Backlog of Funny URLs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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.