Rumsfeld has a list. It’s a list of things that could go wrong in Iraq. It doesn’t mention those things that you think, though. It doesn’t mention risks to troops, or a long, drawn-out war, or the possibility of retaliation here in the States. It does have these things, quoted from the New York Times in SwissInfo’s article, War planners considering risks.

There is “concern about Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction against his own people and blaming it on us [the States]”. This is... [More]

Bush Eases ‘Abortion’ Funding Ban: An Effective Compromise? on Plastic documents a recent announcement from the White House that:

“Any agency that provides treatment for AIDS will get the money, as long as none of the funds are used for family planning purposes or for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger.”

This is a step back in policy for the Bush administration, which heretofore has only allowed money to be used to convince kids that sex... [More]

Why doesn’t MSN work with Opera? is a systematic investigation of the behavior of the MSN website when approached by different web clients. Recently, Opera Software discovered that on the home page for the MSN web-site, “…it looks like Opera7 has a serious flaw so that many lines are partially hidden [and] the page shows less content than users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (MSIE) see.”

They concluded that the MSN web-site is sending back a different style sheet to only Opera browsers.... [More]

As you’re no doubt aware, yesterday marked the largest number of people ever to march in one day, all over the world. They were marching to prevent war in Iraq. The Sunday Blick (a paper in Switzerland) trumpeted 10,000,000 total from the headlines (“Mehr als zehn Millionen gingen für den Frieden auf die Strasse” (More than ten million march for peace in the streets) from Alle gegen den Krieg in the Sonntags Blick. The New York Newsday only mentioned “millions”, with the NY estimate at “[t]ens of... [More]”

XXX!!! See Horny Teens Hide Weapons Of Mass Destruction!!! XXX!!! onPlastic announces that the US has been spamming Iraqi citizens for the last month, causing Iraq to “disable Internet access for the entire country”. Below is a sample of these emails, captured and presented by Plastic poster, Chatsubo.

“Texan Unable To Trick NASA Into Hauling Old Washing Machine Off Lawn”

As we have our focus pointed more and more towards the impending war that will be fought no matter what, we necessarily leave small issues like the economy’s shattered wasteland to disappear into our less-focussed peripheral vision. Paul Krugman, an economist of some repute with the NY Times snaps us back to attention in Is the Maestro a Hack?:

“…the fiscal deterioration has reached catastrophic proportions. [The] first budget … projected a 2004 surplus of $262 billion. [The] second budget... [More]”

As you’ve probably already heard in alternately fevered and hushed tones from your local newscaster, Osama bin Laden has graced the world with a new diatribe. As with the other tapes and videos, there are significant doubts as to the veracity of this tape or its origins, of which you will hear next to nothing in the States. The Washington Post has the full transcript in Osama bin Laden Urges Attacks on the U.S.

Thanks For Listening In Again Folks!… on Plastic says the tape came from... [More]

John Carmack, of id Software, has updated his .plan file (cached copy at earthli.com) with his impressions of the NV30 from NVidia. He compares it to the current king of the video card market, the ATI R300 part and describes how they handle his DOOM3 engine.

“At the moment, the NV30 is slightly faster on most scenes in Doom than the R300, but I can still find some scenes where the R300 pulls a little bit ahead.”

He mentions that there are several code-paths or renderers available for the DOOM... [More]

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]