Puzzles Online

How to be a Radio Pirate

The Mouse that Ate The Public Domain Disney, The Copyright Term Extension Act, And Eldred V. Ashcroft

The Alphabet’s Bastard Children Ever since Alef and Bet, we have taken their existence for granted. But the letters are beset by mutation. They writhe, they shift, and in the end they succumb to the erosive force of changing media. They have had to retrofit to survive. Steal to flourish. Hack upon hack. It was inevitable that this would happen. Witness now their twisted progeny.

Words of the Year

7. Least Likely to Succeed

Osamaniac - Woman sexually attracted to Osama bin Laden

How Fast is Your Internet Connection?

Independent Feature Project The Independent Feature Project’s mission is to facilitate the professional development and exhibition of new work from a diverse community of American filmmakers.

“Defective” cigarette filters hidden for 40 years, claim scientists Researchers are claiming that Philip Morris, the world’s biggest tobacco company, knew for at least 40 years that fibres and particles are drawn out of filters and into smokers’ lungs, but did not disclose it. They also claim the company knew of the potential additional health risk this “fall out” posed.

Bikini pics prompt teacher to seek banning of Guinness record book The School District should remove copies of the Guinness World Records 2001 because of photos displaying women clad in what is described as the world’s most valuable bikini and other pictures, an elementary school teacher says.

Never mind Saddam. What about nuking the Belgians? It is almost unbelievable that the Belgians, with their sickly, mayonnaise-drenched cuisine and disturbing interest in paedophilia, are not considered an axis of evil all by themselves

When Maxim and Cosmo get together… The Guys Have It The battle of the sexes is over.

I may have to go buy a copy of Maxim and Cosmo now. But, according to this article in the Washington Post, the two editorial crews got together for drinks and hashed out a peace agreement. Great.

But, well, I’m going to use this wonderful thing to springboard into a rant I’ve been meaning to get into here.

First, a quote:

“The strangest proposal advanced by the Cosmo team is that men must stop suggesting sex as a solution to all of a gal’s problems. Wait a minute. I thought Cosmo’s editorial policy was that sex — preferably steamy, kinky, acrobatic sex — is the solution to all of a gal’s problems. Isn’t that why they keep running articles about hot new sex positions and cover lines like “The Last Sex Taboo (and Why You’ll Love Breaking It)”?”

AMEN! Now, my problem isn’t with the sex thing, it’s with Cosmo. Hell, Cosmo, Glamor and every other femme mag out there. It’s all about sex and fashion. And not just ANY sex and fashion, but sex and fashion for the sake of appealing too, reeling in, bagging and pleasing the men.

“Ten moves that will make HIM howl”

“Top Ten Looks that will make HIM want you more.”

“Ten women HE’S thinking about while making love to you and how to be more like them”

What ever happened to the women’s lib movement?

Okay, this is probably my girlfriend talking through me a lot, but, really, common sense, why would a women’s mag simply sell based off of giving the same information that has stereotyped the gender for centuries. I thought they were trying to get out of that mindset and mold. But, no, here’s how he wants you to look, here’s where he wants you to touch him, here’s what he wants for dinner and here’s why you should stay at home and make babies!

And what the hell is with the covers? Who are they trying to sell to when they put a half naked supermodel on the cover of these magazines? They aren’t just trying to sell the look, that’s for damn sure. And even then, why sell that look? That can’t be good for self esteem. When did the feminist movement allow this to happen?

And why am I saying all this? I’m a pig. Where’re the half naked chicks?

Mmmmm…..

New source of joy and reading: Ben Hammersley.com

What’s coming to Yahoo tomorrow? Does anyone really care?

Team picks white man mascot to make point An intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado called ?The Fighting Whities? is turning the tables on the Eaton mascot issue.

Um…okay….

The Simulator Just for those that want to work at McDonalds for a day.

Pilot believed alive, held in Iraq U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained new information indicating Iraq is holding captive a U.S. Navy pilot shot down during the Persian Gulf war, The Washington Times has learned.

WOW! This is one of the most beautiful sites I have come across in a damn long time.

They call us “white trash” but what’s trashy about loud music, big engines, hot chicks, and cold beer? Nothing! So we are proud to be what they call “white trash” and this site is intended to be nothing but fun. Some will make fun and think this is a joke but the rest know how great this lifestyle is. We are proud. We are the WTW!

Subliminal.org/

Karel Van Wolferen: To keep a population in line, wage perpetual war against

a vague enemy Has anyone else following the aftermath of Sept. 11 been struck by the similarity to George Orwell’s “1984″ — in which a never-ending, faraway war against ever-changing enemies serves as a rationale for political and social repression?

The same people responsible for the WTC disaster are the same people responsible for these camps. Destruction of the Trade Centers: Occult Symbolism Indicates Enemies Within Our Own Government The world is being offered a “stark choice”: join us, or “face the certain prospect of death and destruction.”

The Black Panther Coloring Book

DigsMagazine.com for the post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation.

Budweiser secretes promotion transmitters in cans Budweiser has launched a World Cup promotion using global positioning satellite technology.

It has hidden special transmitters inside beer cans and bottles sold in multi-packs in stores across the UK.

How polluted is your community? Based on EPA’s most current data, Fredericksburg, VA ranked among the cleaner 40% of all counties in the US in terms of the number of people living in areas where cancer risk from hazardous air pollutants exceeds 1 in 10,000.

Netscape Navigator Browser Snoops On Web Searches AOL Time Warner’s [NTSE:AOL] Netscape unit is snooping on searches performed by users of its latest Navigator browser at Google and other search sites.

Waiting for the numbness to die down No work today thanks to a couple of appointments, one of which I just got back from. The Dentist!!! I just got a temporary crown put on my broken tooth and had a flap from my gums cut off because it could become infected and all that other good stuff. In about an hour I will probably be balled up in a fetal position in the corner of my room crying to myself from the pain.

Yeah, yeah, I’m a wuss, but I’m in touch with my inner wussiness so there.

Ideally I’ll unfurl myself long enough to go to the shrink at 2:30 and tell some stranger about my life. I have the feeling that I’m going to confession only there’s no barrier and no Hail Mary’s afterwards. Guess that’s the trade off, I have to be face to face but there’s no need to repent. Oh well, we’ll see how that goes.

So, I might not be around to update today, but, hell, last week was a big week as far as content goes and I’m sure you haven’t read all of that yet so go look it over again.

Or, if you want:

Winning the Woman of Your Dreams

20×2.org

Slanguage

Program kick ass CSS rollovers

Britney doused with urine …Spears apparently had to duck for cover after angry resident threw buckets of urine as she sang her heart out on location in a downtown street at around 4 a.m…

Mike Sanders posted earlier today about the soul as a continuation of the prevalant topic this week at Keep Trying and I thought I’d jump in.

From his original post:

Today’s technology allows us to envision the possibility of a memory transfer. What if we could clone a new body with an empty brain and transfer the memories, thought patterns and personality traits to the cloned body. The person would literally exist in the new body, with nothing physical being transferred. All that has been placed in the new body is information that existed in the old brain. Yet it contains the sum total of the person’s personality.

So we could see that the real you is not your body or brain, but the information contained in your brain - your memories, personality traits and thought patterns.

When a person dies, the body and brain cease to function but what happens to the real you - the human personality. When a computer is destroyed the information is destroyed. Does the same thing happen when man dies?

If we understand the universe’s Creator as omniscient, knowing all and not forgetting then we can see how the information comprising the human personality can continue to exist, at least in the Creator’s memory.

According to some mystical traditions, the spiritual world is a realm whose substance is information. It is an arena where information can interact without being attached to or dependent on matter.

This gives us a simplified explanation of how a person’s soul consisting of their memories, personality traits and thought patterns could continue after death.

I think you touched on it there, the “Soul” or our essence, memories and experiences live on beyond us not only because this omniscient Creator remembers or observes it, but it lives on by how we interact with and influence others. A parent’s soul will carry on through their children by how they interact with and raise that child, what thoughts and morals they instill in his young mind. Genetically and spiritually that child will carry on his parents and pass them down into his children and so on and so on, and while it may dilute, that person will be remember throughout history in some manner or another, whether a name on a headstone or a name in a history book.

Bringing this back to weblogs, there’s a piece of ones soul there as well. Here you have a journal of experiences, an autobiography that contains parts of ones life and experiences for others to observe and remember. We pour our soul into our work and others will view that and take something away from that. As long as that lives, we do in some manner.

he replied:

I like it. I am not sure if we can consider the physical manifestations of the soul (ie a blog), the actual soul but they definitely are rooted in our spiritual side.

and I continued:

Well, the physical manifestations are not the entire soul, simply part. It represents a piece of us, our story in our words and prehaps is the best way to spread our influence over the world without leaving the comfort of our own home. It’s sort of a computer brain, something that can store our experiences and live on through others acting upon them, we live through others.

Ooo…I just went here and didn’t realize it, but, if someone does something because of your blog, are they not representing you and your soul in a manner? Say someone has never been to a Dairy Queen but I say “mmmmm boy, I love Dairy Queen” and they go and enjoy it because of me, they are living one of my experiences, they are replacing me physically but expressing my joy at Dairy Queen.

if that makes any sense.

But the blog is a brain of sorts, a storage unit of information and experiences and if someone acts based off of information on that blog, is that not the same as acting off of information in our brain, therefore living our soul?

oooo…

And now I’m leaving for the day so if there’s more later, I’ll share. I like this conversation, and Mike’s a good guy, very thoughtful, check out Keep Trying, consider it required reading this weekend.

Everytime I go to type “proposition” today when entering in legal mail I keep typing “poopsition”.

Kimmie McKinnis posted on the Webloggers User Group:

Since we were discussing the neuroprosthesis site, I thought I’d paste my post and their reply to it.

“Neuroprosthesis sucks. Why? Because they claim to be running their own googlebombing experiment. They’ve been posting random comments with links to their site on people’s weblogs recently, including mine. The general concensus on the Weblogger User Group forum is that this experiment will do more harm than good, and it is irresponsible. We know how it works, why do we need to experiment more? Google is fair, I hope it brings up all the ’sucks’ sites first.”

No, we are not running a googlebomb.

It’s an experiment inspired by the article on googlebomb, but it’s different. Please come to our site _again_ to read about the results.

np [neuro@fsmail.net] 03/07/02 10:19pm

And her post was in response to a run of posts on the GoogleBombing discussion I spoke in earlier. Well, after this post, I had more to say.

From their site… www.neuroprosthesis.org/2002_03_03_neuroblog#10516628

“If TextAds run in parallel on blogger, MeFi, as well as DayPop define a googlebomb so be it. Guilty as charged. In that case the three owners should keep checking also whether the advertiser placed the TextAd simultaneously on any of the other two sites. Then again on Sunday afternoon we thought that ten dollars is the _minimum_ what each of those three owners deserve for all their hard work. How about looking at the events that unfolded here from this perspective Dear Yahoo Blog User Group Members?

Googlebomb was not the goal at all when we placed the TextAds on Sunday. In fact, we did not even know about googlebombs then, only next day, after reading John Hiler’s article.

The now-so-famous-famed-much-discussed-yet-entirely-misunderstood experiment only aimed to test that

1) Google does not care about comments even if they are synchronized.

2) You can convince Google to recognize your site for the right combination of words.

Independently of whatever else is going on on other sites. Please note that none of the TextAds had the words which we keep referring to. Why would we want to _replicate something such as a googlebomb_ anyway?

Something that is googlebomb - related, googlebomb - inspired, is not the same as googlebomb.”

“Related” and “inspired” but not the same? Why, because it doesn’t involve google? Or you’re buying the adspace? They may not have intentionally started off wanting to googlebomb but now they’re trying to, now it’s an “experiment”. But don’t these people realize how uncontrolled this experiment is? If it works then they screw with Google and they can’t do anything to fix it. Congrats, you just ruined one of the greatest assets to blogging all in the name of whoring yourself.

As I said before, it’s irresponsible and self serving. And I’m sure these guys are basking in the attention they’re getting.

Now, let me go a bit further here. Buying advertising is not what I meant by “whoring yourself”. I was refering to Kimmie’s problem with them “posting random comments on people weblog’s lately”. THAT is self promotion for the sake of self promotion using the googlebombing theory without any concern for the repercussions.

A couple links for specifics on Googlebombing:

Filler Friday: Google Bombing

Google Time Bomb

Follow up to yesterday’s rant: does this look like a freakin’ car bomb explosion to you?

Friday Five

1. What makes you homesick? Not much, really, as long as I’m keeping busy. I guess boredom, then, and being alone, but those usually go hand in hand for me.

2. Where is “home” for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom & Dad’s house, particular state/city)? Right here in Fredericksburg, Virginia (or, there, considering I’m at work in Washington DC at the moment). I mean, after spending the last 20 years of my life here I guess it’s as home as anyplace is gonna get.

3. What makes it home for you? People? Things? The people, mainly.

4. Where is the furthest you’ve been from home, miles-wise? I visited my Dad in Missouri a few years back, so that’s, what, 1000 miles or so?

5. What are your plans for this weekend? Throwing a going away party for my pal Ian who’s joining the navy and I’m going to get a bed and maybe finally celebrate my now almost week old birthday. I hope.

Filler Friday: Google Bombing Where the whole thing began.

Buy a link on thie guy’s site!

Police: Hit-run victim left to die in car windshield A woman accused of hitting a homeless man with her car, driving home with him lodged in her broken windshield and ignoring his pleas as he bled to death in her garage, is not the monster being portrayed by prosecutors, her attorney says.

In her garage no less! She parked her car in her garage and left him there! FOR THREE DAYS!!! Good Lord…

Cartoonist defends cartoon that offended widows An award-winning cartoonist offered no apologies Wednesday for an editorial cartoon that portrays some widows of the September 11 terrorist attacks as greedy and superficial.

Astronomers: Universe is Beige The color of the universe is not an intriguing pale turquoise, as astronomers recently announced. It’s actually beige — and a rather ordinary beige at that.

Pigeons

Poke the Bunny

My brother Shaun stepped out of his City Council race so his website will now be all sorts of political opinion fun.

Tony Rawk’s StickDeath SkatePark

80’s Cartoon Central

for sale: 2 ovaries, slightly used but in fine condition.

No Pain, No Game Have you ever had a hankering to play a computer game that allows you to inflict real pain on your opponent?

Ever wondered how it would feel to shock, burn and lash your opponent into submission?

Well, wonder no more. Two German designers have addressed this yawning gap in the gaming industry with a fiendish invention called, appropriately enough, the Painstation.

Drug Story An Informational resource for entertainment writers and journalists.

Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions! As everyone knows, on 11 September, less than an hour after the attack on the World Trade Centre, an airplane collided with the Pentagon. The Associated Press first reported that a booby-trapped truck had caused the explosion. The Pentagon quickly denied this. The official US government version of events still holds. Here’s a little game for you: Take a look at these photographs and try to find evidence to corroborate the official version. It’s up to you to Hunt the Boeing!

Okay, now this pisses me off. Listen here, folks, being a person who goes by the Pentagon every day, RIGHT WHERE IT WAS HIT I can tell you this is bullshit, out and out bullshit.

Where the hell did that plane go? It was in the air and then it wasn’t, what, did it just disappear?

Do you see a crater infront of the building anywhere? Do you see any damage on the ground consistant with a car bomb exploding?

How the hell was a truck going to get that close? Just drive right up? Hell no, that area was also used as a helipad and trucks would only be allowed in that area if they were either military, inspected, or associated with the construction company working on refurbishing the Pentagon, but even then, that wing was done, it wouldn’t have been there anyways.

Eye witnesses saw the plane, lots of them, including my brother who works at the DEA offices nearby.

Also, Rt. 110 goes right by where the Pentagon got hit, it’s the route my bus takes day to day to get into DC. The road was unscathed by this. Were a truck bomb on the road or even near it, the road would show marks, and not only that, schrapnel would be around, which was not found anywhere.

Were a plane to fly straight into the building all schrapnel would go foward and into the building and that’d explain why people SAW A DAMN PLANE FLY INTO THE BUILDING!!!!

The Pentagon is built to withstand certain blasts, the side that was struck was actually one that had just been refurbished to withstand fire and other damaging attacks.

The AP and many news agencies had no idea what they were reporting. There was supposedly fires on The Mall, a car bomb went off at the State Department, an entire fleet of planes from Europe were heading for DC, you can not go by what the news was reporting on the spur of the moment.

So get over it, people, it was a tragedy but it is not a cover up.

Mr. Nice

Ladies Of The Evil Dead

Bitchquick If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the bitchin’

Bruce Campbell Online you know, the guy with the chin…

My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable I’m sure I’ve linked this before, but who cares

Illustrated Guide to Goth Hunting

Intelligence Online

Crafty Captain Wipes Smiles off Taunting al Qaeda

Ginger vs. MaryAnn

Bush Proposes Welfare Change ‘Workfare’ Participants Could Be Paid Below Minimum Wage Isn’t this counter productive? I mean, we want these people to be able to get off of Welfare, yet if we don’t pay them properly they’ll never make enough to provide for themselves and therefore be STUCK in the system. Sigh.

Are Green Eggs Really Red? Hidden messages of Communism in the stories of Dr. Seuss

Meet Jacob Furey. He’s a 19-year-old fast food employee who just got nailed for a rather stupid prank. Just when TSG thought these guys were the biggest dopes slinging tacos, Furey comes along and gets arrested for “adulterating” a customer’s grub. I’ll ruin it for you, he put pot in a cop’s taco.

William Shatner has a blog?

Norwegian star of “Frozen Dead Guy” Festival An obscure Norwegian grandfather has the role of honor in a bizarre festival held in the USA. Bredo Morstøl is arguably the most famous resident of Nederland, Colorado, even though he has been dead for over ten years.

Who’s the Rogue State? She says we are.

The suicide note left by the 15 year old who crashed his plane into the building in Florida a couple months back.

Model Niki Taylor claims that representatives of British Glamour magazine manipulated and coerced her into recently posing for photos showing scars from her horrific April 2000 car accident. Niki Taylor’s hot.

Inmates get drunk on work detail Road work had an unexpected perk for some Louisiana prisoners. Authorities in Webster Parish say six inmates assigned to trash pickup found a cooler full of beer. Thanks, Beer Fairy!

Naked man in grave rampage More than 150 graves were left damaged after a naked man went berserk in the main cemetery at Dudley - he even wrecked a memorial to a five-year-old girl.

WakeMeUpBeforeYouGoGo?

Buy a customized bag of M&Ms!

And on a more civil note folks are actually liking my skins at Blogskins! Neat! At least two folks have written me to say they’re using the skin I designed to be used with a group blog. $bloggertitle$ and hardyharhar.org like me, they really like me! Well, not me, but my design. Sweet! Here’s where I first used and continue to use the design. I plan on making it more public than two people, this is the test that really worked! Thanks for liking the skin, folks!

Stupid Netscape So I’m going along, all happy and designing the DC Dark Side page and all, really pleased with the way the site’s turning out, when I think to myself “hey, what’s this look like under Netscape?”

Shit.

I really really really don’t like Netscape. I used to swear by the thing and now I can’t stand it. As a websurfer and designer, the browser does nothing for me, not when Internet Explorer opens faster, loads pages faster and is actually CODED TO STANDARD!!!!

Okay, so Netscape 6 meets standard requirements, great, but the browser’s still freakin huge and kills any computer more than two years old (at least, any computer I’ve played with it on). And I know the standard thing isn’t completely NS’s fault. I mean, way back when, NS was THE standard because there was nothing else. IE came out and slowly but surely dug into their market. NS went on with business as usual, they were the industry leader, they set the standard. When IE started to do their own thing, NS refused to follow, either ignoring what IE did or coming up with their own code for the same thing (like IFRAMES and ILAYERS). But, as IE grew, it pushed itself into the spotlight and it’s code into standard. NS continued in it’s own little world until it broke down and conformed, for the most part, with NS6.

But most folks, if they use NS, still use NS4. 6 is a beast of a browser (or what when i first used it, it screwed up so many times I gave up on it and have no idea how the more recent versions are). So, most NS folks aren’t browsing to standard.

So, then we come to the question that crosses the mind of most webmonkeys:

Do you design a site so everyone can see it or do you design to standard?

I think one site put it as “back designing” and “forward designing”.

Now, I’m usually one for cross browser compatability, though I’ve kinda slacked on that as of late. Most of the pages I’ve designed in the past year have been made with IE in mind. Hell, it took NS users to point out that HEROES originally looked crappy in NS (though that was more from my poor programming than standard issues). But JSKOnline, the redesign I recently scrapped for J’s Notes, and now Dark Side all are made for IE. Part of this is I program at work when I’m bored, they only have IE here, but another part is I’m finding all sorts of neat toys to play with (DHTML, CSS) that just don’t work in anything before NS6.

So, do I conform and sacrifice design for the sake of the viewers or do I force the viewers to conform for the sake of my design?

Well, since Dark Side isn’t my baby, I put the ball back in the site editor’s court and I’ll let him decide, but with JSKOnline and any other personal designs, uh-uh, you conform to standards baby. Now, JSKOnline works in NS4, but it doesn’t look as pretty, the alignment’s weird and all that. But, if you want to see it all kick ass like, get IE5 (or better) or NS6. The whole point of the site is to show off and play with design. Yeah, yeah, I’m not showing off on NS, but I’m showing off overall.

For sites like my brother’s political one (shaunkenney.com) and HEROES and anything else with a broad base readership and that’s just more about content than actual design, I’ll worry about NS and all the other non-standard things out there.

It all comes down to the purpose of the site. Am I trying to get folks to appreciate the site visually or for it’s content? I’ll go from there.

Until then, please, for the love of got, get standard. Either use Internet Explorer or get Netscape 6 (and if that’s good, please let me know, I may break down and download it just to play with it).

Okay, I’m done.

NOTE: my representation of browser history may be horribly wrong, but it’s the way I saw things happen and what not. Don’t kill me, please correct me. Go standard!

If Florida International University wins the NCAA Tourney this month I can win an official team jersey! SWEET! Go FIU!

Wow, and it seems this chick was claiming to be this chick! Weird. (Quick apology for my use of the word chick, I mean it in the nicest way, really.)