The Slippy Express

Bill Kristol, stop profaning Latin

2008-10-20T10:41:00.006-04:00

The problem with overeducated elites is that they can use their knowledge of barely relevant arcana to strongarm others into accepting a point they might otherwise reject. I consider it intellectual dishonesty — even intellectual bullying — and it is especially reprehensible in a newspaper column intended for ordinary people.

Bill Kristol, I am calling you out on your misuse of Latin.

The piece begins innocently enough, with the correct point that politics is by definition vulgar (given the Latin vulgus, crowd), and that this presidential race is no more vulgar than any election in our history. It follows that Peggy Noonan's phrase "a new vulgarization in American politics" to describe the Sarah Palin effect is ridiculous, and that she meant something like "a new anti-intellectualism in American politics."

The line is crossed, however, when Kristol drags the Golden Age Roman poet Horace into the mix. The quotation from Odes 3.1 (Odi profanum vulgus et arceo) he translates incorrectly as "I hate the ignorant crowd and I keep them at a distance." It is a huge stretch to render profanum as "ignorant" — it really means "uninitiated" in a religious context, whence the English profane, meaning "unholy." If Kristol had bothered to read the rest of the poem, he would have immediately discovered the correct context. The whole first stanza reads as follows:

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo;
favete linguis. carmina non prius
audita Musarum sacerdos
virginibus puerisque canto.

Translated:

I disdain the uninitiated crowd, and I keep them away; hold your tongues! I, the priest of the Muses, chant their previously unheard songs to maidens and boys.

Notice the religious language? But the poem isn't strictly religious; in fact, it goes on to discuss politics, emphasizing the variety of candidates for office, whether they have noble birth, fame, wealth or popularity. At its conclusion, the poet professes his disdain for wealth in general, asking cur valle permutem Sabina / divitias operosiores? or "Why should I exchange my Sabine farm for too-burdensome riches?"

Such a sentiment would fit well with Kristol's point; yet his concluding sentence is, "I join [McCain and Palin] in taking my stand with Joe the Plumber — in defiance of Horace the Poet." That's unfortunate, since Kristol and Horace might find they have a lot in common.

Don't they teach Latin at Harvard?

Google Steam

2008-09-17T12:33:00.000-04:00

Google may have Valve in their sights.

Samsung in Hostile Takeover Bid of Sandisk

2008-09-17T09:46:00.008-04:00

Samsung, the massive quasi-state-owned Korean conglomerate known in the west for its LCD's and cell phones (one of their lesser known offerings pictured here), has made a hostile takeover bid for Sandisk at $26 a share, which is quite a premium.

Samsung's been making moves on the smaller firm for some time now, and the answer has been a consistent 'no.' Guess they got sick of playing nice. Word down the grapevine is that compared to previous similar situations, it's likely that this deal will start out on the hostile path, but some loose pockets on Samsung's part may well make things consentual. The big hurtle will be regulators, but the fact that Samsung is behaving so aggressively at this point indicates that they are determined to engulf Sandisk, or in the very least, make any rival acquisitions that much more costly.

Sandisk seems doomed at this point. One interesting point is that this move by Samsung may escalate its faceoff with Intel, which has a demonstrated record of backing DRAM companies with cash against the Korean firm.

Sandisk makes...stuff. USB keys, hard drives, etc., is all that really comes to mind. They're all about the semis. Their one brand name that I remember for some reason is a tacky budget MP3 player called the Sandisk Sansa.

Guess that makes Samsung Littlefinger GET IT?!!?1

Spore

2008-09-15T15:38:00.003-04:00

Why I won't get bored with this game. Meet Brian, the only one of my creations to get commented on my godamn myspore page which I just now realize existed.

He wants you to use his big green mouth as a human toilet.

BOOM goes Lehman

2008-09-15T01:08:00.002-04:00

Lehman Bros.' holding company has filed for bankruptcy.

The whole street is on damage control lest they are crushed by the giant's corpse. Merrill Lynch is getting bailed by Bank of America, for one.

I am sooo glad I didn't have my shit together when I did those interviews last year.

Googlebot pranks stock market

2008-09-11T10:43:00.008-04:00

Notice anything funny about this chart?

At about 10:45AM on Monday Google listed an article about how UAL had just filed for bankruptcy. This news was automatically picked up by services that piggyback on Google and was propagated all over the web where it was then picked up by automated stock-trading systems. The stock price fell by 75% in a matter of minutes.

The thing is, the announcement was six years old. Google discovered a copy with no date on it, apparently because it appeared on some generic "recent popular links" list, and threw it into the news hopper anyway. Over a billion dollars of value temporarily disappeared before NASDAQ hit the emergency brake.

Google=the singularity

Putin Saves TV Crew from Siberian Tiger

2008-09-06T18:47:00.003-04:00

I was somewhat disappointed to find out that he had actually used a tranquilizer gun to do it. Perhaps it speaks to the man that I, and I'm sure many others, clicked on the link expecting him to have done it with his bare hands.

Then again, blasting a pouncing tiger when no one else even saw it coming is probably harder than point and click, in the first place.

Too bad he's got such a bad rep in this hemisphere, because, you know, it's his fault that that wonderfully ~~weak, poor and corrupt plutocratic~~ freedom-loving Russia of days yore has been replaced by a country that can do more than wank and cry when their interests are sliding down the shitter.

Will Wright's PEE: The Count Down

2008-09-05T15:54:00.011-04:00

Spore's out in the wild in a little more than a day. Gamespot has given it a rather underwhelming 8/10. Gaming jesus it ain't, but I will probably end up shelling out some lunch money just to see what the fuss is about, that, and penis monsters.

Btw, the title refers to this Penny Arcade comic, which, quite frankly, is spot on.

I'm personally waiting on Fallout 3 and Fable 2, which will be the final catalyst for my acquisition of a 360.

Musical Tastes Reflect Personality?

2008-09-05T10:20:00.004-04:00

Could one of you science types take a look at this? The fact that it ends up reading something like a horoscope seems invalid to me for some reason, but I do like the fact that Reggae and Indie are the only two musical tastes associated with the "not hard working" trait.

Oh wait, they spelled "not hard working" 3 different ways: as two separate words, a compound word, and hyphenated. You're special BBC!

Christ. The study also lost my respect when I realized they lumped rock and heavy metal together...

Food For Thought

2008-09-05T08:31:00.005-04:00

Not meant to be taken very seriously, obvii, but rather amusing nonetheless. For my fellows here, you may find the placement of the top three states particularly interesting.

Something else I noticed, is that most states seem to have an average below average IQ, which really doesn't make sense at all, unless you take into account population density.

Shiny Poo

2008-09-04T15:13:00.002-04:00

Some sketches are up of Apple's next outting of music players.

The key terms here seem to be "thicker" and "longer."

Plus I'm Hungry for BS

2008-09-04T13:23:00.005-04:00

Every year, someone falls to their death at one of the few nice nature places in Illinois, called Starved Rock. I haven't been there in years, nor is it that beautiful , but our annual falltook place the other day, with fatal results.

And now the person's family is demanding that the state put up more signs saying "DON'T LEAVE THE PATH AND STAY AWAY FROM THE LEDGE BECAUSE YOU MIGHT FALL PRETTY DAMN FAR" and even erect barriers, blocking out any chance of an unobstructed view or the general enjoyment of nature. Do they need to put up the suicide guard fences along the Grand Canyon? Come on...

Elephant cured of addiction

2008-09-04T13:08:00.003-04:00

I've always said that Elephants make terrible alcoholics since they always remember, they drink to forget pretty poorly.

Some assholes decided that heroin might be better for an elephant. With maybe 25,000 elephants left, this is tragic.

Chrome First Impressions

2008-09-03T10:44:00.001-04:00

EDIT: What a POS. For some reason, Chrome will not let me navigate the internet and is acting like the internet is down, when switching to firefox I have no problem reaching the exact same page. I have been getting zip done this morning because I thought I had no internet. I'm uninstalling Chrome and will check back in 6 months.

Freaking hippies.

So its firefox, but they have cleverly minimized the amount of space toolbars take up, which was one of my biggest beefs with FF. They've also rounded all the edges, which seems to easily confuse people into believing it is futuristic.

I haven't seen the marked improvements in response time, but we've been shedding packets like crazy here at work today for some reason, so the problem could certainly be on my end. Google maps doesn't respond any faster, and perhaps seems a bit slower.

I'll post again in a week to be fair, I like FF3 and have it pretty tweaked, but I do believe that people will flock to the google bandwagon quickly enough that all of my beloved plugins will be ported in a month or less and then I will have a browser that runs faster than FF and allows me to see more of the screen, ultimately winning me over.

This is a good step 1 for google to the browser OS in the future.

Edit: I would also like to add a few more things I like. The main url of the website appears in darker text than the rest of the html up top, making it clear that I am at blogger.com, not http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2218358490107332542&postID=1288895734450479110 which is kinda nice.

Also, the recently closed tabs thing is cool.

However, one thing FREAKING ME OUT is that when I open a new window, it DOES NOT OPEN MAXIMIZED. There is no way to fix this in the settings, unlike Lance's beef about the pop up blocker pop up. For those of us who prefer multi-window browsing to multi-tab, this is very annoying.

Chrome as Well

2008-09-02T18:15:00.017-04:00

I figured this is big enough to warrant multiple opinions, anyway:

Update: Holy SHIT the popup blocker is annoying. It spawns this window at the bottom that, for the life of me I haven't figured out how to automatically close. That's right, folks, the popup blocker spawns a popup. It doesn't just go away after a while, either, but lingers, accumulating disgustingly at the bottom of the screen like some ersatz taskbar. WTF.

Edit: Looks like I missed the option under web content, which is funny because I actually dug into the gears settings to find it. I guess that allows me to sidestep the issue of getting bombarded by overlapping windows if I want to know when something's been blocked. So basically we have a choice of Google silently executing potentially innocent popups without us ever knowing (such popups are very common for office web-apps), or having to manually close malicious popup notifications, sort of defeating the point of the whole endeavor. Godamnit, even IE has a more space-saving way of notifying me.

Also, the maximized window prevents me from getting to my taskbar, which I have set to autohide. Many question the utility of the oft-broke autohide in the first place, but anyone running an Xx768 resolution and forces all full screen apps into windows would probably disagree. Hopefully, these gripes are minor and will be rectified soon enough.

I am noticing better load times. Significantly better in some cases. Edit/Update: This is an understatement. I can burn through fresh doc loads using the forward/back keys, loading fresh copies every time, faster than anything I've experienced before.

Killing the extra search bar has been long overdue; I'm glad they did it.

Excellent use of screen real estate; I run my box sitting across a coffee table with an LCD TV, and it really presents a tradeoff between space and readability; which this seems to handle marginally better than FF3. Zoom, unfortunatley, only resizes text and not images and certain layout panels, which can completely wreck the layout of a page and make it even more difficult to read than before. Yeah, most people probably don't even know about the zoom function on any browser, but I live and die by it...and if I zoom in on a page, I'd appreciate it if the whole thing was magnified, and not just the text. If they can't fix this or at least give us the option to fix it ourselves, than unfortunatley, it's a no-go.

Haven't really tried the incognito feature yet. It's a nice touch, but I suspect that anyone who would regularly make use of this type of feature has already streamlined a process of doing so in their old browser (heh). There are FF3 plugins that perform similar tasks, though probably not as effectively. Considering MS has something very similar to this in the works, Firefox will probably follow suit with something built in and this will not be a killer feature at all.

Update: I must have a hearty LOL at something I noticed with Incognito; namely all of the Google ads are for criminal record searches and PI's for hire. Talk about preconceived notions.

More peeves concern the fact that all the nice addons for FF3 are obviously absent here. I don't have my stumbleupon bar, my fire fm, and more importantly, adblock and my tweak for tab cycling. It's infuriating how these open source browsers continually ignore the superiority of the windows/opera alt-tab cycling style in favor of one that is just plain annoying; it effectively caps how many tabs you can conveniently surf between without going for annoying extra keystrokes or the mouse.

Unless they go all out with addons, I don't see myself converting anytime soon. But hell, if they can make a stumbleupon bar for opera, this will be a not brainer.

I'm also worried about the fact that Google's tendency to collect usage stats for ad targetting is going to limit the extent to which Chrome will support an ad-free, as-private-as-you-want environment a la Firefox. It may be consentual, but would saying no possibly limit the featureset that would put it above its peers? I know I would lose %75 of my Google Desktop's utility if I disabled indexing and usage stats, and that's just not acceptable. To be sure, I don't see any browser features that would require this sort of disclosure, but you never know what they might pull out their asses, and if it turns out to be pure gold, I don't want to miss out because I am reluctant to open yet another facet of my usage to google.

I haven't spoken much about the actual guts of the technology, because I don't know enough yet to comment on it, but everything I've read seems to point to a much more efficient, not to mention safer way to handle browsing potentially dangerous sites. Still, if they can't rectify certain issues with the interface and get the ball rolling on extensions, this might well end up being to Firefox what Cul or whatever the name was was to Goog.

In a world where Don LaFontaine's golden voice no longer graces the silver screen...

2008-09-02T17:15:00.006-04:00

Pardon the multitude of cliches in the headline. But LaFontaine, whose voice was the best part of many movie trailers for many, many years, has indeed passed on. He doesn't quite merit a TSE "In Memoriam" of the kind we gave Isaac Hayes and Bob Dunne, but it's still a sad day for Hollywood and for America.

RIP, Mr. LaFontaine.

Vive la Résistance

2008-09-02T10:08:00.004-04:00

Psystar, a small vendor that sells the third party "Open Computer" formerly known as OpenMac computer that runs apple's OSs, is hitting back after being taken to court by the fruit for licensing violations. They don't deny violation of license restrictions by putting OS X and its diaspora on non-apple machines, but instead contend that the forced packaging of hardware and software in Macs, combined with the premium Apple charges for said computers, constitutes a monopoly. Machines that run Windows, they argue, and for that matter all other OSs currently on the market, do not constitute a credible source of competition for the Apple hardware market due to rabid Mac OS fanboiism.

IMHO, though it's a long shot, if these guys succeed in putting a crack in Apple's totalitarian Mac strategy, it would be the third best thing to happen to the company.

The second would be if Bloomberg magically made everything it publishes come true, and the first, of course, would be a cruise missile.

Google Browser Announced

2008-09-01T20:18:00.004-04:00

Google is coming out with its very own open source web browser, Chrome. It's entering the now-infamous Google style open beta within hours.

Edit: Now available: http://www.google.com/chrome

Gamer Vest Simulates Bullet Wounds

2008-08-29T17:26:00.004-04:00

Cuz, you know, when I get instagibbed, set on fire, plain stabbed with bullets in a game, I want to pay hundreds of dollars to know what that feels like.

Square Enix in Tecmo Takeover

2008-08-29T12:22:00.009-04:00

Final Fantasy Extreme Beach Volleyball

Square's made an offer to absorb Tecmo. This acquisition is being compared to the Blizzard/Activision, which I think, quite frankly, is apples and oranges. All about it here.

I'm particularly interested in how this is going to impact the respective group's IP. It's clear that Square is wearing the pants in this relationship, and has done so for all its prior acquisitions, but Tecmo nevertheless has a decent repertoire of titles that are more than capable of standing on their own. Course, chances are this will be just another boring shift of which profits go where, and the games themselves are left alone. That might be optimal.

Even more fun, though less likely, a name change?

"Square Enix Tecmo?" bleah.
How about "Square Emo" or "Squeemo?"

Large Hadron Collider Collides Soon

2008-08-29T10:28:00.005-04:00

Sept. 10th, less than two weeks to go before this bad boy does its first full run.

There's been much talk about how this might conceivably create Earth-sucking extra-dimensional micro-black holes, large Chernobyl type explosions, the experiment going awry because of interference from time traveling future particles, and whatnot. The consensus is none of this will occur, but the fact that any of this stuff is even entering into remotely serious scientific discussion really gives some perspective on how far and how fast we've hurtling along.

At any rate, I'm keeping a crowbar handy in case on Sept. 11, we all wake up to a Combine invasion signaled by a goddamn resonance cascade.

Interesting Diversions

2008-08-29T00:49:00.003-04:00

Ask Pichachu is an awesome site.

Comcast Becomes a Bigger Hole of Ass

2008-08-28T21:37:00.004-04:00

They've slapped a 250 gig/month usage limit on all residential customers. Two "offenses" in a sixth month period results in a year's suspension of service.

As my fellow TSE posters know, my reaction to an outrage like this would typically include a call for mass graves for relevant parties, but it should be noted that my hope for such is highly unnecessary in this case, since Comcast seems to be digging their own quite capably.

Between Verizon and AT&T, there's plenty of DSL to go around no matter where you live. FIOS and Elite give respectable performance, but most of all you actually get to use the bandwidth that you are paying for.

Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans

2008-08-28T14:32:00.000-04:00

Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans

Oh the Onion, across your many media channels you always entertain.

Bloomberg accidentally publishes Steve Jobs' obituary

2008-08-28T11:18:00.005-04:00

Bloomberg committed a journalistic faux pas by inadvertently publishing their on-file obituary of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Apparently somebody was trying to update it but somehow managed to publish it instead--sounds like their system needs a little idiotproofing. It has since been retracted, but you can read the obit here. This incident comes amid speculation that Jobs' health has been waning over recent months due to an alleged recurrence of pancreatic cancer. The article touches on some extensive career highlights for Apple and Jobs and I think that both Apple fanboys and Apple haters can agree that Jobs has influenced the tech industry profoundly for better or worse.

Suge Knight goes to jail part xxvi...

2008-08-28T10:38:00.004-04:00

Suge Knight, best known for his role in driving the car that Tupac was shot after he ate Mr. T's cheetos, is going back to jail pending his convictions for assault with a deadly weapon (against his gf), possession of controlled substances and domestic abuse.

Oh yeah, and he ran Death Row records.

John Kerry Grows a Pair

2008-08-27T21:52:00.003-04:00

I just heard the man's speech at the DNC (missed Bill's). Now, I'm not plugged into American politics as much as some of the people on this blog, but damn, that was pretty damn good. The whole uncle bit was unnecessary and took the steam out of an otherwise deliciously aggressive oratory, plus the whole bit about Georgia was lukewarm at best, but he certainly laid if on McCain, and with what I detected to be a feeling of glee at pwning the geezer with a lot of the same rhetoric he got pwned with four years ago.

Christ, if this backbone had come on a bit sooner, say 2004, maybe I wouldn't be so damned disenfranchised with this country that part of me actually wants McCain to win.

Diddy holds Assholecon 2k8 a little early this year

2008-08-27T15:55:00.002-04:00

Diddy can't fly around in jet anymore because gas prices are too high. It costs "$200,000 or $250,000" for a round trip NYC to LA. When you have enough money that you can't tell the difference between $50,000 out of your pocket, you really shouldn't be video blogging about how hard it is out there for a pimp.

There's the real bastard who had Tupac killed walking free.

Rise of the Cyborgs

2008-08-27T11:31:00.004-04:00

Half man, half machine. All heart.

Powered exo-skeleton now lets people paralyzed from the waist down walk again. If we can restore sight to the blind, let the deaf hear, and the paralyzed walk with technology, I think we can handle the sea level rising an inch, hippies.

Tyranids

2008-08-26T15:05:00.004-04:00

I'm still trying to retrace the steps that led to me discovering www.hugecrab.com. I could try and describe the site, but the url pretty much says everything that needs to be said. They are pictures of rather large, soul devouring arthropods that people poke, prod and eat. I find it an interesting observation in cross-culture and cross-generational perceptions that my folks would likely find the site very appetising.

If someone makes a hugespider.com, I'll kill myself.

Thoughts on the DNC: Day One

2008-08-26T11:50:00.001-04:00

If CNN has its way, the Democratic delegates in Denver will be rioting in the aisles by the end of the convention. So many people have a reason to get mad about this attempted display of unity: Clinton supporters who can't stand Obama, passionate partisans who scream that the party wasted a day in personal and emotional headliners, and those who spotted Wolf Blitzer chucking rocks from his portable Situation Room onto the crowded floor and waiting for the explosion.

What is the deal with Clinton supporters? I don't like to lump them all together into a monolithic group of crazies, but my hand is forced by the way the polls are put together. This is the poll that CNN was frothing at the mouth over most of yesterday. Its conclusion is that Obama is doomed because the number of (former?) Clinton backers who plan to vote for McCain has increased over the past month (after Obama tapped Biden as his No. 2).

It is sickeningly fascinating to listen to the reasons the Clintonites give for their unwillingness to accept the true Democratic nominee. "He didn't reach out to us," some whine. "He doesn't have the experience necessary to be president," say others. "McCain is a natural fit for us because he, like Clinton, has more national-security experience and foreign-policy expertise than that n00b Obama," conclude some. "He's ready to answer the dreaded 3 a.m. phone call."

This kind of reasoning shows just how effective the Republican strategy has been in terms of framing the election. The consensus among smart Democratic strategists has been that in order to win, Obama and his followers need to make the election a referendum on George W. Bush, not on Obama himself or even on McCain. Obama's life story is too complex for so-called "ordinary Americans" to understand, so every appeal must be framed as such: Are you willing to subject yourself and your country to another four years of Bush? McCain has supported Bush policies 95 percent of the time, so it follows that four years of McCain would be a third term for Bush.

When Clinton supporters declare that they lean McCain, they reject the notion that the election should be about policy and judgment, but rather about what's familiar, what's understandable. McCain was a military pilot and a POW; therefore, he has the credentials to lead in a foreign-policy emergency. This raises the question: Why did the people who think this way support Clinton in the first place? Her life story couldn't be less similar to McCain's, and even when she talked about being in dangerous military situations in Bosnia, she lied about it. Clinton's and Obama's policy positions, however, are very similar.

No better argument can be made that Obama's judgment on foreign affairs is superior than what he has already demonstrated: When he took his big overseas trip, the Iraqi prime minister essentially endorsed his plan for American withdrawal. Now the State Department is trying to hammer out a similar deal with the Iraqi government.

I can't speak directly to the claim that Obama has failed to "reach out" to former Clinton supporters, since I was never one of them. But I can say that after I decided to get behind Obama after Edwards dropped out, all it took was a single visit to barackobama.com to get all the outreach I could handle from the campaign. And to those who were upset that he didn't take on more of her top advisers to help run his operation, get over it. It's his campaign; he has the right to use people who supported his message of change and hope from the beginning.

The appearance (or reality) of Democratic disunity is a golden opportunity for McCain and his legion of "Karl Rove acolytes," as Obama calls them, to sweep truth and reason under the rug. So he's rolled out a couple of incredibly tasteless ads that seem to imply that Clinton would prefer to see her bitter supporters take refuge in the McCain camp. She has repudiated the ads, of course ("I'm Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve this message"), and McCain deserves universal scorn for his claim that he should benefit just because Democrats had a drawn-out primary contest between two amazing and historic candidates.

CNN delights in this kind of strife, and they're eager to prolong it. That's why they have people on like Bill Bennett, who talked about how much better it would be if Clinton were on the ticket, and James Carville (the most bitter and passive-aggressive person in the world), who basically deemed the convention a failure because Dems didn't spend enough time attacking Bush on a night when Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama rocked the house with their emotional and personal speeches. And they weren't shy about inviting conservative analysts, such as Amy Holmes and Alex Castellanos (who, ironically, seemed to cause less dissent than their Democratic counterparts). Donna Brazile remains one of the few consistent voices of reason on CNN's Democratic panel.

I hope that for the rest of the convention, the media's riot-inducing rocks keep missing—and that Democrats emerge without the drama, ready to persuade the American people to deny Bush his third term.

Lolcats: A Venerable History

2008-08-26T10:30:00.006-04:00

Highly informative article on the history of canihascheezburger. I liked the fact that they talked about how the investors initially approached the site, and also about how they have a staff of full time moderators moderating lolcat submissions. That sounds like one hell of a job.

Plus I'm hungry for TV ratings

2008-08-25T18:31:00.003-04:00

What does the M stand for? Moceri. That's right, his name is Marc Moceri and he's finally brought the internet's sickest animations to television. Unfortunately, it's only on some random UK channel called E4, but we can hope that some kind British soul will upload these episodes soon. A few random web pages are also suggesting that Marc's show may make its way to Comedy Central, but I won't get my hopes up.

Personally, I really want a new album more than anything. The Ultimate Party Collection Volume 1 obviously needs a Volume 2.

We all went to the wrong school...

2008-08-25T16:01:00.009-04:00

Oberlin college teaches a course called Super Smash Brothers Theory and Practice. Okay, Oberlin's no Yale, but they're certainly dece, so this isn't the same league as that "Philosophy of Star Trek" crap they spew out on U. of Phoenix.

On second thought, any of us probably more than qualify as faculty. I know I can do a whole lecture entitled "Losing to Win: The Zen of Being an Asshole w/ Kirby" AKA "giving Jay an aneurysm," or "Ice Climbers: Behind the Bullshit," "Samus Balls in Modern Feminism," "The Desalvo Method of Stealth Wanking," etc. etc.

Fun fact, btw: the Smash devs overwhelmingly prefer to use the Gamecube controller for Brawl, so Jay isn't such a toggaf after all.

Step aside Hot-Or-Not

2008-08-25T12:52:00.004-04:00

Make way for Hot-And-Nun.

An Italian priest with a blog, Antonio Rungi, is basically insane. The Miss Sister Italy online contest will start on his blog in September. The idea is to post pictures of hot nuns.

I think this officially calls for a patented Brian Thompson "How high are you?"

Bob Dunne: teacher, mentor, inspiration

2008-08-22T11:15:00.006-04:00

The YDN is reporting that "popular" computer science professor Robert Dunne is dead. But "popular" doesn't begin to describe the impact professor Dunne had on us and on the entire Yale community.

His lecture course, "Computers and the Law," was among the most widely attended during any given semester, and he always had to turn away many applicants—even seniors—from his two follow-up seminars. Of the six contributors to this blog, all but one took Bob Dunne's lecture; two of us also took both seminars, on privacy and intellectual property in the digital age.

"Computers and the Law" was unlike any other big lecture course. No one comes back from Econ 110 excited about telling his suitemates all about Pareto efficiency and supply and demand curves. I never returned from the so-called "Physics for Poets" ready to start a conversation about conservation of rotational momentum. But after the doors of SSS 114 opened after yet another fascinating Bob Dunne lecture (really a storytelling session), one could always hear groups of students abuzz about the enforceability of contracts or the various defenses to copyright infringement. Thanks to professor Dunne, we lowly undergrads could get excited about not only the technicalities of the law but also the larger intellectual questions concerning the application of legal precedent to new frontiers of technology.

Terminology learned in his classes became part of the everyday vocabulary of this group of friends and even provided the basis for several inside jokes. De minimis, for example, which is part of the fair-use doctrine in copyright law, soon became our hypothetical defense to any number of crimes, such as murder. And professor Dunne's assertion that involuntary intoxication could get one off the hook for just about anything led to our development (in many a lunch conversation) of the "Nibbles Machine," a hamster-powered device that would get the user drunk without his knowledge, leaving him free to exact appropriate revenge on his ex-wife.

The seminars provided an opportunity to interact with professor Dunne in a smaller setting. The only drawback was that when only 20 were gathered around a conference table in Watson on the edge of their seats, he didn't automatically feel the need to be entertaining. But he is truly an expert on his subject, and once he started going into detail about the cases we were studying, or the cases he was working on (though he was always careful to protect the confidentiality of his clients), or even how past classes had dealt with the challenging material, he was at his best as a teacher. I sincerely regret that future generations of Yalies won't get that experience, but I have hope that the textbook he was close to finishing (as of May) will carry on his remarkable legacy in legal pedagogy.

Farewell to one of the true institutions of Yale. Thank you for the inspiration you provided to so many of us.

Requiescat in pace.

[Please feel free to share your own memories of professor Dunne in the comments.]

Lolcat Bible

2008-08-21T16:14:00.010-04:00

Praise Ceiling Cat, yu be watchin us, yu can has cheezburger.

Wut yu want, yu gets, srsly.

In ceiling and on teh flor.

Giv us dis day our dalee cheezburger.

And furgiv us for makin yu a cookie, but eateding it.

And we furgiv wen cats steel our cookiez.

An do not let us leed into teh showa, but deliver us from teh wawter.

Ceiling Cat pwns all. He pwns teh ceiling and teh floor and walls too.

Forevur and evuhr.

Amen.

All if not most of both the old and new testaments have been translated to lolcat.

btw, that's Mathew 6 or something like that, not that I'd know.

Sun Takeover?

2008-08-21T13:52:00.002-04:00

Sun Microsystems is in the crosshairs.

Likely suitors are Fujitsu and HP. Goes without saying, this would be massive.

What...is the deal...with macs?

2008-08-21T09:23:00.004-04:00

MS has signed on Jerry Seinfeld in a marketing counterattack to Apple's "I'm a mac and I'm a PC" pandering to the proles.

I still think they would have done the world a favor by going for a hitman instead. Cheaper, more permanent and ultimately satisfying solution.

"I'm a ma-gaaagggghghhh..."
/pianowire

Backlog of Funny URLs

2008-08-19T22:31:00.002-04:00

These have been floating around the net for quite a while, so long, in fact, that many of the sites (fortunatley) no longer exist, but it's still funny how these things manage to make it onto the net without no one noticing. Anyway:

1. Who Represents - an index of entertainment talent and their agents, or somesuch.
www.whorepresents.com

2. Expert's Exchange - asshole tech support site that wants you to register to even look at their solutions.
www.expertsexchange.com

3. Pen Island - pen company. This one still exists.
www.penisland.com

4. Therapist Finder - self explanatory, also still exists.
www.therapistfinder.com

5. Mole Station Native Nursery - I don't know what this is, but it's in the UK and an animal/plant/hippie refuge of some sort. Address has since been changed.
www.molestationnursery.com

5. Italian Power Company - Gone.
www.powergenitalia.com

6. First Cumming Methodist Church - Changed.
www.cummingfirst.com

E-Peen Update: Intel Christens New CPU Core i7

2008-08-19T14:17:00.006-04:00

Intel unveiled their next major core processor line today, dubbed Core i7. Once known only by it's infinitely cooler code name, 'Nehalem,' the i7 will be coming out in boxes in the second half of 2009.

As expected, the architecture will further facilitate multiple cores, sporting from 2 to 8 cores. In addition, the features greater graphics processing capabilities, making integrated GPU's redundant, though nothing close to a replacement in power for a good discrete graphics brick. i7 also features an integrated memory controller, lower power requirements, and better multi-threading. The integrated memory management, in particular, is something of a coup de grace to AMD, since at this point pretty much the only differentiator for them now is higher price and inferior product. ^^;

All in all, it looks to be a killer processor for laptops and desktops that will not be shouldering any heavy graphics demands. For the rest of us e-peen fanatics, though, the improved memory handling and further elimination of bottlenecks is also certainly welcome.

I see Intel and Nvidia starting to butt heads in the future. They've collectively put their mutual competitor AMD to bed (unless they pull something drastic out their ass, like what Intel did to reverse AMD's initial onslaught all those years back), and both seem to be inching their way toward integrating one another's functionality.

Anyway, if i7 slips into 775 when it comes out, I might just pick one up.

Saddleback? More like Saddlecack

2008-08-18T09:47:00.006-04:00

I just finished going through the transcripts of the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, which took place at Rick Warren's California megachurch late Saturday night. Unfortunately, the transcripts are in all caps and in bad need of a cleanup, but legible enough.

Now, as I've previously argued in the YDN, I wholeheartedly disagree with the concept of faith-based forums (and of media-sponsored religious tests in general) and this one was hardly an exception. Granted, Warren—who wrote A Purpose-Driven Life—tried to keep it less ridiculous than the CNN gang did during previous debates. (Anderson Cooper's unintentionally hilarious remark to Mike Huckabee, "Governor, I do have to press, though; the question from the viewer was, ‘What would Jesus do?’ " is forever etched in my mind.)

Who is Rick Warren to vet our presidential candidates? Sure, he's a successful businessman who has sold 25 bajillion books and is the de facto spiritual leader to 50 gazillion people. But he's a preacher. As a Protestant myself, I have great respect for pastors, especially ones whose positive messages reach so many. And I also believe that they should not be involved in government at a high level in their capacity as pastors, as Warren clearly was during the forum.

For all the traditional media's failings in its role as the primary watchdog of government, clergy of any stripe are not a fit replacement. Even bloggers would be better. (How about Kos and some conservative counterpart as a joint replacement for Bob Schieffer on Oct. 15?) If it were up to me, newspaper executive editors (or political editors) would moderate all presidential debates—I think they're usually excluded because they don't have experience being on TV.

The point is, I don't care, and Americans shouldn't care, how a candidate's faith is going to affect his policies. I just want to know what his policies are, and that his personal beliefs are not going to affect what will be best for the nation. If the president has to do something he feels goes against his Christian values, such as executing Osama bin Laden rather than turning the collective cheek of the American military, that's between him and God. I don't even want to know that not bringing a terrorist to justice was even a consideration.

That's not to say that, for example, torture is justified if it is the most expedient way of gathering information for public benefit. We still need to operate under a moral and ethical standard, but one that is inspired by human justice, not some interpretation of "divine" justice. We should not torture at all, not because God says we shouldn't, but because the best policy is to uphold international law and gain the respect of our own citizens and the rest of the world by our restraint and commitment to equal justice under law. In the long term, nothing good can come of compromising particularly the latter ideal; hence, the best policy is to stick to it. (Lance, I can't wait to hear how Eastern philosophy might find a way to contradict me on this.)

But I digress. Let's say for the sake of argument that the Saddleback Forum was a legitimate test of presidential qualifications. The pundits have made much, as Bill Kristol put it, Obama's "windy generalities" and McCain's "crisp," "colorful" anecdotes. (Speaking of colorful anecdotes, McCain's story about a fellow POW's cross drawn in the sand sounds suspiciously like a tale from the life of Solzhenitsyn.)

I would argue that Obama's general answers put him above McCain's embarrassing slipups, plagiarism and echoes of Bush. Here's a couple of examples, edited as best I can from the terrible transcript:

We must respect the entire territory of Russia, excuse me, the Russians must respect the entire territorial integrity of Georgia, and there's only 4 million people in Georgia, my friends.

Did McCain just start that sentence from the perspective of the Russians? Guess so. Just an adorable "I'm so old I forget who's on what side, like Iran and al-Qaida and Sunnis and Shiites, derp" moment, I suppose. And now apparently the size of the country is more relevant than, oh, I dunno, the fact that Georgia started the conflict with the intention of luring the U.S. into a confrontation with Russia? It's a little more complicated than your bluster would suggest, senator.

I say to them [the people who don't want this forum held in a church] that I'd like to be in every venue in America.

Yeah, with your portrait in every living room and every house of worship, with CIA spooks listening outside every door just waiting for someone to criticize the government. I bet you'd like that. Seriously, I've had enough of George Bush's big-brother, screw-privacy attitude toward the citizenry, and careless comments like this just make me more paranoid than I probably should be.

Let's ... send the message to the Russians that this behavior is not acceptable in the 21st century.

Speaking of Bush, this is exactly the inanely hypocritical phrase that the president has been parroting all week. You mean invading sovereign nations and toppling their governments because of their resources or a sphere-of-influence issue is not acceptable in this century? Gosh, I hope that's not exactly what we've been doing in Iraq...

We won the Cold War, as I mentioned earlier, without firing a shot because of our etiology.

This one had me LOLing. It's obviously the fault of the computer that generated the transcript, which for some reason saw fit to substitute "etiology" (the spelling more familiar to Latin majors is "aetiology") for "ideology." But the idea that we triumphed over the Evil Empire because of our folktales about how the institutions of our society came to be is just great, and very Roman—McCain must have been reading his Livy. (Another definition of "etiology" apparently has to do with studying the causes of diseases. That one actually could be true, if somehow the Russians had all gotten SARS or something and we didn't since we know how it was caused, thereby ending the Cold War. But they didn't, so the point is moot.)

For anyone still reading, I'll close with the observation that Bill Kristol is an idiot and doesn't deserve a point-by-point refutation. And to all those who are concerned that McCain's "cone of silence" at the church was breached, and that's why he was able to give such snappy answers, stop worrying. He's probably too senile to remember the questions anyway, even if he did gain such an advantage. Chalk this one up to luck, solid coaching and a friendly setting.

Robot Given Biological Brain

2008-08-16T18:40:00.005-04:00

Scientists at the University of Reading have developed a basic locomotive robot that uses a 'cpu' consisting entirely of cultured neurons. The neurons were grown and spontaneously connected themselves to the motor and sensory components of this monstrosity, and scientists are now hoping that they will gleam insight into memory formation in biological neural networks by having the robot learn to navigate environments with its live brain.

I'm not sure how this development compares with a similar thing done a few years back when a set of cultured rat brain cells were used to keep a plane level in a flight simulator. I guess the real breakthrough here is in the fact that there are no other components of the machine capable of processing information besides the neurons, which was not the case with the rat brain.

LORD PENGUIN

2008-08-15T10:15:00.016-04:00

The Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army, Nils Olav, has been knighted in a high class ceremony.

Sir Olav is a penguin. Sir Olav, prior to being knighted, has held many ranks within the Norwegian armed forces, including the aforementioned Colonel-in-Chief, having enjoyed a very successful career as an officer in service to the king. Sir Olav, upon being knighted, calmly inspected the 130 guardsmen assembled which are ostensibly under his command.

Sir Olav, at one point during the ceremony, poo'ed on the ground.

Nils Olav is apparently also an imposter of the original Nils Olav, put in place by Norwegian intelligence and the National Zoo to replace the original Nils Olav, who had died years before. Their intent remains shrouded in mystery.

Update: There is now video footage of the procession. I must say that Sir Olav looks to be conducting himself in a manner far more dignified and majestic than a few current heads of state I will not care to name.

Google Challenging Iphone

2008-08-15T09:08:00.003-04:00

T-Mobile's first onboard for development of smartphones running Google's Android mobile OS. The platform is being made available for free to a large number of service providers, and sports a featureset that, by all accounts, surpasses that of Apple's proprietary offerings. Open third party development is possible using a set of Java libraries in the free Android SDK, and allows for complete replacement of virtually every aspect of the default application stack (for example, the dialers), with third party apps. This is the perfect storm of brand name power, features, and standardization that will make for a true Iphone killer.

It's great to know I'll soon be able get a high-end phone without feeling like I'm supporting terrorism, well, at least not supporting it any more than I already am. *looks at Ipod.

Writing so bad it could make baby Jesus cry

2008-08-15T08:41:00.007-04:00

I love these contests that encourage people to be the worst at something. Here's one from San Jose State University that gives a cash prize to whoever writes the vilest opening sentence to an imaginary novel. It's called the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, after the author of the 1830 novel that actually begins "It was a dark and stormy night..."

Here are some notable 2008 entries as listed in a brief in the Herald-Leader, starting with the winner:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."
—Garrison Spik

"Toads of glory, slugs of joy," sang Groin the dwarf as he trotted jovially down the path before a great dragon ate him because the author knew that this story was a train wreck after he typed the first few words.
—Alex Hall

Like a mechanic who forgets to wipe his hands on a shop rag and then goes home, hugs his wife, and gets a grease stain on her favorite sweater - love touches you, and marks you forever.
—Beth Fand Incollingo

In case you're a literary masochist (and not the kind who reads Finnegans Wake for fun), here's the full results page.

Coffee for 'mericans

2008-08-14T15:08:00.003-04:00

Dave Beckham (yeah, ironic, isn't it) and his wife Jill have opened up a conservative coffee shop in Indiana. I could comment on the article, but one should look at the quotes for themselves; they make Chevy commercials sound like NPR. The place is bedecked with Ann Coulter books, posters of Reagan and of course, a bunch of Fox TV's (btw, I wonder if all those Fox viewers know that Murdoch keeps a bust of Lenin in his study).

To drive the point home, the place is named, quite simply, "Conservative Cafe."

I must admit, sometimes I think I'm fed up with "liberal bullshit." Just getting a whiff of what the other side has to offer though, like this here little shop of good 'ol fashioned 'merican values, is always a sobering and welcome reminder of why I'll always be out in left field.

Enthusiastic supporter sprains Cindy McCain's wrist

2008-08-14T11:52:00.001-04:00

McCain's age isn't an issue, right? I mean he isn't so old he'll get sick or easily break a bone or anything, right? Guys am I right?

His wife apparently isn't so durable.

Intel Develops Remote "Power On"

2008-08-14T09:38:00.002-04:00

The "Power On" part is in quotes because their new Remote Wake technology can bring a computer out of hibernation, sleep, or any number of other standby modes remotely through a packet, but still requires some sort of axillary power supply to be on.

Still, it's a bit scary knowing that basically the only way to be completely safe from someone turning on your machine in the middle of the night and using it to bring down the Georgian foreign ministry's website (actually happened, btw, to every Georgian domain name site) is to physically disable your Internet connection, power off your machine and drain out any backup power sources.

That, or get a mac, which in my eyes, is pretty much doing the same thing.

Rescue Dragon

2008-08-13T18:21:00.002-04:00

It's here to rescue you. I swear...

Standing Cat

2008-08-13T14:10:00.001-04:00

CATS ARE EVOLVING

First Amendment? That's crazy talk!

2008-08-13T11:08:00.000-04:00

The print media has had a rough time recently. In addition to massive layoffs and cutbacks for many old stalwarts of the Fourth Estate, the government has been trying to take advantage of our weakness by limiting our ability to distribute content.

This story appeared on page B1 of the Lexington Herald-Leader this morning; the gist is that a Lexington city councilman, Dick DeCamp, took a break from ritually burning copies of the Herald-Leader and murdering kittens (I can only assume) to propose a strict limitation on news racks located downtown.

If I'm reading the article correctly, the new newspaper containers would be confined to five government-sanctioned boxes in 25 government-sanctioned locations. Oh yeah, and the media outlets would have to pay for the new stands. The rationale for this project? Why, public safety and "beautifying" downtown, of course!

Naturally, I couldn't agree more. News racks have always been a immense source of casualties for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. (I can't even count the number of times I've been injured by a rogue USA Today stand, and who among us can bear to look at "Apartment Finder" boxes after that horrific incident in '89?) Moreover, I've always thought the most beautiful cities are the ones that show no life at all. In the ideal metropolis, everything is standardized and sanitized, slick and sober, government-inspected and -approved. Character? Who needs it?

Needless to say, no valid First Amendment claims are at play here. If we regulate all media the same way, it's content-neutral, and we're in the clear, right? In fact, while we're at it, let's just ban the public sale of newspapers or distribution of any information in loose-bound print form. This would solve all the problems addressed by Mr. DeCamp's propitious proposal, plus a plethora of others. Paper waste in all its forms detracts from the beauty of our nation's cities, and we'd save trees by the truckload (we'd also decimate the danger of death by discarded daily). As long as we ban all printed newspapers, we're totally within constitutional limits. Hey, they can still post and advertise online! Let them have their free speech there!

Bottom line: I know where Mr. DeCamp can stick his proposal, and it ain't in the law books.

[Here's the text of the ordinance in PDF format, and the disclaimer that the Herald-Leader is my current employer. For some reason, they are not fighting any part of the plan except the bit that would require the boxes to be a standard color. Sad to say, but it's weakness like that gives the government the (correct) impression that they can walk all over us. How about a little backbone, people?]

Preseason polls are meaningful. Really.

2008-08-13T11:00:00.001-04:00

So the Ivy League football polls came out the other day, and it appears that somehow both Yale and Harvard are picked to win.

All I know is that the last time we went head to head with them for a title, it didn't go so well for us. It's hardly worth mentioning that in 2007 we were also favored to be Ivy champs.

Better luck this year, Bulldogs.

Phelps: most decorated Olympian ever

2008-08-12T22:23:00.013-04:00

Michael Phelps just won his 10th career Olmypic Gold Medal breaking the previous record of nine held by several athletes including Mark Spitz and Carl Lewis. Phelps has eight events on his schedule in Beijing and so far has swam four and has not only earned a gold medal in all four but has also broken the world record in each. Event number five is up in about an hour. Look for an update soon.

TAKE THAT, TERRORISTS!

update: make that 11 overall, 5 (with WRs) in Beijing
update2: make that 12 overall, 6 (with WRs) in Beijing! WTF, PHELPS?
update3: make that 13 overall, 7 (6 WR 1 OR) in Beijing! That last medal was by 0.01 seconds and Phelps has now tied Mark Spitz record of 7 golds at one Olympics; also, I doubt anybody is reading this far back.
update4: he did it! 14 overall, 8 (7 WR 1 OR) in Beijing!

Cats! Cats! Cats!

2008-08-12T18:27:00.007-04:00

Some cats aren't as clever as the one pictured here. Most of our feline friends choose to interact with computers by simply walking on the keyboards leading to a 0.0000001% chance that they'll type deltree /y c:\(or sudo rm -rf /) and you'll be saying "Wow, I'm stupid and don't have a computer anymore!" Catproof your computer today with PawSense.

Japan: ...

2008-08-12T14:29:00.007-04:00

Christ, this may turn into a semi-regular posting theme.

A guy in Japan dressed up in a Winnie the Pooh costume, accompanied by his buddies dressed as a mouse and a panther, were just hanging out on a street corner. They got pissed when people started staring at them, and proceeded to beat up and rob the gawkers.

Apparently, they were only dressed that way because they had run out of clean clothes.

...

G-mail Down

2008-08-11T17:37:00.002-04:00

5:37 Eastern, my co-worker and I both just lost G-mail, marking the first time the remarkable webmail client has been down for me ever.

The error message assures me that my data is OK, which is good... This is the sort of thing that gets me to switch my account to yahoo or something though... *snicker*

America, F*** Yeah!

2008-08-11T15:17:00.002-04:00

In honor of the Olympics, I present this amazing video of our National Anthem. When they start showing the other cops' faces in the crowd I completely lost it. I just wish they hadn't edited it up so much. LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE FREE!

Powered Armor

2008-08-11T15:10:00.008-04:00

Cyberdyne, the original creators of Skynet, is actually a real company based in Nippon.

They make fucking exoskeletons.

btw, the guy they picked to model the thing makes me weep for Asian males everywhere.

edit: hmm, Wii, grapes, tentacles, and now this; too many Japan posts for one day, I suppose.

Funny Pic: Large Jelly

2008-08-11T14:24:00.003-04:00

I am never going scuba diving. Not even a wasp knife could kill it.

War in the Philippines

2008-08-11T12:43:00.007-04:00

While most of the world is focused on Beijing and South Ossetia, the renewed conflict between the Philippino government and the Al Qaeda-backed Moro Islamic Liberation Front (the MILF) is heating up. The ceasefire between the MILF and government forces has effectively crumbled, with a renewed government assault on MILF controlled territory under way, and over 130,000 villagers displaced in the fighting (put things into perspective, about 10-20 thousand South Ossetians have been displaced in the recent fighting).

Why does this matter? The MILF is an Islamic organization in the Philippines (and also with a presence in Malaysia, if I am not mistaken) noted for its ties with Al Qaeda, having operated several prominent training facilities for Al Qaeda operatives in the Philippines. Outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, these guys are probably next in line in terms of training for Al Qaeda fighters. While the MILF training camps themselves have long since been taken out, their re-entering conflict could signal a resurgence of Al Qaeda-type organizations and their influence in Southeast Asia, which, quite frankly I think has been horribly left out of the whole "war on terror" equation.

New Dragonforce CD coming out 8/28/08!

2008-08-11T12:12:00.006-04:00

Wow. I just heard the single that will be the lead song on the album. Sound hasn't changed much, but it sounded different enough from Operation Ground and Pound that I looked at my slacker player to discover it was called "Heroes of Our Time." I have not yet seen the music video, but I will guess it sucks like all fantasy metal videos, sadly.

The CD itself will be Ultra Beatdown (with their meatdown?).

$900 Grapes

2008-08-11T11:20:00.003-04:00

That's how much a high bidder in Japan paid for 1.5 lbs of some premium fruit. That's about ten times as much as the most popular premium variety sold there, which goes for $90 a bunch.

There's nothing special about these things; they're not ancient or celebrity grapes, and they aren't filled with cocaine. Apparently, they just taste really, really good.

In memoriam Isaac Hayes: our introduction to New Haven and one another

2008-08-11T09:13:00.003-04:00

Picture a Saturday in late August 2004: Groups of frosh are arriving in the coolest city in southwestern Connecticut to begin a four-year slog through the best university in the world. In glorious Vanderbilt Hall, Aaron and Danny spend the day pushing their beds closer together, Paul has our entire suite smelling like it just spent six weeks on the Appalachian Trail, and Brian is artfully dodging chairs tossed by an enraged caveman.

It's a tough day for us fresh-faced youngsters, what with the stress of moving in, dealing with parents for the last time in a while, fretting about orientation and shopping period. But leave it to New Haven to find a way to get us all together, stress-free, for our first evening together: Isaac Hayes in concert on the Green.

Isaac Hayes died Sunday at age 65. Although this first outing wasn't the best thing ever to happen in college, or even the best concert, it was the first thing that got us all out of our new rooms and chatting like roommates, or, dare I say, friends, after just a few hours. We found common ground in a love of South Park and good music—especially the "Shaft" theme song, which would later decorate a pivotal scene in the groundbreaking "Van Hellsing" series.

I didn't know Isaac Hayes personally, of course, but I want to thank him for that experience. I want to thank him for being the first of many things we shared as friends in New Haven, and for giving us a great start to our Yale careers, on that humid Saturday in August 2004.

Requiescat in pace.

Seattle may ban microwave popcorn

2008-08-11T09:00:00.004-04:00

This article reads like it was straight out of The Onion, but somehow it's true. Apparently microwave popcorn mishaps have caused enough evacuations from municipal buildings that Seattle is considering banning the snack altogether. I love the line "Popcorn is not the easiest thing to cook" and the use of the phrase "illicit popping." It's good to know that our best and brightest are getting things done and tackling the real issues in local government!

Hey check out this link...

2008-08-10T22:35:00.002-04:00

You just got BarackRolled!!!!1!1!

Wii Flint Knapping

2008-08-10T18:03:00.004-04:00

SFW? Of course! This is just a women's back massager, not unlike the millions of other similar devices available online or through mail order. Only, this particular back massager is a fully compatible Wii peripheral.

While certainly amusing in its own right, the funniest part to me is that this is, in fact, not surprising at all.

Church Cancels Free Gun Giveaway

2008-08-10T12:41:00.002-04:00

Proof that the Onion's biggest competition has been, and always will be, the local news.

The teen church event, which featured a prize of one AR-15, the civilian version of the M4, was canceled because one of the organizers injured themselves in a completely gun-unrelated incident. The gun will instead be given away at next year's event.

Russia Goes to War

2008-08-09T22:20:00.006-04:00

Ivan's marched into South Ossetia in support of the separatists against Georgia. Given the state of the world, one might ask "so what?"

Well, this isn't just another G-8 war machine rolling on a relatively helpless country full of brown people; Georgia's a US ally with about 2,000 troops in Iraq right now (half of which are being recalled to fight the Russians), and their arsenal actually consists of more than 20-year-old Kalashnikovs. Considering there are plenty of other former Soviet Republics turned US Allies in the region with their own little Russian separatist problems (some of which have actually weighed in on the latest conflict by launching rockets into Georgia), it looks like things are set for an old fashioned brawl between well armed caucasians in none other than the caucasus.

George W. Bush: Pimp

2008-08-09T13:13:00.002-04:00

AP's caption:

President Bush playfully taps the lower back of U.S. women's beach volleyball star Misty May-Treanor at her invitation while visiting the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Grounds at the Beijing Olympics on Saturday. May-Treanor's teammate, Kerri Walsh, enjoys the moment.

I'm sure we can think of something a little more fitting.

Amen

2008-08-09T12:54:00.003-04:00

The Wii's brought the pastime to the proles. Some lessons in etiquette might be in order.

Things People Do

2008-08-08T19:58:00.002-04:00

Hey kids, you should try exactly what this guy is doing. Not only is it safe and cool, but if you do it well enough, you'll get superpowers, candy will fall from the sky, and mommy and daddy will stop fighting and start loving you again.

(Message brought to you by Nibbles the hamster.)

btw, I'm pretty sure the city shots are Beijing; he picked some pretty good days to shoot.

Eee does the Wii

2008-08-08T15:19:00.007-04:00

Asus' latest push into the full-built PC market has yielded some rather interesting products in the Eee laptop and desktop. If you've seen the things, if becomes clear that they are aiming for Apple's jugular, which I whole-heatedly approve of. Now they've unveiled a new gaming controller for PC's that look rather familiar.

Despite being a lifelong Nintendo fan, their obsession with bringing gaming to the shambling mass of "casuals" with lightweight, Toys 'R Us offerings has left a sour taste in my mouth, to the point where I'm almost morally detered from getting a Wii. I'm glad Asus has brought an alternative to the table that leverages everything that makes Wii such a hot item.

Also, love how the fanboys have already started camping on the comments page here. Chavs of the internet indeed, though I am interested in how Nintendo will respond to this rather blatant incursion into their intellectual territory. They're known for being on the draconian side in this respect, and I can imagine this turning into a reenactment of the legal brawl they fought over unlicensed NES cartridges almost two decades ago. I'm rooting for Asus.

Your laptop (and tech stuff) can be seized at the border!

2008-08-07T21:08:00.003-04:00

US Agents now have the power to seize your laptop and other electronics without suspicion and they can share your data with agencies and private companies for decryption. The policies cover hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes -- as well as books, pamphlets and other written materials, the report said. At the very least, the policy does protect business info and attorney-client privileged info and apparently they aren't allowed to retain a copy of your data once you've been reviewed.

Cop demands hot coffee

2008-08-07T16:07:00.005-04:00

So it turns out there's this Chicago cop who feels entitled to free coffee at Starbucks just for showing up. She's a 14 year veteran of the force and the charges are over the last 5 years. She's also 55. So a little math suggests that she spent 20 years as a mall cop shoplifting from the mall food court before moving up to the big time.

And this is the police force who Mayor Daley wants to give assault rifles to. Oh boy.

Shia to lose a pinky???

2008-08-07T14:21:00.004-04:00

I feel a little guilty for using my power to will pizzas into being to will Shia's pinky to fall off...

Just a rumor for now, I promise reasonably tasteful coverage if it turns out to be true, I would hate to lose a finger myself.

Fun Times at Coney Island

2008-08-07T14:04:00.002-04:00

Waterboarding, the ride.

'nuff said.

News Jay REALLY Doesn't Want to Hear

2008-08-07T13:59:00.002-04:00

I mean it, this time.

Apparently, they don't have spellcheck in the UK, though I have to admit that because of modern technology, my own spelling would be pretty bad.

Pandas are Fluffy

2008-08-07T12:21:00.002-04:00

This video proves it. Just mute the thing to spare yourself some obnoxiousness.

The $1000 iPhone app that does nothing

2008-08-07T12:08:00.005-04:00

Who wouldn't want to flaunt their wealth by adding the "I Am Rich" app to their brand new iPhone? Now for the low price of $999.99 you can improve your iPhone with this hot red gem display signifying your digital bling and general coolness. I'm guessing the target demographic is the same group of people that light their cigars with Benjamins and heat their rooms with sound. The funny thing is that some guy actually bought this thing by accident and is having trouble getting a refund.
BT Edit: Apple has pulled this item from the app store.

Where isn't the red?

2008-08-07T11:09:00.003-04:00

Where is the Red is a popular sponsor in our google ads, so I decided to click the link to see what it was all about.

I nearly pissed myself laughing as I read it was about young excited republicans. I'm sorry, if you don't pay taxes you just have to be morally bankrupt to be a republican. Anyway, I then succeeded in pissing myself when I read their mission page.

My absolute favorite is their claim to be reaching out young people

"motivated to reassert Republican ideals of organic government and fiscal responsibility in the halls of Congress."

Yeah, those Republicans are MASTERS of fiscal responsibility, turning the largest budget surplus into the largest deficit even without the help of the Iraq war. Thanks for keeping such a close eye on things for us Bush and Cheney! Really looking out for America's pocketbook.

God... I am only a Democrat in election years because the Republicans are just so fucking hypocritical it makes me sick.

Double A Paper

2008-08-07T07:31:00.001-04:00

Best. Paper. Ever.

no sexual harassment = no children

2008-08-06T21:52:00.005-04:00

Only three women have ever successfully brought a sexual harassment case before a court in Russia. A Russian judge dismissed the recent third woman's case stating, "If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children." The poll results at the bottom of the article are also pretty shocking. I wonder what a similar survey would report in the US.

Most effed up Claymation Ever

2008-08-06T19:12:00.002-04:00

NOT FOR THE FEINT OF HEART

Somehow, I wasn't surprised that it was Japanese.

Paris Hilton Doesn't Take It Lying Down (for once)

2008-08-06T14:35:00.003-04:00

So McCain came out with the attack ad calling Obama too much of a rockstar, which I felt was totally fair: who wants a President that inspires people and people think is cool? I would much rather look at John McCain's deformed face. God I am sick of seeing it, it is starting to seriously creep me out.

Anyway, so Paris came out with her own ad as she now believes that she is part of the presidential race, which I think would actually be an interesting development. I would seriously consider voting for her just to show how little I want to vote for McCain.

Switzerland

2008-08-06T14:02:00.000-04:00

I won’t detail the things I had to do in order to get a decent DSL connection to my place; suffice to say that whatever it was, it was worth it, because cable companies are notorious for capping bandwidth that you pay for. This awesome little app lets you know whether your ISP is being an asshole about bandwidth usage, blocking p2p, and otherwise slipping in other ways to screw the clueless customer. Of course, if you use Comcast or Optimum, you already know the answer to that question, and probably walk funny as a result.

Afro Ninja: The Movie

2008-08-06T13:36:00.002-04:00

Remember this guy? Turns out he’s not only an award winning professional stuntman who just happened to be having a bad day (in fact, he took a break, then nailed that backflip and the audition as well), but is now starring in his own movie based on the clip, wielding those same nunchaku that he so valiantly whipped around in the original video.

Kevlar Bras

2008-08-06T11:21:00.009-04:00

PICS OR GTFO. The long awaited update of the chain-mail bikini has made its debut in Deutschland. Not exactly meant to be worn as armor on their own, these things are designed to prevent impact from outer body armor turning the metal clasps and wires on traditional holdings into shrapnel. The best part would have to be the fact that they have even gone as far as to print Polizei on the things.

Korean scientists clone pets (read: renewable food supply)

2008-08-06T08:46:00.008-04:00

A Korean company called RNL Bio has successfully cloned Booger, the pet dog, for an American woman, Bernann McKinney, pictured here. This marks the first instance of a commercially cloned pet. In 2005 the team first cloned a canine and has since cloned roughly 20 animals each verified as genuinly cloned. The lead guy at RNL Bio is a former colleague of Hwang Woo-suk, the Korean scientist who falsely reported cloned human stem cells in 2005 which seems a bit sketchy, but apparently the dog stuff is legit. RNL Bio is going to charge up to $150,000 to clone each dog and expects to do roughly 300 a year.

McCain hates Tallahassee

2008-08-06T08:31:00.003-04:00

Add this to the list of reasons Sen. John McCain would make a terrible president: He is not a fan of Florida's capital. Sure, he'll go to Panama City and Tampa and Miami to campaign. Nobody really minds when he skips Tallahassee; he's not likely to pick up many new votes in liberal Leon County anyway.

But where's the outrage when, at a campaign stop in Panama City, he kicks out the Tallahassee Democrat reporter, who just wanted to do a story? (OK, so there's been some outrage, but here's more.) The Democrat also tossed it in their piece that Stephen Price, the writer in question, was the only black reporter there, but I think it's more an anti-Tallahassee bias than a racial bias that motivated this heinous act.

The campaign has apologized for the incident, and the Democrat's top editor, Bob Gabordi, seems prepared to put the matter behind him. But in my mind, this is a great chance for the newspaper—and indeed, the whole Big Bend area—to call out McCain for his unjust treatment of their beloved region and let him know that he's not welcome in Florida if he insults the capital in this way.

Shameless plug for my employer

2008-08-05T15:00:00.007-04:00

So yeah, here's how I've been spending my time the past few weeks at work (I did everything under the heading "Blasts from the Past" on this page). It launched about an hour ago—behold its brilliance.

In all seriousness, I'd be interested to hear what y'all think about it how it looks and functions. (You know how important the perspective of teh youthz is to this business.)

News Jay Does Want to Hear

2008-08-05T14:11:00.002-04:00

Linus Torvalds has some rather harsh words for OpenBSD devs, as well as for the security community as a whole. The words are not exactly SFW, but full of win nonetheless. Unfortunately, he's just going to have to live with the fact that security will always be a sexier computing topic than regular old bug stomping.

Election website better than 538 (IMHO) back online

2008-08-05T13:59:00.004-04:00

Prof. Sam Wang, a biophysicist at Princeton, has revived his awesome "Meta-analysis of State Polls" that he started in 2004. If you remember how I was in the Fall of 2004, I used to check this site about 20 times a day.

In my opinion, the methodology is better than 538 since it does not include Nate's regression data, cool as it is. I think this is a major source of error for 538, as evidenced by Nate's big misses in the primaries (e.g., KY and SD). Also, Prof. Wang's model doesn't use a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the probabilities, but actually calculates the exact numbers.

If you are an obsessive poll-watcher like me, I would highly recommend this resource.

News Jay Doesn't Want to Hear

2008-08-05T13:13:00.002-04:00

Looks like, for Windows, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. Or it may, in fact, be a freight train coming your way. Midori is interesting not only because it represents the first hint of a post-Windows era, but may also be the herald of the post-localized OS era, as well. Hosted virtualization is taking off in recent years, and while it has yet to see the light of day in consumer markets, rumblings of similarly web-centric OS’s—the “Google OS”—have been going on for quite a while now. The fact is that the majority of computing functions already exist in some form or another either with a web app, or some sort of virtualization software. Ironically, just as HD’s start to be measured in TB’s, we may just end up using them as caches.

Morgan Freeman Crashes Car, Lives

2008-08-05T12:22:00.003-04:00

In yet another threat to the Batman series, Morgan Freeman was in a serious car accident this weekend. He suffered some injuries, but does not appear to be hideously disfigured, avoiding the irony of him having to switch to playing Two-Face. I read other reports of a female passenger, but this BBC article makes no mention of her health status.

The Slippy Express wishes him a speedy recovery because we like movies that he is in.
Conversely, I hope Shia LeBouf's hand gets gangrene and they have to chop it off.

Properly inflating your tires saves more oil than offshore drilling can produce

2008-08-04T23:04:00.005-04:00

Over the past few days, Republicans have been gleefully mocking Barack Obama's call for Americans to ensure their tires are properly inflated and to get regular maintenance on their cars to preserve gas. John McCain's campaign has even been passing around tire pressure gauges to reporters and donors to mock Obama. Clearly, Obama's call for tire inflation is no match for McCain's plan to increase off-shore drilling, right?

Incidentally, it was Barack Obama's birthday today and the RNC put this up on their website:

Classy, beating a black man over his head with a long, blunt object. You know, sort of like the nightsticks that Southern white cops used to beat black men during the Civil Rights Era.

Well, it turns out that Obama was right. Time is reporting that

[E]fficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points.

By the Bush Administration's estimates (probably on the extremely optimistic side), expanding off-shore drilling would provide us with only 1% of our oil demand in 20 years.

This is yet another demonstration that if elections were merely about facts, this thing would have been over a long time ago.

No More F------ Around

2008-08-04T14:00:00.005-04:00

What drew me to this article about control schemes in military hardware is:

1. That's an X-Box 360 controller in the picture.

2. That's obviously ROB, everyone's favorite Smash robot, Winter SS Variant, ready to rock and roll.

Obama too skinny to be president

2008-08-04T12:48:00.003-04:00

Who else but Fox News would release a completely serious "article" arguing that Obama will be unpopular due to being slim? McCain's camp has also criticize him for going to the gym and eating healthy food and nutritional supplements citing these acts as things that only celebrities like Obama do. I think the most cogent response to this comes care of The Onion.

Intel Marches on Discrete Graphics Market

2008-08-04T12:32:00.003-04:00

Yes, Larrabee is not entirely a GPU, but it's not a CPU, either. It is, however, discrete, geared towards graphics, and possesses an inherently multicore architecture that will allow it to potentially utilize hundreds of cores (they are starting out with a modest count of about a dozen or so, cough). The article didn't some of the more practical aspects of this type of architecture, however, like how such a hundred-headed beast would not crush a mobo (these are targetted toward consumer PCs) and/or not burn a hole through it.

World's Oldest Joke Traced Back to 1900 BC

2008-08-04T12:17:00.004-04:00

Proof that toilet humor predates toilets by a long shot. I don't really get them, but the general themes are timeless.