The vote

Fair And Balanced Time! First Defense Tech:

Read the rest of "The vote"

Case of the Mondays

• Wired News: "Global warming may ramp up average temperatures by 20 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 50 years, according to the first climate prediction experiment relying on the distributed computer power of 90,000 personal computers."
• BBC News: "We look forward with amusement to explanations by a variety of psychologists and graphologists of how various characteristics ascribed to the prime minister on the basis of the doodles, such as 'struggling to concentrate', 'not a natural leader', 'struggling to keep control of a confusing world' and 'an unstable man who is feeling under enormous pressure', equally apply to Mr Gates."
• Swearing Jesus: "I'll fuck you in the ass, motherfucker!"

Countering the counter-counter argument

M.C. Barsenas has written a rebuttal to my objective analysis. Since I am currently too drunk on scotch to write a proper response, I will let my highly-intelligent, logical younger brother Greg write a counter-rebuttal. Greg's analysis is after the jump.

Read the rest of "Countering the counter-counter argument"

Tossed salad

New rule: fans of the show Frasier are no longer allowed to make fun of my blogpost titles for being obscure.

Conservative quotations to remember

"Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem."
--Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, April 22, 2003

M.C. Barsenas' objective analysis: An objective analysis

Analysis 1

Barsenas claims that President Bush did not use the word "mandate" in his inauguration speech. This is true. But Vice President Cheney used it right after the 2004 election:

President Bush ran forthrightly on a clear agenda for this nation's future, and the nation responded by giving him a mandate.

Analysis 2

Barsenas states that

Further, if Ms. Ryley had read Hitler's Mein Kampf, she'd know Hitler was motivated not by God, but an Aryan myth system of his own invention.

I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Read the rest of "M.C. Barsenas' objective analysis: An objective analysis"

Cracked

Time for a change of pace: I'm going to criticize the Wayne Review's "back end", i.e. their attempt at humor.

Here is a "joke" verbatim from the Wayne Review Vol. 2, Issue 4.

CIA fails to crack code after 15 years

Artist Jim Sanborn created a cryptographic sculpture nearly 15 years ago for the CIA grounds. Sadly its been 7 years since anyone has made progress on cracking the 4 encrypted messages. The sculpture named Kryptos isn’t a complete mystery. Parts of it have been solved. In 1998, CIA analyst David Stein cracked three of the four coded messages after diddling over the problem with paper and pencil for about 400 hours spread over many lunch breaks. Only his CIA colleagues initially knew of his success, since the agency didn’t publicize it. A year later, California computer scientist Jim Gillogly gained public notoriety when he cracked the same three messages using a Pentium II. Sanborn said he didn’t expect that the code would remain unsolved for this long.

Henri the Hippy Says: The answer to the code, is... two.

P.S. Does writing for the Wayne Review humor section give you the license to plagiarize news reports without citation?

Endangered species

It isn't often that you come upon that rarest of breeds, the "intelligently-written blog". But I found one today! It's called Left2Right, and they wrote a fantastic three-part series about "How Not To Complain About Taxes". I'll let them describe their argument:

I hasten to add that this still leaves plenty of room for reasonable dispute about proper levels of taxation.  For all I've said so far, it's fine to argue that current levels of government spending are excessive, so that the levels of taxation required to support those levels are unjustified.  It's fine to argue that the tax system we have unfairly distributes its burdens on the rich (I'll be posting later on that subject).  It's fine to argue that our tax system stupidly rigs incentives in unproductive ways.   It's even fine to argue that government welfare entitlements are illegitimate in principle, and hence that taxation to support them is unjust.  (For my point here is narrow:  merely that one can't get any support from Locke's theory of natural property rights, and hence not from the general idea of natural property rights, to argue this point.  I'll be posting later on why I reject theories of natural property rights.  My answer will surprise you.) This post is simply a plea to focus on real arguments about taxation, not silly rhetoric.

Tough call

Michigan has electronic highway signs along its expressways: they display traffic advisories, Amber alerts, and reminders not to drink and drive. However, I've been seeing one message on the signs that isn't very useful:

LOW FUEL?
FILL UP

For an equally useless news report, check out this link.

Don't let me be lonely tonight

Have you ever been so lonely that you wished you lived in a distant city so you could justify your loneliness?

Yeah, me neither.

Wunderbar

Readers, I need your feedback!

Today I had a big craving for Wendy's old salad bar. It was the best salad bar ever -- you got nachos and pasta in addition to salad! Unfortunately, the Wendy's restaurants in my area removed the salad bars around 1996 or 1997. The last time I ever ate from Wendy's salad bar was in 1998, near Alma College. I assume they had not received the word from corporate yet (but the salad bar was still as tasty as ever).

I need to know, does your local Wendy's restaurant still have a salad bar? Please leave a trackback or send me an email if it does.

I got nothin' folks

This video clip reminds me of the boss on The Office.

[Via Teal Sunglasses]

Foregone conclusion

No More Mister Nice Blog understands how the right-wing media works:

Oscar nominations: Passion of the Christ gets three (cinematography, makeup, music); Fahrenheit 9/11 gets none.

That sound you hear is ten thousand right-wing pundits and bloggers kicking their laptops in frustration. Their screeds were already written. They were sure Michael Moore would be the toast of Tinseltown this morning and Mel Gibson would be accused of crimes against humanity prior to the announcement of the nominations in a lengthy speech ghostwritten by Noam Chomsky.

This makes no sense to them. Their heads are going to explode.

Alternating bullshit

The whole "liberal media bias" schtick is really getting old, considering it was never true in the first place. And now even the lack of liberal bias is considered proof of media bias:

The people I've felt most sorry for are the journalists who have to pretend they are excited by the inauguration and Bush's second term. NPR personalities in particular. You can hear the inauthenticity and desperation in their voices.

Oh, and you can blow me Mickey.

Teach nothing but to name his tools

Conservatives: "It's ok to harass someone for being gay, but not for being a nerd, slut, or smelly."

"No Name-calling Week" takes aim at insults of all kinds - whether based on a child's appearance, background or behavior. But a handful of conservative critics have zeroed in on the references to harassment based on sexual orientation.

"I hope schools will realize it's less an exercise in tolerance than a platform for liberal groups to promote their pan-sexual agenda," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute.

"Schools should be steering kids away from identifying as gay," Knight said. "You can teach civility to kids and tell them every child is valued without conveying the message that failure to accept homosexuality as normal is a sign of bigotry."...

Numb3rs

I just watched the new CBS show "Numb3rs", which is about an FBI agent with a math-professor brother. The brother helps the FBI agent with cases using mathematics.

I hereby give the pilot episode of Numb3rs a Geekable rating of EH. It's got the cinematography of a CSI, but the main characters aren't very interesting. I cannot heartily recommend it, but if you're into math you should check it out.

Mail impersonator

In an old post of mine, I commented that Apple Mail was awful, and recommended Microsoft Entourage as a replacement. Recently someone asked me whether Apple Mail would be improved in Mac OS X Tiger.

I don't know for sure, but in a set of leaked screenshots from the Tiger Developer Release, one of the shots is a crash report. The application that crashed? Mail.

(Between that old post and now, Mozilla Thunderbird reached version 1.0. Thunderbird is a great program, and it's free!)

I knew it when I saw it

God bless America! The federal anti-obscenity statutes were declared unconstitutional!

The government argued, in part, that "entertaining lewd and lustful thoughts stimulated by viewing material that appeals to one's purient interests . . . . is immoral conduct even when done by consenting adults in private." The court, however was unmoved by this Comstockian argument, declaring that after Lawrence, "upholding the public sense of morality is not even a legitimate state interest."

What I'm looking for

I've decided to pretend that I'm a girl on LiveJournal and post some song lyrics. (They seem especially apropos right now.)

Read the rest of "What I'm looking for"

Dram funny

One of the funniest editorial reviews I've seen on Amazon.com is for a book about single-malt Scotch whisky.

Vanity of vanities

FYI: The political terms "left" and "right" come from the organization of Parliament, when more liberal members would sit on the left side of the room. This is well after any biblical history, so when you read Ecclesiastes 10:2:

The heart of the wise inclines to the right,
but the heart of the fool to the left.

This is more clear if you're familiar with different Bible translations; check out this passage in the King James translation to see the mythology in play.

It's your money

A classic blurb from Josh Marshall:

Under the new Ownership Society, apparently, Republicans are so dead-set on letting people control their own money that they're going to go out on to the international capital markets and borrow a few trillion dollars so they can give it out to people so they can put it into the stock market. Of course, if individuals are more inclined toward conservative investment strategies they can purchase bonds and thus lend back to the Treasury the money the Treasury just borrowed so they could put it in stocks.

It's the government's fault, silly!

I'm confused by Daniel Drezner's post entitled "How To Turn Americans Into Libertarians". Sounds to me like ATA failed to hire enough flight attendants to comply with the FAA's entirely reasonable regulations. How is this the government's fault?

That's how I'm goin' out

If you just don't understand rap music, I suggest you let Nina Gordon's interpretation of "Straight Outta Compton" make it clear for you.

You lit the fuse, I stand accused

Don't get hit by the gay bomb!

Hot Focker

A Small Victory asks:

If you're not at work or near small children or horny men, take a look at the Playboy photos [of Teri Polo]. Now, be honest with me, guys; do you really, truly find this sexy? Do rib cages and bony knees turn you on?

What precious drops are those

The inevitable has arrived: I have received my first trackback spam.

How the economy works

Real GDP, inflation, interest rates, bah! Mike Thomas of the Orlando Sentinel knows why our economy is so strong:

I bought an Apple.

"Wimp," said a computer geek at work. I sensed the fear.

You see, he makes his living from the Microsoft Industrial Complex. It has piled so many worthless programs into your computer that an entire digital bureaucracy has developed in the hard drive to manage it. And like any bureaucracy it is unwieldy, inefficient and impenetrable.

Hence, we must have geeks to serve as our intermediaries. Lots of geeks.

Every time the evil geeks in Singapore find another hole in Windows, through which they can invade our homes, it creates more jobs for the good geeks.

The entire national economy, in fact, depends on the incompetence of Microsoft.

If everyone switched to Apple, the unemployment rate would skyrocket and we would fall into a depression. The government would be forced to give away Microsoft-based computers to stimulate the economy...

Chewing the GLAT

Q: What happens when you become famous and fabulously wealthy?
A: Your old friends poke fun at you.

And so the mathematical savants at Wolfram Research (creators of the wonderful Mathematica) reveal that one of Google's founders, Sergey Brin, was a Wolfram intern. They also take the time to solve the Google Labs Aptitude Test.

Cross fire

Fun Czar Cross Fire Time!

The Wayne Review thinks that Harvard should focus on teaching their students how to think. But this is Cross Fire, so you get a penalty for not using the word "liberal" in a condescending manner.

Matthew Yglesias, actual Harvard graduate, thinks that Harvard does a fine job of teaching critical thinking. He also thinks Harvard is full of people who "would be unfun no matter where they went". Penalty for knowing something about what you're talking about.

Most boring Cross Fire ever!

UPDATE: My brother Greg just observed that "WROG" is one letter away from "WRONG".

Illogic gate

So let me get this straight: Bill Gates is arguing that because your medical records should remain private, this means that any music you purchase online must be usage-restricted?

What the fuck?

I also find it interesting that he bashes communism because creative people are not rewarded and have no incentive to create, but then supports DRM even though it takes away rights from the people doing the purchasing. The effect of DRM is that it makes me less likely to purchase a song online, which leads to decreased revenue for the creative artist.

About the only statement from Gates that has its roots in fact and logic is "It's the same bits!"

UPDATE: I should add that everyone should read Cory Doctorow's talk about DRM in addition to Gates' nonsensical babbling.

There is a spectre of the past in my bold assertion

Today in German class:

A student brought up the movie "Goodbye, Lenin". This inspires another student to ask, with complete seriousness, "So is Lenin the guy who came up with Marxism?"

Still trying desperately to not be cynical

Hopefully you know that there is overwhelming evidence that Bush was AWOL, and none of this evidence depends on CBS's dubious memos.

Unfortunately, the media did not focus on all the evidence of Bush's AWOL status, but instead on CBS and "liberal bias". As a result, you remain uninformed.

Desperately trying to not be cynical

Here's what I don't understand about this story about the end of the search for Iraq's nonexistent WMDs...

Rumsfeld insisted at the beginning of the war that

We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

The evidence points less and less towards an "intelligence failure" and more and more towards a "blatant lie by the Bush administration".

Ananias and Sapphira

Here's an amusing little blurb from a preacher about the story of Ananias and Sapphira:

Preachers don't like this story, apparently. I once spent a morning in a large seminary library hunting for sermons on Ananias and Sapphira and couldn't find any. The two most read preachers' magazines - Expository Times and Pulpit Digest - didn't have a single sermon on this passage. Folks dropping dead in church (it happens occasionally) isn't nice.

There are some big questions here. Why did they do it? How did Peter know? Why was the punishment so severe - and so swift? Why did God deem this sin so bad? "Did they go to heaven?" one woman asked after I'd preached on this passage.

There are no easy answers.

Cute, tiny, and cheap

The Mac Mini is out -- and the base model is only $499. It's official -- you can't criticize Macs for being too expensive anymore.

UPDATE: Apparently Scoble can:

It's not as cheap as it sounds, though. No monitor. No keyboard and mouse. Compare to Walmart machines selling for $468 including monitor and everything.

(Also note that the Walmart machine has a slow Celeron processor and an Intel Extreme(ly Slow) graphics system. While a G4 and a Radeon 9200 aren't exactly fast, they're faster than that.)

Canonical history

All the hip kids are criticizing Wikipedia for its potential to be unreliable. After all, what could everybody in the entire world know?

It turns out, not much. You would think a geeky encyclopedia would at least get stuff about Star Trek right, but no!

The Federation was founded in Y4 (Y1 being first contact between Humans and the Vulcans, whom had already been in contact with other races....

Y40-Y46 First Federation-Romulan War: The Federation first encounters the Romulans who are seeking to retake their home planet of Vulcan...

Y71 The Federation forms Star Fleet.

UPDATE: Whoops.. my bad. Apparently this was all in reference to the "Star Fleet Universe", invented by some game company -- not the Star Trek universe.

Killer app

Scoble and many others are talking about the beta version of Microsoft AntiSpyWare software. According to Slashdot, it sounds like it catches a lot more nasty stuff than the competitors.

I'm glad to hear that Microsoft has a great product on their hands, but I have to ask this important question: doesn't the mere existence of a program called Microsoft AntiSpyWare indicate a colossal failure by the Windows (especially Internet Explorer) team? What if your bank told you it was introducing a beta program called Citibank AntiLosingAllYourMoney? Would you consider this an astoundingly successful product launch, or would you wonder why Citibank had to develop it?

Defense mechanisms

Hopefully you've read about how the Bush administration paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 of your tax dollars to be a No-Child-Left-Behind cheerleader. Naturally, when a fellow conservative does something so blatantly unethical (and probably illegal), the National Review finds themselves suffering from cognitive dissonance. Thus they protect themselves with defense mechanisms.

Read the rest of "Defense mechanisms"

Obsolete and quaint

John Moltz breaks it down:

The state of Republican discourse can apparently be summed up thusly: because I had a proctologic exam once, we should be allowed to anally rape Iraqi prisoners.

Seems fair to me!

I like it so much, I might stay for a while

Dave at Blogography urges us all to visit Leavenworth.

Leavenworth, WA, that is. There's another Leavenworth that I don't think anyone wants to visit.

Rube Goldberg and switch statements

I'm ashamed that I've never seen this before: the intersection of a switch statement and a do-while loop. It's known as a "Duff's device". If you ever studied the C programming language, this should make you cringe.

Let's get cookin'

Would you like to do Geekable a favor?

If so, please go to this link immediately and vote for David from Los Angeles. (He's the cousin of a good friend.)

For mature adults only

The Chicago Sun-Times bravely reports on how easy it is for kids to buy inappropriate video games:

Froehlich and Crime Commission Executive Director Jerry Elsner did not tell the governor's office in advance about their spot-check on video game sellers, but a gubernatorial spokeswoman was nonetheless excited about the results. It appears to support an earlier Federal Trade Commission study that found that younger teens were able to buy M-rated games 69 percent of the time.

One writer's routine

Writer extraordinaire Neal Pollack has a redesigned website. Go check it out.