Last night, the dictator of the “free world” gave a speech recorded here in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address at the Washington Post.

Summary

Pardon my cynical attitute, but my general rule of thumb with George Bush speeches is to assume he’s lying whenever his lips move. So, yeah, I exepcted to hear some innaccuracies. However, I didn’t expect the slew of fantastical imaginings this speech turned out to be. I didn’t see the speech (I read the transcript — I find it’s faster and less... [More]

New For Christmas: Do Me Barbie, found on Plastic, tells of FAO Schwarz’s refreshing departure from classic, fully-dressed barbies. This is a great idea and should prove very educational for young ladies wondering what assets they need to get ahead. Ahem. As if the size 38DDD rack Barbie has traditionally sported isn’t indication enough. Now, she pulls out all stops as she “exudes a flirtatious attitude in her heavenly merry widow bustier ensemble accented with intricate lace and matching... [More]”

CNN is reporting that Bush declares National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Hey, didn’t we just have one of those last summer? Or has it really been a year already? Or does Bush get to declare many different days “Sanctity of Human Life Day”? I don’t think there’s a gambler in the world who’d take odds that he gets the irony of talking about the sanctity of human life at the same time as mobilizing almost 100,000 troops (is it that many? The numbers are so confusing…) that are getting ready to... [More]

There are only 10 kinds of people in this world… those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Arguing on the Internet is like running a race in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you’re still a retard.

Being a cop

1. During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
2. Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
3. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
4. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.
5. All handcuffs can easily be opened with nothing more than a paper clip.
6. If you... [More]

Slashdot is reporting a film submitted to the Online Sundance Film Festival called S-11 Redux: (Channel) Surfing the Apocalypse. It’s about 11 minutes long, has a good beat and you can dance to it. Highlights? Juxtaposing Bush with the banjo player from Deliverance. Also, watching Gephardt saying “[w]e cannot let out our country be run by terrorists”, then cutting to a picture of Bush and son, winking, smiling and waving.

It’s done by Guerrilla News and can be downloaded from there (S-11 Redux).... [More]

There’s a new world record holder for largest rollercoaster: the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in Ohio is “420 feet” (128 meters) high. It shoots up a “90 degree”, pure vertical climb into a 400 foot vertical drop that takes you from 0 to almost 120MpH (193KpH) in just “4 seconds”. The ride was manufactured by “Intamin AG of Wollerau, Switzerland”, and they say the Swiss are boring.

The whole thing is basically a long loop that has one end vertical. The cars are look like dragsters and each... [More]

For all those who respond to the comparisons to Japanese internment camps and the slaughter of American Indians as phases of American History out of the deep, dark past, never to be repeated, perhaps you should read Hundreds of Muslim Immigrants Rounded Up in Calif. on Yahoo News.

“Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide... [More]”

You may have heard rumblings recently about an Oscar of some sort being awarded to the actor that played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. You may have thought that it was ridiculous since the character is complete digitized; nothing of the actor himself remains. However, The Next Reel − December 18, 2002 on Green Cine has a very good (and long) article about the filming.

The last page, Gollum, contains a lengthy explanation of how this character was brought to the screen and... [More]

Can’t Afford AIDS Drugs? Then DIE on Plastic has a discussion about the latest global program that the US has stymied with its single, powerful vote. The article, US blocks cheap drugs agreement on BBC News provides details, mainly that the US voted against the proposal that would make it much easier for “ poor countries to buy cheap drugs” because “US negotiators say the deal would allow too many drugs patents to be ignored.”

Hmmm….save “30 million people … in Sub-Saharan Africa” or line the... [More]

Andrew Lipson’s LEGO® Page has some pretty amazing creations, chiefly his recreations of some of M.C. Escher’s works. You can see “Ascending and Descending” to the right.

I guess while we’re at it, you can check out this site with computer-generated art. It’s very difficult to tell the difference on some of these. The whole site is tightly linked together and takes you seemingly randomly from one ‘painting’ to the next.

So one of these is taking impossible art and trying to make physical... [More]

Bush Administration Pushes “Regime Change” in Venezuela on Counterpunch chronicles the continuing sage of US involvement in South America. Chavez is the legally elected president of Venezuela. He was elected with far more of a mandate than George Bush. Despite this, “A recent op-ed in the Washington Post referred to the Chavez government as a ‘dictatorship’” to let the American public know how they should feel about him.

There was already a coup attempt on April 11, and Bush and Co. “ at first... [More]”

Bookworm Hi ScorePut your vast vocabulary to good use with this cool Java game from PopCap Games called Bookworm. It’s a Java game where you have to select words like in a word jumble. The more letters in a word, the more points and so on. Hard-to-use letters have higher value. If you link a few longer words together, you’ll be granted gold or green blocks, which multiply the value of the word score. If you link too many short words (like 3 or 4 letters), you’ll get flaming blocks that eat through one letter... [More]

Seanbaby’s been on vacation/hiatus or in hiding almost as long as Osama, but I found him. He’s not updating his own site anymore because he’s writing for The Wave, “The Bay Area’s Best Entertainment Mag…Ever”. In fact, I just found his latest article, Video Review: Turkish Star Trek, in which he notes:

“The teleportation effects are, like all Turkish special effects, a strange combination of retarded and rad. The four men stand as still as possible while the camera goes out of focus. Ten... [More]”

I was just kicking around Snopes the other day and found this transcript. Snopes is an urban legend tracking site and has discredited the veracity of this incident, but it’s pretty funny nonetheless.

ACTUAL transcript of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. This radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on 10-10-95.

Americans: “Please divert your course 15 degreesto the North to avoid a collision.”

Canadians:... [More]

I was on the Newsday today, in the World section. Six or seven articles down the page, I’m greeted by this headline, “Experts: Time to Put Cards on Table” which linked to this article, Experts: Time to Put Cards on Table. I was pretty sure I’d missed a big announcement from the UN. the blurb that followed the title was:

“Hoping to convince a skeptical world, the United States went before the United Nations and dramatically presented indisputable evidence that a rogue nation possessed weapons of... [More]”

This web site, GWBush.com is the unnofficial George Bush homepage. The best part is the stickers section in the store, where you can find beauties like:

1. “Regime Change” Starts at Home
2. Democracy was getting old anyway
3. Don’t Blame Me, My Vote Didn’t Count
4. Vote Republican — it’s easier than thinking!
5. If you can read this, you’re not the president
6. I wasn’t using my civil liberties anyway
7. George W. Bush: America’s Last President

…and finally, my personal favorite:

“Bush — born on third... [More]”

Slashdot reports in Another Critical Microsoft Hole that IE, once again, has a problem with granting ActiveX controls too many rights. This latest security flaw in Windows NT/2000 (not present in XP) is a really good as the best solution Microsoft can recommend is to “…to make sure you have no trusted publishers, including Microsoft.” (Security Bulletin MS02-065). That means you have to remove all the trusted publishers from your list, because the control at issue is actually signed and... [More]

Read the New York Times these days about the new round of inspections in Iraq and you’ll likely see the U.S. government’s (not it’s people’s) stance toward war in Iraq. They desire it. They want it to happen. When asked what they would like to see happen, the answer is never that they would like to see Hussein disarmed peacefully, they respond that they want to go in and take him out. The war is no only inevitable, it’s not even seen as a last resort for these people.

In Iraq Tells the U.N.... [More]

I learned this trick for crashing Windows 2000/XP a while ago. I know, I know, it doesn’t take much. But, seriously, I haven’t gotten a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) in Windows 2000 in a long time. I can’t actually remember the last time I got one. This extremely simple program produces a BSOD immediately every time. Your computer will reboot.

It still works today. It’s quite simple: you simply issue one more backspace in a buffer passed to printf than there are characters in the buffer. You... [More]

When you start reading Service Tension on Salon by Mary Elizabeth Williams, you find yourself agreeing with her. Her tales of “rude, pathological or clueless service people” resonate with our own experiences. It’s an article about what it’s like to exist in a world supported by service industry staff, and having to put up with it all. In many ways, I’m sure it sounds just like the kind of “you just can’t find good help these days” griping that’s accompanied the upper classes since the dawn of time.... [More]

Swiss earthli Logo

If you’re seeing this article, then you’re browsing the Swiss version of earthli.com. The site (along with it’s proprietor) has moved to Switzerland. As you can see, the logo has been updated to reflect this status :-). If you find anything that is broken, be sure to let me know, as it could be a configuration problem as a result of the move.

After long months of focus-group testing and careful deliberation, earthli has a new logo. This logo is only rendered in alpha-transparent PNG, so will look extra bad on all Windows IE incarnations, but those are the breaks. It’s worth it just to have one logo for all themes now. The new logo also makes a nicer and more distinct icon, as you can see in the icon to the left. With the decision to leave all non-alpha-transparent-PNG rendering browsers behind, the logo can make full use of the... [More]

The August 15, 2002 Cryptogram by Bruce Schneier at Counterpane Internet Security explains what is known about “Palladium”, the code-name for Microsoft’s trusted computing intiative. It’s abbreviated as Pd, like an element. Isn’t that cute. This is a natural outgrowth of Hollywood’s (in the form of the MPAA and the RIAA) jihad against its customer base and our acceptance of the blame. It aims to use hardware to prevent people from doing anything that Hollywood doesn’t want them to with... [More]

Am I looking for conspiracies where they don’t exist when I read The Importance Of Being In India in Business World India and this article, Bill Gates pledges $100 million to fight AIDS in India on Canada.com on the same day and wonder whether the two are connected? I mean, Gates himself said that “…[h]e worried that India’s enormous progress in information technology − the country has the only Microsoft software development centre outside the United States − would be thwarted by AIDS.” At this... [More]

Arab League Expects Iraq to Comply on the New York Newsday discusses Iraq’s response to the new “United Nations resolution that requires Baghdad to declare and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction.” In addition, neighboring countries in the “…Arab League yesterday urged Hussein to comply with the Security Council resolution”.

“Hussein yesterday ordered Iraq’s 250-member parliament to hold an emergency session today in Baghdad. The legislature is stacked with members of Hussein’s ruling... [More]”

The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks on Counterpunch talks about the latest plan for “rooting out evildoers”. The report, prepared for Rumsfeld by the Defense Science Board, plans to create a new organization, whose duty it will be, in the most Orwellian possible fashion, to find terrorists, even if they must be created first.

“new organization—the “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)”—will carry out secret missions designed to “stimulate reactions” among terrorist... [More]”

As BBSpot points out in Americans Surprised to Learn of Upcoming Election, “74 percent of Americans were surprised that elections were being held this Tuesday”. This is actually surprising, since you would think that the administration would have their hands full with diverting attention from the economy; but it seems that the ever-compliant media has helped to downplay today’s elections as well.

Plastic explains why there may be so little emphasis on today’s elections in Election Day In The... [More]

If you dig the Pixar movies, then check out the trailer for Finding Nemo, hosted at Apple. I’m not really sure what the story is about — it looks like two fish trying to find one of their sons, surprising named “Nemo” — but it’s a sure bet it has a happy ending. It seems Pixar has found another venue in which to show off its technical prowess. In Monsters, Inc. it was Sully’s fur that stole the show, technologically; this time, it’s the underwater environment that will blow you away. In the... [More]

The Washington Post reports in Europe’s Microsoft Alternative that a region of Spain, “a western region of Spain called Extremadura, a mostly rural expanse of olive trees and tiny towns with 1.1 million inhabitants”, is planning “to convert all the area’s computer systems, in government offices, businesses and homes, from the Windows operating system to Linux”. This is a trend that started in Asia, with first China, then India, declaring that they would be standardizing on Linux or other... [More]