Wanna touch the Congressional gavel?

Irony alert!

Ok, so we've got Mark Foley, former U.S. Representative. During his time in the House, he was the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Not only that, but he's quoted as saying w/r/t President Clinton:

It's vile. It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction.

Better than an MBA

In one short Daily WTF comment, the entire business of software is summed up:

I bet they followed a strict 15 step methodology which determined precisely how every click, tab and character would be handled, written by a major team of architects, managed by hordes of project managers and business analysts, watched over by flocks of vice-presidents, and coded by a brillant summer intern.

This just in: liberals responsible for my allergies

How pathetic can the College Republicans get?

Pretty damn pathetic, apparently.

Wonder Twin powers, activate!

CNN:

Henry Kissinger has been advising President Bush and Vice President Cheney about Iraq, telling them that "victory is the only meaningful exit strategy," author and journalist Bob Woodward said.

Rendition

Eric Umansky on "a few bad apples". If you're an American citizen, you have a duty to read this article and learn what's being done in your name.

For that matter, you should also read this.

Dreaming of walking down Asylum Street

Now this is a music video.

[Via Boing Boing]

Squiggles

Am I the only one who watched House tonight and thought, "Ok, it's gotta be lupus this time!" Too bad I was wrong -- goddamned raccoons!

(I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who thought that from now on, whenever a woman finds me physically attractive, I'll have to check her for spores.)

It's been a long road

My brother Brad: [watching The New Adventures of Old Christine] Is there anything that Scott Bakula can't do?
Jeff: Captain the Enterprise?

Best bookstore experience ever

So I went over to the bookstore to browse, when what did I see before me, but several copies of iWoz!

My first instinct was, "Hey, that's not supposed to be out yet," but I picked up a copy anyway and skimmed through it for 5 minutes or so. When I turned around to stick it back on the shelf, the other copies were gone! The bookstore clerks apparently removed the books from the shelf as I stood there. (I wonder why they didn't take my copy out of my hands...)

Anyway, since the book didn't have a home anymore, I purchased it and took it back to my place. It's a good read!

Schwarzschild radius

Answering the coffeeshop trivia question correctly is such a hollow victory.

Hope you don't mind, I took a shit in your pool

Now the Amway guy thinks we should teach intelligent design in science class. For Kitz's sake, vote Granholm!

(Unless that mouth-breathing thing kinda turns you on.)

You could be headed for the serious strife

Shorter Ramesh Ponnuru: The Catholic Church doesn't teach that A implies B; rather, their position is that not-B implies not-A. Amen.

Trading a rock for a turd

I'm amazed how many people, while talking about the Michigan gubernatorial campaign, make an argument like, "Well, Granholm has screwed us over, and I think DeVos will be a breath of fresh air."

It's astonishing how many people are willing to vote for a known sleazebag pyramid scheme con artist man on the slim chance that he'll be better than the current governor. People, remember this: while better necessarily means different, different does not necessarily mean better.

How do you request vacation time for something called C4?

Yes, I will be at Rentzsch's conference. Who's ready to rock?

(Will there be a chance to win the Victor A-Trap?)

And now we have the money for our bills to pay!

I swear I didn't make this video!

You have to believe me!

Notes on Salt Lake City

• If your boss ever asks you to travel to Salt Lake City on business, then he obviously hates you.
• I spent a bit of time at the Trolley Square shopping center. I commented to a coworker that there's absolutely nothing offensive in the mall, not even a "WHORE" t-shirt. Just then I turn around to find a kitschy boutique shop with a bunch of "SLUT" t-shirts. Chagrined, I looked closer and found a comma between SL and UT. That's right, they were Salt Lake, Utah t-shirts.
• Take your vegetarian and vegan friends to Rodizio's. That'll be good for a few laughs.

Don't even get me started on so-called URIs

Tim Bray on the inevitable rise of Wikipedia:

So if the public-sector community decided to standardize their URIs, or adopt a principle that every front page should have a FAQ link, or make some sort of concerted intelligent attempt to show up on the Web, they might grab some authority back. But they’re not. And I don’t see any signs of interest.

So Wikipedia is going to win. Do you see any other plausible outcome?

Do I like Kirk, or do I like Picard?

I suspect that one day, people will come up with a quiz based on the lyrics of this song, to determine your overall level of nerdiness.

I think I might have the highest score possible -- I was in AV club, glee club, and the chess team. (Thankfully, I never rolled around in bed covered in bubble wrap.)

And it drops September 26

Oooh... finally I get to hear the Weird Al parody about being white and nerdy.

Go shove a goalpost up your ass, part 2

On the topic of young criminals who get special treatment just because they play football, we have this heartwarming tale from the Washington Post.

A 17-year-old who (allegedly) drove the getaway car in an armed robbery? Who earlier to this, was convicted of using a stolen credit card to buy sneakers? Pshaw! If he can run fast and throw a ball, get him out on that football field!

Microsoft? Being anti-competitive?!

Rob Weir has a good exposé on the latest sleazy behavior from Microsoft; specifically, how ODF is treated as a second-class citizen compared to OOXML.

These overnight text editors don't reflect well on the genre or the platform

Just so everybody knows, Bare Bones Software released BBEdit 8.5 today, otherwise known as the "Gah! Please don't switch to TextMate!" release.

You can't always get what you want

Yay! House is back... and without a cane (for now)...

Quick political hits

There's been some very quotable political writing lately. I'll get it out of the way in one post.

• My Wheel of Fortune was rudely interrupted yesterday by an ad for Amway. Yes, that's right, Michigan's favorite pyramid scheme multi-level marketing opportunity. As this news story notes,

  ...It is the first time in 20 years the company, founded as Amway Corp., has run any U.S. television commercials...

  ..."If anyone believes Amway isn't doing this to try to help Dick DeVos in his run for governor, I've got some soap I want to sell to them," said Chris DeWitt, spokesman for Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm...

  Oh, snap!

  UPDATE: And now they're interrupting my House! Fuckers!

• This is perhaps some of the dumbest writing I've ever seen on the Corner, and that's saying a lot:

  President Bush's speech today will be very important. The administration has done a bad job of explaining why Iraq is vital to success in the overall war against jihadists. But, as Dan Henninger argued in the WSJ last week, the London planes plot is a new opportunity to remind the country that (a) our enemies still desperately want to kill us, and (b) al Qaeda, which was in cahoots with Saddam long before the U.S. invasion, regards Iraq as a crucial battle. That's what the war in Iraq is about...

  Um, have you been listening to Bush's speeches in the past four years? I think he's hit those points a couple of times before.

• No More Mister Nice Blog on the big picture:

  ...This is a remarkable accomplishment by the Bush administration: It's been able to repeal a herotofore inviolate law of law of journalism. "If it bleeds, it leads" -- that's not true anymore. In Iraq (and certainly in Afghanistan), if it bleeds, it doesn't lead. It's consigned to a quick sentence in a broadcast news summary or the inner pages of the morning paper. Hundreds of deaths and injuries a week are a footnote. Empty bombast gets the banner headlines.

  Now the law is: If it orates from a balcony, it leads...

Learn your daily WTF well

Note: if a job candidate professes 10 years of Java experience, that doesn't necessarily mean they were years of good experience. They may not know anything about, say, object-oriented design patterns.

Or data structures.

Big Brother knows what brand of shampoo you buy

More and more stores are asking for very personal information as you checkout. I usually dismiss the cashiers with a simple, "You don't need to know that."

But tonight was the first time a cashier actually started to argue with me about the reasons such data is collected. It went something like this:

Cashier: Do you have your S-Mart Bonus Card?
Jeff: No.
C: What's your phone number?
J: You don't need to know that.
C: [blinks]
J: It's an invasion of privacy.
C: Do you want your discount or not?
J: You're going to sell my phone number to telemarketers.
C: You can give me any old phone number. I don't care.
J: Ok, 248-xxx-xxxx.
C: [dutifully types it in]
J: Now I get a discount, and my dentist will get strange telephone calls.
C: That's not why we ask for your phone number. It's so if you lose your Bonus Card, you can still get your discount. If I don't ask for your phone number, then the service desk yells at me...

Why are people so intent on helping Big Brother out?

(Oh, and I use Protene Pro-V. Stick that up your Oracle database and smoke it.)

Duckies

This past week on Ze Frank, we saw a discussion of data compression and information filtering, an essay on the convergence of celebrity, trademarks, and pedophilia... and an uncomfortably erotic look at putting your fingers in fruit.

Forget being the next Jon Stewart: I think Ze Frank is the next Steve Martin.

Notes on Santa Clara

• So early Tuesday morning I was riding around Santa Clara trying to find my business meeting. In the meantime, I happened upon the headquarters of Macrovision. Thankfully, my coworkers were able to stop me from keying any cars in the Macrovision parking lot.
• I made some time to visit Apple headquarters in Cupertino and shop at the Apple Company Store. I now have plenty of objects embroidered with the Apple logo.
• On my way to SJC, I sat one row behind the first class section. I enviously watched the elite travelers eat their melon, cantaloupe, cheese, and cracker plates and drink their complimentary alcoholic beverages.
  On my way home, two of my three flights were bumped to first class, so I got to experience air luxury for the first time. Now I am forever spoiled!
• To the woman at LAX who got on the loudspeaker and said my flight to Chicago was in the final boarding stages, leading me to sprint across half the terminal to discover that the flight wasn't boarding at all yet: I hate you with the fury of a thousand suns.

It's funnier with a pregnant pause

Projectionist reminds us all why we need to be careful with our idioms on IRC.

Deprecated

Scott Adams on self-criticism.

Do you know the way?

I'm back from my business trip to San Jose/Santa Clara.

Details later.