I went to the movies last night to see f911, and I must say it's a work of sheer genius. I'm very sorry that Ray Bradbury was angry about the title, but it's not like he didn't steal the title to I Sing the Body Electric from a Whitman poem. I was diappointed that it didn't delve into the Plame affair, but that's a hairy on that would fit into the story presented in the film very well. I'm a bit disappointed that Moore didn't bust out a trilogy of 3-hour movies presented a month apart building up to the election. There's certainly enought damning Bush footage and information to fill that amount of time. Why no mention of the ghoulish Skull and Bones? That's a whole other can of worms that deserves its own documentary. Then again, perhaps since Kerry was in it too we should wait until he's elected to launch into that one =)...But I digress. The movie was great. It's a classic. Overall, it's sad so many people had to be killed, tortured, and impoverished for us to have an entertaining caricature for a president, but it'll certainly go down in the history books as a defining moment in our country's history where we stepped back and realized how corrupt and insane our leadership really is.
Update: Go here to see a side-by-side comparison of F911 vs The Passion.
Update 2: Read the transcript a large portion of the movie.
Wow, former members of the Mormon church are pretty bitter on this website. What's the deal with the secret handshakes lifted straight from Masonic tradition, and why holy underwear? I'd probably be asking myself that if I were a mormon.
I found an article about the Bush administration and why they're going down hard. It breaks down Valerie Plame, the neoconservatives, and CIA Director Tenet resigning in the evening shortly after Bush retained a criminal defense lawyer. There are a lot of interesting points. It's long, so make sure you have an hour to sit down and really digest this one. Be in the know before the impeachment hearings.
"The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." "To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art."-- US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
Hymn will help you poor itunes users you set your music free.
Submitted by a Slashdotter: Profiting From A Vague Patent HOWTO.
The comments follow the article, and rival the subject of the article in their hilarity.
>1. Obtain vague patent>2. Enforce vague patent
>3. ???
>4. Profit!!!
...and...
A lawyer, as sailor, and a priest are trapped on a lifeboat. The sailor looks over the side, and say "These be shark infested waters." The priest look to heaven and asked "Help save us lord!"
They lawyer simple whistled. Several dorsal fins stopped circuling and headed right for the boat. They stopped in a ring as the lawyer talked to them in hushed tones. The sharks skattered underwater before the boat was suddenly lifted up, and surged forward.The sailor gazed over the side, shocked. The sharks were carrying the boat on their backs. After a few minutes travel, they spotted land ahead. The priest said "Saint's be praised."
The boat slid onto the beach, and the three men stepped out. As they did another school of sharks appeared, and began depositing fish on the shoreline, before swimming away.
The priest said, "God has answered our prayers."
The lawyer turned and said, "Nah, this is just professional curtesy."
Ah, Lawyers.
Check out these panoramic photos of epic disaster scenes while you're waiting for the next hurricane or earthquake.
Jurisprudence doesn't have to mean you're a prude!
It's probably not good to have "Told a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, 'Go Fuck Yourself!'" on your resume when you're the Vice President and you're going to be unemployed in six months. Oh well.
Just when you thought the songs of John Ashcroft had ruined you on the music of the Republicans The Music of Orrin Hatch is there to lift your spirits.
Childhood and Cultural Evolution is a great paper with some amazing concepts presented in a straightforward and thorougly researched fashion. Read and learn.
That crazy Reverend Moon. When he's not getting locked up for tax fraud, and calling homosexuals, "Dirty, dung-eating dogs", and officiating mass weddings, he's being honored by lawmakers in Washington, D.C.!
More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons."
Of couse, the lawmakers didn't know they were honoring Moon.
"We fell victim to it; we were duped"
Of course they were. Politicans don't hang out with religious lunatics; that's crazy!
Take Our Word For It will teach you a lot about the words you're using. Take my word for it.
It looks like the FDA is doing a better job than the DEA at preventing teens from smoking things.
Shocking, since marijuana is known by *everyone* to be the deadliest thing you can smoke. How could the DEA fail in their mission and allow America's youth to smoke that devil weed? Meanwhile, the FDA appears to be doing a great job of convincing teens not to smoke harmless tobacco. Has the world gone mad?
This angry squirrel makes me laugh until I pee myself. Enjoy.
Amazon humbly submits: Listmania! The Top 25 Weirdest Items You Can Purchase Through Amazon!
My personal fave has to be the Pork Chocs TM - Sugar Free Milk Chocolate Dipped Pork Rinds. Yum.
It's too bad there's no oil in Darfur, Sudan. Maybe if there were Dubya wouldn't be ignoring the ethnic cleansing and/or genocide there.
"We estimate right now if we get relief in, we'll lose a third of a million people, and if we don't the death rates could be dramatically higher, approaching a million people," said USAID chief Andrew Natsios after a high-level U.N. meeting in Geneva this month.
With dropload you can drop off data (up to 100mb). It will send your friend a note to come by and pick it up before 48 hours elapse and the file is deleted.
I've changed my mind: I'm voting for Bush. Now get yourself to bush2004.com right now!
Mutopia is a project which aims to distribute sheet music to the masses. Of course I can't remember how to read sheet music, but this certainly provides a good reason to learn.
Just in case you were being productive at work: A devastating blow to your ability to accomplish anything.
Dubya plans to screen the entire country for mental illness.
Please note that this move has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there are close ties between the Bush family, former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay (a former member of Eli Lilly's board of directors) and Eli Lilly, who manufacture Zyprexa and Prozac. Pay no attention to this article. There is no truth to the statement, "Eli Lilly paid over two million dollars in campaign contributions to the Republican party in 2000 and 2002." Not at all. However, if there were a relationship between Eli Lilly and the Republicans, it wouln't have had any impact on their insertion of a rider into the Homeland Security Act which protects Eli Lilly from lawsuits.
After shaking hands with Saddam and saying he was "extremely pleased" with the visit in 1982, Rumsfeld violated international law by hiding a prisoner from the Red Cross in post-Saddam Iraq. Don't take my word for it:
In the military’s own investigation into prisoner abuse, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said efforts to hide prisoners from the Red Cross were “deceptive” and a “violation of international law.”
Will Rummy end up like disgraced former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, unable to visit most of the western world out of fear of trial and imprisonment for war crimes?
DRM is bad for just about everyone.
1. That DRM systems don't work2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
There's also something in this highly convincing and compelling article about DRM being a bad business move for Microsoft. I didn't get that far before I decided it was a prime candidate for blogging.
Filet Mignon: Check.
Puff Pastry: Check.
Beef Wellington Recipe: Check.
I still need mushrooms and onions, and some salad ingredients to bring this all together.
I just love it when Dreamhost makes my web hosting plan sweeter.
Joel breaks the news to Bill about How Microsoft Lost the API War. The sad news for Redmond is this: Web is the new Windows. I suppose MS is getting what it deserves for putting the fear into developers that if they're successful, they'll get run out of business.
Joel links to Raymond Chen's blog in his article, and I surfed over to discover a very funny post about Norway.
Nobody stepped up to answer my question: "What exactly was the Iran Contra Scandal all about?"
In the meantime, I've answered my own question with the help of Wikipedia.
Reagan denied involvement, however according to the article linked above, his January 1, 1986 diary entry stated, "I agreed to sell TOWs to Iran."
No legal action was ever taken against him. In fact, some of the parties involved, i.e. John Poindexter and Colin Powell, are still active in government under the new administration.
R.I. Hell, Ronnie.
How did they cram all the chrome and radiator fluid into that clear acrylic PC case? I didn't know until I read this article.
I want one.
How did I stumble across Bookslut? I was reading about how to throw together a blog in an hour and the author mentioned their bad experience with Movable Type 3. I followed the link in the article and thus discovered the fountain of book reviews. When I finish this post I'll browse the interview with Chuck Palahniuk. This cookbook review is very enticing, too.
The SWIPE Toolkit will allow you to do things with the 2D barcode which is likely on the back of your driver's license. For informational use only, of course.
Memorializing Ronald Reagan: This is just going too far. Can anyone explain the logistics of the Iran Contra scandal to me, and how Reagan was involved? Why are we memorializing this guy?
Yesterday: You looked ravenous at the McDonald's on my corner. I was scavenging in the trash for leftovers when our eyes met; then I saw a half-eaten McNugget. Glanced up and you were gone. Dessert? Meet me at the corner of Sixth and Vine.Disney World,
April or May (?). It's a Small World. You: At the front of the boat, looked great from behind. Me: Asked to leave for undoing my pants. There's so much more to me! 555-780210 a.m. Sunday.
I was on fire, running down Stewart Street. You were at the bus stop on your cell phone, looking my way. Was that your boyfriend you were talking to? If not, how about a drink? 555-8723
Ray Charles is dead, some might say because of old age. I think it's of a broken heart, Ray being crushed by the news of Ronnie Reagan's passing. We'll all miss the Gipper and everything he did for our country. He single handedly crushed communism, prevented the Kurds and Iranians from removing Saddam from power, and left us a huge budget surplus which guranteees our children will not be poor. I feel ill myself, knowing he's not out there holding true for all of us. *Sigh*
This is insane. I'm taking my box offline until I'm safe from this kind of madness.
In November 2004 I'm gonna vote for the unstoppable force:
Both need brains, for one reason or another.
P U N C H L I N E S S U G G E S T E D
B Y A S H T O N K U T C H E R
F O R P U N K ' D T H A T
W E R E R E J E C T E D
D U E T O T H E I R
A R C H A I C N A T U R E .
You, unfortunately, are the jestee! .
Hello again, I'm back from my travels. For my loyal reader(s), sorry to frigten you with the the idea of an end to my blog. I had a long weekend at the Griffith family reunion. It was a good time, with BBQ, fishing, frolicking in paddleboats, fireworks, and many, many family photos. I accepted the challenge of setting up an online photo album to document the event, and (hopefully) I'll be getting that up sometime this week.
On the flight home last night I saw more lightning than I have ever seen in my life. It was intense, with hundreds of flashes lighting up the clouds and causing our flight to deviate hundreds of miles off course. We made it home ok, but Portland is back to drizzling and generally being overcast. However, I think I prefer it to the muggy 90-degree weather of Chicago and Detroit.
Bad news for the White House:Bush Knew About Leak of CIA Operative's Name and didn't lift a finger to stop it. That's probably why he's hiring a lawyer to help him deal with the grand jury investigation that's going to cause heads to roll in the near future.
I'm pumping up with these Microsoft interview questions so I'll be able to withstand the intellectual asssault in my future interviews.
C'est la vie, at least it's for a good cause. After all, we did find the WMD in Iraq (and they were in bed with Al Qaeda, natch) and we caught Bin Laden, too. I guess that makes it worth it.
Not!
Remember that a vote for Bush is a vote for forcing yourself or your children into military service.
With Ultimate Flash Face, the long nightmare of workplace productivity is over.
*phew*.
Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel Tips and Tricks will teach you how to turn your digital rebel into a Canon 10D. For any sane person, this is enough to make you want the Digital Rebel more than life itself.
UPDATE: Here's another link with more of the same