For they shall be called the children of God

Those wonderfully sweet Christians are at it again:

A homemaker active in her children’s schools, Mrs. Dobrich said she had asked the board to develop policies that would leave no one feeling excluded because of faith. People booed and rattled signs that read “Jesus Saves,” she recalled. Her son had written a short statement, but he felt so intimidated that his sister read it for him. In his statement, Alex, who was 11 then, said: “I feel bad when kids in my class call me ‘Jew boy.’ I do not want to move away from the house I have lived in forever.”

Later, another speaker turned to Mrs. Dobrich and said, according to several witnesses, “If you want people to stop calling him ‘Jew boy,’ you tell him to give his heart to Jesus.”

Pig university

I love silliness in official government reports, as you may have guessed.

So via Wikipedia, here's some unintentional silliness: a report that refers to a shift supervisor being covered in a "Pu organic solution" (page 56 of the PDF). Trust me, this is the only time that you'd rather be covered in a poo organic solution.

Shitstorm

An anecdote from Romenesko's letters:

Editor & Publisher reports incorrectly that the word "shit" has never appeared in the New York Times. It appeared on July 10, 1973, in the text the paper published of the Watergate tape in which Richard Nixon said, ""I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up or anything else." (It also appeared on July 23, 1973, in the "Doar Summary to the Appeachment Inquiry.")

However, the word did not appear in the accompanying news stories. When Newsweek called managing editor A.M. Rosenthal to ask if the appearance of the expletive represented a new policy, Rosenthal replied, "No: we'll only take shit from the President." To Rosenthal's great disappointment, Newsweek never printed his comment.

Idealized breakfast

On maple syrup:

I've eaten at places in the south (IHOP being the exception), where the restaurant just buys a 20-pack of Log Cabin squeeze bottles and plunks one down on each table. New Yorkers probably think their system is better, but I don't see how. I never thought I'd have anything good to say about IHOP's syrup, but at least it doesn't look obviously fake.

I say relax and enjoy your frickin' pancakes.

Mmm-mmm good writing

This article is so good, it's making me consider subscribing to Harper's.

Fight it yourself

William Kristol, February 7, 2002:

...The short answer is that Iraq is next. I am not simply saying that Iraq should be next – although I think it should be. I am rather drawing a straightforward conclusion from President Bush’s State of the Union speech, and from the logic of the war itself. The president sees this war differently from our European allies and differently, I think, from the way his predecessor or even his father might have seen it. The president has chosen to build a new world, not to rebuild the old one that existed before September 11, 2001. And after uprooting al Qaeda from Afghanistan, removing Saddam Hussein from power is the key step to building a freer, safer, more peaceful future...

...The larger question with respect to Iraq, as with Afghanistan, is what happens after the combat is concluded. The Iraqi opposition lacks the military strength of the Afghan Northern Alliance; however, it claims a political legitimacy that might even be greater. And, as in Kabul but also as in the Kurdish and Shi’ite regions of Iraq in 1991, American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. Indeed, reconstructing Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan. [emphasis Geekable's]

This morning on Fox, Bill Kristol continued to escalate his calls for war against Iran, stating, “We can try diplomacy. I’m not very hopeful about that. We have to be ready to use force.” Kristol claimed the people of Iran would embrace “the right use of targeted military force.” He added that military force could “trigger changes in Iran,” causing them to embrace regime change. [emphasis Geekable's]

Hey paisanos

As an impulse buy, I purchased the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and The Legend of Zelda cartoons on DVD.

While the actual shows are utterly awful, the smile on my face when I first saw Mario and Luigi dance across the screen again was priceless. These DVDs are nostalgia heroin.

(Also worth the price: hearing Link tell Zelda "Excuuuuuuuuuuse me, Princess!")

Fuck you asshole

I found this entry at the Corner extremely offensive:

DO YOU THINK.... [John Podhoretz]
...Andrew Sullivan has gone a single day in the past two years without using the word "waterboarding"?

What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs...

I wonder: was calling the prototypical female swing voter "Eileen" a coincidence, or a really funny pun?

Time for a "pink on the inside" joke

From the Associated Press' story about the animal wrangler for Snakes On A Plane:

He earns $500 to $1,000 a day for his work, which he calls "the kind of dream job no one tells you actually exists." Sylvester is a lifelong movie buff and animal lover, but he's not a vegetarian.

"I like animals inside and out," he says with a smile.

Ready?

Ok, time to clear out my inbox of things I need to blog. Here we go.

Signs

A tip: don't think up a topic for a blog entry and then put it on your mind's rear burner for years. The Crooked Timber commenters will get there before you do.

Anyway, what I was going to say was: the ending of the movie Signs makes no sense. If water is toxic to the aliens, then they really picked the wrong planet to rape. After all, not only do we have vast oceans, but we have water vapor in our air. I'm surprised the aliens didn't walk around in full-body protective suits.

And if they're going to try to use our planet's natural resources, why not start with our moon? It has very similar mineral deposits compared to the earth.

UPDATE: Another good point brought up by the Timberites is how the aliens broadcast unencrypted on VHF-band radio. Even us puny humans have better schemes than that.

Stop hurting the Xbox

So I now have an Xbox 360. (My gamertag is geekable, if you're into that sort of thing.)

I've been playing UNO on Xbox Live, and I now realize people are retarded. How many people am I going to watch challenge a Draw Four card played immediately after a card draw? Isn't it clear that they obviously don't have that color?

I need to fax more documents

Combination of the night: Kinko's + young Tia Carrere lookalike + light summery dress + no bra + bending over + twice + my unbelieving eyes.

They hopin' that they don't catch me ridin' dirty

According to Wikipedia, the next Weird Al music video will be a parody of Chamillionaire called "White and Nerdy".

I hope that John Hodgman makes a cameo appearance!

Allen wrenches, all of them for free, all of them for me

So I finally made the trek to Canton yesterday to visit IKEA. Phew, what a busy place!

My favorite part? The shopping carts with four-wheel drive.

My second favorite part? Making juvenile fun of some of the product names. Specifically, the Titta finger puppets, or the Femmen Våg.

Algorithms don't kill people

I'm thinking of making this quotation my new subhead:

The lesson here is that it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics. Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptography

It's all about the deductible

I like Slate's series about blogging the bible.

[Genesis] 9:9-17. God announces His first covenant with man, that He will never again destroy the earth with a flood. He doesn't rule out other catastrophes. (God, apparently, is the opposite of an insurance company. He offers flood protection, but no other coverage.)

My personal boycotts

I'm a pain-in-the-ass, vindictive consumer. If your company pisses me off, I remember it, and I don't do business with you anymore.

Here are some companies that are on my shit list:

• Barnes & Noble. Back during my university days, they tried to sell me a visibly used textbook at the new price because the book didn't have a used sticker. I showed them the bent corners, the smudged cover.... their response was, "No sticker!" I haven't walked in a Barnes & Noble since.
• D-Link. I've deployed 3 Linksys routers in the past year, and they've all ended up being unstable. So when I moved into my new apartment, I thought I'd give D-Link a shot. I bought their DGL-4300 router. Within a month, the router didn't work anymore, i.e. it thought an Ethernet cable was plugged into the WAN port even when there wasn't. Called technical support, spent 40 minutes confirming the thing was fried, and then when I tried to get an RMA number, their automated system said my case number didn't exist. First and last D-Link product I ever owned.
• Apple. Sold me a Pismo PowerBook whose FireWire port lasted for exactly one plugging-in. Sold me a Power Mac G5 whose logic board lasted one year and two weeks, then refused to pick up the repair tab. Sold me a MacBook Pro with a noticeable CPU whine, a scorching heat problem, and other strange intermittent glitches. Apple, you're not supposed to make your most loyal customers feel like suckers.

Wish it was supported under Windows XP

From Dan Appleman's Visual Basic 5.0 Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API, p. 972:

Security is a somewhat complex subject, and since it is only supported under Windows NT, it is one of those subjects that is covered very lightly in this book.

Keep your Jesus off my penis

Everybody sing along!

Celebrate "I wish life was like Grand Theft Auto" day

Did the speed limit on westbound Big Beaver Road change from 45 to 40 when I wasn't looking? This marks two days in a row that I've been stuck behind a slow driver in the left lane, with cars zooming past me on the right, and my horn blaring.

People, listen: if you're in the left lane on a 45-mph road, you should be going 50. There's a place for people who like to drive 40... it's called the right lane, and/or the median U-turn.

They killed Kenny

Another notable shitty-ass human being, Kenneth Lay, died this week. A couple of notes:

• Scott Adams remembers:

  My favorite Ken Lay story is that he bought his wife a $200,000 boat while they were already $100 million in debt. His explanation was “It’s hard to just turn that kind of lifestyle off.” That was the moment I believed his defense – that he was so frickin’ stupid he didn’t know he was a thief.

  But now that he’s conveniently “dead,” I wonder if anyone is checking the whereabouts of the wife’s boat. My guess is that it got reported stolen just about the time that Kenny allegedly died.

• Thanks to the Web Archive, we can look at Enron's Statement of Human Rights Principles from June 11, 2001. We get heartwarming observations like

  At Enron, we treat others as we expect to be treated ourselves... We are dedicated to conducting business according to all applicable local and international laws and regulations, including but not limited to, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and with the highest professional and ethical standards.

  Maybe that Ken Lay guy wasn't so bad after all!

Perks

David Pogue has an upcoming segment on CBS News Sunday Morning about the blog phenomenon.

I expect that within a week, we'll hear all about how he accepted a free Movable Type license, a year of hosting from Pair Networks, and a blowjob from Dave Winer without disclosing any of it.

(If you didn't get the joke, click here.)

Party like it's entry 999

Just a reminder for you Geekable fanatics out there -- we're coming up on the 1000th blog post! Only four more to go!

UPDATE: Oh wait, there's only three more to go. Crap, this blogosphere moves too fast for me!

Shitty-ass human beings

It's compare and contrast time!

What similarities and distinctions can you draw between this blog post and this USA Today article?

The answer: absolutely none. There's no relation whatsoever! Nothing to see here!

Trinity

I think I'm in love.

Not only can this woman write really scary code, but she's really cute too!