Archives   -  July 2005

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July 30, 2005

Too Much Blogging? Me?

I've spent a good deal of time, I suppose, trying to get a feel for how I might like my future blog to work. Maybe a little too much time. I ran across this 'toon which struck home, so I think I'll be devoting a little less time to the learning curve and a little more time to fun with wifey. I've got a pretty good idea what I want now, and have narrowed the software choices down to two...

...but that'll wait.

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July 29, 2005

Spray-on Mud

From Britain, what every urban SUV driver needs...

Amazingly, this appears to be legitimate.

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July 28, 2005

Windy City Skyline

This is the first image in a 5-image-show from the Chicago Sun-Times. It's the proposed Fordham Spire, a 2000-foot building designed by Santiago Calatrava for downtown Chicago.

Donald Trump doesn't like it. Is that alone reason enough to build it?

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July 28, 2005

Take Back The Memorial: Update

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July 27, 2005

The Great Ground Zero Heist
Will the 9/11 "memorial" have more about Abu Ghraib than New York's heroic firemen?

BY DEBRA BURLINGAME

On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero. The broken pieces of the Twin Towers have long ago been cleared away. There are no faded flags or hand-painted signs of national unity, no simple tokens of remembrance. So why do they come? What do they hope to see?

A powerful piece worth reading...

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July 27, 2005

OJ Simpson Loses DirecTV Court Case

MIAMI (AP) -- A federal judge has ordered former football star O.J. Simpson to pay $25,000 in damages for pirating satellite television signals from DirecTV.

"The evidence was overwhelming since the devices seized in Simpson's home were connected to his TV and in operation and receiving unauthorized signals at the time of the raid," said Dan Fawcett, an executive vice president with El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV Inc... read more

Maybe he was searching for the "real killers" on late night tv...

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July 26, 2005

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Lift off!

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) -- Discovery roared into the skies over Florida Tuesday morning as NASA returned to shuttle space flight for the first time since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Under a blue sky, the spacecraft lifted off at 10:39 a.m. ET, as scheduled. The launch followed days of troubleshooting to fix a faulty fuel sensor in its external tank that led to cancellation of a planned launch on July 13.

read more

This is the first time a camera has been attached to the side of the shuttle enabling video of it in space. If you missed the launch, you can download or view it here thanks to Political Teen. It's a large file, 8.5 MB, but it lets you watch the countdown, launch, and views from the exterior "shuttle-cam."
 

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July 25, 2005

Microsoft Finally Eliminates Apple... 

From Google Maps:
 

 
From MSN Virtual Earth:
 

Hmmm... Well, nothing else has worked.

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July 25, 2005

A Taxing Situation for Telecommuters

How lame is this?

Do you work remotely as an employee of a New York state-based company but live across the country in another state? Then you'd be well-advised to contact your accountant, and to avoid setting foot in New York to do any work onsite at corporate headquarters – unless you plan to open the door for New York State to tax 100% of your income at New York State tax rates.

Sound crazy? Well, it certainly did to Mr. Thomas Huckaby, a citizen of Tennessee, who was taxed by New York on all of his income.

I doubt New York is the only state you'd need to worry about...

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July 24, 2005

SEVEN

PARIS - Once more, and for the last time, Lance Armstrong swept into Paris today as the winner and undisputed champion of the Tour de France.

Although riders were still racing, with eight laps of the Champs-Élysées to complete, organizers said that Lance Armstrong had officially won the Tour de France.

This was his seventh consecutive triumph in the world's toughest bicycle race. Read more here and here and here. Cool images here.

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July 24, 2005

School Dress Codes

Just in case you're in the "I don't want anyone interfering with my child's right of free expression" camp, here's a video clip that should help you see the light regarding imposed dress codes at schools.

I can hear some of you saying, "Gee, that stuff would have been caught by the metal detector," or "He couldn't possibly have walked packing all that gear," or "But we live in a good school district, so we don't have any of those 'inner city' problem kids." If that's what you're thinking, well, there's just no hope for you.

But if you're maybe "on the fence" about the whole dress code issue, well, maybe this little demonstration will help tip you towards sanity.

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July 22, 2005

Attempting to give a damn... 

...about the political news.

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July 22, 2005

I Don't Care...

Joe Getty of the Armstrong and Getty morning drive talk show in Sacramento read an essay yesterday and this morning that has local folks talking - and scurrying for copies!

"...Are we fighting a war on terror or aren’t we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001? Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation’s capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania? Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning death that day, or didn’t they?..."

So, my friends, as a public service, here it is. It was written by freelance writer Doug Patton. I'm not sure how long the page will stay up, so if it fails to open, here's another link.

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July 22, 2005

California Tax Dollars at Work with Anti-American Art Exhibit

You may have seen this story about anti-Bush art hanging in a government office in Sacramento with the approval of Democrat Attorney General Bill Lockyer . Now, Move America Forward is mobilizing to stop California from endorsing the trash art.

This painting, “T’ANKS ALOT MR. BUSH,” was painted by Steve Pearcy, who gained national notoriety for his displays of U.S. Troops hanged in effigy from a hangman’s noose which he affixed to the front of his second home in Sacramento, California.

In the writeup that accompanied Mr. Pearcy’s “artwork,” Pearcy says his exhibit is supposed to attack the “absurd display of fanatical patriotism following 9/11.”

Other exhibit photos and comments here.

Republicans are calling on Lockyer to remove the exhibit as well.

It's your tax dollars, people...

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July 22, 2005

Miss Universe Isn't Welcome...

...at the town square in Toronto because she's been deemed "degrading to men or women through sexual stereotyping," but Kate at Small Dead Animals points out that Toronto has no problem with these folks prancing around the same gathering place. Warns Kate: "Not work safe. (Not lunch safe, for that matter.)"

What the...? You got some splainin' to do, Lucy!

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July 22, 2005

'Nuff said.

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July 21, 2005

We're Sorry

In the spirit of all the "We're Sorry" photograph campaigns proliferating the Internet and their attempts to atone for the crime of liberating millions, we believe – nay, we feel – that it’s time for the sprightly, genteel crew at AFP to say, “We’re sorry” to those poor, misguided and misunderstood souls being held at the gulag of our time, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Naturally we realize it’s not enough to just oppose the incarceration of those detained against their will in that beachside version of Siberia. Just opposing the policy won't change it. And it's not enough to compare the troops who run the camp to Nazis. Anyone can do that, even a Senator rumored to be playing with less than a full deck. And it's not enough to call it a gulag. Hardly anyone really knows what that even means and, honestly, I don't think it means what Amnesty thinks it means anyway.

No, none of that is enough. We must truly atone. We must openly apologize to the detainees and their families and their supervisors. Especially their supervisors. These guys have missed a lot of work doing whatever it is that they do besides filing complaints against mean American troops for kicking their beloved Koran...  read the entire photo essay

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July 20, 2005

Google Moon

Cool. Go ahead. Zoom all the way in...

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July 20, 2005

Warp Speed, Mr. Scott... 

James 'Scotty' Doohan has ended his journey. My favorite quote, "The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank":

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures who responded to the command "Beam me up, Scotty," died early Wednesday. He was 85.

Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.

The Canadian-born Doohan was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.

"The producers asked me which one I preferred," Doohan recalled 30 years later. "I believed the Scott voice was the most commanding. So I told them, 'If this character is going to be an engineer, you'd better make him a Scotsman.'"...

More here and here.  

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July 20, 2005

SCOTUS... 

Like you haven't heard, but just in case, it's John Roberts for the SCOTUS. Fine by me because it sounds like he's a smart guy and is not an activist, which is all I wanted.

The best quote I've seen during all the speculation:

Perfect.

I'm still a little upset that Judge Marilyn Milian (or Maxine) didn't win. Oh well...

Here's a profile of Roberts. And note that Joe Lieberman put him forward as a compromise candidate who would be easily confirmable.

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July 19, 2005

Who will it be? President Bush will make the announcement on Fox News Channel tonight at 9 p.m. EDT (That's 6 p.m. on the left coast.)

I've already mentioned my top choice - Judge Marilyn Milian of The People's Court (see July 8 post.) Another top choice for a no-nonsense Justice would be Maxine.

Washington insiders doubt that either of my candidates have made the short list, but we'll see this evening...

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July 19, 2005

Nadagate

John Tierney writes about the Valerie Plame/Karl Rove situation in this op-ed for the NYT (free reg. req'd). I found his conclusion very amusing:

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

It would be logical to name it the Not-a-gate scandal, but I prefer a bilingual variation. It may someday make a good trivia question:

What do you call a scandal that's not scandalous?

Nadagate.

Logical. I like it. And in the Times!

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July 18, 2005

16% of Studies Contradicted by Studies

From the Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul comes something that reads as though it came from The Onion:

New study: 16% of studies contradicted by studies
July 13, 2005

• Latest: Here's some medical news you can trust: A study confirms that what researchers once said was good for you often turns out to be bad -- or at least not as great as initially thought.

The report is a review of major studies published in three influential medical journals between 1990 and 2003, including 45 highly publicized studies that initially claimed a drug or other treatment worked.

• Contradicted: Subsequent research contradicted results of seven studies -- 16 percent -- and reported weaker results for seven others, an additional 16 percent. That means nearly one-third of the original results did not hold up, according to the study in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Proof positive that we shouldn't change our diets every time a new study is released.

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July 17, 2005

Crash This Trailer

Here's a site that lets you edit your own image into the trailer for the movie Wedding Crashers.

Coincidentally, Sen. John McCain makes a 10-second appearance in this film.

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July 15, 2005

Mexico’s Racist Stamps

(Mexico’s) President Vicente Fox rejected calls to withdraw a new postage stamp that U.S. activists called racist, saying on Friday, July 1, that critics don’t understand the beloved comic book character on which it was based.

Fox refused to back down. "Frankly, I don't understand the reaction. Let's hope they inform themselves... and later form an opinion," he said.

Huh..?

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July 14, 2005

Bastille Day, Philly Style

Are we still mad at France? I can't speak for the rest of the United States, but the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia isn't holding a grudge. They continue a unique tradition of celebrating Bastille Day in front of Eastern State Penitentiary, a historic and ominous-looking prison.

From the top of the Bastille, Marie Antoinette looks down at the crowd and tells them that eating bread violates the South Beach diet. When onlookers insist on beautiful, beautiful carbohydrates, she rolls her eyes and says, "Let them eat cake." After that famous line, Marie's faithful minions fire up the catapults and shoot Twinkies* to the people below.

Alas, Twinkies do not appease the crowd, so they storm the Bastille, capture Marie Antoinette, and sacrifice an innocent watermelon in the guillotine. Then all sing and drink more beer.

And that's how they celebrate Bastille Day in Philadelphia.

*In recent years, the cheap bastards have substituted Twinkies for Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets, a tragedy of dramatic proportion.

(Thanks Becky S!)

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July 13, 2005

Lions and Tigers and Ligers, Oh My!

Behold Hercules the mighty liger -- 1000 pounds of big cat that's part lion, part tiger and all humongous. This King Kong of cats is not the work of a mad scientist, but the product of a rarely seen feline love affair that took place in a South Carolina animal preserve. "We just happened to have a male lion and a female tiger in the same compound," explained Hercules' owner, Dr. Bhagavan Antle, whose liger has been wowing crowds at Miami’s Parrot Jungle Island attraction, “and they fell in love.”

Hercules is a rarity indeed -- just one of about a dozen ligers in the world. Huge but gentle, the 10-foot-long Hercules is tall enough at 3 years old to dunk a basketball as he rises up on his hind legs. To maintain such bulk, he can devour up to 100 pounds of raw meat in a day. This intake gives him the massive strength of a lion and the 50-mph quickness of a tiger. Not only that, but he likes to swim, a feat unheard of among water-fearing lions.  more...

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July 12, 2005

The Eye of God

Imagine looking through your telescope into space one night and seeing this gazing back at you! The photograph is of the Helix Nebula, although it's technically not a single photograph but rather a composite image formed from several photographs taken by NASA's orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and a land-based telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

The image was NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" for May 10, 2003. The picture's "Eye of God" appellation appears to have been coined by an admirer of the photo due to the nebula's resemblance to a human eye, not something designated by NASA or the Hubble Team. The so-called Helix Nebula is described by astronomers as "a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases." At its center is a dying, Sun-like star which has ejected masses of dust and gas to form tentacle-like filaments stretching toward an outer rim composed of the same material. Our Sun may look like this in several billion years. More...

Original Image Credit: NASA, WIYN, NOAO, ESA, Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), & T. A. Rector (NRAO).

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July 11, 2005

Technically speaking...

...I suppose you'd have to call this "off-shoring." But who's splitting hairs.

Click the image to visit the SeaCode site, where the motto is, "Taking outsourcing to a better place."™

And that place would be 3.1 miles off the coast of Los Angeles...

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July 9, 2005

“I am at war with your country”

On January 30, 2003, U.S. District Court Judge William Young made some moving and memorable remarks in sentencing "shoe bomber" Richard Reid to life in prison, a stinging condemnation of Reid in particular and terrorists in general.

They were noteworthy then and deserve to be remembered far longer than he predicted, especially in view of Wednesday’s terrorist attack in London and our ongoing war against terror.

Read Judge Young's statements and the linked partial transcript which includes Reid's comments, and be reminded of the ideology we're up against...

Note: Reid was sentenced to 60 years which translates to 51 years actual time (85%). At 29, he'll be in prison until he's 80. Very few inmates make it that long in maximum security prisons, and Reid is serving at the Supermax at Florence, CO.

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July 8, 2005

Godspeed To Our British Allies...   (Click on image)

For more, see The Command Post.

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New Supreme Court Judge

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring. The battle for a new Justice will likely be fought between strict Constitutionalists and those who feel that the U.S. Constitution is a "living, breathing document."  It's going to get ugly.

So I'd like to place in nomination the most fair-minded, clever, and attractive jurist in the legal system today. She'd be a perfect Justice to replace O'Connor...

   Judge Marilyn Milian of The People's Court

Uh oh... Ten minutes to Wapner...

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July 7, 2005

The No. 1 Lady Detective

From the Sunday Herald Online:

NOT long after dawn in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and a steely-eyed, handsome woman in a grey police uniform is going through a daily ritual of checks at her modest home. The checks are not mere routine; if she is to survive until dusk they could be of crucial importance. First her six children are breakfasted, their faces washed and hair brushed and they are made ready for school.

Next comes the firearms check. Malalai Kakar counts bullets into a curved AK-47 metal clip, rams it home into her assault rifle, and makes sure the safety catch is on. She is never first through the steel door into the dangerous street outside; her bodyguard, younger brother Toryalai, also clutching a Kalashnikov, cautiously peers out at the neighbourhood left and right, to ensure no assassins are waiting. Police headquarters are called on the radio to see whether there has been any violence during the night. Prayers are said.

When these morning rituals are completed and the kids are off to school, Kandahar's most fearsome woman hoists a blue burkha over her head, climbs into a pick-up truck and heads off to the office; another busy day with murderers, sexual abusers and wife batterers is about to begin.

Read the entire article…

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July 6, 2005

What can I say?

The Kansas Department of Revenue very helpfully publishes this tax guidance for the street pharmacists doing business there:

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July 5, 2005

The Force is Out of Balance?

MOSCOW - NASA's mission that sent a space probe smashing into a comet raised more than cosmic dust - it also brought a lawsuit from a Russian astrologer. Marina Bai has sued the U.S. space agency, claiming the Deep Impact probe that punched a crater into the comet Tempel 1 late Sunday "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe," the newspaper Izvestia reported Tuesday. A Moscow court has postponed hearings on the case until late July, the paper said.

Scientists say the crash did not significantly alter the comet's orbit around the sun and said the experiment does not pose any danger to Earth. The probe's comet crash sent up a cloud of debris that scientists hope to examine to learn how the solar system was formed. Already, scientists have learned that the comet is shaped like a potato rather than a pickle as previously believed...

Bai is seeking damages totaling $300 million - the approximate equivalent of the mission's cost - for her "moral sufferings," Izvestia said, citing her lawyer Alexander Molokhov. She earlier told the paper that the experiment would "deform her horoscope." NASA representatives in Russia could not be reached for comment on the case...

  NASA photo

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July 1, 2005

Anyone want to go to lunch?

TAIPEI - It may take a strong stomach to eat curry or chocolate ice cream out of a toilet bowl, but a commode-themed restaurant in Taiwan does booming business serving up just that.

                                                                                                                                                                 Reuters photo

The Martun, or toilet in Chinese, restaurant in the southern port city of Kaohsiung boasts lengthy queues on weekends as diners wait for a toilet seat in its brightly colored tile interior.

Click the image to see the full story at MSNBC.