Triumph of the Breast Meat

Let's get some shoes

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:47:17 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA

cheggidout. :)

CNN screams fire in crowded theatre, blames marketers...

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:19:55 GMT

"It had a very sinister appearance," Coakley told reporters. "It had a battery behind it, and wires."

more here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/

Absolut Stoopid.

Oh yeah, and Molly Ivins died. :(

Now what are you waiting for? (tongue in cheek)

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:34:20 GMT

Linux just got a lot more like MS Windows.

Now, you too can have a Genuine Advantage on your computer, and use Linux: Linux Genuine Advantage.

There's a link to the (Perl) source code that's a fun read. :)

Bound by Law

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 17:00:44 GMT

A comic book portrayal of the mire a film documentarian has to muck through:

From Duke:

You can buy it, peruse it online, download a .pdf version, and even make a derivative project, if you follow the guidelines of the copyright license...

GEEK powers test!

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 05:49:09 GMT

Can you tell me what the numbers in each series have in common?

series zro: 0
series one: 1 2 4 8
series two: 3 5 6 9 10 12
series tre: 7 11 13 14
series for: 15

[Update:]
Okay, there's actually a couple series I left out because I'm mean... I've added series zro and for, above.

Ralph to Pay Demo Opposition Bills

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 03:27:34 GMT

Supreme Court hits Ralph Nader with $89,821 bill for his 2004 Pennsylvania ballot bid upholding first-of-kind ruling

by Michael Richardson

The U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to review a decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, has upheld a hefty $89,821 penalty levied against Ralph Nader for his failure to obtain ballot access in 2004 during his presidential campaign.

Nader has been ordered to pay the costs of the nineteen lawyers hired by the Democratic Party to challenge his nomination petitions in the Keystone State. This ruling will have a pronounced chilling effect on future candidates in Pennsylvania concerned about large legal bills if they lose. The original bill was $81,102, but has swelled because of interest accrued during the appeal.

More from the source.

Oblivia wishes you yummy people food

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 04:56:50 GMT

and a happy chrismahannaquanzadan

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 00:11:39 GMT

Click and you'll go to the archive... What's the Prince of Insufficient Light's (yeah, the Ruler of Heck) name, again??

[Update: ooh, dead link.

was http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2003053760816.gif ]

John and Kristy

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:12:36 GMT

Are coming up for a visit (it's a clicky):

On the west coast, no less!

(hmm, that image has a shelf-life... maybe I shoulda copied it somewhere?)

Pretty Proof

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 14:29:58 GMT

Here's a nice page that is touted as a proof for the existence of dark matter. Dark matter and dark energy have been a hypothetical crutch leaned on by astrophysicists to explain some of the properties of the universe. Basically, the matter and energy that we can detect in the universe don't add up to what's required for it to behave as it does (e.g., it's pushing itself apart at such a rate that can only be explained by undetectable energies). Here is some evidence the crutch may actually be a new limb. It rides on the observation that the hot gases of the recently collided galactic clusters shown below are where most of the visible mass of the clusters has been shifted by the collision.

It's all so silly, really. If we just recognize that dark matter is the presence of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and dark energy the will of HIS word, we wouldn't have to spend all that money and effort on research, we could all go home and read whatever version of the bible is the One True one, sing our hymns and be content.

Unless you were some kinda Deist and don't go for that teleological mumbo jumbo. Logos, d00d.

Get on the Night-Soil Train

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 21:08:38 GMT

Do your doody.

(sorry, couldn't resist--the title flashed in my eyes and I had to, I just had to--and I think it's an idea who's time has come)

I googled that hottie!

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 02:57:29 GMT

Apparently, Google thinks it's a violation to use their trademarked name as a verb in that manner (and they're sending letters):

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/6/story.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10396133

A Heathen eye for the Godly Dye

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 01:21:22 GMT

Something inspirational?

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 09:05:19 GMT

Oi, the steamed fish in soy sauce with ginger at Hong Kong is to die for.

Four massive slabs, all fighting for space in my stomache.

How will I sleep, it's 2am? We just beat the bar crowd.

We saw Diabolique (the original french version) in Carl's backyard, tonight. Awesome old school thriller.

I'm warning you...

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 05:59:36 GMT

You probably shouldn't click on this link.

It may ruin your life. It may take you away from your family. It could prevent you from paying your bills, and doing your shopping.

I warned you.

The Gospel of Tux

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 05:51:29 GMT

Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and mighty among the Microchip Corporations; mighter than any of the Mainframe Corporations before it had it waxed. And Gates heart was hardened, and he swore unto his Customers and their Engineers the words of this curse:

"Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporations bound thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licences, such that ye cried unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance. Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation before me. Will I loosen your Licences? Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as grave and ten times more perilous than my forefathers. I will engrave my Licence on thy heart and write my Serial Number upon thy frontal lobes. I will bind thee to the Windows Platform with cunning artifices and with devious schemes. I will bind thee to the Intel Chipset with crufty code and with gnarly APIs. I will capture and enslave thee as no generation has been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye cry then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, and Moore? They cannot hear ye. I am become a greater Power than they. Ye shall cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I am the Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live."

more gospel, here. (It's funny. Laugh.)

EFF v. at&t link

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:59:52 GMT

It's a clicky... to some background on the EFF v at&t NSA thingy.

Stand back, it's a Dell!

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 19:12:52 GMT

Funny article about exploding computer:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

Sucralose (Splenda) study

Fri, 26 May 2006 20:45:44 GMT

A while back, somewhere on the 'Net--which has since fallen into the alternate dimension of lost links--I posted something about the studies that had been done on Splenda™ (sucralose) and made some comparisons to the claims made about it by its manufacturer.

xianrex reposted, and that was linked to by (I think) a rate-your-poo subdomain's pages, allowing me to find it again. Yay. Xianrex introduced it in his blog entry:

Splenda is made of "sucralose", which is refined sugar that has been processed to replace three hydrogen-oxygen groups in the molecule with chlorine. McNeill Nutritionals (owned by Johnson & Johnson) says that the molecule is "is essentially inert. The result is [a]... sweetener that tastes like sugar, but without sugars calories. After consumption, sucralose passes through the body without being broken down for energy... and the body does not recognize it as a carbohydrate. "

I am now reposting because the other evening a friend showed me an article about sucralose in The New Yorker. On to the repost:

After digging a little deeper into pubmed, I was able to find some real research on the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of sucralose after all. Yay!

Here are a couple from McNeil itself. The first study finds statistically significant increase in "non-neoplastic findings". I'm too lazy to download the report but I'm willing to bet these relate to anomalies in organ structure. The study was determinedly focused on carcinogenicity however, and so blew it off. The highest dosed sucralose mice were underweight compared to the controls. I think that's because they failed to properly control the experiment in that the mice found their food unpalatable. The second study also had the same "body weight gain decrement", but also statistically significant increase in "non-neoplastic findings":

renal pelvic epithelial hyperplasia in all female treatment groups, renal pelvic mineralization in females administered the intermediate or highest dietary concentrations of sucralose, adrenal cortical haemorrhagic degeneration in high-dose group female rats, and the histopathologic incidence of cataracts at necropsy in high-dose group male rats.

These were blown off as common in old-age (um, don't use sucralose if you plan on growing old?)

I found three studies by one group that demonstrated not that sucralose crosses into the blood stream in some animals, but did so in ALL the animals (some to greater extent, some only 5% or so: see, if it passes out the urine not the feces, then it was absorbed) and was actually metabolized into unidentified substances (the lowest was 1%, but 1% is not zero as is being claimed). So it's actually NOT the inert chemical they've been claiming it to be.

Another really scary study (scary because of all the things they subjected all those animals to) claims to have found DNA damage due to sucralose ingestion in the organs of the gastrointestinal tract.

This study observes "decreases in food consumption, body weight gain and selected organ weights and ratios as well as splenic and thymic histopathologic changes occurred".

This study is scary too, because they are feeding volunteers radioactive carbon, which, if sucralose actually does enter the body, and is metabolized, could be inserted into their DNA where it would decay and cause a mutational event (like, cancer). I didn't think they were doing that sort of thing to PEOPLE, and I wonder if they did it (and the volunteers accepted) because everyone's been telling them it never enters the body. Well guess what: it did:

14.5% (range 8.9 to 21.8%) of the radioactivity was excreted in urine and 78.3% (range 69.4 to 89.6%) in the faeces, within 5 days. The total recovery of radioactivity averaged 92.8%.

I think that was even more than the dogs in that earlier study. Note that some of the sucralose DID react in the body, that "two more polar components which accounted for only 2.6%". Only. Sheesh. What loaded language. Not scientific at all. Oh and, ah, we couldn't find the other 7.2%. Um. yeah. That's unethical.

heh

Sun, 14 May 2006 09:23:07 GMT

How cars get sold in the UK:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4639771121&sspagena

Bill Swanson of Raytheon is a Plagiarist!

Sat, 06 May 2006 04:34:14 GMT

[note: I "internalized" the title from Carl's blog entry]

A friend of mine recently discovered that Raytheon's CEO has been publishing and promoting a book entitled "The Unwritten Rules of Management" that is, in fact, largely (17 of 33 "rules") cribbed from an earlier (1944) publication by W.J. King, "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering" (good luck getting a copy, it's been backordered four weeks or more).

Four other "rules" were taken from an article by Donald Rumsfeld in The Wall Street Journal, and one from Dave Barry.

Three or more articles in the NYT, more in Boston's Globe, and Herald, and just about everywhere else.

Here's one that compares Swanson's fate to the recent Harvard Student plagiarism scandal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/business/media/03leonhardt.html

Swanson had previously claimed to have written the "rules" himself (in a USAToday interview):

https://s100.copyright.com/DR/USATODAY/SM8SIe2CNrRgrLVWjHeHUw--.pdf

Here's the article (also USAToday) where many of the "rules" are written, allowing Carl (who possessed the original) to make his comparison:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-04-14-ceos-waiter-rule_x.htm

[Note: The "waiter rule" is the one taken from Dave Barry.]

His story changes when the discovery was made, however. Here Swanson says he never copied them from a book:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-04-24-raytheon-ceo-responds_x.htm

[edit: had that one wrong, at first...]

But in a recent press release a spokesmonkey for Raytheon also claimed that Swanson gave a "ghostwriter" a manila folder with notes, and also including the original W.J. King book (neatly putting the blame elsewhere.)

fortune files

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 08:49:15 GMT

Famous quotes from famous people:

Wm. Shakespeare: To be or not to be.
Friedrich Nietsche: To do is to be.
J.P. Sartre: To be is to do.
Frank Sinatra: do be do be do.

WTF? I'm no nancy boi!

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 03:15:13 GMT

Sheesh.

Last week I went to bed with an itchy bump on my finger. The next day I had lumps all over my index fingers and thumbs, and a spotty itchy rash up my arms, under them, on my sides, my upper chest, and my waistline.

My first thought was, of course, wildly metastatic melanoma. Then I found out that because of my carelessness, I have a huge deductable on my health insurance (time to get that changed!).

Then I thought maybe an allergy. I talked to a doctor friend, who basically said "watch it a couple days, and don't touch your d**k".

Sure enough, antihistamines alleviate the itching. I'm insanely allergic to either metal (sanding it got grit all over my hands the day before) or cocobolo (a gorgeous wood from Mexico, the most highly allergenic with poison oak like response... but the pathology isn't a complete match).

And now thhe last couple days I've been fighting a pounding sinus headache and stuffy nose... allergic to something in the air.

I never had allergies. Well, once I was allergic to bees but I got over it eating bee pollen.

Now my body's being a flake. I have chemical sensitivities so I can't: drink domestic wine, or most beers, use eye-drops, walk through by the perfume counter, or remain in the bathsoap's section at the store for too long without courting a headache.

Oh yeah, and I got a bandsaw. :)

And I'm single (addie tossed me out.) :-(

And I need a house cleaner that doesn't mind vacuuming wood shavings and metal filings. :-/

Apparently it's not true...

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 22:37:27 GMT

...that the left owns the media. According to Ann Coulter, it's the right's dog:

http://www.oliverwillis.com/wp-content/coulterwehavethemedia.mp3

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:21:18 GMT