Sharp Tools - Symlink

Awesome is made of win, which is made of...

...the components of win! I would be happy not even getting past the first one, but hey, they're all goodness.

Oh my dear God no.

Please no.

The Day The Earth Stood Still was bad enough.

Another Imagery Exercise

The Australian DoD has a Play Imagery Analyst exercise up for your self-evaluation and delectation.

Um...Nature is really, really, really impressive.

Normally I'd balk at just posting a link to Gizmodo, but they have one of the absolute all-time coolest 'Hey, look what I did with my camera!' vids, ever.

Really.

Fours galore

Damn and blast my brother, who showed me this puzzle. Careful, the solutions are on the same page, so don't scroll down.

Aigh.

A moment to recite the Seven Words.

Rest well, George.

Dear God, thank you

Every few weeks I realize I'm behind, and I run, squeeee-ing with joy, over to catch up. And nuggets of sheer brilliance await.

Bump.

Read this article, posted by Scott Horton, which simply offers a transcript of some of Senator Whitehouse's remarks on 12/7.

That's it.

Hope Floats

A study shows that Americans, especially younger ones, seem to have decided that Christianity as it is practiced in the U.S. is MADE OF FAIL. Notably, it's too homophobic, too obsessed with politics, too hypocritical, and out of touch.

Fingers crossed.

I never understood Dragonball Z

...but I watched it a few times trying to understand why some people liked it. God help me, that may be why this is so breathtakingly funny.

Also, I like Beavis and Butthead. There. Now you know.

Give a lowlife celebrity, he's still a lowlife.

So dog-fighting should be winked at if famous football players are found doing it (and it's a felony) because non-famous people do it too? The football players should be let off because non-football players aren't prosecuted despite the fact that "everybody knows they do it?"

In other words, "I got no responsibility to be an example, and all you pay me for is to perform on the field, and how I conduct myself is none of your business despite the fact that I'm being paid to be a public figure."

Yeah, right.

Comey testifies.

Damn. I mean, damn.

Repairing the damage

This is a fascinating interview with Daniel Metcalfe, a senior attorney at the U.S. Dept. of Justice, who retired in 2006 as the director of the Office of Information and Privacy - the office that handles government secrecy and the FOIA. I won't comment on his opinions re: the current state of affairs at Justice, but he brings up a sharp point that few folks are discussing (at least, that I've seen). He notes:

But that strong tradition of independence over the previous 30 years was shattered in 2005 with the arrival of the White House counsel as a second-term AG. All sworn assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, it was as if the White House and Justice Department now were artificially tied at the hip -- through their public affairs, legislative affairs and legal policy offices, for example, as well as where you ordinarily would expect such a connection (i.e., Justice's Office of Legal Counsel). I attended many meetings in which this total lack of distance became quite clear, as if the current crop of political appointees in those offices weren't even aware of the important administration-of-justice principles that they were trampling.

This matters greatly to Justice Department employees of my generation. They are now the senior career cadre there, with the high-grade institutional knowledge that carries the department from one administration to the next, and when they see a new attorney general come from the White House Counsel's Office with a wave of young "Bushies" in tow and find their worst expectations quickly met, they just as quickly lose respect for nearly all of the department's political leadership, not to mention that leadership's "policy concerns." That respect is a vital thing, as fragile as it is essential, and now it's gone.

This is something that is extremely worrying. As the process of discovering what went on at DOJ grinds forward, pulled this way and that by various agendas and points of view (even if with the best motives), it must be kept clearly in mind that the DOJ is one of the rocks on which our Federal Government rests. The trust that the career personnel have in their leadership, in the very system within which that leadership operates, is critical. If enough DOJ personnel become disgusted or disillusioned or simply fired, at some point the 'glue' of any organization - the tacit knowledge base and value system shared among and passed down by its career or long-term members - will be lost or degraded.

Can we afford that? I contend that we cannot. We must keep in mind that any investigation of DOJ, of those who worked there, and what happened there, must be done with the clear understanding that the objective is the preservation and, if necessary, restoration of the traditional functioning of the Department.

Thanks to Laura Rozen's War and Piece, without which I wouldn't have seen this article.

Lee's pissed.

He's making me remember all the reasons I'm pissed, too.

The Justice Department.

Your tax dollars at work, protecting you.

I have found my new source of all things news.

Between gems of reportage such as this and this, why go anywhere else? Especially with the most excellent photo editing.

The White House, email and Obstruction of Justice?

CREW has a post up which starts off speculating on possible Presidential involvement in the decisionmaking to fire the US Attorneys of recent attention and fuss. It moves on, however, into something I personally find more interesting - the possibility that the White House has been using non-governmental email systems in order to avoid the specific requirements of the Presidential Records Act. In this particular case, they note the possible use of the gwb43.com domain (owned by the GOP) by Karl Rove's office to coordinate the plan to replace the USAttys.

As the PRA does not specify penalties for its violation, CREW notes, this may have caused the WH to become 'cavalier' about flouting its requirements. However (and here's where it gets interesting) if the US Attorneys who were being replaced were in the midst of pursuing cases involving government officials, then (CREW says) a case could be made that the explicit use of non-archived email systems despite a mandate for the President's staff to do so might be taken as obstruction of justice. If at any point it became necessary to investigate the motivation behind their removal, it seems to me, the deliberate use of non-archived email systems to discuss the process, in violation of requirements otherwise, seems like a bit of a problem.

Deep wisdom lulz

MySpace, the real definition.

Losing Neurons

What bothers me most about this test is that I've taken it three times, separated by at least 24 hours between tests, and each time I've missed one. The worst part is that it's always been a different one.

The fact that this is in 'GQ'...

...just shows the depths to which we've sunk. It should be in the New York Times, and it should be in Congress, damn it.

George Takei.

SO the man.

via boingboing

*THWIPP!*

Heh. While taking The Superhero Quiz, I kept thinking to myself "Iron Man, i think, based on these..." Well, I wasn't that far off.

Spidey's cooler, though, so I'm stoked.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 65% Iron Man 60% Superman 50% Supergirl 50% Green Lantern 50% Catwoman 50% Robin 47% Hulk 45% The Flash 35% Batman 35% Wonder Woman 30%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

I am shocked, shocked!

"...to find out there is gambling going on here!"

Seriously, where were all these folks who seem surprised by this now? There were stories even then about political appointees from the Young Repubs with L.L. Bean backpacks getting off buses in Baghdad with no experience whatsoever save working on GOP campaigns and being handed responsibility for huge chunks of money and (more importantly) U.S. strategic interests and security.

I mean, come *on*.

Not wrong at all.

So, so right. My cousin made this for Baconfest last year. It was delicious (the white chocolate was the best, dark second, milk third in my opinion). We tried to get her to commercialize it, but she kept waving us off. Looks like we didn't try hard enough.

I am weak.

I am a wretch. I am susceptible to memes. I am...I am...

LOLCATZ!!!!

heh.

I can explain what?

You scored as Scientific Atheist. These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 100% Apathetic Atheist 58% Spiritual Atheist 42% Agnostic 42% Theist 33% Angry Atheist 17% Militant Atheist 17% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

I'd either smash Foamy with an ashtray, or buy him a beer.

I dunno which. The laughs are fun though.

This is why they put it on an unmanned platform.

Still, ow. I feel for Sea Launch. I hope this doesn't stopblock their program.

Go Maine.

You tell 'em!

New Translation Available

...on the impeccable MC White.

Woot.

The Government Does Not Currently Have Any Plans to Make Monkeys Available

I love the British. Especially their civil service, for its extreme sense of humor as outwardly expressed by a complete lack thereof.

Hooray! The Return of the Secret Life!

...The Secret Life Of Machines, that is...one of my all-time favorite British television documentary series. A quirktastic edutainment spin. Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing this one out! I tried to find that series on DVD for ages.

Who understands those 'rap guys' anyway.

Ever wonder what the hell they mean? No matter how good your street cred, you gotta give props to MC White for trying to make hiphop comprehensible (linguistically) to the poker-inserted set.

CRAP and Windows

Yep.

My avenue for 'premium content' continues to be 'Purchase hard media (CD, DVD). Stripping DRM if required (DVD) Rip to unprotected digital format. Store.'

My OS of choice continues to be Mac OS X because, despite various bleatings about iTunes (some, in my opinion, deserved and many not) Mac OS X and media players available for it have no problem with me utilizing my preferred avenue, above, on Apple-branded hardware end-to-end. This might change in the future, certainly. But given that I still can't get many default Linux distros to play a bloody video file (or, in some cases, audio) out of the box because people can't get their act together either legally, organizationally, philosophically or just plain technically - and given that using Linux as a primary desktop still feels like swallowing glass compared to using OS X - well, at home, I have a Mac.

Grey Lady Rising

...to the challenge, at last. Here is what the New York Times is supposed to do. Here is what a 'free press' looks like when it is trying to do its job; when it is attempting to tell us something is wrong by the very act of complying with rules which are, themselves, broken. Note the following sentence: "Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House." That is an extremely interesting claim, even from a strictly legal point of view.

It's been a good while since the Grey Lady has shown the gleam of combat in her eye. It's good to see it again. Here's hoping she can bring some sunshine.

I'm an internet junkie. So how come I missed this?

Because it frakking rules.

Japanglish Is Fun!

...and makes for the BEST PRODUCT PAGE EVAR. I'm not kidding. This link is SFW.

Despite having text like the following: Please remove plastic cover package from the item and insert it into your desire hole.

hat tip Wired

Clarkson and May, on Hammond

Jeremy Clarkson and James May discuss their colleague Richard's accident in the Vampire Jet Car whilst filming for Top Gear, as well as the public reaction to it in Britain. These gentlemen are writers, damn it, which is why that show is so bloody good.

(hat tip jyeo for the pointer)

Senator Lincoln Chafee, R-RI.

While I'm happy the Dems took the Senate, I'm somewhat sorry Senator Chafee is one of the seats they nailed in doing so. Why? The quote from him in this story, especially considering he just lost an election at the hands of those same American People. This man may be one of those Republicans I miss.

Why don't I live in England? WHY?

Tanks! TANKS!!!!! AIGH!!!!!!!

C'mon, Top Gear, get on this one!

Warren Ellis has awesome friends of friends

Pictures of the Space Shuttle launching - taken from the ISS.

Rock.

Update: Aw. Those w/sharper eyes than me were right. They're not from ISS. They're from a high-altitude plane. Still awesome images, but somehow the cool factor is diminished.

Hooray Hamster!

The Hamster is up and about! Many sighs of relief for him and his family are heard throughout the pistonhead world. Now let's see the footage of the runs before, at least, eh BBC? C'mon! C'mon! It's got a bloody jet engine!

Some things on the net actually *remain* funny.

MY NEIGHBOURS ARE HOORS! ...is definitely one of them.

SOUP!

Oh, *that's* where the Republicans went.

A while back, I lamented the disappearance of 'real' Republicans - the type who you could argue with over policy. I'm not saying they've reappeared, but it looks like even those on the other side of the fence seem to be missing them.

Hopeful. Fences can be used to shake hands across. There's this old saw about good neighbors, too...

Those aren't the people I'm talking about. But they seem to agree with me that the people in DC at the moment aren't the ones who should be there.

What the hell?

"October Surprise"? Nice.

Scientology Fun!

This deserves a google pagerank boost. I've had run-ins with the Scientologists before. Those that aren't pathetic are simply dangerous. Well, I take that back - they're all pathetic. Some are dangerous. Scientology is a classic example of the human need to absolve the self of all responsibility in favor of external authority and explanation, no matter how ridiculous. It is an example of the danger of carefully crafted mental distortion applied to large numbers of the venal, the willing and the merely weak.

Don't listen to me talk about it, though. Google 'em. And watch the video.

Question everything

It's a terrible sign when things like this make you sit back and wonder. I have to say I find just as many problems with this narrative as with the 'official' one - but that alone makes me sad. It drives home the fact that I don't believe what I've been told, and haven't since the event. This may make me 'fringe' and it may make me 'partisan' and it may make me whatever people want to label me. The problem is that in order to accept the tale as it has been told, I have to discard logic in too many places.

I still don't believe in tight, overarching conspiracies of evil. I have a much easier time accepting venality in opportunism and mistaken good intentions. But the thing that really roils my gut is not what I think did happen but the sheer fury of the certainty that I don't know what did. Given the import of the events, and given what they have been used to justify, that's unacceptable.

A Mighty Wind

One of my parents' current obsessive causes seems to have made Wired.Com via an AP story (they live in one of the towns mentioned). I follow their fight with half an ear and one eye - after all, their home is partially my home too. One bit of information I find amusing is that in nearly every story about these proposed wind turbine projects, you can determine the degree of support for the wind project by the amount of information suppressed.

The AP article is to the 'support' side of the line, which is probably to be expected if it is being run in Wired magazine - after all, renewable power = good, right? Well, yes, renewable power is good. The main problem is how you get it.

In particular, the piece of information that is being left out of that story is the size of the damn things. They're roughly twenty stories tall. The plan calls, therefore, for over two dozen twenty-story tall wind towers to be erected. Where they are to be placed, mind you, is on top of a Green Mountain ridge, which has no structure on it taller than a fire watch tower - and no structure which currently breaks the ridgeline. This ridge is overlooking Interstate 91, which means that it is set in the middle of the more populous corridor' along that region of Vermont as you approach the Northeast Kingdom - which does make sense from a power-delivery point of view.

However, consider that. I don't think there's a single building in Vermont that's twenty stories tall. Now imagine you live in a peaceful rural community, in what is still a very, very pretty ridge-bordered valley in Vermont. So pretty, in fact, that numerous high-priced bed & breakfasts and country inns are placed strategically around the area, some along the top of that very ridgeline (although offset several miles south) for the views. You're a Vermonter, a solid, tough, independent type with a distrust of 'flatlanders' - the local sobriquet for those from south of the southern Vermont border and in fact anywhere else - and the town you live in is so poor, it doesn't even have a general store. No industry whatsoever.

Now imagine someone tells you that a company based in one of the richest suburbs of Boston wants to put up two dozen twenty-story tall industrial objects on the highest, most picturesque and visible ridgeline in the country. These turbines will require anticollision lights for aircraft, of course. They will need concrete and steel footings and basemounts the size of small skyscrapers, all built of reinforced concrete and steel on the top of your so-far-relatively unsullied forested-and-field ridge.

Now realize that these turbines will produce maybe enough power for a couple of counties. 15,000 homes? Bupkes. This is not a California desert valley, with guaranteed winds due to daily solar convection, either - this is merely the highest point of a ridge system, with a general airflow pattern - and not a very strong one.

Does the deal look quite so good?

Well, let's have another look: "...supporters in Sheffield, which voted 120-93 in December in favor of the project, still hold out hope." Supporters? What supporters? Ah, well, remember another incredibly important thing about these towns: they are, as towns, incredibly poor. They have little tax base save for their inhabitants. Suddenly, an out-of-state company wants to buy up some land that is likely nearly unsaleable because it is unfarmable and difficult to get to and has no services - and they're probably willing to pay cash on the barrelhead in quantities that, in this town, are simply enormous. In Newton, Massachusetts, they probably wouldn't buy a bathroom redecoration, but whatever.

Now, it is certainly in the interests of the landowners to accept this offer. This is their privilege, and more power to them - I would expect them to support this project. There are of course industries that would benefit - contractors to do forestry work, roadbuild, clear, put up maintenance structures, work on the electrical delivery grid, etc. Sure.

Now, of course, you have the town clerks, who are looking at huge increases (in relative terms) in their towns' tax takes for the first couple of years, at least - in other words, the years they can forsee being in office and 'making a legacy.' Sounds like a godsend.

But what about that farmer in the article who has to wake up every day and look out across that ridge? What about the people who live within twenty miles of that ridgeline who enjoy their relatively unsullied night sky who will have to look at the crazyquilt of anticollision lights and strobes? What about the ornithologists, professional and amateur, who spend months at a time in that part of Vermont watching those particular ridgelines because of those same airmass movements carrying birds, who will now be looking into the face of what are essentially enormous twenty-story tall Cuisinarts?

They're not the ones with the budgets. But their concerns matter too.

For a rendering of the ridge with and without the turbines, see this web page.

We Are Not Descended From Fearful Men

Keith Olbermann calls out Donald Rumsfeld and cronies on national television.

Watch it. Now.

He speaks well, and quotes Edward R. Murrow to great effect.

Thank you, Mr. Olbermann, for saying something with great clarity and conviction that I am unable to get past my anger to frame properly - and using your position and pulpit to broadcast.

I beg to differ!

Boing Boing links to a list of typos published by Monochrom, which is cool. However, they include the 'typo' "New Zork" - at which I must protest! As any good IF aficionado knows, New Zork is base for that most excellent publication, the New Zork Times!

James Brown, Bitch!

Red Meat frigging rules. Even home-made Red Meat.

It Is Better to Light A Single Candle Than Curse The Darkness

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor strikes a flame.

Ah, homesickness...

You have to respect an article that uses words like 'fetor.'

It's All About The Butt

An excellent and funny tip on the creation of cartoons as an art form, from one of the modern masters:

"Even Walt Disney, who is mostly anti-cartoon loves a good old butt violation. All real cartoonists think the butt is the funniest part of the anatomy and tend to do an inordinate amount of butt poking and crack exposure in their cartoons. If you are ashamed of buttcracks, you are probably ashamed to be drawing cartoons and shame on you for doing it."

-John Kricfalusi (creator of Ren & Stimpy)

John K.'s blog is a fascinating and ever-educational look at the craft of cartooning. He offers personal anecdotes, history lessons, step-by-step tutorials, and advice honed by years of experience in the trade - all with tons and tons of drawings to back up his words. The man knows more about cartooning than I could dream of knowing about anything. His tale of how, as a kid, he could tell each of the animators who drew Fred Flintstone apart from looking at the character and how their interpretations differed from the designer's drawings is awesome.

Throw in lots of 'lost material' presented there, stuff his friends do, and it makes a fun ol' place to spend part of my blogrounds.

Risque and funny.

It's all about the payoff.

If you're uptight, don't watch it.

Thanks to gorozco!

More money than sense, but balls.

Respect.

Stefan Eriksson, eat a dick.

Five flavors of awesome sauce

I don't know which is cooler/funnier; that they actually decided to call the new T passes Charliecards, or that everyone I've talked to knew what the reference was and why they did it as soon as it's been brought up - even if they weren't from Boston.

Yeh, I know I'm all late with this, but I just took the T and hit my first set of the 'new gates' and went 'huh?'...which led to finding all this stuff out. I'd been using tokens, not passes, so I wasn't in the loop.

Yes, Mr. President, How Long?

How Long Must We Sing This Song? Yeh, it's linkwhoring for thepartyparty.com and youtube, but it's awesome.

95% for me

Would you pass a notional U.S. Citizenship test? I missed the one about the form, never having needed it, and took a long time scrunching my head over amendment numbers, but puzzled it out. I'm unreasonably proud of myself, because it should be a no-brainer, if I'm as proud of being a U.S. Citizen as I claim I am.

Thanks to The Agonist for pointing out the quiz!

How to torment an Apple fanboy

So Tom's Hardware claims you can build a budget ($720) PC with a 4 GHz dual-core CPU. They're not lying, but what this really is is a 2 GHz Pentium-D pushed to 4 GHz with the help of commercially-available watercooling kits.

Computers have changed. Phrases like "It is important to keep the reservoir filled to the fill line. For best results, use distilled water (or another non-conductive cooling liquid)" emphasize this fact to me. Apparently, it's no longer EXTREME to have water lines drooping off the back of your 'puter.

I note that this is similar, if not identical, to the chip in my new iMac. I fantasize briefly about being able to write the following line in a HOWTO blog entry (with pictures) describing how to watercool an iMac: "Using this Dremel, I managed to route the water lines to the heatpipes inside the iMac...

...and the sounds of Apple fanboys everywhere screaming and fainting pervaded the blogosphere. DIY FTW!"

heh.

Of course, I'm one of those fanboys. I cringe at the thought of taking sharpness to the boo'ful white plazztic of my iMac. Yes. Yes. Oh, you smell good. What is that?

Causality's a bitch.

Woo metafilter and youtube: Spin DJ is a God.

Deliver us from Bill O'Reilly

Please. Someone. As Keith Olbermann is trying to do.

Heh heh heh NSA heh heh...

Editorial cartoons in flash, woo.

Bastard.

Bastard bastard bastard bastard.

I beat it. Then I tipped him $5.

Bob beat it before me though, so he got to taunt me.

Play as work

Hm. I used to play TRACON all the time on my Mac II. I miss it. If there was a Mac OS X client for this, I think I'd be in real trouble...

Hold the phone! Job performance is a firing criterion?

And trash talk when writing an adult-themed sitcom isn't sexual harassment? The courts ruled this? Oh, it's L.A. Whew. I thought sanity was breaking out all over.

Risk or Protection?

The Beeb is running an article on the state of wildlife in the contaminated zone around Chernobyl. Apparently, with the exception of species that do not peregrinate and remain within local hotspots, most local fauna are flourishing, in the sense of reproducing and increasing their population above what was possible when humans shared the land. While there are mutations in DNA, it seems that cancer-like symptoms are rarely found - one scientist notes that most creatures (like mice, say) that are studied for such have lifespans shorter than the expected time for such syndromes to appear in the wild, but due to predators and mishap rather than illness.

Anyway, a provocative idea...one point that is made, in an off-the-cuff manner, is that perhaps one way to preserve areas for wildlife would be to store radioactive waste in them. As one 'radioecologist' notes re: the Chernobyl experience, most species there don't seem to care much at all. While many animals are too radioactive to be domesticated for human productive use, this doesn't appear to be affecting their lifespans or life experience much. Furthermore, deep-vaulted waste storage would (hopefully) not actually contaminate the area, but would certainly make it undesirable and impractical for actual development.

Think you're a Lego architect?

Think again. Be sure to check out Evolution: 2005.

FABOB!

Sometimes I feel like a FABOB, baby.

Lightsabers. Right fucking now.

Given this , there had better be a Jedi franchise game out for the Revolution when it ships, because if I can't swing that little controller dealie and get that awesome zzzzmmMMMMmmmmm noise, I ain't buying one.