This is the strangest spam I’ve ever received:

From: rick byerly <rgbyerly@fastmail.fm>
Subject: weird but funny animation
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 01:36:56 -0800

the mullet catcher animation

http://www.hyperionmedia.com/porch2.html

if you don’t want to be emailed animations just reply to this email with the subject: remove...

(Interestingly, there is no To: header on the message at all.)

At that website, there’s a short flash animation of some kid with a vacuum sucking up some other kid by the mullet, and then tying him up, and sprinkling chocolate flakes on some kind of toast or something, while the tied-up mullet kid watches.  It’s thoroughly bizarre.

Then, it automatically redirects you to a page where they’re selling a CD full of "eclectic" farm music.  You can sample each track, and each sample is a flash page with music playing and some weird photo, like a horse or llama or something.

Nowhere on any of the pages are there any ads, no flashy graphics, no begging you to buy their stuff.  If all spam were as off-the-wall and unobtrusive as this, it would be considerably less bothersome.

Hey, Penny... I am allowed to put a personal post on here calling out to our brothers and family for a dinner night? If not, take this off...
Otherwise, let’s try and figure out when we can get everyone together for dinner.  I guess mainly you’re the problem, when is the next time you will be home?  Hopefully, everyone can work around you schedule.  Does Nick go on your site?  If not, I’ll call him.  I guess that’s it. Have a good day!!

There’s a new song for you to check out, in all its prettiness.  Amanda recently reminded me about the people still using dial-up, so I wanted to note that this song is only 3.5 MB.  So it shouldn’t be too painful for our dial-up friends to download.  By my calculations...

If you have a standard 56k dial-up connection:

56 kilobits per second
56 / 8 = 7 kilobytes per second
7 / 1000 = 0.007 megabytes per second
3.5 megabytes / 0.007 MB/s = 500 seconds
500 / 60 = 8.3 minutes to download the song.

Or, if you’re rocking an old-school 36k dial-up connection:

36 kilobits per second
36 / 8 = 4.5 kilobytes per second
4.5 / 1000 = 0.0045 megabytes per second
3.5 megabytes / 0.0045 MB/s = 778 seconds
778 / 60 = 13.0 minutes to download the song.

So come on now.  Check it out.

I think this was my favorite part:

Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized.  This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands, Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq.  As we debate at home, we must never ignore the vital contributions of our international partners, or dismiss their sacrifices.  From the beginning, America has sought international support for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have gained much support.  There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few.  America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people.
(George W. Bush, January 20, 2004)

Update: here’s a nice map showing which countries across the pond are supporting our unilateral enforcement of UN resolutions against Iraq.

My cat loves potato chips.  He’ll come bounding towards me from across the house the instant he hears a bag crinkle.  Watching/hearing a cat crunching on a potato chip is quite entertaining, too.  The cat also snores.  I’m constantly nudging him to make him wake up and knock it off.

Those aren’t the random thought, though.  The random thought is this: if I have to eat the same thing for dinner 3 or even 2 nights in a row, I’m like "Ew, the same thing for dinner 2/3 nights in a row??"  But for breakfast, I can eat the same cereal every day for a week or longer, and not even care.  Why is that?

Also, I’ve been eating multi-grain dark bread for a couple years now.  That’s because white bread is somewhat like iceberg lettuce: it has about zero nutritional value.  It’s white and light because all the nutrients and oils have been removed from it.  They do that so it lasts longer; real bread gets moldy in about a week, but white bread lasts for 3 or 4 weeks easily.  Real bread has lots of things that are essential for keeping your heart working properly; most Americans eat mostly white bread, and as a result, heart disease / heart attack / stroke are epidemics in this country.

Anyway for a few years I’ve been trying to eat real bread (henceforth, simply "bread") daily or at least a few times a week.  But it’s sort of an awkward thing to just eat; I mean, I toast and butter 4 pieces of it, but still it isn’t quite a meal, and yet it’s somehow more annoying than a normal snack.

Last night I had a revelation: I’m going to have bread instead of cereal for breakfast from now on.  That way I can get my bread every day, and I won’t get sick of it, and I won’t mind that it takes a little more preparation than a normal snack, because breakfast is like that.  Also, whenever I have this bread, I have a glass of orange juice, so that will make a nice somewhat-rounded breakfast.

Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica is now my favorite TV show.  I like it as much as, or more than, American Dreams.  (OK, so those are the only TV shows that I watch, but still.)

It’s a reality TV show, but it isn’t fake, like all the other reality TV shows.  (What’s real about some network giving some guy a million dollars and a bunch of women to choose from to have a relationship with?  Right: nothing.  The vast majority of reality TV shows are all based on some premise or situation that is fundamentally artificial.)

Newlyweds is about Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson, who got married like 2 years ago now.  And it’s like the commercial says: If they were any cuter, they’d be puppies.  It’s true.  It’s so fun to watch, because they’re really cute together, and really funny with each other.

The only thing that I’d say could be considered anything like "fake" about it is the fact that they are obviously pretty wealthy, both being successful musicians.  So I think that to most of us, their unusually high degree of well-offness makes them a little different from us in some way.  But other than that, they are just normal people.  The comedy and drama that arises in the episodes is Seinfeld-esque, in that it’s largely the comedy and drama that arises from the events of everyday life.  And I think it’s that realness, combined with their puppy-like cuteness, that makes me like the show so much.

The second season starts this Wednesday, so all weekend MTV has been running re-runs of the first season (I had only seen it once or twice before this weekend).  They’re also running them through Wednesday of this week at various times, so if you want to catch up, you still can.  (And the re-runs aren’t really re-runs; it’s Nick and Jessica commenting on the episodes as they are shown, which adds interesting insight and is different than just watching the episodes alone.)

One thing that I thought was really neat is that in one episode, they show how Jessica is making a video for one of her songs.  In the video, she’s making out with this guy under a waterfall, and some other places... and the neat thing is, it’s her husband.  In real life.  And it turns out that the song is about the fact that she was a virgin until she married Nick, which is awesome for one thing, and it’s extremely unusual for any media outfit to show that in a positive light, let alone MTV.  So they definitely get a big word-up for that.  And in another episode, Jessica is cooking a meal, and she’s talking about how she decided to learn to cook for her husband because Nick had wanted her to be more womanly before he proposed to her.  I thought that too was neat, and admirable.

So basically, I really like this show, and I’m gonna go ahead and suggest that you check it out.

Steve: you watch that game?
Me: freaking yes
Steve: doesn’t that make you mad
Me: what a load of crap
Steve: ahaha
Me: the worst part is, it’s incredibly likely that they’d’ve won if McNabb hadn’t gotten hurt
Steve: yea
Steve: how about that late hit on him with no call
Steve: you saw that right?
Me: I know... it almost makes you wonder whether that was entirely intentional by the Patriots
Steve: what a lousy game
Me: I’m gonna go kill myself, I’ll talk to you later
Steve: hahahaha
Steve: roger
Me: seriously, if you’re on the ..... Panthers, not Patriots, what am I talking about.... if you’re on the Panthers, you know you won because McNabb was out of the game for the second half
Steve: yea, and they probably don’t even care
Me: what a bunch of pansies
Steve: the eagles not being able to catch a pass or tackle someone didn’t help much either
Me: yeah, four turnovers couldn’t have helped
Steve: horrible
Steve: it might not be so bad if the same thing didn’t happen every year
Me: but come on, McNabb always makes everything OK during the fourth (and fifth/sixth) quarters
Me: yeah, that freaking too
Me: argh
Steve: yea, he does too
Me: and of course the stupid commentators won’t even mention McNabb
Steve: you know, maybe it’s just me, I’m not sure... but it seems to me like commentators are always biased against the eagles
Steve: and they keep it real subtle so they don’t get in trouble
Steve: but when the opposing team does something nice, they go on and on about how strong the team is
Steve: and how they deserve this and that
Me: yeah, they do always try to make the incoming team sound so tough, too
Steve: but the eagles always have weak points, and bad ideas, and crap
Steve: yea they do
Steve: it freaking bugs me
Steve: then again, troy aikman was a commentator
Steve: that’s no surprise
Me: yeah, so, can’t expect too much support for the Eagles from him
Steve: he’s probably having a party right now
Me: he’s probably at the party with the Panthers
Me: traitor
Steve: ahahaha
Me: and now I have nothing to look forward to in 2 weeks... I don’t really care about the superbowl when I have no emotional attachment to either team
Steve: me neither
Steve: not one bit

Alright, alright, I finally have a theme I’m happy with.  I guess what’s really been bothering me is how cluttered the link section has gotten.  But there’s lots of stuff here, so I gotta link to it somehow... well, now I just created links to the broader categories, and those pages contain links to the specific pages.  (All the content is still here and at the same places, I just added a few new pages to link to it.)  And all the old themes are still here; they’ll be un-disabled in a day or two.  Anyway, if you hover your mouse over the links at the top of the page, then look down at the status bar at the bottom of the browser window, you’ll see a little message about that section.

Another thing that I’ve been curious about is why so few people listen to the song of the week/moment.  Lots of people view the page, mainly because I link to it from various places, but not many actually listen to the song that’s on the page.  Maybe I’m just a lot more enthusiastic about music than most people; I am pretty fanatical about it.

Send me an email or reply here if you wanna comment on the themes or the songs.  Thanks all.

When Cribs showed Dave Mirra’s house, they played Unsung by Helmet, and Escape from Reason by the Supertones, two stupendous songs.  (Unsung, though 12 years old, is still one of the best metal songs around -- the main guitar part during the verses is just amazing.  It’s probably my favorite palm-muted stop-and-go part ever.

Rather than putting links to every theme in the site menu somewhere, I put them all at nodivisions.com/themes now.  (I also just tested this new red/green 2004 theme in IE at 800x600 and saw that it was too wide.  It should be fixed now.)

I know it’s Thursday, but I put up a new song anyway.  (It’ll work its way back to Monday-ish eventually hopefully.)

There’s a new Strong Bad Email too, called Video Games.  This is the best one since the one where he sang songs about grammar, so definitely check it out.  (When it’s done, wait a few seconds, and then you can play the yonder dungeon text game... see if you can get the flask.)

Speaking of funny, this morning driving home from class, I noticed that the Dollar Tree store has a wireless network.  The name of this network is "d0llartree1nc."  I’m sorry, but I think being the Dollar Tree precludes you from being l33t.

At first, it’s surprising that Rachel Corrie beat Michael Moore for top Idiotarian of 2003; it’s tough to believe that anyone could be more dumb, obnoxious, and deceitful than him.  But I suppose that being a moron and getting yourself killed by it gives you a better stake at the title.  France and the UN also made good showings in the rankings.

I ordered a pizza tonight through the Papa John’s website.  No credit card or anything -- I still paid dude at the door, but I didn’t have to look up a phone number; the website just dispatches the order to the Papa John’s that’s closest to me.  It was here in 15 minutes, and it cost me $6.88 for the 10" pizza with mushrooms.  Not bad, I’d say.

Also on the neato-technology tip, I bought a new cable modem tonight.  Well, ok, it stinks that my old one broke.  (And in a puzzling way: it works perfectly when connected directly to a NIC in a computer, but when connected to a router, it drops the connection every 10 minutes or so.)  Anyway, what’s cool is that the new one is half the size and price of the (year-old) old one.  Maybe it’s not as cool as a Dick Tracy watch, but it does give me a little more room in my room.

Well, it’s 5:30am.  I’ve been trying to sleep since about 2, but haven’t been able to fall asleep.  At this point, it looks like I’ll just have to stay up all night so I can be tired tomorrow night.  Anyway I decided to finish reading Who’s Looking Out for You? in an attempt to get tired / pass time.

I highly recommend this book.  For one thing, O’Reilly’s no-nonsense attitude and writing style make it both enjoyable and really easy to read.  It’s also stinking hilarious.  Though there’s lots of good, sound advice to be found in the book, it’s presented through personal anecdotes from his life, like spats between O’Reilly and the various news outlets he’s worked for (those spats often being the result of his ego or youthful foolishness).  The final chapter in particular is really interesting: it’s about the 3 biggest mistakes he’s ever made, but in explaining them, he sort of explains how he went from being just some Irish Catholic kid in New York to becoming a famous and influential American.

Here are a few quotes from the book:

  This book is for everyday Americans who are fighting the good fight... If you are going to drink a quart of bourbon a day or smoke crack, this book is not going to help you.  In fact, if you are in the above category, you’ve probably stolen this book.  Give it back.  Now. (p. 3)

  It’s important for all Americans to recognize that only good people can really look out for you.  Bad people are looking out for themselves and will use you.  They will pretend to have your best interests at heart but will kick you in the head when your usefulness to them expires...
  So my premise is simple -- before you can find help in this world, you have to develop qualities that are respected by good people.  If you are selfish, shallow, money-grubbing, manipulative, callous, violent, petty, envious, gossipy, or self-destructive, then you will soon be on your own.  Nobody will ever look out for you with the possible exception of your mom.  She is compelled by nature to do so. (p. 21)

  In the end, you are not what you eat.  Rather, you are whom you associate with.  If you run around with despicable people, the heavy odds are that you are despicable as well. (p. 30)

  When Prime Time Live did a segment on me, correspondent Chris Cuomo must have asked me twenty times, "Why are you so angry?"
  "Because every journalist should be angry," I answered.  "Reporters are in a position to expose corruption and deceit in high places.  But in order to do that you have to be annoyed about corruption and deceit.  If you’re a journalist and you’re not angry about social injustice, get out.  Be a barber."
  But Cuomo, son of the former governor of New York, seemed doubtful.  He kept questioning me about my financial status, my success, my good life.  How could I still be angry when I had such big success? he persisted.
  What can I say?  Corruption, unfairness, incompetence, obsequiousness, and exploiting the folks have always made me mad.  No amount of money in my pocket will douse that fire.  You are either angry about social injustice or you’re not. (p. 105)

  In 1781, Jefferson said the following words, which are engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington: "God who gave us life gave us liberty.  Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?"...
  Here’s how ridiculous this whole thing is: At McKinley High School in Honolulu, an official school poem has been recited on ceremonial occasions since 1927.  One of the lines mentions a love for God.  After the ACLU threatened a lawsuit, that poem was banned from public recitation, a seventy-five year tradition dissolved within a few weeks.
  This is tragic insanity.  To any intellectually honest person, it is apparent that the Founders wanted very much to keep God in the public arena, even uppermost in the thoughts of the populace.  What the Founders did not want was any one religion imposed by the government. (p. 114)

  Sincere dissent should always be respected.  But if you put yourself out there and you make a mistake, admit it.  Don’t do what the Dixie Chicks did.  Don’t speak provocatively about a subject you don’t know much about and then claim, "Well, I have the freedom to say what I want."
  That’s true, but that’s stupid... the result will be that some fans will no longer support her commercial enterprises.
  Remember, the Constitution gives you the right to be a moron.  And millions of us exercise that right all the time.  But sometimes there is a price to be paid. (p. 157)

  Without a doubt, the number one problem among minority Americans is the collapse of the family... The rise in the percentage of children born out of wedlock has corresponded with the rise of secularism in America.  There is no question about that.  As late as the 1970s, there was a certain stigma imposed by society on a woman who got pregnant outside of marriage.  No longer.  Now it’s "baby on board," and if no father is around to support it, hey, it’s none of our business.  The hell it isn’t.  The epidemic of out-of-wedlock kids is the primary source of poverty and social problems in this country.  We all pay for that.
  The statistics are brutal... Nearly 69 percent of African-American babies are now born to single mothers.  For black women ages fifteen to twenty-four, that figure is an astounding 89 percent!  That is simply a cultural collapse on an unprecedented scale for a developed country.  Just the fact that nearly all black girls and young women having babies today are unmarried is enough to ensure social chaos within the African-American community for generations to come.  A child without a secure support system will most likely be unable to compete with a child who has one.  Thus the cycle of hopelessness and deprivation will continue.
  So let me ask you this question.  When was the last time you heard Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or even Colin Powell address this issue?  When was the last time the elite media pointed it out to you? (pp. 177-178)

I am as loyal as I am annoying. (p. 195)

The solution to toxic people is simple but difficult.  You must divert yourself away from them.  Once again it comes down to discipline.  If the fruit tastes good but you bleed after eating it, you’ve got to dine elsewhere or be drained all the time. (p. 202)

If you never learn how to think, if you drop out of high school, if you refuse to develop your intellect by reading and engaging in serious discussions, then you will not be able to compete in modern America... I see kids all the time who are just about doomed by age sixteen because they don’t know anything, and worse yet, they don’t want to know anything. (p. 207)

Then there’s your body to attend to.  We all get one, and most of us abuse the heck out of it.  Why?  What is this all about?  We pour intoxicating pollutants into our bodies, we pierce and tattoo them, we gorge on terrible food and then don’t go to the doctor to gauge the damage.  This is insane... Nobody can look out for you if you’re a physical wreck.  If you are grossly overweight or underweight, don’t bathe regularly, refuse to go to the dentist, or do a myriad of other things that will hurt your body, no one can do anything for you.  You will, inevitably, pay a painful price. (pp. 207-208)

So I didn’t really quote any of the anecdotes there, because they’re mostly somewhat too long to quote.  But there are lots of them and they’re really interesting, and usually funny too.  So anyway go buy the book.  It’s good.

My brother Nick just pointed me to Kim Jong Il’s LiveJournal, and it’s hilarious.  It’s a bunch of IMs between him and Bush, Cheney, Saddam, etc.  Pure genius.  This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.  Start at the bottom (click on the "Previous 20" link when you get there, and scroll to the bottom, then read up).

In other funny news, I needed a big list of fake email addresses to test my mailinglist script, so I created a little Perl script that generates such a list from a dictionary file.  It turns out that a lot of the names/addresses it creates are hilarious.  Here are some of my favorites:

"Northamptonshire Pythagoras"

"Liturgy Bacon"

"Louisianian Freudian"

"Robyn Clifton"

"Zionist Gentile"

"Lancelot Indianapolis"

"Zaharias Deanne"

Then again, I’m a geek, so YMMV on the funny tip.  Click here for more.

My mom sent me a forward containing a list of comments that are (apparently falsely) attributed to Andy Rooney and/or George Carlin.  They’re interesting nonetheless.  Here are some of them:

I don’t think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America.  Try to have things like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television, or Miss White America; and see what happens.  Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door.

And I want to know which church is it exactly where the Reverend Jesse Jackson preaches.  And where does he get his money.  And why is he always part of the problem and not the solution.

Guns do not make you a killer.  I think killing makes you a killer.  You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.

I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia, it is an opinion.

When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70% of the population is black, that is not racial profiling, it is the law of statistics.

My father and grandfather didn’t die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours.

I don’t think just because you were not born in this country, you are qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop, trinket store, or any other business.

I believe that it doesn’t take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents.

I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don’t pretend they are a political statement.  And, please, stay home until that new lip ring heals.  I don’t want to look at your ugly infected mouth as you serve me French fries!

I am sick of "Political Correctness."  I know a lot of black people, and not a single one of them was born in Africa; so how can they be "African-Americans"?  Besides, Africa is a continent.  I don’t go around saying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was from Europe.  I am proud to be from America and nowhere else.

I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some midlevel governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies.

I believe no one ever died because of something Ozzy Osbourne, Ice-T or Marilyn Manson sang.

I’ve never owned a slave, or was a slave, I didn’t wander forty years in the desert after getting chased out of Egypt, I haven’t burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you, so shut-the-#$%!-up already.

I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don’t want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.

I think if you are in the passing lane, and not passing, your license should be revoked, and you should be forced to ride the bus until you promise to never delay the rest of us again.

I’m designing a website for my sister’s real estate appraisal business, so I got the theme bug, and had to make a new one for my site.  After having it online for nearly a day, I discovered a bug in Internet Explorer (surprise...) whereby instead of using the color that I specify for links (red), it picks a color from a commented-out section of my stylesheet and uses that instead (blue).  It’s fixed now.

Anyway this theme is awesome.  If it doesn’t look awesome to you, then your browser/computer/eyes are broken.  Also, if you have your browser set to some obnoxiously large font, then it might not look as awesome.  Here’s a screenshot of the way it ought to look:

I’m not sure about the link color, though.  I like it, but I’m not sure if it contrasts enough with the black of the normal text.  For example, does this link stand out enough?  Can you even tell it’s a link?

Also, it wasn’t meant to be a Christmas theme, what with the red and green and all.  The red was intentional, but then I was thinking maybe a grayish color for the interior, and just guessing, I typed in a7bf92, and it turned out to be a pale green.  I like it so I kept it.

I’ll bring back the switch-the-theme links once I come up with a place to put them.  I want to put the random quotes back too, but I think they will clutter up the top of the page.

I have a photo of the surface of the planet Mars as the wallpaper on my computer desktop.  The photo was taken just a few hours ago, by a rover that’s currently poking around on the Martian surface, and transmitted instantly to Earth.  Amazing.

The TV Guide website’s listings are really funny, because if you click on the name of a listing (like a movie), it tells you what it’s about, but it also mixes in an entirely subjective rating of the movie.  Like right now, Two Weeks’ Notice is on HBO, and it says:

Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant star in this predictable 2002 romantic comedy... When she goes to work for him, they clash professionally even though their personal attraction is undeniable. Or so the film’s publicity claims. Grant’s stammering and Bullock’s goofy mannerisms provide some light moments, but no one profits from their on-screen merger---they have no chemistry.

I guess what’s funny is that they seem to be derogatory more often than not.  You try to see what a movie is about, and you get some person telling you it’s crap.  I love it.

I also love party mix.  The thing is, it’s not all that fantastic to eat a bag of pretzels.  Or cheetos.  Or corn chips.  But when you’ve got a bag of them all together, it’s well-nigh unstoppable.  I only realized this last summer, when I started eating them from the vending machines at Unisys.  Now I actually buy full-size bags of party mix at the grocery store.  What’s also great is that it can be a totally generic brand and it doesn’t even matter.  Mmm good.

Something else that was super was that American Dreams was on last night, for the first time in about 6 weeks.  People were telling me that it had gotten cancelled and all this, but BAM, it’s ON, and it’s on again next Sunday night.  Woot!

Den Beste takes the phony "legitimization through internationalization" argument and hangs it out to dry:

I wonder if Gerges is aware of the Iraqi opinion of the UN? A couple of weeks ago a delegation from Iraq went to the UN and made a speech castigating it for its utter failure and betrayal of the Iraqi people. Why does Gerges think that the people of Iraq would be somehow reassured if everything was turned over to them?

As to us convincing the Iraqis that we do not plan "to stay for too long", that’s exactly the message they most don’t want to hear. Obviously they don’t want to become an American colony, and we don’t intend to make Iraq such a colony. But it’s vital that we remain involved there for the long run, and vital that they believe we will be. Polls of Iraqis have consistently shown that one of their greatest fears is exactly that we’d pull out early and leave them on their own.

As to "legitimacy", we’re earning legitimacy the hard way, by accomplishing things. We’re earning it by repairing schools, and by repairing and rebuilding infrastructure, and by delivering electric power, and by making the streets increasingly safe from crime, and by not retreating even though our men are being killed. One bombing attack against the UN caused it to lift its skirts and scurry away out of the country; but after nine months of constant attacks against us, we’re still there. That’s legitimacy.

Go read it.

As usual, Garrett gets the prize for strangest link of the day/week/month/etc.  Apparently some people in North Carolina have a possum drop like NYC has a ball drop for the new year.  Quite bizarre, needless to say.

They don’t hurt the possum; it’s "dropped" like the ball in NYC, which is to say, it’s gently lowered.  Still, the animal-rights morons need to cry about it:

"I’m sure the animal is traumatized," Ms. Overman said.  "You walk up on a possum in the woods, they freeze; they’re terrified.  They’re putting it through horror for hours.  Instant death would be better."

Nevermind that their freezing is actually a survival mechanism that is well-studied and understood, and has nothing whatever to do with being "terrified;" when you’re an animal rights moron, you aren’t concerned with things like science and facts.  Instead, you lie through your teeth, or speak out of pure pathetic ignorance of basic biological facts.

Sadly, the wackos succeeded in getting the Possum Drop shut down.

Well, I updated my page on New Year’s Eve, and the good news is that validator.w3.org thinks it’s real spiffy. Ok, maybe not "spiffy" but "valid" would be a better word for it.  Valid HTML 4.0 Transitional.  I’m proud of this accomplishment because I think it means that I’ve learned something, and I’m not just tossing some things together that I think will work.  The bad news is that "Bobby" still doesn’t like it, and fooling around with this stuff has helped me to procrastinate on submitting final scores for my students.  That’s pretty insignificant bad news, so I’m happy.  Thanks for your advice!

Since I’ve got this unfortunate tendency to live abroad, my dad and I decided to swap computers - my Cube for his Powerbook.  Now, the Powerbook has a 10 GB hard disk.  For a while I’ve sorta coveted the iPod, but it’s a) too expensive b) I’d be afraid to damage or lose it because it’s so expensive c) if I wait longer I’m sure someday it will have more PDA-ish abilities.  So I’ve pretty much decided to buy an external drive, and I’ve pretty much decided which one to buy, although I’m debating between having only Firewire or having Firewire and USB.

So here’s a question for you, or anyone else who has 2 cents: is it possible to partition an external hard drive in various file formats, allowing me to access the Windows-format partition if I hook the drive up to a PC?  My co-workers always seem to want me to help out with computer stuff, so it would be useful if that was possible.  I’ve been looking for an answer to this on the web and I’m almost sure it can be done. However, when I experimented with the Mac OS X Disk Utility and a 128 MB flash card, the only options that were available were Unix and Mac formats.  Yet if I reformat the card without partitions, the Windows format is available.  Hmmm.

And if I could get that to work, would it be possible to use this
and install Windows on the partition, so that I could have a "Windows machine"?

It appears that all features on homestarrunner are down (no e-mails, toons, etc.).  I hope it comes back up soon.  Oh well, happy new year all at "no divisions."  I know this next year I will be praying for elections, Iraq, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other important things that we are all aware of.

It’s like a screenshot, only.... different.  Really I just wanted to show how cool these little speakers look.  They’re the Creative "I-trigue 2.1 3300" model, and the point-one is a black cubey subwoofer that’s on the floor.  They sound really good, I think, for computer speakers that were only $80.  They’re no Infinity RS3s or anything, but the whole point was that I didn’t want to unwire and bring home my RS3s and my receiver for only 3 weeks.  I compared them to a $100 set of Logitech speakers, and a $140 set of Altec-Lansings, in the store, and thought these sounded the best.  (The source material was Christmas songs sung by the American Idol winner girl, which were surprisingly really good.)

To complete this multimedia presentation, I give you a new song.

Here’s a few photos from Christmas day.

I can’t believe that the weasels collective are trying to claim that sanctions and "peaceful processes" are the cause of Qaddafi’s decision to end his WMD programs.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I really didn’t see this one coming.  It’s just so blatantly false on its face; I guess you really have to be as irrational and desperate as France and Russia to pretend that this isn’t the result of US-led action against Iraq.  Argh.  I don’t feel like writing about this, and fortunately Den Beste already has summarized it quite succinctly, so I’ll just quote:

The idea that this was somehow a triumph of diplomacy and soft power pressure (e.g. sanctions), as is variously claimed by China, Russia, France, and Solana at the EU doesn’t stand up to the light of day.  Why was it the British (and indirectly the Americans) that Libya contacted, not China or Russia or France or the EU or the UN?  Why did Qaddafi begin his diplomacy last March, and not earlier or later?  And why the final agreement now, rather than last August or next August?
...
Why did he call the British, rather than the French or the Russians or the EU or the UN? ... What has developed over the last couple years is that Blair and Bush are doing a superb good-cop/bad-cop act.  Blair is the good cop, the "reasonable" one.  Unlike Australian PM John Howard, Blair has leftist/internationalist credentials, and has positioned himself to be the only world leader with such credentials who has significant influence with Bush and who has some ability to restrain or deflect Bush.  Bush is the bad cop, the cowboy, the moron, the devout Christian, the one with blood in his eye, who also happens to be commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world and appears very willing and perhaps even eager to use it against those he dislikes... That characterization of Bush is facile and wrong, of course; but he has that reputation in many places and it has actually served us well.

It’s absurd to suggest that it’s just coincidence that Qaddafi only started to negotiate when we attacked Iraq, and just coincidence that he only finally capitulated right after we nabbed Saddam.