What a job will do to you

Boy, you neglect your personal blog for a couple of weeks, and suddenly they proclaim the end of geek blogging.

Such pressure!

No, I hate her more!

Apparently the hatred for Cindy Sheehan runs so deep, that one group of haters tore down the signs of another group of haters, not realizing they were both on the same side.

Pretty damn amusing, if you ask me.

Great moments in IM

Friend: i have a fun weekend of trash movies to watch! woohoo!
...
Friend: i have james boned...and the sopranos fifth season.
Friend: bond...
Friend: not the porn version.
Friend: roflmao
Friend: wow, that was freudian
greasypeso: indeed

Not windy enough

There's something very wrong about this CNN poll.

Medicine revolutionized!

As much as I hate to admit it, intelligent design has been successfully applied in the field of science for the first time. Find the account here.

Museum of idiots

An example of a post that I don't need to read, because the title is already super-clever.

Tornado

Jamie Gillespie is a computer science major, which makes this all the more inexplicable:

The discussion reminds me of a church sermon which made an indelible impression on me early last year: The chances of life beginning randomly and evolving from a spec into what we know today is less likely than a junk yard full of scraps assembling itself into an artistic masterpiece. In other words, it's just not possible.

But what's more worrying is the lack of imagination: you would think that a computer science major would be familiar with cellular automata and genetic algorithms, and be more receptive to the idea of complexity generated from simplicity.

Situation well in hand, part 2

The esteemed Drunkenblog agrees with my evaluation of the Mighty Mouse:

If the Mighty Mouse existed in a vacuum -- if there was no metric to measure it against -- it might not blow. Since it doesn't, and other companies have to take ergonomics into account in at least a cursory way, it officially kinda blows.

Schmuck

Here's a sample of our most-likely future Supreme Court justice:

In a January 1982 memo he wrote about legislation that he said would "heap benefits" on the Texas Band of Kickapoo Indians. Explaining their history, Roberts wrote, "The Kickapoos, originally from the Great Lakes area, did not stop running from their encounter with Europeans until they reached Mexico, where they now hold 17,000 acres of land" and "provide migrant labor in the U.S." Roberts said he had no legal objections to the bill, which he said was consistent with administration policy, but added that its "provisions seem overly generous -- particularly in light of the fact that these are, generally speaking, Mexican Indians and not American Indians"...

Take back what you said, little girl

Would it be rude to go over to Jack White's house, ring his doorbell, and when he answers the door, tell him, "Now"?

Just asking.

Intelligent Falling

Thank you Onion! What would we do without you?

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."...

...The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."...

..."Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."

"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"...

Loose electronic lips

While I love my Macintosh dearly, I still feel the need to make fun of Apple occasionally. Here's one of the bugs fixed in the latest Mac OS X Security Update:

Under certain circumstances, secure input fields may be read by VoiceOver services. This update stops VoiceOver from exposing the content of these fields. This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.4.

That's one serious cock-up.

The answer is "wrong"

From the astute comment 46 on this Crooked Timber entry:

“Dear, you’re an alcoholic, and you’ve cracked your skull open because you’re falling down drunk. You need to get help.”
“Aha! You wanted me to crack my skull so that I’d get help.”

I’m sorry you’ve got blood on your hands for promoting this easily-foreseen cock-up. But please stop trying to wipe it off on us. We told you not to, and you called us Saddam-lovers. Now we remind you that we told you not to, and we’re terrorist-lovers. For god’s sake, what does that make you?

Tekken ewes whirled

Believe it or not, this passage is copied verbatim from the publication "TechNewsWorld":

[Kevin] Mitnick attempted to hack through TimeDiff Linking protection by using a method called sequel injection in hopes of discovering a mistake in the application coding that would allow him to change the logic and bypass security. It didn't work.

[Via Digg]

Go ahead, dare me

Today's Detroit Free Press, on the Woodward Dream Cruise:

Love it or snub it -- you can't ignore it.

Like "an intellectually-honest Republican"

Dear Republican Party:

When you use the term "Socialist Ponzi scheme", does it even occur to you that it's an oxymoron?

Tort sport

The L.A. Times has a great article on "tort reform" and the desperate measures big business are trying:

Merv Grazinski set his Winnebago on cruise control, slid away from the wheel and went back to fix a cup of coffee.

You can guess what happened next: The rudderless, driverless Winnebago crashed.

Grazinski blamed the manufacturer for not warning against such a maneuver in the owner's manual. He sued and won $1.75 million.

His jackpot would seem to erase any doubt that the legal system has lost its mind. Indeed, the Grazinski case has been cited often as evidence of the need to limit lawsuits and jury awards.

There's just one problem: The story is a complete fabrication.

It is one of the more comical tales in an anthology of legal urban legends that have circulated widely on the Internet, regaling millions with examples of cluelessness and greed being richly rewarded by the courts. These fables have also been widely disseminated by columnists and pundits who, in their haste to expose the gullibility of juries, did not verify the stories and were taken in themselves.

We need Heller

Josh Marshall on Bush and Iran:

(ed.note: My literary powers failed me when I tried to come up with a joke suitably humorous and grim to fully capture the ridiculousness of President Bush's continued insistence that he is willing to use force but only as a last resort. Perhaps someone out there can help?)

Everybody farts

Jeff Vogel outlines how he potty-trained his daughter:

...First, we bought Cordelia books on how to use the potty. Every parent is expected to buy at least one of these gruesome horrorshows, which consists of adorable drawings of smiling moppets grunting away on the toilet in return for unconditional love. If I’d seen one of these books three years ago, I would have given myself a vasectomy with a ballpoint pen right there on the spot.

Second, we started putting her on the toilet several times a day. We got this special seat you can put on top of the regular toilet seat to keep the baby from falling in. If babies fall in the toilet and get flushed, they breed in the sewers.

Then, when she is on the toilet, Mariann and I stare at her and helpfully say, “Pee? Poo? How about Pee?” If Cordelia urinates, she gets one chocolate chip. If she craps, she gets three. Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t go out of my way to do anything unless I’m paid for it.

Also, sometimes, Cordelia only farts. When this happens, she smiles and brightly says, “Farrrrrrt! Chocolate?” This is the cutest thing that has ever happened in the history of the world...

Monkey see

Kevin Drum with the million-dollar question:

When USA Today runs an article on September 26th about the 100th anniversary of the Theory of Relativity, as I hope they do, will they feel obligated to print a rebuttal from one of the many crackpots on the web who say that Einstein was wrong? I suspect not. Why then, do they feel the same need with evolution, which, if anything, rests on a more solid evidentiary foundation than relativity?

Truly humorous

Tom Burka knows how to turn a phrase:

...Dr. James Dobson, founder of the rightwing Christian group Focus on the Family, applauded Bush's plans to eliminate scientists from science. "It just puts all four of my humours into complete harmony," he said.

Critics were less sanguine, however...

The "Complete Ignorance of 20th Century History" Award

Kathryn Jean Lopez really shined yesterday, so she gets the "Complete Ignorance of 20th Century History" Award this year!

I CERTAINLY KNOW LIFE DIDN'T BEGIN IN THE FALL OF 2001, BUT...
Am I wrong to be justifiably uncomfortable with the Hiroshima headline in the Washington Post today? "The Original Ground Zero." Anyone who's lived in America in the past few years knows what "Ground Zero" conjures up. What we dropped in Japan is such a complicated question. What was done to us on 9/11/01 has no reasonable-people-can-disagree justification. I am pretty sure I am reading way too much into that Post headline, but it left me feeling like it should have been written some other way.

Well it is the naked mile run

Dave Holmes, former MTV VJ extraordinaire, on Tara Reid's wardrobe malfunction:

I am reminded of Tara [Reid]'s interview with the New York Post, in which she lamented her party-girl image thusly: "I'm known as this retard." Oh, Tara. I don't think you're a retard. See, my cousin Mike has Down's Syndrome, and he knows when his shirt is on.

Rightly skeptical

Matthew Yglesias has a great article about terrorism-related racial profiling. Here's a brief excerpt:

...But Krauthammer's [racial profiling] idea was hardly meant seriously. It doesn't withstand even cursory scrutiny. This was just a little twitting of liberal sensibilities, the old right-wing game of épater les intellectuels designed to position conservatism on the side of common sense and basic decency, not a real effort to debate anyone or change minds. Seen in that light, David Gelertner's Los Angeles Times effort on the same day on the same topic was by far the greater success for including the outlandish contention that "you might argue that dark-skinned people are a special case, given the way the United States has treated them. I agree -- we have treated them so solicitously, and worked so hard to suppress racial prejudice, that dark-skinned people owe their country the benefit of the doubt." I'm shocked -- shocked -- that Republicans have a hard time getting black people to vote for them...

Situation well in hand

In today's edition of Geekable.com: Hard-Hitting Journalism, we took a trip over to the local Apple Store and tried the Mighty Mouse. What's the verdict?

It blows.

Seriously, folks -- feeling the mouse click is more important than you think. A little speaker playing a mouse click sound is lame and disconcerting.