A year ago, it was silly to be concerned about the elections in 2008. With the primaries finally underway and the election actually within three seasons’ reach, it’s time to get engaged again. That means shaking off the cobwebs instilled by the ubiquitous brainwashing of the mainstream media (the cloaca of ideas) and actually figuring out what you need to know for the elections, which include:

• Figuring out what your problems are
• Figuring out where your interests lie
• Thinking long term, even... [More]

In Braking Kristol: ‘NYT’ Public Editor Hits Hiring of Columnist (Editor & Publisher) has a typo; they wrote that:

“Clark Hoyt, has called the controversial hiring of William Kristol as an op-ed columnist a “mistake.” … He also wrote, in his column today, that of nearly 700 messages he has received about the selection, only one praised the pick (empasis added)”

It’s a sad day when even Editor and Publisher can’t proofread well enough to detect that they mis-spelled “prick”.

Apple recently announced a new laptop that weighs only 3 pounds and is less than an inch thick at its thickest and only a quarter of an inch thick at its slender foward edge.[1] It’s a nice step forward, combining a large, excellent screen with a full-size, back-lit keyboard to provide a very comfortable mobile experience. It’s got an iSight camera, plenty of RAM and all the wireless goodies you’d expect. The drive is a bit small (only 80GB) and might also be a bit slow, there aren’t many ports... [More]

1. Cell (2007) − Stephen King
2. The Essential Ghandi (second half) (1962) − Mahatma Ghandi (edited by Louis Fischer)
3. Zwischen Krieg und Terror (2006) − Ulrich Tilgner (de)
4. A Man without a Country (2005) − Kurt Vonnegut
5. Wild Fire (2006) − Nelson DeMille
6. Das Parfum (1994) − Patrick Suskind (de)
7. Cobweb (2005) − Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George
8. The New Rulers of the World (2002) − John Pilger
9. Thud! (2005) − Terry Pratchett
10. Count Zero (1987) − William Gibson
11. Infinite Jest (1996) − David Foster... [More]

News about Iraq has recently dropped off, and the military has filled the void with intimations that the surge is working. The explanation is clearly due to US military efforts, which are capable of fixing everything. That we are still within the six-month ceasefire window opened by Moqtada Al Sadr in August is a minor detail. The BBC is happily burbiling away right now with interviews of people from the American Enterprise Institute (a favorite source for the BBC) telling us that weak... [More]

Subduing Protesters in New Orleans

As reported today in New Orleans to Demolish Thousands of ‘Poor’ Homes by Leonard Doyle (Common Dreams) and New Orleans Police Taser, Pepper Spray Residents Seeking to Block Public Housing Demolition (Democracy Now!), a meeting of the City Council of New Orleans to decide whether to raze 4500 units of low-income housing and replace them with mixed-income housing was disrupted by police wading into crowds of chanting protesters with pepper spray and tasers. The clips on Democracy Now! sound like an... [More]

Video Gaming has come full circle.

It began with kids feeding quarters into machines at the local arcade, honing their skills with an endless stream of silver. The occasional talent would rise above the rest and gain fame in the neighborhood for his (or her) mad skills. There were masters of Pac-man and Space Invaders. Then came the home versions of these games, which allowed you to train at home, for free. People got better, but they left the arcades, taking the show out of video gaming. In... [More]

As feared by right-wing pundits everywhere, the power of a slightly democratic Congress and Senate is a fearsome thing to behold. As stated in the article, Senate Approves $70 Billion To Continue Wars (Common Dreams):

“In a boost to President George W. Bush, the Senate voted late Tuesday to approve the catch-all 555 billion dollar budget bill, adding extra war funds without any of the restrictions that Democrats hoped to pin on their release, such as linking them to a withdrawal date for US troops.”

... [More]

Just as governments seek to justify everything they do—regardless of how violent or fascist—as being in the name of democracy or the greater good or for moral reasons, other dubious ideas have glommed onto the idea of portraying themselves as science in order to accumulate more than their fair share of respect. It seems that the cloak of science is just the spoonful of sugar the media needs to make any crackpot idea go down without a hiccup. Two areas in particular are swirling with boasts... [More]

Audio in Linux is awesome (darkness) document’s one man’s journey to being able to edit an MP3 file under Linux. Included are the following gems:

• Look at the Ardour interface. Decide that (1) it’s not what I want, and (2) dear god that is ugly. Is that Tk? Motif? Holy hell. Run away.
• Read http://jackaudio.org/faq. “The simplest, and least-secure way to provide real-time privileges is running jackd as root. This has the disadvantage of also requiring all of JACK clients to run as root.” Yeah, no.

One... [More]

The Traveler IQ Challenge (Travelpod) is a Flash-based game with 12 levels, covering famous places, world capitals and other cities with increasing difficulty.[1] There will be countries whose names you have likely never heard before. It times you and gives you points for accurate clicking and speed. You need a certain number of points to proceed to the next level.

You might want to brush up on Statetris (earthli News). There used to be a site with a “name as many of the 192 UN countries as you can in ten minutes” game,... [More]

Every once in a while, Reddit does a “tell your best jokes” thread. Here are my favorites from the last one; try not to hold it against me.

Brewer’s Convention

At a world brewing convention in the States, the CEOs of various Brewing organizations retired to the bar at the end of each day’s conference.

Bruce, CEO of Fosters, shouted to the Barman: “In ‘Strylya, we make the best bladdy beer in the world, so pour me a Bladdy Fosters, mate.”

Bob, CEO of Budweiser, calls out next: “In the... [More]

Dan Savage is an advice columnist focusing on questions about sex and relationships. When pushed, he knows how to throw down with the best of them.

Werner Herzog has made many films and not one of them was boring, either to watch or to film (he famously “haul[ed] a boat up a mountainside in [his film] Fitzcarraldo … in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest, [because] audience will know if the shots are real”. His latest is Little Dieter Needs to Fly—a documentary about the only successful escape from a POW camp in Vietnam—with the unparalleled Christian Bale in the lead role. Roger Ebert wrote him a magnificent letter (linked below)... [More]

The strips from October 2007 (MNFTIU) have some pretty good lines:

“I used to have a friend who was skeptical about whether bombing the shit out of people was the best way to fight terrorism. I bet he feels pretty stupid now.”

“If Turkey invades Northern Iraq, we should try selling them a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. I know where you can get one cheap. … You know, if enough countries invade Iraq, maybe we can just slip out the back…”

In response to the possibility that Blackwater employees might be... [More]

It would be nice if all of the faithful in America would apply their faith constructively for once. Instead of shopping amongst the meatheads on the Republican side or the non-commital shysters on the Democratic side, they should take a look at Kucinich’s platform and believe that he could make it work. Vote him into the presidency and give him four years—if he only accomplishes half of what he would like to, America will be on its way to being the country we were all[1] taught it already was.

Debates... [More]

The internet is lately being overrun by pictures with captions. Most of these pictures features cats with bad grammar, but not all of them. For some unknown reason, some are incredibly, laugh-out-loud, tears-in-your-eyes funny. Most of the images are from 100 Top Internet Pictures by TheWalkingDude.[1]

Exhibit (A) below is an image that originated somewhere on the internets—most likely Something Awful or Fark (browse at your own risk/not for the faint of heart/your mileage may vary), but which indicates that it... [More]

This picture showed up when you clicked through on this link title: AP Photo of the President and some fucking asshole that bankrupted our country and killed 1,000,000+ people. (Reddit)[1] Sure, it’s a cheap trick, but funny as hell.

There’s a fun little video called What We Call the News (JibJab), which lampoons the state of American media today, which has degenerated from “anchors of integrity and three channels to choose” to “a ratings race, with the anchors replaced by blondes with big, fake boobs”. To be fair, it’s not these superficial qualities that form the crux of the problem—Lou Dobbs, for example, is neither blonde nor especially busty. But he exemplifies the problem with the news with his shocking incompetence and... [More]

This guy kicked off a [a] better design to fit a year calendar comfortably within a business card. (ELZR) There are a lot of, shall we say, unique, entries. Many of them are interesting only in that they actually work, not that they would be more useful than the standard pocket calendar, which uses text too small to read. The winning entry is the Thumb Calendar by Adam Sporka, which is clean and clear:

Here’s how it works:

First half of the year is on one side of the card, the rest of the year is on the other.... [More]

The International Photography Contest (National Geographic) selected the following picture as the winner in the Animals category of their annual competition. This is wrong on so many levels, not least of which is that a lot of people (yours truly included) tend to have much stronger reactions to the suffering of animals that fellow human beings. Why is that? Is it their helplessness? Their relative innocence? Are people not accorded a similar guilelessness, by default? Or do we just assume that they, while not... [More]

Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared (A Calorie Counter) took the time to painstakingly combine the published nutrition (if you can call it that) information for the largest fast food chains in America.

A few tidbits:

• In the french fries department, Dairy Queen at 1530mg delivers almost five times the sodium of McDonald’s fries and 730 kCal for their large size.
• Carl’s Jr weighs in with a regular hamburger that has 470 kCal and 1060mg of sodium.
• The unlimited weight class for sandwiches/burgers has... [More]