And never the twain shall meet

I really love local news. I especially love the Detroit Free Press, for writing a sentence like this:

In June, the City Council said the [Hooters] restaurant wasn't the kind of business it wants in the Big Beaver corridor.

Intrusion detection

Your fun fact of the day, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Vaginal fingering is legally and medically called digital penetration of the vagina.

Flaccid with rage

I think the Dilbert Blog gets a lot funnier when people take such unjustifiable offense to it.

I mean, come on! Scott Adams was being extremely sarcastic the whole way through -- there was no "unbridled rage or venom" in that entire blog post. And I think Scott's entitled to a little sarcasm; atheists are constantly under the same sort of attacks that Scott skewers so well. "You're an atheist? You have no morality!" I'm amazed Scott didn't write an angry blog post.

Rich, I recommend reading Sam Harris' The End of Faith, so you can see what a true militant atheist is like. Otherwise, you just don't get it.

Lazy-blogging, January 24

• Think Progress: Bush Trusts Patients To Make Their Own Health Care Decisions, Except When They’re Women
• AirTran Airways defends decision to remove family from plane after toddler's temper flares. I defend their decision too -- please don't inflict your whiny toddler on the rest of us.
• On the other hand, don't handle your whiny toddler like this, either.
• While I think you should kick whiny toddlers off of planes for being a nuisance, I don't think you should hold up ill patients trying to fly to a life-saving liver transplant. Yay for our nickel-and-diming culture.
• How come this woman gets convicted of wire fraud, yet any old church can get a tax exemption?
• If you can't think of a million uses for this new product, then you're not very creative.

What, the chicken?

This is a long moment of zen, but it's got more enlightenment than usual.

Stop lecturing me, universe

Seen today in my blogfeed reader: a headline entitled, "How to stop procrastinating (a strategy that *really* works)".

Meet me in St. Louis

Strange coincidences alert: A couple of weeks ago I made my second trip to St. Louis, MO.

This weekend I attended ConFusion, and bumped into a girl in the hallway. After a couple of seconds, she said I looked familiar, but neither of us could figure out where.

The next time I encountered this girl, she informed me where I knew her from -- we sat next to each other on a bus from Detroit to St. Louis in 2000.

The mailman

So which am I -- Norm or Cliff?

No moderates

While I thought Sam Harris' book The End of Faith was very good, this excerpt of his from an ongoing debate with Andrew Sullivan is even better. It hits all of my philosophical G-spots.

I'm wise enough to know when a gift needs givin'

Today's Dilbert blog asks if you've done anything romantic for your partner this week.

I'm disappointed; after scanning through the comments, I don't see anyone who gave their special someone a dick in a box.

Here come the Democratic janitors

Yes, it's been known to happen -- here's today's insightful Slashdot comment.

Truly kickin' it old school

On tonight's American Idol, the self-proclaimed "urban Amish" contestant's ID number was 31336, which happens to be one short of 31337.

Based on his performance, I'd say that was an appropriate choice.

UPDATE: Some people didn't believe that there was an urban Amish guy on American Idol. Well, here he is. As Deathbycamera asks, "Are amish people allowed to have myspaces?"

Nasty, nasty boys, don't mean a thing

If you are a Mac OS X user, and LMH and Arkon's threat is even remotely non-empty, I'd recommend:

1. switching immediately to a non-admin account for the majority of your day,
2. being very judicious with authentication prompts,
3. never ever repairing your permissions again.

Two birds

Ok, House writers. I'm doing you a favor by helping you with the season finale's story outline. Here goes:

The viewer finds out that Tritter doesn't give up after the trial. Tritter continues to investigate House, and discovers money laundered from House to the rehab clinic's supervisor. Tritter goes to House's office to confront him about the evidence he's found. He toys with House, and tells him he's going straight to the courthouse to file more charges.

This is when Moriarty walks into House's office, intending to finish the job he started in the season 2 finale. Moriarty points a gun at House, and Tritter draws his gun. Moriarty and Tritter get locked into a Mexican standoff, and after a few tense moments, they both shoot each other.

Ba-da-bing! Now that's a story!

Intent

Did everyone see the last part of this week's episode of House?

No? Then don't read on.

Why in the hell did they dismiss the charges against House? They had House's signature in the log book, showing that he was trying to obtain Vicodin. If you showed up at a house expecting to have sex with a teenage girl, and instead found NBC, the show's host wouldn't say, "Better luck next time..." They would throw your ass in prison.

I think they should have thrown him in prison, revoked his medical license, and then continued the show's storyline after he gets paroled. He could be a rogue medical consultant, solving mysteries across the country while Sheriff Tritter is one step (or should that be "limp"?) behind him. Then after a season or two, House could end up trying to cure the President, and when he succeeds, the President could pardon him and House could get his medical license back (maybe).

My point is, keep it unexpected.

Right in the keister

No More Mister Nice Blog looks at George W. Bush's shooting accuracy.

Mac nano?

iPhone? iPhone! The technolust is setting in....

I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! :-(

Prixstep

It was bound to happen: the douchebag duo at Month of Apple Bugs included a rootkit in their recent Application Enhancer exploit.

Jason Harris says

More to the point: The individual who published this exploit has now gone firmly in my mind from white-hat security researcher to black hat hacker. He is not helping the OS X community in any way. White-hat security researchers do not install root kits that attempt to obfuscate themselves onto other people's machines.

(Additional note: I'd bet good money that LMH of Month of Apple Bugs is none other than Rixstep, due to their shared contempt of Rosyna.)

Mother of all bogosity

It's the month of Apple bugs.

I was expecting so much excitement, and yet the first two exploits are:

1. a VLC bug that's not Mac-specific
2. a QuickTime bug that doesn't even work properly on my MacBook Pro

Flight mode

Once my sleep patterns recover from the holiday break, I'm totally trying this software out.

Not impossible. Inevitable.

It's a new year, and it's time for a fresh start.

So to the Fez at my job -- know that I'm coming for you.