Sharp Tools - Symlink

Some of the Best Sci-Fi I Know...

But it's a hell of a piece of writing. Give it a try.

Ten years!

WANTED: Readers and writers

Hey, you! Yes, you. Do you enjoy reading things online? Do you, perhaps, write things online? Are you looking for a low-demand, no-pressure community full of interesting whackos to hang out with online, even if fully anonymously? If the answer to any of these questions is "yes" then we need you.

Who is we?

Everything2 needs you.

We're an online community ancient in internet years (our first decade is coming up in a month or so). We have current members dating back that far. We have newer members. We have content - oh, my lord have we got content. Tons and tons and tons of content.

But we have a problem. Our site was and is devoted to the written word, and as such, it is lacking in some of them there newfangled 'Web 2.0" niceties like images, sound, 'social networking' and the like. We know, we know, but keeping a community up and running on the web with no budget for 10 years has to count for something, right?

Anyway. We still attract new people, who wander by and check us out. But the fact is that most of them kids wants them new features - and few stay long enough to realize the breadth and the depth of the content we offer and the personalities who hang out there, because the wide swathes of text put them off.

If you, however, like to read and/or write online, I'm entreating you to come give us a try at Everything2.com. We won't ask for money. We won't ask for the email addressed of your friends so we can pursue them. Heck, we won't even ask your real name. All we want is a handle, an email address we can use solely for administrative purposes (password verification and recovery) and for you to come talk to us, read stuff, and hopefully write some stuff on E2.

I realize this sounds a bit desperate. And I'm not doing this as an officially sanctioned effort, or as an official designated representative of E2. I'm doing it as a member of a community that I dearly love, and that I want more people to find as fun and engaging as I do.

So, for the final time (promise) I ask: come browse and give us twenty minutes of your time. If you want some suggestions on what to come read to get a sense of the community, read the articles in the section entitled 'Cream of the Cool' and 'Recently Cooled' on the homepage. If you want some of our historical greats, ask me and I'll send you some links.

There is an FAQ for the site, if you want one.

Anyway, that's it. I hope to see some of you there.

Me? Oh. I'm to be found here. I don't advertise my 'real' identity, but I don't go out of my way to hide it either (there's a link to it on this blog's sidebar, f'rinstance).

Thanks for reading.

Clear, concise and efficient webdesign

I love Murakami

...so here is one of his illustrated short stories just for you and the betterment of your day.

Contribute to Joe Wilson (R-SC)'s Democratic opponent.

Apparently Mr. Miller has taken in over $100k since the importunate outburst.

Cory Doctorow is a tit again

Um, except the poll shows 86%+ in favor of the Pirate Bay verdict when I look at it.

Cory? Earth to Cory?

Now, if you're trying to tell us someone hacked/stacked the poll, then say so. Even if that's your argument, though, it's a pretty weak follow on to your conclusions.

Update: Fair's fair. Cory posted a mea culpa explaining he misread the graph due to 5:30am posting. Fair.

War on Terror Update

Welcome to the world, Caesar Penn Boothe, and you're a New Yorker, you lucky sod.

The Grey Lady Shows Herself for the Slut She Is

This is what is called brazen revisionism and image repair spin. The fact that the Times doesn't call them on it anywhere in the headers or footers is just unforgivable.

Thank you Internet Archive!

Disturbed by Amazon and Scientology rumors

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

Oh my dear God no.

The Day The Earth Stood Still was bad enough.

Another Imagery Exercise

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

Really.

Fours galore

Aigh.

A moment to recite the Seven Words.

Dear God, thank you

Bump.

That's it.

Hope Floats

Fingers crossed.

I never understood Dragonball Z

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

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

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.

Repairing the damage

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.

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.

The Justice Department.

I have found my new source of all things news.

The White House, email and Obstruction of Justice?

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

Losing Neurons

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

George Takei.

via boingboing

*THWIPP!*

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.

I am shocked, shocked!

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.

I am weak.

LOLCATZ!!!!

heh.

I can explain what?

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

This is why they put it on an unmanned platform.

Go Maine.

New Translation Available

Woot.

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

Hooray! The Return of the Secret Life!

Who understands those 'rap guys' anyway.

CRAP and Windows

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

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?

Japanglish Is Fun!

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

(hat tip jyeo for the pointer)

Senator Lincoln Chafee, R-RI.

Why don't I live in England? WHY?

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

Warren Ellis has awesome friends of friends

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!

Some things on the net actually *remain* funny.

SOUP!

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

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?

Scientology Fun!

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

Question everything

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

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

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!

James Brown, Bitch!

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

Ah, homesickness...

It's All About The Butt

"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.

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

Thanks to gorozco!

More money than sense, but balls.

Stefan Eriksson, eat a dick.

Five flavors of awesome sauce

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?

95% for me

Thanks to The Agonist for pointing out the quiz!

How to torment an Apple fanboy

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.

Deliver us from Bill O'Reilly

Heh heh heh NSA heh heh...

Bastard.

I beat it. Then I tipped him $5.

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

Play as work

Hold the phone! Job performance is a firing criterion?

Risk or Protection?

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?

FABOB!

Lightsabers. Right fucking now.

Tastily tasting tasty things

What is it with this set of Conservatives?

It'd be funny if it weren't so damn sad.

I Love Getting Evidence I'm Not Crazy.

Well, Aviation Leak...er, Aviation Week thinks so too.

Hoax? Possibly. Do I think so? No. Could I be wrong? Absolutely.

Whatever you do, don't pay your bill.

Bush and Company implementing policy from Syria?

Touchscreens redux

I Will Say Only This About The 'Ports Issue'

Dogs and Cats

Of course, it's not like MA is much different.

Metafilter can shake you.

Lawyers, Guns and Money

I'm not a lawyer, but he's talking about Equal Protection as it applies to the vote and ballots, a specific legal concept and tactic. He's discussing the 2000 recount cases brought in Florida (at around 38:40 into the video). Here's a rough transcript for some context, all errors mine:

We went to the Florida Supreme Court twice..there was litigation in scores of federal and state courts around the state...a quick note on perhaps the most interesting issue that came up there as we dealt with it and that was equal protection. Equal Protection is from really the Macintyre/McClosky race back in 1984; sort of the wildcard in litigating recount cases. In other words, are all similar ballots counted the same way? Because each county counts its own ballots, they may do it slightly different... what's a 'hanging chad' and counted in Palm Beach may be a 'pregnant chad' and not counted in Dade, and is that fair under the law, does it meet Equal Protection if all ballots aren't counted in the same way. Now, just like really with the Voting rights act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection. And in this case we decided nonetheless to begin filing the complaints based on Equal Protection. I was defeated in the Florida district court down in Miami early on, it went up to the 11th circuit, it sort of hung around there, it reemerged as an issue in the Florida Supreme Court cases, uh, which is what ultimately went up to the U.S. Supreme Court and at the end of the day there was a 7-2 majority of the US Supreme Court to find Equal Protection violations in the Bush vs. Gore case. The justices split on the remedy 5-4 but there was a 7-2 majority for the notion that you needed to do something about the Equal Protection violations in Florida. Of course, Bush vs. Gore is probably the most notorious of all the election violation cases that went up to the Supreme Court.

At around 54:00 in the video stream, Mr. Ginsburg notes that the U.S. House of Representatives has, since 1974, had an extremely high re-election rate - i.e. incumbents tend to win. He attributes this to a string of decisions from the Supreme Court, starting with the Voting Rights Act, involving redistricting. He further says that a Constitutional 'Originalist' must prefer the House to 'blow with the prevailing political winds' of the country rather than remaining locked through incumbent victories, and notes that the Delay case (which begins hearing arguments March 1, 2006) will likely have a profound impact on redistricting in the United States since it involves nearly all aspects of political redistricting in the U.S. He makes a remark that a federal judge many years ago told him that the Supreme Court was not, in fact, planning in any way to affect the political nature of the House and that he should stop being paranoid, because there 'wasn't anything behind those robes' (referring to the Justices)...and then notes that that judge was John Roberts, so we'll see.

Some other revealing (to me) bits. Earlier in the Q&A period, he characterizes the dispute over recounts between the GOP and the Democrats as one where the Democrats are afraid the GOP will attempt to suppress minority (Democratic) votes through intimidation, and the GOP is afraid that the Democrats will attempt to 'register multiple votes through fraud in those precincts.' Er, what? He then, in that same answer, does admit that remaining tough on perceived GOP intimidation is an effective Democratic 'get out the vote' tactic, while offering no opinion on the point of view that intimidation is a much, much easier to achieve and harder to prove (and hence prevent) form of tampering than actual voter fraud.

Also, remaining a true GOP operative, he closes the talk by answering a question as to what the plans would have been had the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Gore campaign in 2000 - "We would have gone back to the county level and fought tooth and nail," and then immediately painted a picture of "imagine if 9/11 had happened and we hadn't had a clear decision on who was President."

Um, and whose fault would that have been then, had the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gore?

Schmuck.

I will give him this: he's opposed to electronic voting systems. He thinks they're bad for the country. He says as a 'member of the society of hourly billing' he loves 'em, but as an American, he thinks there is just too much anecdotal evidence, even, that they are vulnerable, and too many ways for plausible challenges to their veracity to be raised in comparison to paper ballots. Which makes sense, given that his specialty is recounts.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

The Stealth Bomber's Got A Daddy

Feb. 25 FLYING WING - The Flying Wing, designed by Jack Northrup sic during the early 1940's is a most significant historical aircraft. This radical design was the precursor to the Stealth Bomber. The object of a political controversy, Stuart Symington, Sec'y of Defense under President Truman, ordered the original 13 Flying Wing aircraft and plans destroyed. Original Northrop employees restored this Flying Wing over an eight-year period. FLIGHT DEMO

I really want to know if this is the B-35 or the (X/Y/YR)B-49 (reciprocating engines on the first, Allison turbojets on the latter three).

BaaClick

Car Dancing Par Excellence

Seriously, da-a-a-mn.

I recall, during the same period, there was an ad shot for a Renault (the Fuego?) on upper Park Avenue, Manhattan. I remember arriving in that area to visit a friend, and realizing that every car in every parking place for as far as I could see was a red Renault Fuego. There were security guards on each corner with radios, and the cars were all under plastic covers, but that didn't really detract from the sheer oddity of the view. The ad, IIRC, was essentially a crossfade shot where the 'normal' Park Avenue traffic faded into a stream of identical red Fuegos.

But they were just driving along sedately.

Snickers

Pay No Attention To That Consolation Prize

Pay careful attention to that $450 million of 'your' money.

BUMP.

Now tell me that isn't a truly fucking worthy rant. My hat is off.

Where's Q when he's needed?

Returning to Normality?

My problem with this is that it seems to glance approvingly on this process. It tells us that this push back towards the center is adequate compensation for the wild and dizzy swing to the right after 9/11. I disagree vehemently. To take that position is to simply accept that the rule of law will drop into abeyance when drastic events occur - and I believe strongly that that is an improper position.

We should strive to ensure that the system does not swing out of line in response to catastrophic events. Allowing it to do so simply does, in fact, offer 'encouragement to our enemies,' Mr. President. All it takes is for one of them to decide that this constriction of our liberties, and hence damage to our way of life, is their objective, and you have created the ideal conditions for them.

I fail to understand how the Executive branch can think that this form of unilateral invasion of American citizens' privacy, arguably a flat violation of the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution, 'improves' our situation. I would argue that the damage done to our political system by that swing far outweighs the damage done in New York City - and I am a New Yorker.

Why? Think of the many times we have willingly spent lives and treasure to preserve our way of life - specifically, our political and civil philosophical ideals. Think of the resources marshalled to fight the threat du jour to those ideals (as well as, yes, to our prosperity - which may be linked). We seem to have decided, in each of those cases, that we were willing to risk, hazard, and ultimately spend the lives of Americans to preserve them.

Yet President Bush and his advisors decided, without consulting us, that even though we'd already paid the price to preserve those liberties and that Constitution, we wouldn't mind if they trampled them a bit for us.

Impeach them now.

It continues to get interesting.

Despite the fact that Google News, when you select the "U.S." header, current displays no sign of this story anywhere, despite having multiple-story categories for:

• Puppy Smuggling (not kidding)
• Explosives missing in Albuquerque
• Polling data showing that more Americans prefer 'Merry Christmas' (I swear I'm not making this up)
• A 'Star Studded' memorial for Tookie Williams
• An emergency landing at Boston's Logan Airport
• Schwarzenegger asks that his name be removed from a stadium in his hometown
• ...and on, and on.

  Posted by jbz at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Discussion over the wiretap issue

But of course whether the president thinks that is irrelevant, just as the discussion on how important this program is to the GWOT is irrelevant. The bottom line is that it was not the president's call, it was Congress's call, and this president decided to ignore the law and his duties under the Constitution because he was more afraid of Osama than he was of remaining loyal to the Constitution. And that is being generous.

Hello? Press? Hello?

"...a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Now, personally, I favor an explanation of sheer bald-faced lying or complete stupidity in letting this quote pass over actual conspiracy. But I can't come up with any way that this can be spun to let them slide, and if the press doesn't at least force them to try, I will be...well, even more disappointed in it than I have been.

Note: the original of the speech, before I am accused of presenting a liberal link with an axe to grind, can be found here. This is the paragraph in question (paragraph 29) in its entirety:

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

There's hope.

Bush, Wiretaps, and FISA

What a shock.

Think about it carefully: if it was legal under existing statute, why would those carrying it out need to be 'covered' by a (constantly revisited) Executive Order?

The Same, Except When It's Not

Er, except the Congressional Research Service doesn't think so.

Yup.

Nose brown? Check.

SIgh.

Well, if they're willing to spend all that money buying press over there, and spend dollars buying stories on stuff like No Child Left Behind, why shouldn't they have the WP political editor bent over a table prison-style?

Always Knew Robert Bork Was Odd.

FLOG HIM.

Do not go gently

Two signs of t3h apocalypso.

Now breathe.

Two.

Ms. Parks, Your Bus Is Safe

DALEKS DO NOT PORN.

(Does playing with the Doctor count?)

Give that man a cigar.

FLASHBACK TOO

Update: It appears that link is no longer valid...but it pointed to a demo of the first few rooms of Quake, implemented inside Shockwave. I was running it smoothly inside a browser window, on a PowerMac G4/500.

Defenders of Evolution...

Short fiction

FLASHBACK

I wonder if QWTF will run inside VMware...damn, I miss the FOAM server.

Shadowfax lives!

Godspeed, Mrs. Parks.

Yup.

Mississippi coffee drinkers

Mr. Morgan: I can't speak for the first two adjectives, nor the second part of that statement, really. But I can tell you that as long as you and your coffee-drinkin' friends are a public face of Mississippi, you're damn skippy somebody should go down there and 'stir up trouble.' The status quo is too horrific to let slide.

Welcome to the twenty-first century, America.

Utah Rave: An NPOV infodump

I remember laughing at stuff like this...

(via MeFi)

NYC Subway Searches: The pocket guide

Why we have separation of powers in government

I know nothing about Judge Lamberth save this memorandum opinion from the DC District Court. It concerns litigation ongoing for nine years between a plaintiff class consisting of American Indians who are beneficiaries of a land trust set up by the U.S. Government years ago, and the defendants consisting of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the currently serving Secretary thereof. In essence, the plaintiffs claim that the DOI has performed miserably at managing the trust and at keeping the beneficiaries informed about their trust assets, and based on my reading of this stellar (and entertaining-other-than-the-subject-matter) opinion, Judge Lamberth agrees.

Read the introductory pages and the Conclusion, if nothing else. The Conclusion is not to be missed. This is why we have separation of powers - and this is 'checks and balances' in action. Read and marvel. Oh yes, and the next time someone tells you to 'just trust the government' or that 'the government has your best interests in mind' - show them this document and ask them if they're sure of that without at least checking. Then ask them if they know for certain which piece of 'the government' they're talking about.

New Tech from Disaster Movie Spoofs

eek.

She blinded me...

POLO, Osama bin Laden!

All O'Reilly, All the Time

Also: Max Cannon is a genius.

That is all.

If I had a lot of money

In any case, if I did, I'd be so into the Gumball 3000 shenanigans...

"Of course not, silly. You're a *boy*."

Now comes this news - that twenty-five years or so after the original, there may be a sequel to The Dark Crystal, which is one of my favorite non-mainline fantasy films ever. I don't know the history the various fan opinions on the thread are referring to, but I will say this - I can certainly hope the sequel lives up to the original both in campy fun factor and in genuine fantasy adventure.

Inside Dated Joke du Jour

cough splutter wheeze

From Terranova, talking about 'insider's MMOG humor' comes this gem: "For example, the World of Warcraft Horde guild that I saw the other day called 'My Little Pwnies', which is truly funny but only if you know both l33tspeak and children's culture."

heeeeeeeeeee.

Yes, I know, I'm a loser old geek. Leave off.

Link whoring for laughter

I am wonderfully amused

Sometimes I think we may just survive.

Citibank vulnerable to attacks described by Hollywood 17 years ago

For all those who think the workings of the U.S. Government are uniformly boring

Some critical background: There have been allegations in recent weeks that Bolton, in addition to his public statements disparaging the United Nations (which make him an odd choice to represent the U.S. there, in my opinion) attempted on several occasions to have subordinate analysts who disagreed with him or would not support positions he espoused fired from their jobs - despite those positions proving later to be unsupported by evidence. In addition, there are rumors of additional allegations of personal impropriety that have surfaced, rumors of evidence supporting them as well. During one period, Bolton apparently requested that the NSA provide him with the names of American government officials whose voices were captured on communications intercepts of foreign targets - apparently in order to determine which of his colleagues were opposing his initiatives inside his department.

In a more immediate context, the committee is (in this hearing) attempting to vote to bring the nomination to the floor. You will hear Sen. Lugar refer to 'five o'clock' because the Senate is in recess until that time, which is why they are able to hold the meeting; at that time, the Senate is scheduled to resume business, and the committee business must close. Therefore, Sen. Lugar has only until 5:00 pm to hold a vote to move Mr. Bolton's nomination to the floor.

There are eighteen members of the committee. Ten of those are Republican, and eight Democrat. If a vote is held to move the candidate to the floor, it can be assumed in one sense that Mr. Lugar has done his job as a 'loyal Republican' - moved the President's nominee to the full Senate, where his party holds sway. He will be pressing to do just that. He is opposed by several Democrats, who (while they do not hold a majority on the committee) feel that the facts the committee have heard make it plain that John Bolton is, frankly, a poor candidate, and they will do all they can to convince any of their Republican colleagues to 'vote their conscience' using whatever procedural means are at their disposal to increase their chances of making their case. Even a delay in the vote is a victory of sorts for the Democrats, as the inability to push the vote to the floor with a 10-8 majority indicates that at least one Republican is wavering on the party's nominee - a clear sign of weakness given the overwhelming advantage the Republicans currently hold in Congress. Couple that with the current Republican rhetoric that nominees (for example, judicial nominees) are being held up by Democratic obstructionism, and a Republican defection is suddenly magnified.

In any case, the political theater is awesome. I strongly recommend that you watch the hearings as well; C-SPAN has them available, although their choice of format is, frankly, abysmal.

Damn Yankee

Not bad, either...I'm from NYC, but Mom's from St. Louis and Dad's from Chicago, so it makes sense.

Hm.

Prima facie, this seems a decent plan.

Want to feel inadequate? Welcome to the internet.

Everyone should check out what happens when someone with a much stronger sense of humor than I misses Republicans. Because it's funny. Also because it's true.

Not by Ken Burns

From simplicity, genius.

I would have to add an intangible, there - timing. The 1960s saw an attempt to reissue the duo in a new series of cartoons which appear on the surface to follow these rules - but fall massively flat. The timing is just way off. A couple of obvious differences in the two series include music which is noticeably changed, including the use (in the latter, failed version) of 'musical dialogue' - a near-violation of some of Chuck's Rules. The later 'toons also involve much more 'mugging for the camera.'

Finally, a personal observation on the whole nature of the victim in each. Wile E., in the later editions, is a smug and annoying bastard who is deserving of every bash on the head. The Roadrunner in those is almost a Deus Ex Machina put there to provide it as the filmmakers eagerly share the relief of bashing said noggin with the viewers - losing the entire tao-like sense of balance that the originals maintain. The originals posit a situation of equilibrium, where all the violations of physics serve to maintain a comic balance that can never change, and we the audience know that. The Road Runner knows that. Wile E. doesn't - and that's what makes him sympathetic. We watch him try to deform reality in his desired direction, and reality itself - not a smug director, writer, filmmaker or even Roadrunner - slaps him back. His refusal or inability to understand his predicament is what make his reactions and his perils so funny (to me, at least).

The later ones were nothing more than cheap shots at some poor yokel who was to dumb to know better, taken by an actor (whether the Roadrunner, the director, or the audience, it's irrelevant). That's the difference. The originals were classic existential farce, worthy animated successors to Herriman's Krazy Kat.

Compelling disturbance