I have ceased. And also desisted.
In this case, my theft of was cleverly detected because I slipped up and posted, “I have nicked this graphic” and included a link to the site wherefrom I nicked it. D’oh!
See, this is why nobody ever invites me to mastermind a jewel heist.
Not twice, anyhow.
August 30, 2007 — 5:13 pm
Comments: 30
A faceful of moonbattery
I once subscribed to a short — eight or twelve page (magazines always come in fours) — weekly science magazine that I liked a lot. Written for the layman, but not insulting. One or two paragraphs each on that week’s science headlines. I thought it was called “Science Digest,” so naturally I checked the obvious science digest dot org. I was surprised to find myself slapped in the face with these leading stories:
A STRATEGY of GENOCIDE and the DESTRUCTION of a CIVILIZATION: The American Paradigm for Democracy and Freedom
THE ZIONIST IN GOVERNMENT: A THREAT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES
THE HIJACKING OF THE UNITED STATES BY THE PROPONENTS of the POLICIES of the PENTATEUCH: The Importation of Terrorism into the United States
“THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES”: A Paradigm of US Foreign Policy: ZIONISM: An Analysis of United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East
AMERICAN STYLE “DEMOCRACY”: THE CREATION of a NARCO-STATE in AFGHANISTAN
TERRORISTS or FREEDOM FIGHTERS?
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN ORGAN TRAFFIC OPERATED OUT OF ISRAEL
Ahem. Wooee! It’s like Mister Wizard meets Ward Churchill. What is it about Jews that makes people so gosh-darned nutty?
It’s obviously a labor of love for one author; one angry, bitter, not-fun-at-parties little mammal. The guy who registered the URL — for a ten-year chunk — has only one other Google hit: part-time high school science teacher. The rest of the site is pretty orthodox math-and-astronomy stuff. Er, well there was this:
THE EMPIRE OF EVIL and THE EXPLORATION OF SPACE
Let us hope that our attempts to reach other planets continues to meet with failure; that they remain far beyond our vitiating reach, until we purge ourselves of hate and greed and intolerance. Then we are ready to reach out beyond our own planet.
Not exactly the upbeat, breathless, gee-whiz style of science reporting so beloved of weasels.
Wikipedia says there once was a print magazine called Science Digest. It was similar to Reader’s Digest. That’s not the one I was thinking of. My magazine was called Science News and does, indeed, have an online version.
Eh. I almost hate to burn a good moonbat graphic for this feelth.
August 28, 2007 — 7:21 pm
Comments: 53
Friday, and I’m on strike
Ugh. It’s hot and sticky and I had a crap day. I’m going to sit here and DRINK until it FEELS BETTER.
August 24, 2007 — 5:47 pm
Comments: 54
Grim milestone
For some reason, the old WordPress sites gets a ton more comment spam. Maybe the spamming software just walks down the list of “wordpress” domains, trying all the doors. This is especially useless as the founder of WordPress is also the guy who wrote Akismet, which has proved to be an extraordinarily accurate spam filter. Except, it hates Lokki. That’s just the way it is.
Very pleased at the comment-to-post ratio, incidentally. Thank you. Entrapping good commenters is the hardest part. Many otherwise excellent blogs never manage it.
I put it down to 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, booger haiku and the
sweet, sweet smell of weasel.
August 22, 2007 — 2:02 pm
Comments: 33
After that, it’s weasels all the way down
August 17, 2007 — 11:11 pm
Comments: 37
Weasel’s happy funtime sack o’ crap links!
You ever get a stupid question stuck in your head and you can’t rest until you get the answer? Man, am I grateful for the Internet. I once haunted libraries and pestered librarians for my answers. Now Mister Google, he do it for me, from the comfort of my own nest of chewed paper.
The question was: what’s the longest anyone’s lived inside an iron lung? And the answer is: 57 years, assuming this lady is still alive. Woke up with polio one morning when she was three. 1950. Brrr.
There are forty people left who use iron lungs; she’s got a spare in the garage in case she needs the parts. They don’t make them any more.
Changing the subject, I totally don’t get this story from the Australian. It’s about how terrorists are operating in Second Life, blowing up pretend buildings and killing people. I understand how objects could be destroyed in SL, but killing people? There’s no dying in Second Life, is there?
They do have a point about laundering money through SL, since you can give money to other players, who then can trade online money for real-world money. But surely huge transactions would red-flag for somebody, somewhere. And the part about practicing for real-world terrorism is just silly; it’s not that realistic. You’d get better practice out of Castle Wolfenstein.
Vocabulary lesson from the Daily Mail: 1661. It’s a woman who looks sixteen from the back and sixty-one from the front. Taking care of yourself: good thing. Wearing tights and sparkly things and glommy jewelry past A Certain Age: not so good. I keep waiting for the Hillarys and Barbara Walterses of the world to give old broads with blond hair a bad name.
If the Daily Mail isn’t low rent enough for you, try the Providence rants & raves on craigslist. No post in particular; just jump in and sleaze. It’s a powerful demonstration of what happens when you give dumb people a platform and complete anonymity. I assume the rnr section is bad everywhere, but I’m confident Providentials are a special kind of stupid.
This guy offers a rich chunk of cartooning fun, melding LOLcats with old timey newpaper cartoons. He’s got the style down perfectly.
Best for last. I love this one. This guy took a text file with the words “this program does nothing at all” repeated several times, renamed it awardmestars.exe and uploaded it to a number of software download sites. He gave the ‘program’ this description:
This software does nothing. It doesn’t even run. It was created as an experiment to see how many shareware awards it got. See the results of the experiment at: www.successfulsoftware.net
Two weeks later, it’s gotten sixteen awards and recommendations. Worth reading the article, if you download stuff regularly.
And that’s all I got. It’s the weekend! Now we drink!
— 5:39 pm
Comments: 8
The Friday that Nothing Happened!
August 10, 2007 — 5:07 pm
Comments: 27
Is there a Facebook for grownups?
This is a bleg. Jesus, I hate the word “bleg.”
Anyhow, I’m one of those sad, feckless people who dropped out of college and couldn’t think of anything better to do than stay in my college town. It was as good as anywhere, really. Every once in a while, someone from the distant past will give me a call. It always goes like this:
Me: “I’m still in the same old place.”
Them: “I figured you would be.”
Mmm. Thanks. Well, now I won’t be. I’m moving! To someplace else! Ha hah!
I’ve been extraordinarily careful since back in those freewheeling days when everybody posted under real names. Now a Google search of my real name and all reasonable variations thereof turns up nuffink. So I need to file a sort of cyber business card somewhere. I don’t want to update it or network or anything, I just want people who know me to find a contact email when they search my name.
Is there something out there like that? Because the ‘social networking’ sites all seem to be populated with infants.
Meanwhile, have you ever dreamed of teaching your cat to shit in a salad shooter? Sure, we all have. Well, now you can, with the Craptapulator! Yes, one look at this Byzantine torture device, and all kinds of crap will come flying out of your cat!
Gnus found this on Dan’s Blah Blah Blog. Charlotte shares with Dan’s cat the tendency to pee around rather than in the litterbox. In Charlotte’s case, it isn’t malicious. She’s just very, very stupid. I’ve watched her do it. She stands with all four feet planted surely in the litter, hangs her little pink bidness over the side and cuts loose. I don’t think she’d pee in the same zip code as this motorized gumball machine.
August 9, 2007 — 5:34 pm
Comments: 12
Be a part of philological history
Work on the Oxford English Dictionary was begun in 1857, when members of the Philological Society of London became sufficiently annoyed with all the existing dictionaries. The aim was to cram in 1,300 years worth of every single goddamned word in the English language they could get their hands on, including earliest usage and quotations. Nothing much came of it for the next thirty years.
Eventually, the great work was accomplished through the use of volunteer readers. Hundreds and hundreds of them, who mailed in words and quotations on little bits of paper called quotation slips. These were mashed into chunks of dictionary called fascicles and published one by one. The 125th and final fascicle was published in 1928.
One of the most prolific contributors was Dr. W.C. Minor, who provided thousands of entries. The editors later discovered he was an inmate at my next home, the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. He was an American Civil War vet who went mad and shot some poor bastard more or less at random on the streets of London. Lexicographer by day, crunchy nutball after dark. Simon Winchester wrote a very interesting book about it a few years ago. Well, I thought it was interesting.
The current edition of the OED is 20 volumes and over 300,000 words (also available online and by CD). The Oxford University Press has never made a net profit on sales of the dictionary.
It seems likely Woody’s World of Penis Euphemisms has never made a profit, either, but Woody’s goal is somewhat more modest: to collect every single word for penis, like, ever. He’s asking for submissions. Can you help?
Urban dictionary was first. Hmph. And they can bite me.
August 7, 2007 — 5:51 pm
Comments: 73
Friday snot blogging
My stoopid boss gave me his stoopid cold. Of course, when he had it, he worked through it. We do that. It’s the office ethic. Which is why we keep giving each other colds.
I would’ve done, but the sore throat woke me up at midnight. No sleep + bad cold + dual-cat vet appointment first thing = to hell with it, I’m not going in. I haven’t taken a sick day in I don’t know how long. Considering I slunk around the house miserable and sulky today, I now remember why.
August 3, 2007 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 28