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10.31.2003
Carpenter
Yeah, Baby
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said he does not know whether or not he has lost his mojo, as a leading news magazine suggested, largely because he doesn't really know what mojo is.
..."Have you lost your mojo?" a reporter asked Rumsfeld during a Pentagon briefing. Rumsfeld said he did not consult a dictionary -- as he has for words like slog about which he has sparred with reporters -- but he spoke with an aide who had. "And they asked me that, and I said, 'I don't know what it means.' And they said, 'In 1926 or something, it had to do with jazz music.'" HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA 10.30.2003
Butterfly Ballots Aren't All That Bad, I Guess
Electronic-voting machine manufacturer Diebold sends cease-and-desist letters to persons linking to or mirroring copies of leaked internal memos regarding Diebold's electronic voting security and certification.
Slashdot is making this out to be conspiracy over the right to vote, but I don't see that particular sinister angle -- the line in question appears to be a quote in a .sig file and not a statement from anyone representing the company. Nevertheless, Diebold is attempting to use the threat of a suit under the DMCA to stifle serious and legitimate questions about its product at a time when it is actively courting election commissions to endorse and adopt the same for their electoral process. This is obviously a problem, both in terms of the validity and security of electronic voting provided by a company with pretty well-defined political leanings and in terms of the misapplication of an ill-advised piece of federal legislation. Found on Joe Szilagyi's Worst Weblog Ever -- thanks, Joe. Trick.
Email from my father, whom I love more than life itself:
"Please advise your lovely wife to refer to the Food Section in today's Dispatch. Among its many worthwhile and factually accurate items is a piece listing the 10 worst candy items a Halloween trick or treater could receive this year. Number two on the list is................CIRCUS PEANUTS!!!!!" Which same list also apparently includes such items as a toothbrush, pennies, and candy corn. The first two I get, but candy corn? (This is all hilarious because Val loves circus peanuts. I can assure that in this, she stands alone.) Passing of the Torch: RIP Savant
Everything ends sometime, I guess.
Nice to see some of the guys I worked with doing something else/new, though. Good luck, fellas. 10.29.2003
10.28.2003
Panel
10.27.2003
10.25.2003
10.24.2003
Good Questions, A Little Late
On October 16, 2003, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suddenly realizes that all these reporters are asking some good questions.
Page one // Page two 10.22.2003
You May Already Be a Winner
Received in email:
SUNTER INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY STAKE NL I'm not forwarding this one on to the Secret Service, though I probably should. Long Time Listener, First Time Caller
And so with new futurephone in hand, I join the ranks of mobloggers worldwide, for no damn reason. I am quite sure that my boss will think this particular feature is as stupid as the push-to-talk thingy from Nextel; nevertheless, I am quite in love with the new gadget.
Other things I've wanted to talk about but haven't bothered to compose a full post about: Saw KILL BILL on Saturday night, managing not to have really read anything beyond a bare-bones plot synopsis about the film in advance. Trailers for RETURN OF THE KING and MATRIX REVOLUTIONS were the highlights; everything thereafter was more than a little disappointing (and I'm a Tarantino fan, so it's not as if I have some snobbish opinion of him already.) As PJ pointed out, I didn't hate it as much as, say, NATURAL BORN KILLERS (which was one of the worst films I've ever seen -- don't get me started on that one), but I wasn't really all that jazzed about waiting to conclude the damn thing in February. Too bad. (Interesting how the violence of the thing has spawned its own little tempest in a teacup among the blogosphere cognoscenti.) Only one more week of Which also reminds me: wondering if I'll be able to do the Kapital City Komix Drinkup on the 8th (with the date getting closer, I wonder just whether I can really bring myself to go somewhere else for a couple of hours...) Probably should get Sean to go out for those promised beers before then... 10.21.2003
10.20.2003
Hip Hop Haha
Judge Raps Out a Ruling In Favor of Eminem
In a footnote to the 13-page opinion issued Friday, the Macomb (Mich.) Daily reported in Saturday's editions, Macomb County Circuit Judge Deborah Servitto added a 10-stanza verse that read, in part: AWESOME. spotted on donewaiting.com 10.17.2003
Raise Your Goblet of Rock
Disclaimer: I adored School of Rock. That said:
But School of Rock was written with a new breed of adults in mind—and their driving fear isn't that the youth of tomorrow will fall prey to what Frank Sinatra once described as "the martial marching music of every side-burned delinquent." It's that the kids might never get their rocks off in the first place. When Black first meets his school kids, who are young enough to be Dylan's grandkids, Led Zeppelin takes a backseat to Latin, and rock 'n' roll is as sexy and redemptive, in their eyes, as a square dance at a retirement home. Which might explain why Stephen Holden's New York Times review mentioned in passing that hip-hop has usurped rock's place in the public imagination; if he's right, it makes sense that the substitute teacher played by Jack Black should have to introduce his charges to the pleasures of rocking out rather than the other way around. 10.15.2003
Not Since 1945...
Mark Prior, Sammy Sosa and the Cubs cruised into the eighth with a 3-0 lead, set to end their 58-year absence from the World Series. At that point, it was almost as if the baseball gods woke up and realized these were the Cubs.
What followed was a sudden collapse that would rival anything in the Cubs' puzzling, painful past — and the emergence of baseball's most infamous fan since Jeffrey Maier. A 26-year-old wearing a Cubs hat prevented Alou from catching Luis Castillo's ball down the left-field line. "When it happened, Mark Redman said to me, `Let's make this fan famous,'" Florida's Derrek Lee said. They did. Given the last-gasp chance, the Marlins broke loose. That's about when security decided to escort the fan out. He threw a jacket over his face for protection, but not before other fans hurled beers in his direction. "You cost us the World Series!" one fan yelled at him. 10.14.2003
A Great Disturbance in the Force
Joe Lieberman, right, converses with Ben Kenobi, left.
Yoda announces his candidacy for President of the United States. That Looks Like It Hurts
COPA-cabana
High court to revisit online-porn law
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to revisit the thorny question of how to protect children from online smut without resorting to unconstitutional censorship. Nothing really further to add, I suppose, other than to register my amusement at the government's continued claim of an "enormous amount of pornography on the World Wide Web", which for some reason makes me laugh. Ah, if only there was a study that had evidence to back up that claim... 10.10.2003
Afghanistan::Iraq::Cuba
Bush Seeks Ideas for Cuban Regime Change
WASHINGTON - Eager to please a key Florida constituency, President Bush directed his secretary of state and his Cuban-born housing secretary Friday to recommend ways to achieve a transition to democracy in Cuba after 44 years under Fidel Castro. Must be where Saddam hid the WMD. Setec Astronomy
Three days after a Princeton graduate student posted a paper on his website detailing how to defeat the copy-protection software on a new music CD by pressing a single computer key, the maker of the software said on Thursday it would sue him. ... then wouldn't he just be wrong? What's the point of suing? SunnComm alleged Halderman violated criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in disclosing the existence of those driver files. HAHAHAHA. I'm pretty sure that's not the point of the DCMA's provisions -- wouldn't that permit a software company to put some sort of hidden data mining code in their product without fear of reprisal? Doubtful at best. (Though I will admit I haven't read the specific provisions of the DCMA which might deal with this point, but only because I suspect they're not in there. It was a dumbass bill, but it wasn't that shortsighted.) Lockstep
10.09.2003
Drinky Drinky
10.08.2003
Crybaby
Presidential candidate Wesley Clark's campaign manager quits because he believes Clark's new political and campaign advisers aren't taking Clark's Internet support seriously enough.
... Wonder why one might think Internet politics isn't worth taking seriously? Politico Slapfight Go
Now that the futuristic death robot has been elected Governor of California, it's time to get back to the real political issues facing the 2004 presidential candidates:
Kerry Accuses Dean of Liking the Yankees BOSTON - Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is again challenging presidential rival Howard Dean's allegiance to Red Sox Nation. And people wonder why I'm cynical.
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