Jones interrogates son about post-choir activities

Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame and director of such great movies as Time Bandits, Brazil, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has deceided to use the USA's mthods of interrogation in the hopes of finding out what his son is doing after choir practice. After all, "The thing is, if people don’t say where they’re going after choir practice, this country is at risk."

A warning of ecological disaster

The Aral Sea in Uzbekistan has been mismanaged to the point that it is no longer a sea and is currently wreaking havoc with the surrounding peoples land and even their DNA. Reports of cancer in people living in the area have sharply risen and the land has become desert-like with large amounts of salt deposits and chemically ruined areas.

This should be loked at as an example of what can happen if we don't properly manage our own land and water.

Eeeek Eeeek, I have a big brain!

New studies show that animals that are sneaky ("You underestimate the sneaky.") have larger brains. The scientists have believed for a while that the social skills of a group assist in the growth of intelligence. And being sneaky is a social skill, as well as a recipe for trouble.

Is a draft next?

The US government is planning to announce an involuntary call-up of up to 118,000 retired or inactive soldiers to help bolster its fallen ranks. With the lives of 118,000 men and women who are about to be put in harm's way, is a national draft far behind? If you think it isn't, I covered this in a previous post a few weeks ago. Unsurprisingly, I Googled House Resolution 163 (the proposed reinstatement of a national draft) and could barely find any reports of this very important resolution for a draft that is still floating around congress and the Pentagon. And the original link that I had to the US Congress's site has been removed. So why isn't anyone talking about this?

I guess know one really cares if someone they know, who is between 18 and 26 years old, has to go to war and maybe die in a place that we don't even belong in.

Back to Bite US in the ass

Let's say you have friends that have stood by you in the past because you, in return, have always been a good friend to them. Now, let's suppose you suddenly decide to do something that your friends feel is wrong. You tell your friends that you don't care what they think and that they are either with you or against you. Naturally your friends get angry with you and tell you that they will not support you if you do this thing. Furthermore, they tell you that they think you're an asshole for ignoring their advice and going ahead with your stupid plan anyway.

And my point is: NATO allies are not willing to help us out in Iraq after we have pissed them off and ignored their advice.

Internet Explorer security issue!

Hackers exploited yet another security hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. They used JavaScript and the Microsoft owned tech ActiveX to read passwords from a system and hijack it. If you use MS Internet Explorer and would like an alternative web browser, I suggest Mozilla Firefox, which is awesome and free to use. You can download it here if you'd like.

Casualties of War

I found this article on the Orlando Weekly Website and it really disturbs me. It is an interview with an honorably discharged US Marine who served for 12 years in the armed forces. He was in Iraq from the beginning and spent a year over there.

Thankful

I've decided to start a list of things I am thankful for. I know I can get very dark and angry, and well...I am dark and angry. But I seem to be feeling all warm and flushy and fuzzy this morning, so I am doing this.

The Thankful List
1. My family and wife
2. Friends
3. Dogs
4. Espresso
5. My 7th grade teacher's shelf of loanable books
6. Red wine
7. Wonder Woman
8. Legos
9. Air conditioning
10. Choose Your Own Adventure books

$447 billion dollars for defense

The Senate passed this $447,000,000,000.00 (it looks a lot bigger with the zeros, doesn't it?) defense bill late last night, unanimously. That means not one person did not vote against it. Not one. The bill also includes $10,000,000,000.00 (10 billion dollars) for a missile defense program. Do the terrorist have missiles? Does Russia even have any missiles anymore? I know China does, but China, despite being a communist country, knows what is what and would never try to destroy the top buyer of its goods, namely us. Attacking and killing you best customers is bad business. The North Koreans you say? Like that little psycho dictator can afford to start a war. He's too busy oppressing his own people into submission to worry about anybody else except South Korea.

Of course they voted down a portion of the bill to aid Veterans health and prescription drug assistance. We won't patch you up, but you can go get shot. And how bad does your life have to be to join an organization that puts you in harm's way but won't help once you're out of danger?

I understand the money that is going towards giving soldiers a pay raise. Those brave, unlucky bastards more than deserve it, but why ten billion to a missile defense program?

I may have to see I, Robot in the theater

The movie I, Robot, based on Isaac Asimov's robot stories, will be opeing soon. I was interested in going to see it because of Asimov's stories, which I used ot read in high school. Now I want to see it becasue the movie is being directed by Alex Proyas, director of The Crow and Dark City, two great films I love. You can read the article about the movie, Proyas, and Asimov here at Wired.

PS - the article was written by Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which I highly recommend.

Alex Garland's new novella

Alex Garland is the author of The Beach (which was awesome and one of my top ten books) and The Tesseract (which I haven't read yet, but Jacqui says is good) and also wrote the screen play for the Danny Boyle directed 28 Days Later. You can find an excerpt from Garland's new novella, The Coma, here. From what I've read about the book, it is a short read that includes several wood cuttings from the author's father as illustrations for the story.

It is also on Amazon, here.

Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451, or 9/11?

Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors. This is the man who wrote great stories and books like; The Martian Chronicles, 'The Parrot Who Met Pappa,' 'The Dwarf,' and Fahrenheit 451. Well, it seems Michael Moore has borrowed the title of his new movie from Mr. Bradbury, without his position or a nod to the author.

If you remember, Fahrenheit 451 is about a world in which books are burned and freedom is non-existent. If you have never read Fahrenheit 451, or any Bradbury for that matter, check this out.

The Doggy Sixth Sense

Studies have found that some dogs can predict when a child will have an epileptic seizure before it occurs. Up to 42% of families with epileptic children and dogs said that their pets responded to seizures by either becoming protective of the children or trying to "help" the child.

Oh, by the by; dogs rule.

The Secret Police

The Pentagon, the center of our military, wants to place undercover spies in our own country. As you may know, the military and the CIA are not allowed to operate domestically because a nation that spies on itself and has a military presence in its society makes it ripe for a coup or a totalitarian fascist state.

That is why Rome never allowed its army to enter the city. That's why we don't allow our greatest tools that protect our country abroad to operate within our own borders.

But it seems some people in our armed forces, intelligence community, and government are all for a domestic spy network that is answerable to the military. And that cannot be a good thing. If there is a domestic problem, we have the FBI and the police to deal with that. Are they saying that our FBI is not up to the task of protecting us from spies domestically? And why do they want to have this kind of intelligence gathering capacity used against our own people?

Reagan - Another POV

Read this. It is very informative and funny.

Why is it always Florida?

"Thousands of eligible Florida voters may be removed from the rolls in this year's election because of a faulty database aimed at convicted felons. Despite protests from critics and nervous election supervisors, the state will continue with plans to implement the system." -from Wired News

That's great. And what do we pay Katherine Harris to do, exaclty? I mean besides being madeup for the local trailer park's neighborhood get-together and to circumvent the Constitution?

Strike it rich; become a State Representative!

Wouldn't it be nice to have a job where people (lobbyists) gave you stuff like stocks in companies and new cars almost for free so you could help them out? Just become a Senator or Congressman and you and your loved ones could be swimming in affluence.

Collegiate athletes have very strict guidelines in how they should act and who they can accept gifts from, and what kind of gifts they can accept. The NCAA is a lot stricter in policing their athletes than we are in policing our elected representatives.

I think the extremely lucrative position we put our public servants in can be related to Alan Moore's Watchmen. In that book, Moore asks the question, "Who will watch the Watchmen?" Who will police the people who make our laws? Obviously, having the people who make our laws police themselves isn't working. I know that they try to implement campaign spending laws and set-up oversite committees, but essentially what we're looking at is a club where if anything is done, it isn't done to make a big impact on the status quo.

Do you remember the last time Congress past a law that impacted the way we live? I don't think we can say the Patriot Act or creating the Office of Homeland Security really impacted our lives because I think they are pretty ineffectual. IF you think I'm wrong, just fly the unfriendly skies and see for yourself. I think the last time our government passed any law that made a large impact on our way of life was either Roe vs. Wade or the Civil Rights acts of the 1960's. And do you remember what they did to the guys that helped push that through?

One brother was murdered in Texas, the other in California.

It seems our laws are only designed to maintain the flow of cash to the right people and not effect any real change. And who wants to change anything really? I mean, do you really want to be killed while driving through Dallas or while talking to people in LA?

Dogs rule because they're smart

German scientists have studied dogs and learned that they understand words. The article explains the different kinds of tests they ran and how well the dogs responded to relations between words and objects and words and activities. Take that, cats.

Like saying I sort of got laid

Saying you can torture people a little bit is like saying you can sort of get laid. You are either geting laid or you are not. And you are either torturing people or you are not. So the government and the CIA asked the Justice Department to tell them exactly what torture is and how far they can go with it. Does that sound like our government was asking if they could torture somoeone, pretty please? Maybe just a little?

Fahrenheit 9/11 preview

The preview for Michael Moore's new film is at Apple Trailers. There is one scene in this preview that sums up the Bush presidency; it's when, after talking about the war on terror with his driver in hand, Bush tells the press, "Now watch this drive."

Do you feel better knowing that this man is in control of the largest economy in the world and can wage war with the strongest army on earth as he wishes? It's kind of like giving the greedy, spoiled brat kid from your school the keys to the car you saved two summers to buy and your wallet and your girlfriend and saying, "Hey, could you ruin my life and future because I am a mindless idiot."

Assault with a deadly chalupa

I think this broad deserves the chalupa to the head. I know I'd want ot pelt her with the biggest burrito I could find if she screwed up my order and then wouldn't fix it.

I hate Taco Bell. As if the poor service isn't bad enough, their food messes with your insides for like a week. Yuck.

The end of email privacy

A company is now making web bug tech available to people so they can know when and how long you spent reading their email messages to you. That's nice, isn't it? I know I would probably offend some of my friends if they knew how long I spent reading their inane forwards. Did I just write that? Sorry . . . Anyway, why should people know how long I spent reading their email? It's my email, f-off.

You know why this was created, don't you? For marketing purposes.

I hate marketing.

Quantum Crypto Computer

The first computer to be running quantum cryptography is online in Massachusettes. Quantum crypto is supposed to be uncrackable, almost. It also allows the people sending encoded messages via protons to figure out if the message has been eavesdropped on through counting the number of protons in the transmission and doing some math.

Ephraim says...

Ephraim, a friend of mine, says that we are in the shitter both financially and morally. He tells me there was a time when people used to have values like not putting up with anyone's crap and giving them a good punch in the face for being a no-good bastard. He tells me that this is what the world needs now - some good old barbaric justice. You want to skirt the letter of the law to screw people, you get a punch in the f-ing face. You want to repeatedly lie to my face, reach into my wallet, and then pat me on the back as if you're my friend, you get a f-ing punch in the face.

It's that simple.

Ephraim tells me that once, a big kid used to torture everyone around him in his second grade class. All Ephraim wanted to do was keep low, not get noticed. He knew, from playing chess, that the bully had a better run of the board than he did, with Ephraim not being a white kid and rich. Ephraim also knew that it was only a matter of time before the fit hit the shan the bully would find him and all of his differences and weaknesses. Sometimes Ephraim would dream about kicking the bully's ass and having all the girls and boys in the class like him and cheer for him, but that would not happen. That only happened in movies like My Bodyguard and shit.

That day came when the bully found him and punished him good as the same kids he once imagined would befriend him for standing up for them only cheered as he got the snot beat out of him. And you know what Ephraim thought about that day on the ground with granular, crunchy dirt in his mouth and the copper penny taste of blood running down the back of his throat? He thought of Christ on the cross and how he hated everyone and how Jesus wasn't there to save the world, he was just there to make someone else feel better and more powerful because it was not them getting the crap kicked out of them. And after that thought, Ephraim lost it and gave the bully a a black eye. He still got the ever-loving shit beaten out of him and got a detention, but at least he did not go down without a little dispensing of some justice.

And Ephraim tells me that sometimes you just have to hit them hard and make them feel the pain. And people tell me that I'm angry.

Bush seeks legal advice

President Bush has consulted with a private attorney concerning the outing of a CIA operative. Valerie Plame and her spouse have claimed that she was outed because her husband, a former ambassador, had publicly disagreed with the Bush administration on its policies.

Looks like the Supreme Court-appointed president is worried about criminal charges. If you ask me, outing an agent of our government and putting her in harm's way is a lot worse than having someone wax the dolphin. After all, our country didn't lose any national secrets or intelligence gathering capability becasue someone received oral in the oval office.

Microsoft's new clicking patent

I knew a guy on the footall team that, whenever their was free food, would jostle his way as close to it as he could get and then proceed to stuff his fat face as if he had not eaten in forever. And the point is that nobody likes a greedy bastard; hence Microsoft and their new patent.

Microsoft has patented double clicking or holding down a button to select an application. WTF? Are our keyboard-punching, patent ofice bureaucrats so stupid as to allow the patenting of a double-click? And why the hell does Microsoft have to be so disgustingly greedy? This is like when they tried to patent CSS for web design (bunch of pricks).

Hold on a second...I just had to place a check in the "Why I Hate Microsoft" column. There. I'm done.

'Creating' comics almost from scratch

People are making their own web comics using images from old video games as characters. Some of them are pretty funny, others crap. But there is the big thing about copyright infringement that is looming over these and other new media "art" that is being made from old, almost forgotten media.

Maybe these guys should get permission before using someone's art or property. It's just common sense and courtesy. Huhm, good manners...seems that it is something we all seem to be lacking in these days.

Blaming the Internet and other media for murder

A 12 year-old Japanese girl slashed a 12 year-old girl's neck, killing her. Supposedly, the girl who committed the murder was angry because of a posting on a website. If you've read about this, some patsies that are being set-up to take the fall are a violent manga called Battle Royale, TV, and of course the Internet.

What I want to know is what the hell is a 12 year-old doing reading a manga about kids in the future forced to kill each other for sport and prizes in a twisted reality game show and why were her parents letting her read it in the first place?

Seven-million digit Prime number discovered

Using a distributed computing network called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a guy's laptop in Seattle, WA came up with the largest prime number known to man. This is pretty neat, considereing that prime numbers only have the numbers 1 and itself as factors.