Interesting little widget for those paranoid people who want to see where everyone's coming from. Tells where they're coming from (site), what site they're heading to, and where they are on a map. More specifically, where their point-of-presence is. Interesting to note that Tor users don't show up in the feed.
Well, this did what it was expected to, I guess, though I don't think we actually saved a lot of resources in the long run. For that, every day should have an Earth Hour.
If the effect was to increase awareness, then that's good. If it was to instill some good conservation habits in hydro users, that's something we can't really determine at this point.
If you're a slob like myself, you should at least sign up with Bullfrog Power. This way, the more electricity you use, the more attention you can attract to alternate energy providers. That's what I keep telling myself when I turn on another light.
TheStar.com | Earth Hour | Toronto hits energy target
Toronto hit its energy reduction target during Earth Hour, as thousands of residents and businesses made a clear statement about climate change.Just before 9 o’clock, the meter at the Toronto Hydro control centre hit a low of 2,738 megawatts - 5 per cent below the demand an hour earlier and about 8.7 per cent less than a typical late March Saturday night.
Sweet! Now to get those t-shirts out.
Public Citizen | Press Room - Federal Court Rejects Wal-Mart’s Trademark Claim Against Web Critic
A federal judge today upheld a Georgia man’s First Amendment right to criticize Wal-Mart’s business practices by using satire to compare its destructive effects on communities to both the Holocaust and al-Qaeda terrorists.In rejecting the company’s claim of trademark infringement, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta found that Charles Smith’s parody Web sites (www.walocaust.com and www.walqaeda.com) and related novelty merchandise were protected speech and that a reasonable person would not confuse their use with Wal-Mart’s legitimate trademarks. The court also rejected Wal-Mart’s claim that it has trademark rights in the “smiley-face” that Smith used in one of his parodies.
Public Citizen and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia Foundation defended Smith after Wal-Mart sued the Conyers, Ga. man in 2006, claiming he infringed on its trademark by creating parody logos and Web sites built around the “Walocaust” and “Wal-Qaeda” concepts, including the image of an eagle clutching a yellow smiley face, similar to the one Wal-Mart uses in advertising. Smith also put the design on T-shirts, bumper stickers and other items that he sold on CafePress.com.
Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr.’s decision reaffirms an important point of trademark law – that even though a parody is placed on a T-shirt and sold, it nevertheless represents non-commercial speech that is fully protected by the First Amendment and, thus, is not a proper basis for a trademark action, said Paul Alan Levy, a Public Citizen attorney, who represented Smith along with Gerald Weber of Atlanta.
I'll admit I jump at the chance to disrobe in front of TSA people. Usually, I'll have my pants halfway down before they quickly usher me through. So I'm a little surprised at this. Well, not all that surprised. I have had people tell me I have to remove my earrings before. These are 10 gauge piercing rings that need two pairs of pliers to remove, so they have always just shrugged and let me go.
Once I actually had a TSA guy draw a gun on me when I went through a metal detector. I had saved up about 10 packs of ketchup in my coat's breast pocket. They must have thought I was packing in a shoulder holster. That was fun.
cbs5.com - TSA Forces Woman To Remove Nipple Rings For Flight
A Texas woman who claims she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation."I wouldn't wish this experience upon anyone," Mandi Hamlin, 37, said at a news conference in Los Angeles. "My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way."
Hamlin said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.
Well, this is what we get for sexualizing kids. Sorry, they call them "lower back tattoos".
Lower Back Tattoos Now Available at Toys R Us
Lower back tattoos are 50 cents each, tucked in between the Hannah Montana stickers and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse stickers. You can choose a butterfly, roses, a fairy, or other tasteful designs.Bring exact change, just like you might use for the cigarette vending machine or that one in the truckstop restroom.
Crazy story about how Scientology tried (and possibly succeeded) to buy Clearwater, Fla.
Clearwater, Florida: The town Scientology bought - The Frame Problem
Decades ago, L. Ron Hubbard moved his Cult of Scientology into Clearwater, Florida. The plan, entitled Project Normandy, was to take over Clearwater. Documentation of this comprehensive operation - which included plans to infiltrate government and media organizations, and to identify and “handle” enemies - was discovered in a 1977 FBI raid of Scientology headquarters.Despite the discovery of Project Normandy, the cult has achieved notable success in carrying out this project. The cult has come to own a very generous proportion of the city, with the total value of owned property estimated at $40 million in 2000. Given the cult’s ambition to continue to expansion in Clearwater, I would be interested in knowing how much land they control now, 8 years later. Some have come to call Clearwater Scientology’s town.
Apparently there are far too many loopholes in the Canadian do-not-call legislation -- so many that Michael Geist made his own list.
The Canadian government passed legislation in 2005 mandating the creation of a do-not-call registry. The registry is scheduled to take effect in mid-2008, yet many Canadians may be disappointed to learn about the exemption of a wide range of organizations (registered charities, business with prior relationships, political parties, survey companies, and newspapers). Under the law, exempted organizations are permitted to make unsolicited telephone calls despite the inclusion of the number in the do-not-call registry. However, organizations must remove numbers from their lists if specifically requested to do so.IOptOut takes advantage of this approach by allowing Canadians to create and manage a personal do-not-call list that begins where do-not-call legislation ends. Once you register, you'll be able to view a categorized list where you can opt-out of further contact from exempt organizations. To do this we send an email notification to each organization on your behalf requesting that your name, email address and phone number(s) be removed from their active marketing lists.
Now I have to go out and rent Kiss of Death (1947).
Film noir actor Richard Widmark dies at 93
Richard Widmark, the star of noir films such as Kiss of Death and Panic in the Streets, has died. He was 93.Widmark often played deeply troubled or corrupt characters and even his good guy detectives were hardboiled types who did nothing to court sympathy.
Madigan, a 1968 film starring Widmark as an amoral police detective, was made into a short-lived TV series. The anti-hero character he played was a model for later actors, including Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry.
Excellent piece about how ham-handed approaches to traffic shaping impact real businesses, and that by denying the practice exists only causes further problems.
How Network Non-Neutrality Affects Real Businesses | Xconomy
My company, Glance Networks, has first hand experience. Glance provides a simple desktop screen sharing service that thousands of businesses use to show online presentations and web demos to people and businesses worldwide. When a Glance customer hosts a session, bursts of high speed data are sent each time the person’s screen content changes. The Glance service forwards these data streams to all guests in the session, so they can see what the host sees. The streams need to flow quickly, so everyone’s view stays in sync.One day a few years ago, our support line got a spate of calls from customers complaining that our service had suddenly slowed to a crawl. We soon realized the problem was localized to Canada, where nearly everyone gets their Internet service through one of just two ISPs. Sure enough, posts on blogs indicated that both of these ISPs had secretly deployed “traffic shaping” methods to beat back the flow of BitTorrent traffic. But the criteria their methods used to identify the streams were particularly blunt instruments that not only slowed BitTorrent, but many other high-speed data streams sent by their customers’ computers.
Awesome "Hinterland Who's Who" spoof. You really need to have seend these when you were young to fully appreciate them.
This is very cool. Elfquest is going online. All the original series and the spin-offs too.
What could be more cool than this: Fantasy/Sci-fi comics; elves; aliens; evolution; North American aboriginal spirituality; European fairytales; violence; shapeshifters; orgies. It was all very cool.
Well, there were also the bisexual/homoeroticl elements, the uncomfortable origins of furry culture, and the underlying pedophilia and bestiality. This series was all at once wholesome as well as subversive.
Oh, for the good old days. Elfquest appeared on the stands one print issue at a time and you had no idea where the story was going to go until the next issue showed up.Now, there already exist many dozens of issues, from the very beginnings to various spin-off titles to the most recent installments. How to present them here, online, in an order that makes sense? Seasoned readers want to catch up with what happened after the original tale. New readers want to start at the beginning. We finally decided to mix old with new. The Original Quest will be uploaded more quickly up front; the spin-off series will be spread out over the course of 2008.
Here's a case of having your cake and eating it too. Geez, pick a gender and stick with it.
American Thomas Beatie, 34 -- a transsexual who was actually born female -- admitted that his amazing pregnancy would create “legal, political and social unknowns”.He added: “I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”
Thomas is legally a man after undergoing a sex change, even though he kept his female reproductive organs.
He and his wife were desperate to start a family after ten years together, but Nancy, 45, had had a hysterectomy after health problems 20 years ago
This is pretty cool. It's kind of what I've been looking for in a mo-blogging mechanism for a while now. Unfortunately, it's for MT 4.x. Means I'd have to upgrade to get it.
Six Apart - News and Events: Yahoo! Fire Eagle for Movable Type
...Yahoo!'s Fire Eagle service, which is simple, privacy-aware, and most importantly, is now hooked in to Movable Type, using the new Fire Eagle plugin for MT. This makes my MT profile location-aware: I can add a map of my current location; changes to my location are added to my Action Stream; and other MT plugins can build off of the location to provide additional location-sensitive features. You can see it in action -- combined with the Action Stream plugin -- on David's site.Another interesting aspect of the Fire Eagle API is that it uses the new OAuth standard for all API requests. We've written about OAuth in the past and are really excited to see Yahoo! supporting it. To help do our part in the adoption of this open standard, we'll be shipping the Perl OAuth library with the next release of Movable Type so that no plugin developer needs to worry if they'll be able to develop atop OAuth with MT.
... but were afraid to ask. And were afraid of playing the game and the thousands of add-ons.
mental_floss Blog - Sharing My Love For (Plus 9 Fun Facts About) The Sims
1) NPCs (non-player characters) included the Grim Reaper, Santa Claus, the Tragic Clown (ugh), strippers (yup), Avril Lavigne, Andy Warhol, Christina Aguilera, Cameron Diaz, Jon Bon Jovi, Sarah McLachlan and a Genie.
Ruh-roh!
I joke about there being 6-10 feet of snow still on the ground up here, but this is real.
Satellite images show that a large hunk of Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf has started to collapse in a fast-warming region of the continent, scientists said on Tuesday. This series of satellite images shows the Wilkins Ice Shelf as it begins to break up. The large image is from March 6. The images at right, from top to bottom, are from Feb. 28, Feb. 29 and March 8. The images were processed from the MODIS satellite sensor flying on NASA's Earth Observing System Aqua and Terra satellites.
Heh. I love angry people. Especially when they're funny about it.
How to Lose Money with Your Website
Do you really want to monetize your website/blog with a bunch of ads and crap that will automatically induce the few wayward assholes who stumble upon it by accident to think it’s a tacky pile of dogshit and click away before at least giving your content a chance not to completely suck?If you don't believe doing so is lame, uncool or obnoxious, then chances are your site is already plenty lame, uncool and obnoxious anyway, so what the fuck.
This guy set out to make a blog that would earn him enough money to live on. Now that it's a success, he's selling his blog. I'm happy for him. (BASTARD.)
A Difficult Decision - BloggingExperiment.com For Sale | Blogging Experiment
For an 8 month old blog to have 900 RSS subscribers, and bring in thousands of dollars per month, I think everyone would agree it’s been very successful. However, despite that success, I no longer think my time is best spent on this site. I have met amazing people and have learned an incredible amount during this experiment and in the end, that’s actually why I decided to sell. I’ve got two new projects currently in the works that evolved out of this experiment and unfortunately, I just don’t have the time or resources to go around.When I set out on this journey my goal was to discover whether or not an average guy could launch a blog and turn it into a source of a full time income over the course of a year. Many of you will probably look at the sale of this site as the end of that experiment or think that it has failed. While I can certainly understand that sentiment, I would strongly disagree. In just under 8 months I have created a blog that is worth a significant amount of money. Exactly how much will be determined by the auction. But, if I then leverage the income from the sale of this blog, into something that is able to generate a full time income for myself, would that not make the experiment a success?
... without telling them. This has apparently been confirmed on DSL Reports forums, and Bell's justification is that this is part of their TOS.
Bell Canada Throttles Wholesalers, Doesn't Bother To Tell Them - dslreports.com
Users of the Canadian family-run ISP Teksavvy have started noticing that Bell Canada is throttling traffic before it reaches wholesale partners. According to Teksavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault, Bell has implemented "load balancing" to "manage bandwidth demand" during peak congestion times -- but apparently didn't feel the need to inform partner ISPs or customers. The result is a bevy of annoyed customers and carriers across the great white north.
Interesting little tidbit from Michael Geist on H&R Block's privacy policy. It's a little unnerving to know that my tax information is being sent to the U.S.
Michael Geist - H&R Block's Privacy Policy
Due to H&R US's location in the United States, and in instances where your personal information is processed or stored by another affiliate or service provider in the United States, courts or law enforcement or regulatory agencies may be able to obtain disclosure of your personal information under the laws of the United States.
I remember seeing this ad at the tail-end of an international commercial festival. I believe it won as a PSA, or was a runner-up. It's heart-wrenching to see this poor woman suffer through her love life. But also very funny.
Ok, I suppose any online portal can be used to troll for sex. It's not that surprising. I know several people who have carried on virtual affairs in MMORPGs, and have met their future spouses online.
How Scrabulous became a sleazy internet pickup joint, by Will Doig - Nerve.com
"Flirty girlz only who can also have S.E.X.Y. chat," reads Syed's open-table Scrabulous challenge. "Age must be less than thirty. Send a msg before playing a game." According to his stat board, Syed's player's rating is 947 — not dismal, but nothing to brag about — and he's looking for hot women who play according to the English TWL dictionary.He'll find them. Scrabulous, the Facebook application that allows users to play Scrabble against each other online, has turned Hasbro's slow, stodgy board game for vocabulary enthusiasts into one of the internet's sleazier pickup joints. "Any ladies want to play strip Scrabulous?" beckons Jamie. "Hot women, MILF only, no men, prefer Canadian," specifies Mike. "Just waiting 4 the right horney [sic] women to appear!!!!" announces Andrew, adding, "Like blondes but all welcome."
Sure, it's not my thing, but I -- wha??
"I've played games where I have been made to feel so horny I had to touch myself," says Alicia, a slightly older woman with whom I ended up engaged in a particularly licentious match. The atmosphere within Scrabulous has become so amorous that players who don't want to talk dirty while they play have begun specifying so: "Looking for a player with a similar rating to me, no sex chat nonsense," reads one open challenge. "Just a regular game, no pervs," reads another. A few weeks ago, the game's administrators finally added a function that cordons off "adults only" tables into a section separate from games "suitable for all ages."
Why do we even bother having astronauts when we don't even listen to what they have to say about our presence in space?
globeandmail.com: Sale of Canadarm maker to U.S. company threatens Arctic sovereignty, Garneau says
"The Prime Minister talks about sovereignty - use it or lose it. And yet we have a tool that is excellent for Arctic surveillance, monitoring of our internal waters that are contested by the Americans and other countries, and now we're going to sell this asset to an American company," Mr. Leblanc said."The American government takes sovereignty very seriously, and when it's in their national interest to cut off access to information, they do it. So even though the company that's buying the system has pledged to continue to provide data from the satellite, if it was not in the national interest of the U.S. to provide that information at some point, you can bet a month's salary it won't be provided."
It's pretty much what you'd expect. PZ Meyers is kicked out; Dawkins gets in and kicks ass; the film is craptastic; Stein is boring; and Mathis is unscrupulous.
'Lying for Jesus?' by Richard Dawkins - RichardDawkins.net
Seemingly oblivious to the irony, Mathis instructed some uniformed goon to evict Myers while he was standing in line with his family to enter the theatre, and threaten him with arrest if he didn't immediately leave the premises. Did it not occur to Mathis -- what would occur any normally polite and reasonable person -- that Myers, having played a leading role in the film, might have been welcomed as an honoured guest to watch it? Or, more cynically, did he not know that PZ is one of the country's most popular bloggers, with a notoriously caustic wit, perfectly placed to set the whole internet roaring with delighted and mocking laughter? I long ago realised that Mathis was deceitful. I didn't know he was a bungling incompetent.
You guys like swarms of things, right?
Truck crash unleashes millions of bees | Metro.co.uk
Millions of swarming honey bees are on the loose after a truck carrying crates of the insects flipped over on a California highway.The California Highway Patrol says somewhere 8- and 12million bees escaped Sunday from the crates in which they were stored and swarmed over an area of Highway 99 and stung officers, firefighters and tow truck drivers trying to clear the accident.
The flatbed was carrying bee crates each filled with up to 30,000 bees, which had been used in the San Joaquin Valley to pollinate crops.
I often wondered where the symbol came from.
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | World's best-known protest symbol turns 50
Gerald Holtom, a designer and former World War II conscientious objector from West London, persuaded DAC (Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War) that their aims would have greater impact if they were conveyed in a visual image. The "Ban the Bomb" symbol was born.He considered using a Christian cross motif but, instead, settled on using letters from the semaphore - or flag-signalling - alphabet, super-imposing N (uclear) on D (isarmament) and placing them within a circle symbolising Earth.
But it supposedly had a dual meaning, not just with the semaphore flags:
"I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad."
Apparently it would have looked different if Holtom remembered the Goya piece correctly...
Whoops. Then it would have looked kind of like a pitchfork, and would have spelled out "UD".
Happy anniversary on that war thing.
Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.
There is now an 80,000 strong Sunni militia, paid for and allied to the US but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq, the country has become a geographical expression.
What would Jesus have done to prevent infection?
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Filipinos warned on crucifixions
Health officials in the Philippines have issued a warning to people taking part in Easter crucifixion rituals.They have urged them to get tetanus vaccinations before they flagellate themselves and are nailed to crosses, and to practise good hygiene.
On Good Friday dozens of very devout Catholics in the Philippines re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
She's the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the one who couldn't be bothered to visit Brenda Martin, a Canadian stuck in a Mexican jail for two years now. Couldn't be bothered to visit her despite being in Mexico, and close-by.
Seriously, if you're too lazy to go down there, just issue a travel advisory and sit back. You won't have to lift a finger to get her out of the country.
It's 'buyer beware' going to Mexico
In January, Ms. Guergis travelled to Mexico and met with that country's attorney-general, foreign minister and other officials and asked for Ms. Martin's legal proceedings to be expedited. Despite being 20 minutes from Ms. Martin's prison cell, she did not visit her. "That's not my job. There are 13 Canadians in Mexican jails and if I visit one, I have to visit them all," she said in an interview last night. "It's not my job to meet them -- it's my job to advocate for them."She said there is a very limited role for the government in this case. "We cannot go in and take her home and that is what her request has been.... I'm not going to pass judgment on a judge's decision."
Yikes!!
FYI, here's a traditional Snake Bite recipe:
Star-Telegram.com: | 03/15/2008 | Hundreds of bottles of booze with a bite seized in Palo Pinto
Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents seized 411 bottles of illegal hooch Thursday at Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch in Palo Pinto County.But it wasn't your typical variety of moonshine: the bottles of vodka also contained 10-inch rattlesnakes.
[Bayou Bob's owner,] Popplewell received widespread attention last year when Texas wildlife officials decided to tighten regulations for the collection of turtles. He is believed to be largest buyer of turtles in the state.
This man is still my hero.
Sci-fi guru Clarke to have secular funeral - CNN.com
Even in death Arthur C. Clarke would not compromise his vision.The famed science fiction writer, who once denigrated religion as "a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species," left written instructions that his funeral be completely secular, according to his aides.
"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral," he wrote.
Clarke died early Wednesday at age 90 and was to be buried in a private funeral this weekend in his adopted home of Sri Lanka.
OK, so it may not look totally awesome here, but just check out the site. I wouldn't want to give anything away.
I have to admit, this was a pretty versatile gaming system. If this works the same way, you can get some pretty awesome character creation going.
Champions Online Trailer | Champions Online Official Site
See Champions Online come to life! Our debut gameplay trailer showcases a variety of environments in the Champions Universe, a taste of our superpowered action combat and the massive diversity that only customization can deliver!
Happy St. Patrick's Day. Here are five rules to get you started.
Topless Robot - The 86 Rules of Boozing
15. If you offer to buy a woman a drink and she accepts, she still might not like you.23. Girls hang out, apply make-up, and have long talks in the bathroom. Men do not.
54. Never lie in a bar. You may, however, grossly exaggerate and lean.
71. It's acceptable, traditional in fact, to disappear during a night of hard drinking. You will appear mysterious and your friends will understand. If they even notice.
75. Beer makes you mellow, champagne makes you silly, wine makes you dramatic, tequila makes you felonious.
... Waterloo's greatest superhero team. I had no idea we had our own superhero team. This is awesome, in an indie kind of way.
Very cool. Now we won't be disturbed by those loud-mouthed jerks at Starbucks who talk on their phone all day. Heh. I'm one of them.
Nerve-tapping neckband used in 'telepathic' chat - tech - 12 March 2008 - New Scientist Tech
A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a "voiceless" phone call for the first time.With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice.
Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner thoughts though. Callahan says producing signals for the Audeo to decipher requires "a level above thinking". Users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment.
Facinating blog looking behind the curtain of the world's most reclusive nation.
Infiltrating North Korea Part 1 - Gadling
My first impression of North Korea was just what I expected: an old, weathered airport crowded with dour-faced people in uniforms.Policemen, soldiers, customs officials, airline employees and lord knows what other branch of the government requiring a uniform were all packed into the arrival terminal at Pyongyang International Airport looking stern and threatening. It was an intimidating show of force and I was not looking forward to a cadre of officials tearing apart my luggage in search of whatever they might consider contraband. But instead, my baggage was simply x-rayed by a stoic soldier who asked me, in probably the only English he knew, "Cell phone?"
Cell phones are not allowed into North Korea and I watched as those behind me surrendered their only link to the outside world to customs officials who would eventually return them five days later when it was time to depart.
Those silly guys at GetReligion.org are either overstating the current trend against Scientology, or else they're projecting their fears as usual.
Scientology attack news reaches MSM - GetReligion
They're plenty worried when any religion is "attacked" by protesters. Even if the "attacks" are nothing more than "protesting":
News of a growing, sometimes militant, movement targeting Scientology has been brewing in tech publications for a number of weeks now, and mainstream press is finally stepping up to the plate to cover this rather significant situation. In a lenghy[sic] story Monday, The Los Angeles Times covers a couple of months worth of Internet and street protests against Scientology.
Worse still, they seem to be misunderestimating Scientology's general nature:
If this were merely a group of hackers interested in causing an organization problems there would not be a story. But Scientology has become "defensive" and is therefore changing the nature of its behavior.
Scientology hasn't just now become defensive. They've always been this way. They use lawyers like holy warriors; they copyright their own religious texts to prevent other people from critically commenting on them; and as GetReligion cites in their own article, they try to prevent used e-meters from being sold on eBay. This isn't something that's just started happening.
Scientology has a rich history of harassment, intimidation, spying, and destroying its critics. This was official doctrine, and it was called "Fair Game" until they realized it was bad PR to call it that.
They're also a little like the boy who called wolf when it comes to bomb threats. Who's to say that any of the latest ones are real? These are the people who said the BBC made "terrorist death threats" on them.
And then comes the classic X-tian fear mongering. You know the "oh, we're all being persecuted, even though we comprise 79.8% of the U.S. population". For some reason GetReligion projects this fear on to all religions, as if the protesters are somehow going to bring about the end of Scientology, before moving on to the Baptists, or something:
Someone needs to ask the question of whether this form of Internet-vigilantism is what's best for society and for religions in general. Should a religion or group on the unpopular end of an event be subject to treatment on the Internet (and in real life) that crosses the boundary of decency and law?The other big question is who is next?
No one is "next". Quit being so insecure. It's not like it's the Atheists are invading your homes and stealing your bibles.
We're not as exciting as the U.S. but we have had our share of scandals.
CBC News In Depth: Canadian government
Wilbert Keon"An error of judgement," as he called it, caused Conservative Senator Wilbert Keon to step down from his position as the head of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.
Keon was caught in an undercover prostitution sweep in December 1999 when he pulled over his car and began talking to a woman at the side of the road. The woman turned out to be an undercover police officer.
Keon was not charged, though he did have to complete a "john school" sensitivity program. He did not resign his post in the Senate.
To be honest, I'm not sure what they're trying to do: list the worst tasting/looking shots, the strongest shots, or the ones most likely to make you retch. The "Nasty B*tch" doesn't sound so bad -- throw it on ice, add lime juice and you have an old-school marguerita. And the "Liquid Steak", and "Fire in the Hole"are just strong shots that might tast fine, were it not for the addition of 151 rum.
However, some are truly disgusting:
The Worst Shots Ever Created - 17 Horrible Shots | Campus Squeeze
3) Smoker's CoughThe general consensus of the Campus Squeeze staff is that consistency-wise, this is the worst shot ever created, and also the most appropriately named.
-1 1/2 oz. Jagermeister
-One dollop of warm MayonnaiseFill shot with Jager, scoop in a heaping dollop of Mayo, and try not to puke, has been known to make people stop smoking for good.
Well, this bites. "Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty in the Arctic: either we use it or we lose it," Mr. Harper said. "Make no mistake; this government intends to use it."
Creekside: SPP : Selling sovereignty for profit
From David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen :"Sometime in the next few weeks, Canada's leading space technology firm will pass into American hands and, potentially, the 'top secret' files of the Pentagon. Critics fear millions of dollars of taxpayer investment, a significant number of high-tech jobs, our Arctic sovereignty and our international reputation in space research will also vanish."
MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), Canada's largest space company, is selling off its space assets including Canadarm and the $524-million taxpayer-funded Radarsat-2 satellite to Alliant Technosystems Inc (ATK), because - get this! - the new CEO at MDA has determined that there is more money to be made for its shareholders providing data packages to real estate agents!
Oh Jeez, is anyone still talking about this? It hardly even seems newsworthy anymore.
TheStar.com | comment | The $3 trillion war in Iraq
The war has had only two winners: oil companies and defence contractors. The stock price of Halliburton, Vice-President Dick Cheney's old company, has soared. But even as the government turned increasingly to contractors, it reduced its oversight.The largest cost of this mismanaged war has been borne by Iraq. Half of Iraq's doctors have been killed or have left the country, unemployment stands at 25 per cent and, five years after the war's start, Baghdad still has less than eight hours of electricity a day.
Out of Iraq's total population of around 28 million, 4 million are displaced and 2 million have fled the country.
The thousands of violent deaths have inured most Westerners to what is going on: A bomb blast that kills 25 hardly seems newsworthy anymore.
Cool website which sells moustache stickers for vandalizing ads.
First Rule of the Moustache...We do not officially endorse property damage and we hate the word vandalism (ew!).
The moustaches available here are simple vinyl stickers and are therefore semi-permanent fixtures.
Do with them what you will but note that we disavow all connections to you and your actions.
... and got fat and freaky. I bet if you took away their plastic surgeons, personal trainers, money, and media coverage, they'd all look like this.
Batman was everything: cowboy, samurai, ninja, ass-kicker. If only he was part ghost-pirate ... man, that would be really cool.
I dunno. They may be geeky drinks, but they look like they'd taste awful. Give geeks a little more credit for choosing something delicious first, then making it stupid-sounding.
Topless Robot - The 10 Geekiest Cocktails Ever
As long as grown men keep reading D.C. comic books and George Lucas keeps destroying films, there will always be geek-drink drunks, ready to create a drink and name it after a fictional character, although not necessarily in that order.
The best of both memes.
Sure, most of these are simply blogging platforms, but there are some cool tips. Check out this one:
Movable Type on the iPhone - For those using Movable Type 4, you can add this plugin and get easy access to your blog, comments and more from the iPhone/iPod Touch.
St. Patrick's Day is coming up. Better learn all you can about booze, cause there's going to be a test.
Topless Robot - The 10 Greatest Things Booze Is Responsible For
7) The Work of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway drank more in one night than some people down in a lifetime. He drank in-between hunting wild game, running with the bulls, and churning out some of the finest literature of the 20th century, in which the characters also drink, heavily and constantly. No sober man would have done what Hemingway did, and no one else could have written such prose without having experience life so...boozily. Also, like other great drunkards, Ernest Hemingway has a drink named for him: Cuba's famous El Floridita makes the "Papa Doble," which is a extra-rum-soaked double frozen daiquiri.
Holy Jumping Jesus Christ!
BBC NEWS | Programmes | BBC Parliament | Peers vote to scrap blasphemy
The government has got its controversial plan to scrap the blasphemy law through the House of Lords.Peers voted 148 to 87 in favour of the move last night - which was a government amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill.
The amendment will abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales.
Is this a real commercial, or just a spoof? You decide.
YouTube - Dungeons n Dragons commercial
It does appear to pitch a real product from Wizards of the Coast:
Overwhelmed? Just want to play? Learn the ins and outs of D&D and start playing right away with Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies. Book produced in partnership with Wizards of the Coast and written by D&D game designers!
- Topics include:
- Finding a game
- Learning the rules
- Choosing a character
- Creating a character
- D&D etiquette
- Becoming a Dungeon Master...
- and much more!
More beautiful pictures of this same place I previously posted about.
I've never felt deeper and more completely embraced by the earth around me than I did when I got the chance to enter the tailrace and push through rising waters to stand in Niagara's secret mists. The specifics of how we did it are best left unreported -- those with sufficient ability and experience to do what my expert acquaintances did for us would have already (the plant is now being renovated by the Niagara Parks Commission, as a result of which the wheelpit is on the verge of becoming completely inaccessible).Lying below a river that will relentlessly tear into the bedrock until all has been obliterated from Queenston to Erie, this tunnel thirty-three feet in diameter is imprinted into my being forever. A swirling army of red brick millions strong, the eye of a petrified hurricane leading us right into the centre of the stalled but fighting storm that is Niagara Falls. Standing in its back-blast, in a place far deeper and darker than any middling storm sewer, I breathed and drank from the fount of the universe and swam closer to its centre than I ever will again.
... or at least that's how it was described to me in a link today. Fun song by Natasja Saad of Enur. She apparently died in a car accident in 2007.
It's kind of a sad day. This guy was a bit of a legend in the nerdy circles I used to run in. And by "run" I mean eat cheezies and drink a 2-litre bottle of Coke while playing Dungeons & Dragons.
D&D master Gary Gygax was a nerd's nerd
Set both of your 20-sided die to 0-0, raise the Monster Manual to half-staff and spend your 14th level ranger's next several turns hoisting a few pints of ale - even if that does mean losing some hit points along the way.If none of that makes any sense, then you probably didn't take much notice when Gary Gygax died earlier this week. But for those of us who spent our Friday nights huddled around a hexagonal map scattered with lead figurines of dwarves and owlbears, instead of the spiked punch bowl at the junior prom, this is a very mournful week. Our nerd king has fallen.
Gygax was the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, and the godfather of role-playing games. The legacy of D&D is most apparent today in its huge impact on video games and social networking. (Don't fool yourself. Dungeons & Dragons and Second Life are a lot more similar than you think.) For many of us who played, however, the name Gygax conjures up the past: a short but meaningful era when we lost ourselves for hours at a time in a fantasy world created with pen and paper and lots of imagination.
This doesn't bode well for us.
Maya May Have Caused Civilization-Ending Climate Change
Self-induced drought and climate change may have caused the destruction of the Maya civilization, say scientists working with new satellite technology that monitors Central America's environment.One conventional theory has it that the Maya relied on slash-and-burn agriculture. But Sever and his colleagues say such methods couldn't have sustained a population that reached 60,000 at its peak.
The researchers think the Maya also exploited seasonal wetlands called bajos, which make up more than 40 percent of the Petén landscape that the ancient empire called home.
At least kids will get the extra iron they need...
Fit and Active frozen dinners recalled - Slashfood
A teen in Omaha found a big clamp inside a Fit & Active frozen dinner. And this wasn't just inside the box, it was actually on top of the sesame chicken meal itself, underneath the plastic (see photo on the right). The Aldi grocery store chain took all of the dinners off of their shelves and officials are going to investigate the matter to see if any further action has to be taken.
It gets a little heady, but this Wired article does have a good analysis of weapons used in monster movies, and how they might actually be used in a real-life monster situation.
How To: Stop a 500-Foot Monster (Think Missiles, Not Bombs) | Danger Room from Wired.com
Back in the old days, things were fairly simple. When King Kong climbed the Empire State Building, he could be taken out by a squadron of Curtiss SB2C Helldivers . But since then there has been some inflation and apes 20 – 45 meters tall (Wikipedia's estimate) are small stuff.The giant ants in Them! still weren't that gigantic, and the army could deal with them using poison gas and flamethrowers. But by 1955, when a mutated Tarantula the size of a skyscraper turned up, the only solution was to call the Air Force. Bombing with high explosive had no effect – presumably the creature's exoskeleton was too tough. In the end napalm did the trick, setting the creature ablaze (is chitin really flammable?). It may have helped that the pilot carrying out the strike was one Clint Eastwood, then an unknown bit-part player.
Oh yeah, I can see Harper's crew trying to fabricate a little conflict to get the Republicans back in power. I can't see them being very good at it, but I can still see them trying.
Canadian leaders deny trying to interfere with U.S. election - International Herald Tribune
Canada's conservative government Monday denied allegations it tried to influence the U.S election by leaking word of a meeting with Barack Obama's senior economic adviser who allegedly told Canadian officials that Obama's comments about the North American Free Trade Agreement were for political show.In Ottawa, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper disputed the contention of his political opposition that his right-leaning government leaked word of the meeting to complicate Obama's chances or to favor Republican Sen. John McCain, who strongly supports NAFTA.
Harper told Parliament he was amused by the suggestion "we are so all powerful that we could interfere in the American election and pick their president for them. This government doesn't claim that kind of power. I certainly deny any allegation that this government has attempted to interfere in the American election."
Sure, IMDB says it's due in 2010, but we have an almost confirmation that it'll actually come to be in 2011. This begs the question "why not just hold off another year and make it an even 30 years between films?"
Disney Plans A Bumper 2011 (March 2nd 2008)
Now according to 'Zephyr', the studio is filling up its schedule again with big sequels and franchise entries. Most exciting is that the studio plans to release a sequel to 80's sci-fi classic "Tron" in Digital Disney 3D in the Spring of 2011. Previous reports had Joseph Kosinski in talks to direct.
An anti-counterfeitting lobby group essentially pulled a Simpsons episode and took over a class at Hunter College. The students were used as cheap labour to produce a guerilla-marketing campaign by making up a fake student and a fake blog, where the student talked about the dangers of knock-off brands. An exerpt of the blog can be found here.
At Hunter College of the City University of New York, some professors are asking those questions — and a Faculty Senate committee is considering a formal complaint about violations of academic freedom — over a course sponsored last year by the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition (known as the IACC), an organization of companies that are concerned about low-cost knockoffs of their products. The companies involved include some of the biggest names in fashion and consumer goods — Abercrombie & Fitch, Chanel, Coach, Harley-Davidson, Levi Strauss, Reebok and so forth.According to the complaints filed with the Faculty Senate, Hunter agreed to let the IACC sponsor a course for which students would create a campaign against counterfeiting in which they would create a fake Web site to tell the story of a fictional student experiencing trauma because of fake consumer goods. One goal of the effort was to mislead students not in the course into thinking that they were reading about someone real.
What's funny are some of the comments on the blog, especially this little gem:
As a former customs officer tasked with container shipment inspections, I can tell you without any reservations that 75% or more of these "fakes" are made in the same factories, by the same workers (making the same pennies per item) as the "real" thing - and an awful lot of them, at least an awful lot of those we seized, were almost identical in quality to the actual brand-label item.If these firms were actually serious about the quality of their items, would they pay their Asian slave workers the same very poor wages that the counterfeit bag vendors pay?
I can't believe this group of students got scammed by a lobbying group into selling off their education to the highest bidder. This entire blog is a sham - a commercial by the anti-counterfeit lobby. I hope everyone reading this understands that.
I'm no Wordpress user, but these look like good tips. With a little modification, they could apply to most other server-based blogging software.
Wordpress Security Tips and Hacks
We all agree that having a secure wordpress weblog should be our first priorities when keeping a successful blog. In this post we’d like you to share your knowledge and help us create the Wordpress Security guide to keep the bad guys out.Below are 10 security tips that you can easily implement on your WordPress blog. Please share one or more life-savers you use permanently to help protect yourself from WordPress security issues.
What's all this, then? A sequel? I'm surprised Hollywood's not doing a remake. That's more their style.
More On The Last Starfighter Sequel
Yesterday here we were the first place anywhere to bring you the exciting news that a sequel to the 1984 sci-fi classic The Last Starfighter is in the works from George Paige and Associates, Relativity Media, and Universal Pictures. Now we have a few more details on classic’s return to the silver screen.First, it’s all but confirmed that this thing is really happening. In addition to the information our scooper gave us last night, George Paige and Associates now has the movie listed as one of their credits on their official site...
The Judge apparently took some time to defend his initial actions which caused the injunction to proceed in the first place.
After spending more than three hours hearing arguments from a raft of attorneys--two representing the Swiss bank that fought to get the site's plug pulled and about 10 who have been trying to get the site back online--a federal judge here has ruled in favor of Wikileaks.Wikileaks, which uses Wikileaks.org as its primary domain, is a whistle-blowing site that focuses on posting leaked documents.
"The court denies the motion for preliminary injunction, and the court hereby dissolves the injunction against (domain name registrar) Dynadot, and the litigation may now proceed," said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who had called a brief recess around 11:40 a.m. PST, indicating that he was inclined to revisit his order from earlier this month that effectively pulled the plug on the Wikileaks.org domain name.
Very very cool. Makes me want to see the film again.
This was apparently a school project. The song is "Machine" by the Buddy Rich Band off the album Big Swing Face (1967).
Ironically, this is one of my top 10 ways of hoping to die.
Quebec woman dies during kinky sex: police
A Quebec man may face criminal charges after a woman died while they were having sadomasochistic sex.The 39-year-old woman died Saturday night in a home in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville on Montreal's South Shore, police said.
She went into cardiac arrest while engaging in "out of the ordinary" sexual practices using "very particular" accessories, said Longueuil police agent Martin Simard.
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