us all. Many kind Italian folks, knowing our plight, warmly took our family in, adopting Danny and Monica with amazing compassion, most of all at Cognola's asilo (that is, school for tots). This was our salvation.

Post-sabbatical, back in Bloomington, my kids and I didn't curtail our habit of talking Italian, thanks in part to a long string of wondrous and caring Italian au-pair girls - six in all! That was a fantastic boon for us in all ways, not just linguistic. And today, in fact, Italian is still our family's standard way of communicating, still part of our daily fabric - and thus a posthumous fashion of honoring Carol. Danny and Monica did primary school primarily in Bloomington but also a bit in California, and at that point (just short of 2002) our family took off for a sabbatical in Bologna, Italy (a non-touristy town that Carol was so fond of), during which both kids got to swim nonstop in Italian. What lucky dogs, growing up bilingual!

Today Danny is as tall as I am, has a sporty Audi TT (wow!), and is majoring in biology and Italian at IU. His fascination is big cats - lions, jaguars, cougars, and such - scary, but who am I to worry about it? Monica, too, has grown as tall as I (Carol wasn't tall, nor am I a giant, so this is a curious twist!), and is finishing up high school and planning on working in fashion, concocting wild, flashy, and dashing things to don. Also, Danny snowboards with gusto and Monica skis with flair. I'm a bit gray, sad to say, but I won't complain - still got my hair! Anyway, I'm in fairly good form, and I still run and do sporadic skiing and biking (plus almost-daily chinups and/or pushups). Lastly, our gold and shaggy dog Olly (sorry for using a "y", but I had to!), now six (or forty-two in dog units), is a darling. If only Carol could know all this!

As for my own focus nowadays, it is, as always, broad and a bit wild and woolly, including translating (I did an anglicization of Pushkin's most famous book, a lugubrious story told wholly in sparkling rhyming stanzas), studying human cognition through various colorful windows (such as analogy-making, linguistic slips, and bon mots), musing philosophically (what is this "I"-thing, anyway?), stubbornly going back and banging my skull against math and physics (think of a moth drawn to a flaming torch), dipping and diving into many forms of art (such as ambigrams, gridfonts, and jazz-scribbling - of which a crowning point, anno domini MIIIM, was my solo show at IU's Art School, lasting for two months), critiquing today's ubiquitous cool mantra "you guys" and its unconsciously macho halo (which I abhor - but that's a long story, not for now), writing down my sundry thoughts, and particularly savoring doing so with unusual constraints on form - tough hoops to jump through, as I am wont to say - such as crafting lipograms that flow naturally (if you catch my drift, although not too many folks do), and God knows what-all. It's kind of a crazy quilt, I must admit. But that's how I am.

I'd say that that about sums it up. And so now, as I draw to a mildly humorous conclusion, I shall at last bid my tight linguistic constraint - and also you, my forgiving companions - a warm and at last unbound good-bye!

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So there it is - have you spotted the anomaly yet? If not, read all about it here! And, if you still want the challenge, you can find another one here. This link, too, is interesting.

Santorum

2010-11-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since the topic of Dan Savage vs former Senator Rick (the Dick) Santorum (R‑Pa.) came up, but I think it's time to resurrect it.

The links here will tell you the complete story, but I'm just gonna give you the good part. My favorite sex advice columnist, Dan Savage, created a neologism for the word "Santorum" and came up with this incredible definition: "The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." He created a (now dormant) website devoted to the topic, and it's well worth a read.

Savage's website, a section in The Stranger, the paper he writes for, is filled with excellent sex advice and his writing is both humorous and cogent. Again, I highly recommend you take a look - in fact, you will notice that I have a permanent link to his website in my Links I like box in the sidebar. The Wikipedia articles (here, here and here) about him give more insight into the santorum story.

In a response to a reader, Savage recently said: "...while you ~~fingered~~ O'Donnelled his girlfriend...". He denies trying to create another neologism, but I dunno - I like the idea!

Spring forward, fall back

2010-11-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

It's that time again, when we all have to reset our clocks - a useless, outdated practice that wastes more time (!) and energy than it saves. But, it got me to thinking about unusual clocks. I remember once purchasing a ballbearing clock (right) for about $30 - cheap enough - but dropped it on the way home. I ended up with 32 ballbearings and a pile of plastic pieces. I never bought another, although I would dearly love to own one (hint hint!). The action is mesmerizing - a bit like staring at an aquarium. Using it as a timepiece is secondary to the fun of seeing those balls dropping!

The 'net has an amazing array of fascinating clocks. For example, go to Google Images and search for [clock]. If you search for [clock ballbearing] you will find pictures of some truly incredible clocks, including the one at left which will write the time on a piece of paper for you! It costs a mere $350,000 - more info, plus a video demonstrating it in action, is here. Classic Rube Goldberg. Which reminds me - for a beautiful Rube Goldbergian device, take a look at this commercial. (It loads slowly, but be patient - it's worth the wait.)

Knowledge of science

2010-11-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

As my regular readers know, I despair about the lack of decent education in this country. Science is one topic that is under intense scrutiny, and here is a test, conducted by Pew Research that speaks volumes. It is a (relatively) simple 12-question quiz, and shows how you fare compared to other demographic groups. Give it a shot, and see how you do. I found the results very interesting, and the section which breaks down the percentage of correct answers by age really supports my hypothesis about the idiocy of the younger generation. Fascinating stuff, yet depressing.

I don't understand...

2010-11-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

As I type this, there is a story making headlines about a Qantas* flight (Airbus A380) that lost an engine over Singapore. No-one on board was injured, and (thus far) there have been no reports of the debris hurting anyone on land. The plane landed safely.

In 1987, I was on a SAA flight (Boeing 747) from Johannesburg to London. Shortly after refueling at Ilha do Sal, one of the Cape Verde islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, we lost an engine - same circumstances as the Qantas flight. I was sitting at a window seat over the wing that lost the engine, so not only did I get an earful of the explosion, I saw the damage as well. After dumping the fuel, we landed safely back on the island. No injuries, although a change of pants was in order for a few passengers!

Here's what I don't understand. This happenstance did not hit the news in any way, shape or form! So, what is it about today's occurrence that deems it newsworthy? Is it because, 23 years later, we live in a world so hungry for anything, we're now happy to unquestioningly accept non-news?

Interesting aside: The day we spent on the island while waiting for another plane to come and pick us up was fascinating. Ilha do Sal primarily exists to support its large international airport, used by SAA in the days of apartheid when South Africa was not allowed to fly over Africa. The airport stood out in solitary splendor, with nothing but salt flats all around. Our arrival significantly increased the population that day, and the hospitality we received was truly amazing. We were bussed to the Morabeza Hotel (which, judging by its website has changed a lot!), and were mightily entertained through the day and night. A lobster and crawfish barbeque was hurriedly put together, a local band rushed down to the hotel to entertain us, we danced the night away at the hotel's disco - in all, a very memorable 24 hours. The next day, British Airways sent a jumbo jet to rescue us. Because communication from the island was somewhat primitive - no phones, only shortwave radio to reach the outside world - we had no way of letting friends know what had happened. (The island is almost on the equator; their 10 ft. TV satellite dishes point straight up, a strange sight.)

A friend of mine, Bonnie, was going to pick us up at SFO. She got to the airport, and nobody was able to tell her anything - because we were connecting to a different airline in London to fly to SFO, there was no continuity in terms of knowledge about our arrival. Coincidentally, that same day, a different SAA flight had crashed in the Indian Ocean, killing 159 people. At the airport, Bonnie picked up the paper, and saw a headline that said something like "South African Airways flight crashes; 159 dead." You can imagine what that did to her heart rate...

* So just how does one pronounce Qantas? There's no 'u,' which makes pronunciation of the 'q' a hard 'c', not the usual 'cw' as in "The queen is quite queer." Al Qa'ida has the same problem, and there we use the hard 'c'. Not to mention Iraq, Qatar, Compaq, Nasdaq, and qwerty (as in keyboard). That said, is Qantas pronounced cunt-ass?!?! Wikipedia seems to agree...!

Midterm election results

2010-11-03T08:50:00.000-07:00

Well, it turned out as expected - the GOP got the house, while the Dems retained the senate. On the surface, many see the house takeover as a bad thing, but I'm not sure that's true - for too long, Republicans have had zero incentive to step up to the plate and actually take some responsibility. Instead, they've been sitting on the sidelines, refusing to get involved - in essence, just wailing "No, no, no!" like whiny children. Now, however, they can no longer do this. Hopefully this will usher in an era of cooperation with the Democrats, and maybe - just maybe - we'll see some progress. As always, time will tell.

For great election coverage, it's hard to beat the NYTimes. Here's their main page for election coverage, and make sure to explore the links - particularly the two maps at the top, which will take you to great interactive views of what's happening where. No doubt I'll be posting some cynical, snarky items in the days to come...!

As I find interesting/thoughtful/funny articles through the day, I will add them here:

Huffington Post - Bush did the damage, Obama underestimated its extent, and didn't fix it, at least not quickly enough. (I would argue that the devastation was so extensive that it needs more than two years to fix, but still - Obama should have made that clear.)
Huffington Post again - How well the polls worked, with an interesting breakdown by polling organization.
PolitiFact - How you were lied to in e-mails during this campaign. All the "Pants on Fire!" ratings that stemmed from spam. (I guess this shit must work, else why would they do it? It astonishes me how easily people can be scammed by spam.)
Us Magazine - Bristol Palin forgot to vote!!!!!
Huffington Post - A Norman Lear piece about how we've had enough of politicians using the phrase "the American people." Here's a quote: "Our experiment in democracy depends, the founders told us at the beginning, on an informed citizenry. Fat chance, American people!" (Boldfaced emphasis mine.)

Election results

2010-11-02T17:23:00.000-07:00

As I post this, it's early - results are starting to trickle in, but it looks like the predictions seem spot-on. The GOP will likely take over the house, while the Dems will probably keep the senate (although it looks tight - the lead will probably be only one or two seats). For a thorough, realtime, interactive look at results, these NYTimes pages are pretty good: House. Senate. Looks like it's going to be a long and very interesting night!

Palin the hypocrite

2010-11-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun one: Sarah Palin criticizes the use of anonymous sources - using an anonymous source!!!

I quote: "'For Washington consultants to sit around and personally disparage the Governor anonymously to reporters is unfortunate and counterproductive and frankly immature,' the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, continued." Also, see this.

Public funding for TV around the world

2010-11-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

I came across some interesting statistics a few days ago when I was doing the story about the NPR brouhaha. This is from the Huffington Post, and focuses on the proposed bill by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and Sarah Palin to rescind all public funding for NPR. What caught my eye was this:

BBC Television Center in London

"The call for funding cuts is particularly galling because the United States already has one of the lowest levels of federal funding of public media in the developed world - at just $1.43 per capita. By comparison, Canada spends $22 per capita, and England spends $80. If you're wondering why we don't have anything like the BBC, that's the biggest reason.

"If the United States spent the same per capita on public media and journalism subsidies as Sweden and Norway, which rank 1 and 2, we would be spending as much as $30 billion a year on public media instead of $440 million. It's no coincidence that these same countries rank near the top of The Economist magazine's annual Democracy Index, which evaluates nations on the basis of the functioning of government, civic participation and civil liberties. On that list, the United States ranks 18th.

"Yet instead of debating how to build a better public media system, we're stuck with a rotting commercial one that would rather help the likes of Palin whip up a frenzy and play up the false divide between left and right. And why not? It worked with the takedown of ACORN, with the smearing of Shirley Sherrod, and with all the other bogus controversies we're told to swallow as news."

Country	Spending per capita per year
Canada	$22.00
United Kingdom	$80.00
United States	$1.43

And now DeMint and Palin want to take that piddly $1.43 away! Say what?!

This bolsters my argument about the apparent "demise" of TV in general, which I discussed in my post on Sunday.

Pants on fire!!!

2010-10-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

Two days to go to the election, so it's time to visit PolitiFact and see what they have to say about the campaign. Here's a very interesting article about the "truthiness" of it all.

Being non-partisan, PolitiFact is very careful to avoid pointing out which side of the political fence most of the bullshit is coming from - but take a look for yourself, I have no doubt you will see a pattern here!

Gotta go - Bill Maher is on, and I missed most of it on Friday... (UPDATE: I just watched it - a really good episode!)

The future - never certain

2010-10-31T06:08:00.000-07:00

A good friend sent this to me recently, but its author is unknown. Enjoy - and let me have your thoughts too! (One thing does strike me right off the bat - this is a U.S.-centric view, and it doesn't really hold water when looked at in a global context. Like it or not, we do live in an ever-shrinking world, so I think it's important to bear that in mind while reading this.)

[Italicized notes in square brackets are my bafflegabbed, peanut gallery comments.]

----------------

British GPO logo

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, FedEx, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills. [Maybe true for the U.S., not necessarily so in other countries, particularly those where the Post Office is state-run, handles business other than delivering mail, and can run at a loss because it is subsidized. And, in the U.S., what about people who aren't online, including those who would love to be but cannot because they live in rural areas? Not even FedEx and UPS serve them - only the USPS does! Additionally, there are those who simply cannot afford to be online. Will the U.S. Gov't subsidize the rural and the poor? I think not...]

Check that purchased Alaska

2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business. [The payment system model is changing rapidly and radically - I think that even plastic will soon be history. But, as is often the case, this is a much larger topic that needs to be reserved for a different time. Update Nov. 2: Coincidentally, this appeared in Monday's edition of the S.F. Chronicle, discussing the problem of reluctance by banks in the U.S. to move to newer technology - again, giving me ammo for my view that this author was being very U.S.-centric in his/her essay.]

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services. [I really don't think newspapers have much of a chance setting up paywalls at this stage of the game - that train left the station a long time ago. I despair for the future of decent journalism. Sure, the likes of the NYTimes will survive, but most of them, I fear, will be joining the horse-and-buggy set soon.]

Mmm ... paper!

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. [Not true - in fact, there's a debate raging right now about the fact that the likes of Amazon are now charging more for e-books than their printed counterparts. This is being forced on e-booksellers by the publishers.] And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book. [This is a slightly naïve view - distribution and sale of content in all its forms is undergoing a sea-change. The primary issue in my mind is the lack of permanence when it comes to electronic storage; this, however, is an issue that goes way beyond the scope of this discussion.]

Who remembers how to use that
twirly thing on the front?!

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they're [sic] always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes. [In most countries, mobile phones are already way in the majority and, indeed, many developing countries have skipped landline technology and gone directly to mobile, giving them a huge advantage (no maintenance of an aging infrastructure is necessary). In some respects, there are connections here to my post a few days ago about centralized vs distributed organisms.]

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates simply self-destruction. [That's not a sentence - where's the verb?] Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies." [Here, I think I agree; I say "think" because the point is hard to discern. It goes back to the lack of permanence I mentioned in #4 above, as well as the DMCA takedown actions of late.]

7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing all lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix. [This is a pipe dream - while I would dearly love to see more intelligent TV content in this country, it ain't gonna happen, because that's what pays the bills. And TV, quite simply, is not going to go away, at least not for a l-o-n-g time. Believe it or not, TV is a valuable cultural phenomenon elsewhere. See this post.]

Storm clouds!

8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. [Again, see here.]

In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

[And there you have it - we do agree, after all! Why on earth did it take this long for the author to make his/her point?!]

Little brother is watching

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7 "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again. [ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY!]

Oops

Mumbai mansion

2010-10-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

Once again, I have to take a break from the insanity. Politics. Terrorism. Yuck.

Here's an interesting story from the NYTimes. This newly-built home in Mumbai is designed to accommodate a family of five. Yes, five! It is 27 storeys tall, with six parking levels. There are nine elevators, three helipads, numerous terraces, ballroom*, a 50-seat theatre, "airborne" swimming pools, and hanging gardens. No word on the number of bathrooms, but nine elevators for a family of five? The building is the new home of Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India.

Reportedly, the residential space is somewhere between 60,000 and 400,000 ft². Judging by the picture above, I'm guessing the lower end of that range is more realistic - but still.

And this in Mumbai - a city where, reportedly, >60% of the population live in slums.

Update: I found this page, which provides pictures of the interior as well as close-up views of the exterior. The mystery of the nine elevators is now solved: "Two are designated for parking lots, two for the Ambani family, two for service and three for all the guest quarters." And there are more interesting factoids. The sheer extravagance of this place both horrifies and intrigues me. Scroll through this pic - looks like my square footage guesstimate above was a little on the low side!

* Which reminds me: What do a tight pair of trousers and the Royal Albert Hall have in common? No ballroom.

That Christine O'Donnell - she's just so damn irresistible

2010-10-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, but you cannot blame me for pointing this little story out. Thank you, Gawker!

It involves a drunken Christine wanting to use a stranger's bathroom to change into her ladybug costume for Halloween, and the two of them end up in bed. Titillated enough yet to click through? I hope so! ;-) Damn, I hate emoticons. Where did that one come from?

Yes, I realize that she has become a joke, and that the right wing is, at this point, just using her to deflect real criticism of their dirty, low-down tactics. I guess she's the scapegoat candidate. Or trophy candidate? It's all very Palin-esque, which makes it extra-special!

Update 1: It seems that a number of people (including, of course, Christine) have gotten their tits in a tangle about this story. One would hope that people who read Gawker are smart enough to understand that it is a fluffy, gossipy, entertainment site - nothing more, nothing less. Context is everything!

Update 2: In Christine's response to this story, she says, "From Secretary Clinton, to Governor Palin, to soon-to-be Governor Haley, Christine's political opponents have been willing to engage in appalling and baseless attacks — all with the aim of distracting the press from covering the real issues in this race." Read that sentence carefully. While Clinton is clearly an opponent, I very much doubt that Palin and Haley are!!! Seems that copy editors truly are a dying breed. (And, I think the assumption that Haley is a soon-to-be governor is just a tad presumptuous, not to mention likely incorrect, given current polls!)

2010 midterm campaign - hard to believe, and now barely true!

2010-10-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Let's face it - the level of discourse in the current political campaign has turned into nothing more than a mud-slinging match. Now, my old friend PolitiFact.com, has, for the first time, given a rating of "Barely True" to the entire campaign!

PolitiFact.com is a non-partisan group that analyzes statements made by people in the public eye and comes up with a rating on their Truth-O-Meter™. These ratings are, in my view, both novel and clever. The list: True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True, and (my personal favorite) Pants on Fire! Check 'em out.

Centralized vs distributed organisms

2010-10-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

This article from Techdirt contemplates the nature of centralized vs distributed organisms, in the context of Wikileak's recent exposures of the U.S. Government's behavior in Iraq. Regardless of one's opinion of this particular situation, it's worth reading because it provides food for thought about what our future may look like.

This is a topic that, through my life, I have thought about in different, specific, contexts - not least of which is how the pendulum has swung over the years with regard to the pros and cons of server- and client-side computing. Central came first with mainframes and dumb terminals. Then minicomputers came on the scene, reducing the cost - which led to "microcomputers" (who among us remembers that term?), aka PCs. And now the pendulum is swinging back, with all our data (and intelligence) in the "cloud."

Perhaps a good illustration of the way this works is the Microsoft/Google analogy. Microsoft built its empire on the notion of putting the smarts into PCs by having you buy their software, and then locking you into occasional "upgrades" - the distributed model. Google came along later, and realized that a centralized model made more sense. So now, Microsoft is in the sad position of having to release updates of its software (e.g. Outlook) on a periodic basis. Otoh, Google, by virtue of the fact that its software (e.g. Gmail) is in the cloud, is in the much happier position of being able to control updates centrally, as and when they want or need to. If you're a user of Google's products, you will notice how they "push" subtle changes to you on a regular basis. Microsoft wishes they had the ability to do this. But that's not really what this post is about, and I happily recognize that I've elided over many points that make the computing example much more complicated.

Back to centralized vs distributed organisms... Beyond computing, where else does this occur?

Well, there's the Cold War, where the enemies were easy to define: sovereign nations. With the Cold War behind us, we now have global terrorism to worry about. Now, the enemy is much harder to define, because instead of countries with clear boundaries, we find ourselves battling ideologies. Small cells of trouble can pop up anywhere, and vanish just as quickly. So: Cold War - centralized. Terrorism - distributed. Is it any wonder the coalition forces going up against the likes of Al Qa'ida are having so much difficulty? We still model our defense forces on the old, centralized model, yet we're fighting a distributed "war." It needs an entirely new approach, one that will not come easily or quickly.

Another example is that of governments. Why is China gaining ground on the U.S. in oh-so-many aspects, not least of which are their respective economies? China uses an autonomous, centralized model. The U.S. has a federal system, which devolves much of the power to individual states - a distributed model. When China wants to achieve something, they simply do it, declaring it as a fait accompli. In the U.S., however, it's a much more complex process - eternal wrangling over, for example, whether to spend or save. The consequence, of course, is that very little gets accomplished here with any alacrity.

So there you have three examples: computing, war, government. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide which is preferable in each case: centralized or distributed organism? And to what other situations can we apply this? Comments, as always, welcome!

Oh, c'mon - get a sense of humor, please!

2010-10-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

If nothing else, it shows we've come a long way. Baby!

Kissin' cousins

2010-10-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well! The genealogy service Ancestry.com tells us that President Obama and Sarah Palin are 10th cousins, and Obama and Rush Limbaugh are 10th cousins once removed. Apparently, the chances of this happening are slimmer than you think. Maybe Sarah and Rush oughta stop dissin' and instead start kissin' my guy. Read about it here!

Interesting hypothesis

2010-10-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

While this theory was advanced in the '08 Presidential election, I think it's certainly worth re-hashing. This article discusses a trip to a Sarah Palin Teabagger rally in Phoenix, and ends with the following:

"I think the pollsters might be very wrong about the upcoming election. And that's because they are polling the people I saw at this rally - the people with land lines. I wonder how many of the pollsters are polling younger people, or working people with cell phones.

"The people I saw today were the fearful middle-aged white people who have been outsourced, laid off, and "victimized" by diversity. They looked as if they had been outrun by the pace of change, in every area of their lives. They were familiar, like Rotarians. They clearly want things to go back to the past - one man came riding a horse, and the Minutemen were there. Everyone talked about bringing it back to how it used to be and taking it back. Everyone prayed and talked about Christ, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the National Anthem. It was the old days of baseball games and hot dogs, horses and guns, and the Greatest Generation. I didn't hear anything about taxes; in fact I heard very little political content, except from the local guys.

"I was probably the only geek in the place. And that says it all."

And it says it all for me as well!

Talk about ignorance!

2010-10-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

I was doing some research for a friend concerning GLSEN, a gay advocacy group. They are selling a kit for schools that includes posters and bumper stickers which, in essence, tell schoolkids that they're in a "safe space." (No such thing, but we won't go there today.)

Here's the bit that got me. There is a page of testimonials about the kit, where one of the teachers says, "I will put up the safe zone sticker on my door to do something...most of my coworkers will not know what this means.....but those kids who need me to keep them safe will." (Boldface emphasis mine.)

The other teachers won't know what the stickers mean?!?! Well, if they don't know, then how in hell are the kids supposed to figure it out?

Perhaps there's a deeper problem here, one that is going to take a lot more than a kit of posters and stickers...

Joys of the NY subway

2010-10-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

Apropos of pretty much nothing, I just find this cartoon charming. It comes from today's special Subway issue of the NYTimes.

Fun with the First Amendment

2010-10-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

When Christine O'Donnell had her recent meltdown, she tried to deflect the situation by asking her opponent, Chris Coons, to name the five freedoms contained in the First Amendment. This was clearly unfair - after all, it was out of context, came totally out of the blue, and obviously was designed to distract Coons. [Note to Christine: It's a debate, not a pop quiz!] Who of us, even those who know what the five freedoms are, could answer a question like that under those circumstances?

Very few, I'll bet. And now we read that most Americans don't even know what they are, which, while not surprising, is still shocking. So, I figure that a bit of help might be necessary. First, the answer - it's freedom of:
- Speech
- Religion
- Press
- Assembly
- Grievances (i.e. the right to Petition the government, but that would be another P).

Let's see if we can come up with a mnemonic with those initial letters. How about:

Amendment Gives Republicans Speaking Point. No good? Well, that's off the top of my head - if you can come up with something better, by all means let me know and I'll update this post.

Maybe we just need to come up with a list that we can easily remember, again using the initials. And, since I'm doing this in honor of Republicans, how about a list of well-known ones (famous or infamous)? Let's see, we have...
- Steele (as in Michael)
- Reagan (or Roosevelt or Romney)
- Poindexter
- Armey (as in Richard - remember all the Dick Army jokes?)
- Grant (or Garfield)

The G, of course, could also be for GOP (By the way, did you know that the Know-nothing Party was a predecessor of the GOP?!)

Of course, if you, erm, grasp the idea of using the initials ... need I say more?

Emoticons

2010-10-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

Even as emoticons are rapidly going out of style (I hope...), I have to admit that there are some pretty inventive ones out there. Take a look at this page - I especially like Marge Simpson, as well as Homer.

Or, for image-based ones, just search Google Images.

Yes, silly post. It's Saturday. Gimme a break. ;-)

Finally - I get to criticize the left

2010-10-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

As my regular readers know, I try to keep this blog as balanced as I can, but with all the idiocy demonstrated by the right wing these days, I'm hard-pressed to find anything that could point out weakness on the left.

Even this story is not the best example, because it really is more about how silly political correctness has become; but since being PC has been co-opted by the left ... well, there you go. It's also not directly related to the current political nonsense, but in that case the Republicans truly have the edge on stupid - no contest there!

TV commentator Juan Williams, who worked for NPR as well as ~~Faux~~ Fox News, apparently made a boo-boo on ~~Faux~~ [damn, I keep doing that, dunno why] Fox the other day. He mentioned that he has a visceral reaction when he sees Muslims, dressed in traditional garb, at an airport gate, about to board the same plane as he is. He said the reaction is one of nervousness, and passes as quickly as it comes. Later in the segment, he made the point this is not because of any problem he has with Muslims, it's merely one of those gut reactions that we all have at certain moments in our lives.

Well, this got his superiors over at NPR in a froth - and they booted his ass. Talk about making a fuss over nothing! To make matters worse, one of their spokespeople (!), in an interview yesterday, said that this sort of posturing has no place on public TV (even though he said it on ~~Faux~~ Fox, not NPR), and that he should be taking this matter up with his "psychiatrist or publicist, take your pick." (NPR has subsequently apologized for this slip.)

Tempest in a teapot? Fersure. Of course, this is now a major story, hardly a surprise in the U.S., and - again of course - the right is making hay out of it. ~~Faux~~ Fox News is chortling, and leading every hour so far today with this story, spending a large, disproportionate amount of time on it.

Not only that, but now Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) is proposing a bill that would remove the vestiges of public funding that NPR gets. A whole 2% of their budget - shock, horror! But, again, this is all part of their glee over the fact that those damn liberal, politically correct lefties made a boo-boo.

The only reason this is a story is because it isn't. I never cease to be amazed at the very low level of discourse that passes for news in this country.

There has to be a backstory here: My guess is that NPR has been unhappy with Williams' affiliation with ~~Faux~~ Fox News for some time, and that they (prematurely?) leapt on this to get rid of him. But, NPR is the one that ended up with egg on its face. Score one for Juan - especially now that ~~Faux~~ Fox has given him a new $2 million contract!!!

Link colors - admin note

2010-10-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

Cool fractal, huh?

A quick bit of administrivia: I've changed the link and the visited-link colors to more pleasing shades of blue. The hover color remains red.

My usual request: If this is a problem on your monitor, please let me know - it's hard to judge without feedback! Thanks. (There are lots of other color changes, but it's the links I'm concerned about because those are the ones that you, dear reader, need to see to be able to click 'em.)

In all fairness to Christine...

2010-10-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

OK, so there's been an argument about exactly what Christine O'Donnell meant with her self-inflicted flub about separation of church and state, and its presence (or lack thereof) in the Constitution. (My earlier post.)

Here's the thing: She is trying to downplay this, by saying that she (originally) said the specific phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear. This is true, but c'mon - why on earth would someone even bother to ask about how an idea is exactly worded when the real issue is its significance? Clearly, she is trying to shift the focus.

Trying to be fair, I have done some research, and it is apparent that Christine and her attendants are busy exercising damage control. Here, from Slate, is a good, objective explanation of what went down. Take a look for yourself, and make your own decision.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel

2010-10-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

Christine O'Donnell and her minions apparently have trouble spelling her name. As I write this, the error is still on her website, despite the comments from a number of people online! UPDATE: They finally fixed it!

They make it so easy - who could resist pointing this gaffe out? Not I, certainly!

And to those of you who say "who cares?" I say I do. When an error like this is allowed to be published, it tells me that they truly have a don't-care-just-send-money attitude. And the really sad part is that her followers probably are incapable of picking up on this.

How the Teabaggers get it wrong

2010-10-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

I came across this thoughtful, well-written, objective essay in Newsweek, discussing how the Teabaggers use the Constitution as their "bible" to get their message across, and how incredibly misguided and just plain wrong this notion is. Yet another must-read.

I also feel compelled to show you this sign from them - what the hell do they think Medicare is?!

(I'm finding so many "must-reads" these days, where the articles in question speak for themselves and really need no comment from me. Consequently, I'm now adding a box in the sidebar which will change as necessary, and will contain links that I think are important.)

Quickies

2010-10-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

Some good items in the Huffington Post today - worth linking to. Here goes:

Carl Paladino fell apart in a gubernatorial debate with Andrew Cuomo.
There's a dustup between Sarah Palin and NYTimes columnist Maureen Dowd.
Larry Magid talks about how Facebook Groups can jeopardize privacy.
And, on DADT, it appears that the judge is likely to defy the government.

Christine at her best

2010-10-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm uncomfortably aware that I keep zeroing in (see here) on Christine O'Donnell's scary nonsense, but who can resist? Not her fellow Republicans, it seems! Or even herself...

Today, in an exchange with her opponent Chris Coons during a radio debate, it became apparent that dear Christine has no clue about the separation of church and state, which is very clearly stated in the First Amendment. Politico tells us that this was a true foot-in-mouth moment, given that she was the one who brought it up by asking "Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" When informed of the text of the First Amendment, her initial response was "You’re telling me the First Amendment does?" She then repeated this with "That's in the First Amendment?" Oh dear. In addition, we now learn that Sharron Angle is with Christine on this issue - surprise.

UPDATE: Here's Christine's, um, rebuttal to this brouhaha on her website: "In this morning's WDEL debate, Christine O'Donnell was not questioning the concept of separation of church and state as subsequently established by the courts. She simply made the point that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution. It was in fact Chris Coons who demonstrated his ignorance of our country's founding documents when he could not name the five freedoms contained in the First Amendment." I honestly cannot see how she squares this with her original question (see above). Talk about stretching the truth!

Witchy woman!

Her fellow Republican, Newt Gingrich, criticized her yesterday for her now-infamous "I am not a witch, I'm you" ad. There's this irresistible quote from Christine: "One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn't know it. I mean, there was a little blood there and stuff like that... We went to a movie and then had a little picnic on a satanic altar."

And on Sunday's This Week on ABC, Meghan McCain - John McCain's daughter - commented that she thought Christine is a "nutjob." Daddy is not happy.

Redesigned again!

2010-10-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

The old look

Yup, I've done it again - a new look for Bafflegab! I've tried to retain the best of what I had, but given it cleaner lines and (I hope) a friendlier look for normal as well as widescreen monitors.

No doubt I'll be tweaking it for a few days, but most of it is there. Like it? Hate it? Let me know via comments below or clicking one of the response boxes.

Facebook does it again

2010-10-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Yet again, Facebook is in the news. It has come to light that, regardless of how stringently you set your so-called "privacy" settings in Facebook, there are a number of associated apps that ignore this, and divulge personally identifiable information about you to their "trusted partners." What's worse, not only about you, but also information about your Facebook "friends." One of these apps, Farmville, has almost 60 million users (yes, 60,000,000!), and it seems they are one of the worst offenders.

Here's what happens: Every user of Facebook has a unique ID. Anyone, you included, can look up an individual's profile using this ID, thus divulging (at least) the name, along with anything else the person may have chosen to include. Apps like Farmville use this ID - as well as those of your "friends" - to pass this info on to data mining companies. So, even if you, personally, have chosen not to get involved, there is a high likelihood that your "friends" have - and thus your personal info is being passed on! Nice, huh?

Now, I've written about Facebook a number of times (see here, here, and here), so none of this comes as a surprise to me. But I am amazed at the continued explosive growth of the site, given all the negative publicity they have been receiving; either people don't read or they're just incredibly stupid.

The Huffington Post had this to say about it, along with some informative links that you should look at (particularly the three things you can do on Facebook to help protect your privacy - not that it seems to have much effect!).

As I was looking into this story, I discovered a great website, SUSPACK. There is an excellent essay about Facebook, focusing on the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you only click through to one item, this is the one!

And, if you still feel a desperate urge to use a social networking service, take a look at these alternatives.

Of course, with the speed of change in this world, who knows how long it will be before the next phenomenon comes along that will overshadow Facebook ... only time will tell.

There's gotta be a morning after!

2010-10-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

The Turf Club certainly got lucky with the weather. Saturday night was beautiful - typical Bay Area weather. Sunday saw our first real rain of the season - here's what the patio looked like then!

Pictures of Turf Club's 25th anniversary

2010-10-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my prior post, yesterday was the Turf Club's 25th anniversary, and a blast was had by all. I snapped some pictures, but not nearly enough to do justice to the event. Nonetheless, here's a sampling.

Great hors d'œuvre and amuse bouche got us going, prepared and served by Steve D'Assis. Then we were served a dinner of juicy, tender prime rib, new potatoes slathered in butter, and a delicious marinated bean side (a nod to my need for veg!). I wasn't able to manage dessert, but was reliably informed that the selection was, again, delicious. And, of course, champagne. All the staff were parading around in tuxes (or some variant thereof), all looking wonderful. A big thank you goes out, in kinda-sorta alphabetical order, to Larry, Doug, Danny, Dave, Eric, Frank, Gary, Hazel, Jay, Jennifer, Michael, Randy, Shawn, both Steves, and others I'm just not remembering right now (apologies)!

Some people pics first, then some more general pics.

My friend Bryan and bartender Shawn

Bartender Jennifer

My friend Carrie (aka Dinklesquat!!!)

Doug - da mob boss!
(And, of course, the ever-present whiskey sour in Bryan's hand!)

Bartender and good friend Dave

My friend John, who owes me a drink!
(Bet he can't remember why...)

Dave, suitably attired!

And some more general views of the party:

Turf Club's 25th anniversary

2010-10-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 25th anniversary of my "home away from home," the World Famous Turf Club. It's in downtown Hayward, CA, and is the only "gay bar" left in town. I use the term "gay bar" in quotes because, while people use the term familiarly, that really isn't the main focus these days - and that's as it should be. I'm always fascinated by the dichotomy of gay people wanting to be in the mainstream, yet when it comes to revered institutions like "their" bars, then they want exactly the opposite: a sense of exclusivity. C'mon, guys - it's one or the other, otherwise you're just being hypocritical.

The Turf is a wonderfully supportive community of like-minded people - gay, straight, ambisexual, whatever, who cares. LGBTQQWTF! From charity events to just plain having fun, you can find it all here. So, if you ever wander off the beaten path into Hayward, give it a whirl. (Tonight promises to be a blast because of the celebration - they're going all out to make this a night to remember.)

I could point out all of its attributes, but ya gotta see it for yourself to really appreciate it. The huge patio is being upgraded, and they are about to install a permanent outdoor bar on the top deck, in the Tiki Hut. This nighttime picture of the bottom section is a few months old, but it gives you some idea of the atmosphere. (And no, I'm not a shill for the place ... I just happen to really like it!)

FYI: Updated pictures page

2010-10-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've added some new pics to my Picture me page ... hope you like 'em!

Christine O'Donnell - another Sarah Palin?

2010-10-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

During the recent debate between senatorial candidates in Delaware, our new Republican idiot, Christine O'Donnell, displayed an appalling ignorance of Supreme Court cases. This is astonishing; you would think that she at least had done enough homework to answer a question that had a high likelihood of being asked, particularly since she has been so critical of so-called "activist judges" and has expressed unhappiness about the recent California Supreme Court decision on DADT.

I'll let the transcript speak for itself:
--------------------------------
Nancy Karibjanian: What opinions, of late, that have come from our high court, do you most object to?

O'Donnell: Oh, gosh. Um, give me a specific one. I'm sorry.

Karibjanian: Actually, I can't, because I need you to tell me which ones you object to.

O'Donnell: Um, I'm very sorry, right off the top of my head, I know that there are a lot, but I'll put it up on my website, I promise you.

Wolf Blitzer: We know that you disagree with Roe v Wade.

O'Donnell: Yeah, but she said a recent one.

Blitzer: That's relatively recent.

O'Donnell: She said "of late." But yeah. Well, Roe v Wade would not put the power - it's not recent, it's 30-something years old...

Blitzer: But since then, have there been any other Supreme Court decisions?

O'Donnell: Well, let me say about Roe v Wade - if that were overturned, would not make abortion illegal in the United States, it would put the power back to the states.

Blitzer: But besides that decision, anything else you disagree with?

O'Donnell: Oh, there are several when it comes to pornography, when it comes to court decisions - not to Supreme Court, but federal court decisions to give terrorists Mirandize rights. There are a lot of things I believe - this California decision to overturn Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I believe there are a lot of federal judges legislating from the bench.

Blitzer: That wasn't the Supreme Court. That was a lower...

O'Donnell: That was a federal judge. That's what I said. In California.
--------------------------------
While she promised to update us on this issue on her websites, thus far I have not been able to find anything, either here or here.
UPDATE: While Christine has not personally responded (as she promised), this post is, I guess, the closest we'll get. It is, of course, nothing but pure bafflegab from one of her minions, wherein she has apparently changed her mind, now saying that she is OK with "recent" Supreme Court decisions. She attributes this change of heart to the fact that Roberts and Alito are now Supremes, conveniently ignoring the fact that they joined the court in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Newsflash for Christine: This is 2010. Not only that, but since she acknowledged that Roe v Wade is "30-something years old," you would think that she could name at least one case she has a problem with during the intervening 25-"something" years!
UPDATE AGAIN: Bill Maher, on his show this week, mentioned this, and commented that it's easy to promise an update on the website, and then do some creative copy-paste from Wikipedia. How true. How sad.

It's also illuminating to read her political viewpoints, not to mention her personal ones! Let's see. Masturbation: bad. Witchcraft: good. Evolution: bad! There's lots more. The Huffington Post always has some interesting comments. Or just Google her (no thanks!).

So there you have it. Just like the time when Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin (Christine's, erm, mentor) to name a recent Supreme Court case (besides Roe v Wade), and was not able to. Oh dear. Of course, this was yet another reason for Christine to have done her homework - if sister Sarah was tripped up, she really should have anticipated this question!

Battle to dominate your living room

2010-10-12T21:05:00.000-07:00

It seems that marriage of TV and the 'net is becoming more a reality as each day goes by. If executed well, this could be an exciting innovation. Or, it could be a dud - after all, hooking one's 'puter to a TV is somewhat passé already, even though it does require at least a smidgen of technical knowledge. But if it really, honestly, absolutely, becomes "plug 'n play" (to resurrect an old term), then I think we may be on to something revolutionary. I've always dreamed of the potential of truly interactive TV, but there's no question it has to be as seamless as possible - almost like what the iPhone/iPad/iWhatever did to get phones and 'puters to wed.

Needless to say, Google (surprise!) is one of two major contenders in this arena, the other being Apple. It will be interesting to see who prevails - if at all! Time, as always, will tell.

Wind power - and this time, I'm not farting!

2010-10-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

Here's an exciting prospect - an offshore wind farm on the Atlantic seaboard that would generate ~6Gw of power. That's equivalent to about five large nuclear power plants, and the windmills would be located in the ocean, away from populated areas. Even better, Google is one of two major investors!

This all sounds very promising. While expensive to deploy, the benefits, of course, accrue over time. I think this is exciting, and could well be the harbinger of things to come.

And, just for grins, on the left we have a picture of an old windmill on a farm in South Africa - I like it for nostalgic reasons, so why the hell not? (These were typically used to pump water from underground wells.)

This space intentionally left blank! (But is it? Really?!)

TV tech terminology

2010-10-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered why the TV industry insists on confusing us with their bafflegabby (!) terminology. Take, for example, the popular "1080p" resolution. This is typically described as a mode characterized by "1080 lines of vertical resolution." (Emphasis mine.) Now, I dunno about you, but this leads me to think that each line is 1080 pixels high - iow, from top to bottom. That's what "vertical" means, n'est-ce pas? Nope, 1080p is the number of horizontal lines, stacked on top of each other. (The width of each line is 1920 pixels.) And, yes, I know it means that each line is, in fact, 1080 pixels high - but it still confuses the crap outta me!

In checking this out, I came across a rather illuminating, easy-to-understand depiction of all the different video resolutions out there. It's interesting to see how far we've come from the early days, and where we may be headed. I say that with reservations, because I think we've pretty much hit the point of diminishing returns. After all, why pump all those extra pixels down the line, eating up precious bandwidth, when the human eye really cannot discern much more than the current standard? Here's the pic in question; you can find a larger, easier-to-see version here. (Realize that HD 1080 is 3,801,600 pixels 30 times a second, while the highest resolution, QSXGA would be 5,242,880 pixels, 1.38x more!)

Nice billboard

2010-10-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

This ad is from the South African electricity utility, Eskom:

Admin note

2010-10-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to speed up loading of this page (in response to, um, complaints!), I am now limiting the number of posts to 15. Of course, you can always click on the "older posts" link at the bottom of each page to continue trolling through my bafflegab!

The store not in motion

2010-10-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

OK, yes, stationary/stationery misspellings are a common problem, but sometimes it's contextually funny. This, from a story at NDTV.com:

"The boy was returning home from a stationary store, when the man took him to a nearby isolated ground and tortured him for more than two hours."

(Before I get nasty comments: Yes, the story itself is not funny.)

Fun bathroom pictures

2010-10-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

All the political nonsense going on right now is getting me down. So, back to bathroom humor... (Not to worry, most of it is clean!)

Gotta love the detail,
down to the direction of the drips -
as well as that of the baseball caps!

Talk about ropey!

That hair! Is she in a wind tunnel?
(Btw, is that really how women pee? Damn.)

Gotta go?
See below...

Gotta go! Gotta go!
Gotta go right now.

This is disturbing...

...but not as disturbing as this!
(And there are those baseball caps again.)

Umm ... OK.

But it is a non sequitur!

I'm sure there'll be more of these appearing soon, so stay tuned!

The tea party and its (unspoken) racism

2010-10-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here's an article that I would regard as a must-read for anyone who is concerned about the future of this country. It's objective, well-researched, and most definitely speaks for itself - so I'm going to let it do just that!

Political silly season

2010-10-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

With the mid-term elections coming up in a few weeks, the loonies are most definitely out there, making - as usual - complete idiots of themselves. Let's start the season with a "light" one:

House representative Larry Brown (R-NC) appears to not be too enamored with gay people. In an email string (for context see here), he said, and I quote: "I hope all the queers are thrilled to see him. I'm sure there will be a couple of legislative fruitloops there in the audience."

Queers. Fruitloops. Hmm.

Now, clearly, this doesn't rise to the level of anything extraordinary - after all, by now we all should be accustomed to seeing this sort of garbage. It just blows me away that there still are politicians up on the hill, supposedly representing us, "the people," who maintain this kind of outdated, ill-informed bigotry. And, sadly (and more importantly), this fool is running unopposed in November.

(Thanks, John, for alerting me to this one!)

Oh hell, I give up

2010-10-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

Instead of constantly apologizing for my puerile fascination with naughty bits, why don't I just 'fess up now: Like most men, I am still in a state of arrested adolescence, and find stuff like the following pretty damn funny. Enjoy.

OK, I know...

2010-10-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't exactly been prolific with my writing the past few days - I'm a little, erm, preoccupied at the moment...

But at least I'm updating the funny stuff above and on the left ... that's something! So quitcha bitchin'!

Feds want to snoop even more

2010-09-29T13:16:00.001-07:00

So now our friendly U.S. Gov't wants to be able to view all encrypted communication over the 'net, as and when they want to. They even want companies doing business outside the U.S. to provide backdoors. It's gross, and it's scary. It's also useless, since there will always be ways to abuse the privilege - and, believe me, it will be abused, whether by the Feds or by other mischief-makers.

But I feel a soapbox rant coming on, so why don't I just let this article explain it all...

Google's browser, Chrome, shows its superiority - again

2010-09-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I told you about an evil new phenomenon - persistent cookies.

Well, I just read an item from PC Magazine that shows that Google's free browser, Chrome, pretty much decimates these things. If that's not a reason to use Chrome, I don't know what is. Get it here - you will love it, I promise.

I'm taking the liberty of quoting a significant chunk of the article from PC Magazine, mainly because I think this is so important:

"...But in Google Chrome you'll find a superior handling of the problem. Much to my surprise, and confirmed by Adobe, Chrome's cookie manager (Tools—Options—Under the Hood—Content Settings—Show cookies and other site data) integrates management of Flash cookies and almost all of the other items on Kamkar's list. Under the "samy.pl" domain the section "Local Storage" included both the HTML5 storage and Flash cookies. Deleting the domain deleted all of it.

"Better still, Chrome's "Incognito" (private) mode prevented any of them. The cookie manager can't stop the cached image Kamkar says he creates, but all the private modes should be flushing the cache anyway.

"Adobe says that they are working with other browser companies to integrate similar functionality for Flash local storage, but Google Chrome is the first."

FYI: To open an Incognito window in Chrome, press ctrl-shift-n. Oh, and if you're searching for the Tools menu item mentioned above, it's the cute little spanner at the top right, just under the close button!

Dr. Who? Why, it's Dr Ann de Wees Allen!

2010-09-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

Dr. Who?

So there's this woman, goes by the name ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~, who seems to think that she (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~) can trademark her name (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~). Not only that, but ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ is sending "cease and desist" letters to anyone who uses the name ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ in any way, shape or form. Apparently. Maybe I should try the same trick - there'd be a boatload of people who'd be SOL if I did, since my name is pretty common (just like me!).

Hallelujah! It's a miracle! ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen's~~ website, which touts a miracle cure for something or the other, makes the trademark threat explicit, down to publishing the names of websites that have dared (shock, horror!) to use her name (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~). ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ also displays a copy of the C&D letter. The lineage of the name ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~, we're told, comes from a royal house in England - see here. And, ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ lays claim to some rather dubious patents, without showing any specifics such as patent numbers, just a long laundry list of ... oh, hell, I really don't care. She (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~) also seems to specialize in spelling errors, as can be seen at this page, where Dr Oz apparently says that diet sodas are "fattenting." The error is repeated here. Notably, ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ seems to specialize in poorly-edited websites - almost every page on every site is riddled with typos, spelling errors, and bad grammar. Oh well, whaddya gonna do? One wonders if ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ has also been able to trademark artwork such as the elegant (!) representation of her name (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~) depicted above. One also wonders if Dr. Ann de Wuss Allen would be OK.

Technical note. ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen's~~ website has some rather elementary Javascript that attempts to prevent one from copying text ... an ancient trick, one that any script kiddie knows how to overcome (hint: don't use your mouse). Right-clicking has also been suppressed - a dialog pops up saying "Copyright Protect!". Whatever that means.

Drag thinkin'... Someone made an interesting comment elsewhere - I quote: "It is not illegal to use trademarks, it is completely legal to used [sic] them to designate the actual trademarked thing. It is illegal to use a trademark to misrepresent a non-trademarked item as the 'real' trademarked item. So it would be a violation of trademark to dress up as Dr. Ann de Wees Allen, wear a Dr. Ann de Wees Allen mask and a nametag that says Dr. Ann de Wees Allen unless you actually are Dr. Ann de Wees Allen. So don’t do that." I see that there are some good pictures of ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ at her (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen's~~) website, trowel-thick makeup and all. She (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~) would look real good in drag. Wouldn't it be fun for a drag queen to use the name ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~ as a nom de plume for those, well, special occasions? Just sayin'...

Eat your chips. Here's another one of her websites, equally, erm, interesting. Apparently, computer chips are edible. It's here we learn that brains, as well as computers, can be damaged. Brain. Damaged.

Source-y! This came to light compliments of Techdirt, my amazing, reliable source for all web-related stupidity. You can read about our friend, ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~, here. There's also a fun blog entry about her (~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~) here. Should I receive any communiqué from ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~, I will most certainly let you know.

~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~
~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~
~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~
~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~   ~~Dr Ann de Wees Allen~~
Oh dear, what happened there? I had a little accident ... my ctrl-v key stuck!

And, on a completely different subject, can you say "charlatan"? How about "paranoid"?

Technology we take for granted

2010-09-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

Scenario: For me, it was the middle of the day in California. For my friend, it was 3am in a Bangkok hotel room - I never know where he is from one day to the other. I emailed him, he saw my note on his phone. He responded, and mentioned that I should tune into CNN to watch a live feed of the Iranian idiot ranting at the United Nations - quite a scene. My friend and I discussed it.

Observation: It made me realize just how much we take instant (and almost free) connectivity for granted these days. California, Bangkok, New York. All in real time. 20 years ago, this was not something most of us envisioned.

Homework: Think about it - the social ramifications, the global "village," the technology, the convenience, and on and on. Drop a comment; share your thoughts.

Persistent cookies

2010-09-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

Seems there's a new trick out there - cookies that regenerate themselves when you try to get rid of them. This is not good. I can see how it can be done - quite easily, in fact, and you gotta wonder why it hasn't happened before. Read about it here.

Anger in America

2010-09-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Alice's Tea Party is also crazy,
except hers makes sense!

Here's an interesting post from Arianna Huffington. I'm going to let it speak for itself - a preview below, and the full article here. Just remember - there are alternatives.

"The Tea Party is angry! Really, really angry. So we are told again and again by the media. What's missing from this narrative is the fact that everybody is angry - even people who love the president, and wouldn't dream of voting for anyone other than a Democrat. And it's not hard to understand why. How can you look at what's happening in America and not be angry? But if we keep associating anger exclusively with the Tea Party, our public debate becomes a false choice between the status quo and an agenda that would, quite simply, destroy America. There is more than one way to channel anger. Yes, you can demonize and divide and scapegoat. But anger can also be harnessed and redirected -- the energy behind it used to connect, to reach out, to take action, to make life better both for your family and for others who need help. And there are tens of thousands across America doing just that."

Lies, damn lies

2010-09-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

I'm always interested in the many ways us humans can distort, bend, manipulate, misrepresent the truth - see my earlier rant about MarketingSpeak.

Today's edition of Techdirt has a couple of interesting items on this topic, not least of which is a discussion concerning Amazon's recent "claim" that ebooks are outselling printed books by a wide margin. The first problem is obvious, but not one that a casual reader would pick up on: Amazon says that for every 100 hardcover books sold, 180 ebooks are sold. The key word there is hardcover - most people will just see this as ebooks vs any (printed) book. Well, when some bloggers saw this blob of bafflegab, they decided to look a little deeper. Net net, it turns out that a more realistic viewpoint is that ebooks represent about 6% of the total market - nowhere near 180%!

In the same vein, but applying the misinformation notion to politics instead of marketing... Politifact.com is a non-partisan group that investigates the veracity of claims made by politicians. They take specific incidents, research them, and write an article about what they found - and they add a rating on their "Truth-O-Meter" as to whether it was completely true, mostly true, half-true, etc. down to "pants on fire," obviously the lowest rating! They recently noticed that Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) was the worst liar of them all - six items rated "false" and five rated "pants on fire." Read about it here.

Of course, I can't resist reminding you of my earlier posts about Jan Brewer (R-Arizona Gov.) and her stupid comments about illegal immigrants - the infamous beheadings in the desert, not to mention the dessert! Here's Politifact's article on that, and here's her record.

Apologies...

2010-09-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

...I've been a little outta sorts the past few days, but will resume my rants asap. Meantime, here's a truly gross picture - it's an ad touting another one of those iTunes apps that promise to analyze your turd.

More Monty Python: The Penis Song (not Noël Coward!)

2010-09-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

Here's another little ditty from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life that I had forgotten about. I happenchanced upon it while browsing the intertubes today. Lyrics are below, so while Eric tickles the ivories, you can sing along around the 'puter with your family ... enjoy!

Eric Idle: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Here's a little number I tossed off recently in the Caribbean...
   Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis?
   Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong?
   It's swell to have a stiffy,
   It's divine to own a dick.
   From the tiniest little todger
   To the world's biggest prick!
   So three cheers for your willy or John Thomas.
   Hooray for your one-eyed trouser snake.
   Your piece of pork, your wife's best friend,
   Your Percy or your cock;
   You can wrap it up in ribbons,
   You can slip it in your sock.
   Just don't take it out in public,
   Or they will put you in the dock
   And you won't ... come ... back.

The inevitable Wikipedia entry is here.

Glenn Beck - is he really that dumb?

2010-09-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

Given the, erm, caliber of the typical Glenn Beck audience, do you really think he believes that he's being sarcastic by using these quotes on his book's jacket, or is he just stupid and doesn't realize what he's done? Read about it here.

Masturbation party!!!

2010-09-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

In keeping with today's, erm, topic, I give you:

It's in Spanish, but it speaks for itself...

The million masturbators march!

2010-09-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

You gotta read this report from Andy Borowitz about the attempt to organize a "Million Masturbators March" on Washington DC. Seems the city is concerned about the cleanup costs after the event...! This is in response to senatorial hopeful Christine O'Donnell's stance against masturbation.

And since we're on the topic, take this poll!

Everything old is new again

2010-09-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

We think we're so damn clever with all our new technology. Well, check this out. You know how, these days, we are able to associate metadata with photos? Examples include date, place, technical details of the pic, etc. Read about it here.

Did you know that Kodak thought of this a hundred years ago, and actually made it happen? No need for fancy hard/software, just a pen. Take a look at these ads:

Yep - just open the little door, write down the info, expose, badda bing, badda boom - you're done!

ALERT!!! --> --> --> --> Bill Maher returns! <-- <-- <-- <--

2010-09-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, indeedy - it's that time of year when Real Time with Bill Maher returns to HBO. If you have HBO, make sure you're tuned in on Friday night - the 17th. And if you don't, find a friend who has HBO, check into a hotel with HBO, whatever - just make damn sure you're watching!

This has been a crazy summer - from Islamophobia to DC infighting to right-wing loonie pundits to babblin' Sarah Palin to Qur'an burning to you-name-it. I have no doubt that Bill is more than ready to preach his viewpoint: A voice of utter and extreme sanity in the midst of the bigotry, childishness and, well, thoroughly unnecessary behavior we are subjected to day after day. [Exit soapbox left.]

The Huffington Post, unfailing as always, alerts us to the good news about Bill. For a preview of the spot-on hilarity, watch this:

And, for some classic (and hysterical) Bill Maher, see this 2-minute clip.

(A quick aside: As I write this, I'm listening to an interview on CNN with the Republican Teabagger who won the New York primary for Governor yesterday, Carl Paladino. This man is uttering the most preposterous garbage I have ever heard. It's astounding. The topic is the Islamic center (not mosque) near Ground Zero. I am sure I will have more to say about this later...)

Beaver time!

2010-09-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm watching The Office, and just heard a great gag: Michael Scott, the manager of the Scranton Dunder-Mifflin branch, is handing out his idiotic annual awards, the "Dundies." He awards Phyllis (the frumpy one) the "Busiest Beaver" trophy, but when she accepts it and takes a look at the inscription, she says to him, "But it says "Bushiest Beaver"! Zing - good one!

Build your dream house, while sitting at your computer

2010-09-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

I've always been excited about the potential for creating physical objects from a printer.

HUH? I hear you say. Well, bear with me. For some time now developers have been improving a technology using what are known as "3D printers." No, not 3D in the sense of wearing special goggles at the movies. We're talking physical creation - these so-called "printers" use different materials, from paper to plastic to metal and even to concrete, and build actual objects layer by layer. The objects range from prosthetic devices to models of buildings to lamps to doorknobs and even to - yes! - houses.

It truly is a matter of sending your computer-generated 3D model that you see on your screen to one of these machines, which then manufactures the thing - just like you were sending a document to a printer. They can even make things with moving parts. Pretty damn cool, no?

Think about the possibilities and implications. Custom-generated items that are unique - print once, delete the file. Remote creation of items. All done automatically, so no more manual handling. Prices are dropping dramatically, making it feasible even for small businesses to enter the fray.

Imagine actually building your house in California while sitting at your 'puter in Ohio!

Read about it here, courtesy of the NYTimes. The short demo video below is worth watching too!

[Btw, if you clicked the NYTimes link, you will notice that I directed you to their print page for the article. I'm going to do this wherever I can in future, because there are far fewer ads, and the page loads quicker.]

Sarahbabble

2010-09-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

And here I thought I babbled! Since this site is dedicated to silly ramblings (mostly mine), today I thought I'd treat you to the nonsense that Sarah spewed in Wasilla this weekend, on the occasion of the 9/11 anniversary - which, btw, she barely mentions in this ~~speech~~ diatribe. As I often do, I'm just gonna let it speak for itself - this time, literally! (And yes, I am using that word correctly.) The best way to appreciate this is to read it out loud - if you can bear it. What a total idiot the woman is. My only fear is the potential for her ending up as the POTUS - that would be even more embarrassing than Bush was, both here and on the world stage, and that's saying a lot! (Which reminds me - don't forget to look above to see my somewhat-regularly updated Bushisms.) That sentence I underlined below? Talk about the Bridge to Nowhere; this is the Sentence to Nowhere!
----------------
"Well, I'm sorry I'm late. We had a bunch of kid activities today, and the kids come first, OK, so... we're taking care of that, but first let me ask you - Do you looove your freedom? We do love our freedom so what we do is we think of vets and we have some vets right here and we have vets all over this crowd. Raise your hand if you've served in the past or are presently serving in the United States military. We love you and we salute you! God bless you guys. Thank you guys so much! You're why we are here - why we are free - why we have these protections in our Constitution that only you can secure so we thank our vets. It's just really really good to be home. Tonight I think I'll see some of you at a Glenn Beck event that we have in Anchorage. Woohoo! I know. What would we do without Fox News? I don't know.

"We've had a busy time getting to travel around the United States and share the message of really the reform in this country that we need. The reform it's not a fundamental transformation of America that some would want to instill upon us but it is a restoration of America and the values that we hold so dear. That's been our message. And I tell ya where that springs from though, is the roots here in Alaska. I tell my parents all the time there is no better gift that they could have given me than besides such an appreciation for family and for faith and patriotism, it's been an upbringing in America in this most perfect state in America - Alaska, where we are independent and we have the pioneering spirit that more of America should hopefully get to look into the state and understand and really try to emulate because it's that pioneering spirit that America needs more of.

"It's a spirit that really wants to value work ethic and value family and value country and not ask much of government. We just want government on our side. We don't want it against us, we just want it on our side so it's not a lot to ask. But that... that value, that belief, it comes from being an Alaskan. There is no place that I would rather be than with you on a day like this - patriots in Alaska. Patriots here who have taken time out of their day to say that we will never forget 9/11, nine years ago - we will never forget and we all commit to never letting it happen again. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart for not just welcoming me in my home town but for being who you are, true patriots holding on to time tested truths. Knowing that... knowing some basic principles that again, the rest of America can learn from so many Alaskans who believe this - those time tested truths that are based on the government that governs least, governs best. And the knowledge that it's our Constitution that provides the best path - the best blueprint for a more perfect union and the knowledge that our men and women in uniform are a source for good throughout this world and that's nothing to apologize for. So you Alaskans who are so proud to be American, I'm with you. I love you. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. Thank you guys!"
----------------

Ever thoughtful, the Huffington Post provides video of this delicious morsel here. (I can't bear to watch it myself.)

An interesting aside: Whether true or not, I dunno, but it's still funny. During some websurfing, I came across this story - apparently, when Sarah heard that Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, she was heard to say, "So Sambo beat the bitch." (Snopes.com categorizes the story as "undetermined," but it's likely true - see here.)

And if you like Sarah humor, try this - particularly her 2008 stuff.

Dangers of social networking

2010-09-13T05:01:00.000-07:00

Again, this is a post that I won't comment on - I'll let this article from the NYTimes speak for itself.

Briefly: It's about being careful what information you divulge on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. This is important, folks!!!

And please make sure that your account settings are set up in such a way that your privacy is under your control. Be safe!

Prop. 8: Newsweek article worth reading, plus a fun video

2010-09-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

Ted Olson and David Boies

Yes, I'm back on Proposition 8, the "law" that denies equal rights to same-sex couples who wish to marry. Prop. 8 is clearly unconstitutional, and one of the two lawyers who fought to overturn it wrote an excellent article in Newsweek.

The two lawyers are liberal David Boies, and conservative Ted Olson (appointed by Bush). Who do you think wrote the article? Wrong! It was the conservative one - Ted Olson! He explains why this so-called law should be a concern for everybody, not just gay people. Please read it!

On a lighter note, here is an excellent video about Prop. 8. The music in the video is Adam Lambert singing Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." The wonderful underlying video of Adam's performance was created by Jack "Angel" Montana.

Just because I can...

2010-09-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, another gross picture. I made it extra-large this time - the pic, that is. Sorry about that! (As always, captions welcome!)

Beheadings in the where?!?!

2010-09-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

A delicious typo from a CNN blog entry:

"What is hurting us right now economically are statements, false statements made by Jan Brewer, about how Arizona has become so violent, that we are a place of fear, and we have beheadings in the dessert," said Arizona Attorney Gen. Terry Goddard, the Democrat challenging Brewer, during the debate.

Say what? Would that be beheadings in the Baked ~~Alaska~~ Arizona? It doesn't look like Jan is enjoying her dessert! Maybe she's getting her just desserts?

See my earlier post about this...

Polari

2010-09-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

No Smoking in Polari

[Maybe I should have used polari as a word-of-the-day on my bafflegab me page, since I notice I've been somewhat remiss about keeping my other pages up to date. Oh well...]

WTF? I hear you say. Yesterday, I wrote this sentence: And, my dear, just varda her ugly eek! and, at the time, thought that may have needed elucidation. But I was just so pissed at the topic in question (Qur'an burning) that I didn't go there. So I will today.

Polari is slang (or, more appropriately, cant or argot) that was popular about 50 or so years ago in the gay community, particularly in the U.K. The BBC made good use of it in a number of their popular radio comedy programs, which no doubt was responsible for its growth. Usually, it was used by campy gay guys, possibly because they felt they had a need to communicate with each other using terminology that only they would understand. Remember, this was still in the days when "gay" was bad, and there was a desire, nay, a need, for secrecy. And when you're a stereotypically effeminate queen, I would imagine that was a really tough thing to accomplish!

So what did I say in that sentence? Well, "varda" means to look, or see. And "eek" is a face. You can take it from there!

If you're interested in learning more about this, here are some good places to look: First, commentary by one of my favorite language pundits, Michael Quinion, in his World Wide Words website, where there is a brief lexicon. For more, check out the Wikipedia entry, which has a more comprehensive list, as well as a bunch of good links. And here's a good, no-nonsense article about it. Enjoy!

A busy day

2010-09-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

This is a jam-packed day, so I'm gonna resort to bullets and short comments (yay!).

Burning the Qur'an: If, as this idiot "pastor" has threatened, the burning of 200 copies of the Qur'an goes ahead on Saturday, I think we will have descended to a new low in history - and, let's face it, that bar is already pretty damn low. This act would not only be disgusting, but it most definitely threatens our security. It's gonna piss off so many people. This horrible act of hate and bigotry may cause many of the soldiers who are protecting this asshole to be killed - that's pretty rich, ain't it? Imagine if Bibles or Torahs were being burned...? I'm speechless - that's rare. (Btw, I put the word "pastor" in quotes because he certainly is not acting the part. And, my dear, just varda her ugly eek!)
And more from Google: Yes, Google has done it again, with Google Instant. They have modified their search capability such that it tries to predict what you are looking for with every single keypress. It's pretty damn cool - you can read about it here, and try it out from that link by pressing the big blue button. There's more info here too. You may want to try a search like [Quran burning] since that's topical now. (For my pedantic friends out there: I deliberately omitted the apostrophe in "Qur'an" because there's no need for punctuation in a search term.)
Penis envy: Here's the largest penis in the world. And it's in St. Petersburg!!! (Cue Peter Griffin: giggle.)

Craigslist and censorship

2010-09-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

So now Craigslist has finally bowed to the pressure it's been getting from the politicos. It has shut down its "Adult Services" section, and replaced the link to that area with a big, bold "CENSORED."

As this article points out, this is really dumb - all it's gonna do is move these ads to other sites. I quote from the article:

While some had threatened, no actual lawsuit had been filed against Craigslist for this section -- and for a damn good reason: Craigslist is, without a doubt, protected from liability due to Section 230. Furthermore, Craigslist seems to go out of its way to help law enforcement use the site as a tool to crack down on prostitution. Shutting that down won't stop the prostitution. It'll just drive it to sites that don't work as closely with law enforcement.

Section 230 is the law that shields websites that host user-generated content from being sued because of what their users post. But the Techdirt article I linked to above explains it much better than I can, so make sure you take a look; this is important stuff.

I guess this means we won't get to see "things" like this any more. (Sorry, couldn't resist! And, yes, he is of legal age. And he's not selling it - for that, see below.)

I don't think this picture was digitally modified - the juxtaposition of his fingers and dick looks genuine.

In the meantime, go here to find some interesting alternatives - that is, of course, if you're into actually paying for it. Eeew.

Article re Palin - a must-read

2010-09-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

I know I've already cited this article from Vanity Fair, but now that I've actually read it, I URGE you to take a look. It's a good, objective account of the woman, and anyone who takes an interest in politics and fears the possibility, nay, probability of her running for president has simply got to read it. It speaks for itself, so I will say no more!

Update, September 15: ~~Man~~ (oops) Ann Coulter has weighed in with her "criticism" of the Vanity Fair article. Poor thing - her hateful ramblings are normally pretty cringe-worthy, but this week she's really gotta be desperate to fill her column with this nonsense. Everything (and I mean everything) she says about the VF article has no basis in reality whatsoever.

A quickie re DUI/DWI

2010-09-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

There is currently a PSA on TV about drunk driving or "riding." It's the same commercial every time, except that ~50% use the term "drunk driving" while the rest of them use "drunk riding."

My question is - why? Are they subtly trying to make us think that merely riding in a car while drunk is a DUI/DWI no-no? And, if so, how does the "designated driver" deal now work? Is it gonna be illegal to be drunk while sitting in the passenger seat? And where in hell do they expect people to drink now - I will not drink alcohol on my own at home. For me, drinking is a social experience, not a loner one. If my assumption is correct, this sucks - big time.

Palin - again

2010-09-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

This time, I point you to an article from Vanity Fair. While lengthy, it's definitely worth reading.

Ya know, I concede that Palin has political "smarts" - she certainly knows how to manipulate her throngs of adoring admirers and that, sadly, is what constitutes savvy in this disgusting power game we see playing out in D.C.

But think about this - if she ever, Goddess forbid, became (gulp) the POTUS, how would she handle the job? You think George W. Bush was stupid? Compared to her, he's a veritable Einstein. When someone doesn't know who Margaret Thatcher is, how on earth could she hold her own when interacting with world leaders? (Oh that's right, I forgot - the world is flat, and ends at the U.S. borders - except, of course, Russia, because Palin can actually see that from her porch.) Consider this quote from the Vanity Fair article:

Early in the 2008 campaign, when John McCain's aides discovered that Alaska-size gaps existed in Palin's general knowledge (among those previously unreported: she had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was), they from time to time would give her some books to read in hopes of improving the candidate's learning curve. On one such occasion, Palin accepted the books, set them aside, and for the next 25 minutes was held rapt by one of her three BlackBerrys.

Eventually, an aide asked, "What are you working on?"

"I’m reading these great e-mails," she said, "from the prayer warriors."

Oh dear.

Beheadings in the desert - WTF?!

2010-09-03T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here's one for the books. Governor, Jan Brewer (R-AZ), appears to have had a couple of meltdowns in the past few days. You simply must read this article from The Huffington Post, as well as make sure you watch the two YouTube videos there.

The first one shows her at a very embarrassing moment in a political debate, where she ... well, I dunno, it's hard to describe ... she sorta "done did her very best," I guess. If you believe those lengthy pauses and bad grammar are her very best please go ahead and vote Republican. Craig Ferguson, in his inimitable way, decided to add sound effects which really appeal to my disgusting sense of humor; take a look at the video below... But wait - there's more!

She made a claim recently that there have been, and I quote, "beheadings in the desert." The second video in the link above shows how a bunch of reporters asked her about this, and why she won't recant the statement. I'm not going to spoil the surprise - again, see for yourself.

Also, did you know that she claimed Hitler killed her father? It was an outright lie, and she denies having lied about it. Details here.

Amazing. Or maybe not - given all the shenanigans going on in this political silly season. Funny how this nonsense always seems to come from the right - believe me, I really do look for leftie shenanigans, but can never find them. I wonder why. To sorta prove my point, in posting this article, I inadvertently bumped into an outrageous "trailer" for Glenn Beck's book. It's interesting to note that Beck has forbidden comments, as well as the ability to embed the YouTube video. But no matter - if you want a good giggle, go here and watch it!

It's time for REVOLUTION!

2010-09-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

That's what you see on James Lee's page on MySpace today. (For those of you who will have forgotten about this dude when the current news cycle ends, he is the one who is trying, as I write this, to hold the Discovery Channel hostage, in an attempt to get his demands heard.)

Here's a thought: Isn't it a shame that he had to get to this point to have his voice heard, when we have to put up with blowhards like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, ~~Man~~ (oops) Ann Coulter, and all the other right-wing idiots who have a built-in platform like ~~Fucks~~ (oops again) Fox News to expound their views as and when they like?

Shouldn't there be a better way for people not in the public limelight to expound their views? Whether the views in question are reasonable or not isn't the point here ... if you look at Lee's manifesto, and get beyond the absurdity of the actual "demands," you will see that he actually has a viewpoint that many people would agree with.

Update: As I write this, CNN is reporting that he has been captured, and everything is OK. Which is exactly the outcome I anticipated; what I find fascinating is the breathless-baffling-babbling-bafflegab-bullshit "BREAKING NEWS!!! ... BREAKING NEWS!!!" coverage that TV is so fond of.

More update: Well, he's dead now, so who gives a shit?

Time to eat my words - well, one of 'em, anyway

2010-08-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

I just came across a fascinating bit of trivia, worth repeating here. It comes from the book "What in the Word?" by Charles Harrington Elster, and concerns the origin of the word aluminum. Where I grew up, and pretty much everywhere in the world except the U.S., the word is spelled aluminium - with that extra "i," it's obviously pronounced differently as well. I've always laughed at what I thought was yet another American abuse of the Queen's English. But, no...

Seems there was a story going around that in the early days of Reynolds Aluminium, a clerk placed a large order for company stationery, and misspelled the word in question - Aluminum! Because the order was so large, the company decided to let it be and, if questioned, merely assert that this was - yes - the American spelling of the word! "What in the Word?" refutes this notion - here is the real explanation:

Aluminum

Aluminium

"...It's complete poppycock. Sir Humphrey Davy coined aluminum in 1812, based on Latin alumen, aluminis, which meant "alum" (potassium aluminum sulfate). The variant aluminium with the additional i appeared that same year "as a deliberate alteration," one etymological source says, "on the analogy of other names of elements, such as sodium, magnesium, potassium, all coined earlier by Davy." (Kind of like nucular coming about because of false analogy with muscular, molecular, etc.) So the EC (etymologically correct) form is the American one. (Suck on that one, limeys.)"

However... Wikipedia, interestingly, redirects a search for aluminum to aluminium, thereby inferring a preference for the British spelling. But the article itself seems to take a neutral stance on the topic.

And... Since I have a permanent link to World Wide Words over there on the left, I have to give a nod to its entry for this damnable word.

It's gonna take time for me to get used to aluminum, but this one I have to concede! (Btw, if you're interested in the word limey, click it!)

Equal opportunity filth

2010-08-31T12:42:00.000-07:00

Seems my disgusting picture two items down was a hit. As an equal opportunity purveyor of gross genitalia, I present to you this picture, this time courtesy of Fugly... Again, captions for this one are welcomed; use the comments button below.

Obama's mistake

2010-08-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

I came across this column from E.J. Dionne, Jr. at Truthdig. It's well worth a read - he explains, very coherently, how Obama has messed up in his first 20 months of governance. This paragraph really hit me:

There was a revealing moment in early August when Obama told an audience at a Texas fundraiser: "We have spent the last 20 months governing. They spent the last 20 months politicking." Referring to the impending elections, he added: "Well, we can politick for three months. They've forgotten I know how to politick pretty good."

E.J. then continues:

Obama’s mistake is captured by that disdainful reference to "politicking." In a democracy, separating governing from "politicking" is impossible.

And then proceeds to explain why. As I say, worth a read.

Bonus to cheer you up: Also from Truthdig today, Eugene Robinson's comments on Glenn Beck's 15 minutes of fame at the ego-rific Beckfest held at the Lincoln Memorial this weekend. Also check out some of the sights and sounds.

This is just plain gross

2010-08-29T22:06:00.000-07:00

A picture desperately in search of a caption - suggestions welcome!