del.icio.us links for 2005-08-29

• Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb: "I realized that, paradoxically enough, good programmers need to be both lazy and dumb." (culture funny productivity programming usability)
• TrustedSource™: Spam senders by geographic region (internet spam tool)
• American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches by Rank: Transcript and audio (where available) (history mp3 politics reference writing)
• Strategizing a Christian Coup d'Etat: A group of believers wants to establish Scriptures-based government one city and county at a time. (politics religion southcarolina weird)
• HANDY ONE-LINERS FOR SED (Unix stream editor): (howto programming reference tool unix)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-27

• Evolution of Shamanism Paper: Shamanism dates back to the beginnings of humankind -- at least back to the first modern humans, called Homo sapiens. (anthropology culture history reference religion)

Intelligent Design Inscrutable Ontology Theory

Intelligent Design, or ID, is a "theory" which postulates that the universe and the things that live in it must have been created by an intelligent designer. However, the name "Intelligent Design" leaves out a critical aspect of the theory: Life, the Universe, and Everything are just too darn complicated for science to ever figure out the mechanisms by which they were brought into existence.

Therefore, I propose the name be amended to the Intelligent Design Inscrutable Ontology Theory, or IDIOT for short. This will cause less confusion as it better summarizes what the "theory" is all about.

(Updated 22:00; it's a bad spelling day.)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-24

• Positive Ape Index: Paintblogging, Pt. 1 [via BoingBoing]: "A while back, I started a new painting. While working, I typically leave my digital camera on a tripod, and snap a photo every so often. ... I thought it would be interesting to document the whole process step-by-step." (art boobs design nsfw)
• Werewolf: A Mind Game (a.k.a. Mafia): Werewolf is a simple game for a large group of people (seven or more.) It requires no equipment besides some bits of paper; you can play it just sitting in a circle. I'd call it a party game, except that it's a game of accusations, lying, bluffing, second (free game howto mafia werewolf)
• Google Talk: They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world. (free google im internet jabber social software voip)
• Werewolf Legends from Germany: "I was stationed at Hahn Air Base, Germany, from May 1986 to August 1989 as a security policeman, and it was my group that witnessed the Morbach Werewolf. Whoever told you the story about the monster that you put on your website had very accurate informat (germany history reference weird werewolf)

Pat Robertson Backpedals Furiously

Pat Robertson says he was misinterpreted:

(CNN) -- Conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Wednesday that his remarks about the removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were taken out of context and that he never called for the killing of the Latin American leader.

"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' And 'take him out' can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" program.

He's right. They could also take him out for dinner and a movie. I'm sure that's what he really meant.

The controversy began Monday when Robertson called Chavez "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it," said Robertson on Monday's program. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."

See? By "take him out" and "do it", he obviously means, take him back to their place for hot gay sex. Not "assassination", but "shoot off in his ass". It's just a simple misunderstanding and a plot by the liberal media to put words in his mouth.

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-23

• PyLucid - a OpenSource CMS written in pure Python: PyLucid is a lightweight, OpenSource content management system written in pure Python CGI. Nearly all output can be customized. No shell account is needed. To run PyLucid you need a standard Webserver with Python (at least v2.2.1) CGI and MySQL . (Based o (cms gpl mysql python)

Homeless Terrorists

The Feds say:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Urging increased vigilance in the wake of the London bombings, the government is warning that terrorists may pose as vagrants to conduct surveillance of buildings and mass transit stations while plotting future attacks.

Better start rounding them up and putting them in "homeless shelters" before they can get us. Or maybe, just to be safe, we should kill them all.

Pat Robertson is a Terrorist

From CNN:

Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.

Islamic extremism? A curious position to take since Hugo Chavez does not appear to be Muslim, and in fact is probably Catholic.

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson told viewers on his "The 700 Club" show Monday. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."

Good to know that murder is OK if it's done as a cost-saving measure.

Robertson, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, called Chavez "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly."

He said the O-word! Somewhere, George Bush gets a faraway look in his eyes and says in a monotone voice, "Must... kill.. Hugo... Chavez..."

In November 2002, Robertson charged that the Muslim holy book, the Quran, incites followers to kill people of other faiths and disputed Bush's characterization of Islam as a religion of peace.

"It's clear from the teachings of the Quran and also from the history of Islam that it's anything but peaceful," Robertson said in a subsequent interview with CNN. "Of course there are peace-loving Muslims. But at the same time, at the core of this religion ... is jihad, and it is to subject the unbelievers either to forced conversion or death. That's what it teaches."

Yeah. Uh-huh. Hey, Pat, take a look in the mirror sometime.

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-22

• World Famous Comics >> Megaton Man - Don Simpson: America's Nuclear Powered Hero! (comic funny)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-21

• Clusty the Clustering Engine: Clusty is the search site owned and operated by Vivísimo that aims to change the way people search online. It uses our award-winning Clustering Engine to organize search results into folders grouping similar items together. (aggregator internet search tool web)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-20

• Boing Boing: Violence satirical RPG under CC license: World-champ game designer Greg Costikyan once wrote a funny, obscure game called "Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed" as a gag for a publisher called Hogshead Publishing. (funny game weird)
• CutUsABreak.org: 13 high-school students in Pennsylvania are being prosecuted on felony charges of Computer Tresspass for subverting the security on their school-mandated laptops. Adminstrator passwords were printed on the back of the computers. (administration evil liberty politics security software)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-19

• FlickrBooty: Flickr's Fabulous Females (art boobs flickr nsfw photo)
• Clown Samurai: Sin City meets Kill Bill meets Bozo the Clown. Hilarity ensues. Then depression sets in. Amazing what you can do with just 4 colors. (clown comic funny mafia noir samurai web)
• Is Your Boss a Psychopath?: Odds are you've run across one of these characters in your career. They're glib, charming, manipulative, deceitful, ruthless -- and very, very destructive. And there may be lots of them in America's corner offices. (administration anthropology culture productivity)
• FlickrLicio.us - Babes of Flickr: 'nuff said. (boobs flickr naughty photo)
• Storage Technology: Get Perpendicular! Mad propz to Hitachi! Disco-dancing bits and talking disk drives! (cartoon flash funny hardware music physics reference science storage weird)

Clown Samurai

You must read Clown Samurai. It's a hard-boiled, film noir-style crime drama, with a twist:

Clown Samurai follows the adventures of Ogata Utamaro, a failed clown with the training of a warrior. Japanese but born in England, Utamaro was taught the way of the samurai by his grandfather as a child. In adulthood, Utamaro found his calling as a clown, a profession of which his father did not approve. Disowned, he traveled to the United States, where he found work as a rodeo clown in the south. We find him now depressed and jobless living in a large northern city after a disaster in his life. No longer able to make children laugh, Utamaro is drawn into the world of organized crime, where it will take everything he has just to survive.

The dialog is deadly serious, and the artwork is done in a dark, posterized style. Plus the main character is a killer clown with a samurai sword. It's drop-dead funny.

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-18

• Phases of the Moon: Covers new moon, full moon, first and last quarters, for years 1700-2035 (astronomy moon reference)
• Shape-Changers: Medieval Thru Renaissance Periods: Some interesting historical accounts of people persecuted as werewolves, plus possible causes (rabies, porphyria, autism, drugs) (anthropology history science werewolf wolf)

Baby Terrorists Strike Berlin!

From Reuters Oddly Enough News:

BERLIN (Reuters) - An "electronic nappy" used to monitor wetness sparked a bomb alert in a German post office when it arrived in a parcel ticking suspiciously, police in the southwestern city of Heilbronn said Thursday.

Photblography

With the advent of digital cameras, you can now take more bad pictures faster than ever before. The best of the worst of my own are over at Flickr.

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-17

• BlackDog: BlackDog is a fully self-contained computer with a built-in biometric reader and a host of other powerful features. Unlike any other computing device, BlackDog is completely powered off of the USB port of your host computer (X debian hardware linux ppc security)
• The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory: "Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts U (creationism evolution humor physics politics religion science theonion)
• UGAnime: UGAnime exists mainly to promote and showcase Japanese animation for the University of Georgia and beyond. Not only do we hold weekly showings of a regular schedule (Mondays 7-10pm, SLC 102!), we also participate in special events and attempt to provide a (anime culture social uga)

Sorry!

It keeps getting worse:

It has now emerged that Mr de Menezes:

• was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;
• was unaware he was being followed;
• was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;
• never ran from the police;
• and did not jump the ticket barrier.

But the revelation that will prove most uncomfortable for Scotland Yard was that the 27-year-old electrician had already been restrained by a surveillance officer before being shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

Secure Flight Oversight

Bruce Schneier writes:

According to Wired News, the DHS is looking for someone in Congress to sponsor a bill that eliminates congressional oversight over the Secure Flight program.

The bill would allow them to go ahead with the program regardless of GAO's assessment. (Current law requires them to meet ten criteria set by Congress; the most recent GAO report said that they did not meet nine of them.) The bill would allow them to use commercial data even though they have not demonstrated its effectiveness. (The DHS funding bill passed by both the House and the Senate prohibits them from using commercial data during passenger screening, because there has been absolutely no test results showing that it is effective.)

Feel safer now? Me neither. But at least they are keeping baby terrorists off airliners. (UPDATE: And puppet terrorists too!)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-12

• The Chronicle: 4/15/2005: Clever Canines: Did domestication make dogs smarter? (animal dog evolution science wolf)
• Deleted Domain Names: Search for domains recently expired or expiring soon by partial name match (dns internet)
• Behind the Name: the Etymology and History of First Names (culture etymology history reference social writing)
• Modern Drunkard Magazine Online: There's more to it than tipping a glass and acting foolish; Modern Drunkard Magazine presents 86 rules to drink by. (culture drink howto humor social)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-11

• Powerisers, Jump up to 6ft with the Poweriser jumping stilts! jumping shoes Powerskip Spring stilts bouncing stilts spring loaded Shoes: Be Advised that any injury or death gotten while using Powerisers is not the responsibility of Superdairyboy. Use these at your own risk. (exercise funny weird)
• The Hidden Boot Code of the Xbox - Xbox-Linux: Only Microsoft could fit three bugs in 512 bytes of code. (gaming hardware microsoft programming security)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-10

• Shirky: Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags: The strategy of tagging -- free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints -- seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets. (database design internet web)
• UGA scientist takes dark out of chicken meat: University of Georgia poultry and food scientist Daniel Fletcher can make "a silk purse" if he wants to. In his research, he's turning dark meat, the underused "sow's ear" of chicken, into something more valuable: white meat. (chicken food meat science uga weird)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-08

• One Bag (all about packing, luggage, and travelling light): The Art and Science of Travelling Light (howto reference travel)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-05

• Montana Supreme Court justice warns Orwell's 1984 has arrived | News.blog | CNET News.com: Believe it or not, it's perfectly legal for police to rummage through your garbage for incriminating stuff on you -- even if they don't have a warrant or court approval. (declan liberty politics privacy security)
• eChalk colour perception: This is the most amazing optical effect in the world: And actually, that's not an exaggeration. (art color optical perception science weird)
• paper cd case: Use this website to create a PDF file which can be printed and folded to create a paper CD case. (cd pdf tool)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-04

• FUD Forum: FUDforum is a highly customizable forum package, with a large feature set. The easy to use administration control panel allows the administrator to easily configure and control the many features available. The forum also includes an interactive help packa (mysql php web)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-02

• Mozilla Update :: Extensions -- More Info:PwdHash - All Releases: Automatically generates per-site passwords if you prefix your password with @@ or press F2 beforehand. Prevents JavaScript from reading your password as it is typed. (cryptography extension firefox javascript mozilla security)

del.icio.us links for 2005-08-01

• AMD Processor Support Forum > Guide to Memory Timing: Typical timing parameters look like 2-3-2-6-T1 or some other variant. So what do these numbers mean? (hardware)
• Installing DB2 Version 8.2 on Gentoo (2005-01-17): Short answer: Install RPM and hack the script (gentoo linux)