So I've been wasting my time then?

20-something girl #1: Why do they call it 'Smart Water'?

20-something girl #2: Because it has electrolytes.

20-something girl #1: But does it make you smarter?

20-something girl #2: No! Does drinking Dr. Pepper make you a doctor? I don't think so!

Link: Overheard in New York | Best Quotes from the past two weeks

Bubbles attack

BOISE, Idaho -- City streets got an unscheduled cleaning as a sudsy, citrus-scented foam erupted from manhole covers like geysers....

There was a similar problem in Wasilla, Alaska. Clusters of foamy bubbles spewed from the city's sewer lagoon, witnesses said.

Link: Bubbles spew from sewers :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Nation

I don't know - I'll just guess

Who cares that the Defense Department just received an F for its cybersecurity efforts on a Congressional report card? I mean, what information does the Pentagon really have to protect, anyhow?

Email?

Link: Danger Room - Wired News

Don't mess with our chocolate!

Read it.

Do it.

Link: skippy the bush kangaroo: calling all chocoholics!

This is way delicious, isn't it?

Everything you ever wanted to know about “computergate”:

Any way you slice and dice it, this is big and it points to organized criminal effort.

And way, way more, at Cannonfire.
Link: Cannonfire

Don't forget, Bunky, these are the guys who want to read your mail.

The jury is in.

Technology to the rescue

ANDREW SCHNEIDER, ITP, NYU - The Idrink swimware line is perfect for those who want to go the beach, listen to music, and enjoy a cold and deserved beverage, but who don't want to get wet. The photovoltaic film panels allow a fashionable fit while supplying the 6.5 volts @ 1.5 Amps needed to power a peltier junction and an Ipod and keep you double cool....Wear it to the beach, find a nice spot in the sun, get out your iPod and plug in to the retractable female USB connection sprouting discreetly from the hip. As soon as your Ipod is all charged up, cool that frosty beverage that's been warming in your bag by plugging in the beverage cooler (peltier junction) to the same USB connection.

Link: UNDERNEWS: COLLEGE PROJECTS: A SOLAR FILM BIKINI THAT COOLS A BEER & RECHARGES AN IPOD

Bringing the history back to Boston...

...“with television commercials on the Food Channel, a major makeover of Salem Street, and a new line of slogan-bearing trinkets.”

Long an attraction for tourists who came for an Italian meal and to see historical sites like the church where lanterns set Paul Revere on his midnight ride, the North End is being touted by promoters who want to forge a new image of a retail paradise where high-end shopping goes hand-in-hand with old world charm....

“We want to make it tourist-happy,” said Frank DePasquale , president of the North End Chamber of Commerce, which is leading the push. “To us it's well known, but to people in Utah and Florida, it might not be.”

Come on, you people from Utah and Florida, let's get with the program here. See over there by the coffee bar? That's Paul Revere's old silver botique.

Link: Big Dig gone, North End tells tourists charm is back - The Boston Globe

Holy iteration, Batman!

Vietnam! Remember when they said it wasn't? Well, now it is. And look! There's George McGovern, right over there! And it's all the Democrats' fault!

It's amazing what you can learn if you listen to the right bullshit, isn't it? Oh. Did I say right bullshit? Holy neo cons!

And here's another thing - Trickshot Dick's secure undisclosed alternate universe is in the Chicago Ritz-Carlton! Yeah, I suppose that's as good a place as any for it. We wouldn't want him hiding under one of those downscale Motel 6 beds. That wouldn't be scary and inspiring at all, would it?

Just cheap and sad.
Link: Vice President's Remarks to the Heritage Foundation

And then the kitchen sink

The Marine Corps said yesterday that the V-22 Osprey, a hybrid aircraft with a troubled past, will be sent to Iraq this September, where it will see combat for the first time...

“They will plan their missions in Iraq to avoid it getting into areas where there are serious threats,” said Thomas Christie, the Pentagon’s director of operations, test and evaluation from 2001 to 2005, who is now retired.

Why? Because the helicopters now in use - apparently a bunch of Vietnam-era relics - are starting to get shot down. No such problem with the V-22. It tends to crash all by itself.

Yeah, support the troops.

Link: Combat, With Limits, Looms for Hybrid Aircraft - New York Times

Pig?

Oklahoma wants you.

“Just days after Google announced that it may build a huge data center in the state, Oklahoma's governor has signed a bill into law that will effectively exempt the largest customers of municipal power companies from public disclosure of how much power they are using. Officials of the state's power industry say the measure is not a 'Google Law' but was sought 'on behalf of large-volume electric users that might be considering a move to Oklahoma.'”

Link: Slashdot | New Law Lets Data Centers Hide Power Usage

This sounds like more than just going steady to me

I get an email from Performics...

Subject: DoubleClick to be Acquired by Google

Do they take me out for dinner first?

Awe, Harlan

CHANNEL FOUR, DC - A woman charged with running a D.C.-area prostitution ring on made good on her threat to identify high-profile clients, naming a military strategist who developed the combat theories known as “shock and awe” as a regular customer in court papers. Harlan K. Ullman, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was named in court papers filed by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who is acting as her own lawyer.

What a shock.

Link: UNDERNEWS: PURPORTED DC MADAM STARTS EXPOSING ALLEGED CUSTOMERS

You know that Rove...

...a little lame in the brain. Hell, the guy can barely get his shoes tied without help. And...

Any e-mails Rove deleted were the type of routine deletions people make to keep their inboxes orderly, Luskin said. He said Rove had no idea the e-mails were being deleted from the server, a central computer that managed the e-mail.

Says his lawyer.Yeah, well he's not that dumb.

Look, babe, here's the deal. Either these guys are outright flat-out freakin' criminals or they - all of them taken together - can't muster up the baseline intelligence it takes to run a goddamn lemonade stand.

Either way, they do not belong running the government and the sooner they get relieved of that little task the better off we'll be.

Link: TPMmuckraker April 13, 2007 01:39 PM

No! No! No!

Dude! When the local sewer department plans to dispose of human waste - 61 tons of it per month - in the local “extinct” volcano, and the scientist over at the university opines...

“I think it is pretty safe”

...you are in deep, deep...well, trouble. Also shit. And both could get a whole lot deeper if that damn thing ever blows.

Link: UNDERNEWS: GREAT MOMENTS IN WASTE DISPOSAL

Meta über alles

The next scheduled College Republican games? “Find the e-mails,” “Obstructing justice for beginners,” “Out the covert agent,” “Waterboarding: Get your detainee to confess!” and “Supporting the troops: How many car magnets = one soldier's body armor?”

Link: Mixter's Mix: News for the rest of youse: 4.13.07

It's the largest attack in the last 12 months, and more than three times the volume of the two biggest in recent memory...The spam carries a ZIP file attachment posing as a patch with subjects such as Worm Alert!, Worm Detected, Spyware Detected!, or Virus Activity Detected.“

Link: Slashdot | Massive Spam Shot of ”Storm Trojan“

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Link: Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog: Of Threats And Deletions And A Hefty Helping Of Hubris

World, meet Bushco

The association representing the World Bank's 10,000 staff said the embattled Wolfowitz had “destroyed” the trust of employees and should quit.

“He must act honorably and resign,” the de facto union said in a letter to staff, according to contents confirmed to AFP.

“The president must acknowledge that his conduct has compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group and has destroyed the staff trust in his leadership,” the staff association said.

Too bad we don't have a staff like that.

Link: The Raw Story | World Bank chief under pressure to quit over pay scandal

No...ya think?

Bottles of Rubbel Sexy Lager featured a picture of a woman with a removable swimsuit on the label.

Drinkers could scratch her clothes off to leave her naked, reports Sky News.

Alcohol industry regulator the Portman Group has ruled the name of the drink and the scantily-clad model could lead drinkers to associate the product with sexual success.

Link: Ananova - Beer 'stripped' off the shelves

Blogblogging

And if you had heard, you may have been so amazed as to have missed a few other important stories: an earlier bombing in Baghdad destroyed an important bridge over the Tigris, in plain daylight and on a seemingly relaxed operational schedule, and the Turkish military has issued its most bellicose statements yet about the possibility of military action in northern Iraq.

Link: IraqSlogger: US Papers Friday: Chaos in the Green Zone

I just came across this priceless pearl from Tom DeLay's “blog”: “If the Left takes Imus, We’ll take Rosie.”

Link: Welcome to Pottersville: Tit For Tat?

Wow. Karl has been a naughty boy, it seems.

Link: ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

It sure as hell was a mistake and was inexcusable.

Link: spiiderweb™: Sneh: Cluster bomb use was a mistake

Hilarity ensues

As the criminal US administration announces it's lost (wink, wink) potentially incriminating emails - yes, Bunky! millions of them! - surreptitiously sent through RNC servers it seeks even more authority to snoop around on your hard drive.

The proposed changes to domestic surveillance would be so broad that “you have basically done away with the protections of the FISA,” said Kate Martin, head of the Center for National Security Studies.

What, so they can “lose” your stuff too? I think not.

This is not an original idea - I read it somewhere, I'm just to lazy to trace back where, so apologies to whoever said it first: Waxman should subpoena the “lost” White House bunker e-mails from NSA. If they can't produce them we can at least bust them for not doing their job. And put an end to some of this bullshit, at the very least.

Link: McConnell seeks to boost U.S. spy powers - Yahoo! News

So my advice would be: get guilty of something...quick

“There is a type of person that would walk in that building and kill innocent life -- and that is the same type of person that is willing to come and kill innocent Americans.”

Link: Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Good days and bad days

The state of terror in Texas

Remember to duct tape your doors and windows … and keep an eye out for potential Arabs.

(Or would that be...oh, never mind.)

Link: Horse Stuck In Mud, NEVER FORGET! - Wonkette

A glop storm

Is what we had here. Today. Well, not all day, of course. First, in fact, we had driving sleet. Then rain, and sort of rain-with-ice. Or iced rain, that might be. Then glop. Great globs of glop. And then (which is now) more rain. The phenomenon, in other words, known to New Englanders as “mix.” Mix is forecast for about another week, of and on. Hooray.

Given expected daytime temps in the 40's or so, it's unlikely much of this mix will stay around very long. It's purpose, mostly, is to freeze on car windows at night and, in the daytime, run down the back of necks.

Which brings me to the question I've been wanting to ask: I know this is where it all started (or some of it, anyway, we like to think), but why in hell did anybody stay?

Meta über alles

“hello, babies. welcome to earth. it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. it's round and wet and crowded. at the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. there's only one rule that i know of, babies -- `god damn it, you've got to be kind.”'

Link: skippy the bush kangaroo: rip kurt vonnegut

…the tide is turning, people, which is what happens when you make waves. The only wonder is why it took so damned long.

Link: Welcome to Pottersville: “Lipstick on a Pig.”

But fear not. As Josh Marshall notes, some of that new technology that the GOP has given the FBI and NSA to spy on everyday Americans without probable cause can now be used by the Democrats.

Link: The Left Coaster: White House “Loses” RNC Emails On Attorney Sackings

Here’s the scary part: about 1/3 of the papers in answering the part of the uestion about the lesser number of protests of the Iraq War said something like this: “The major difference between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War is that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Therefore, our war against Iraq was entirely justified.”

Link: Generation Y and the Big Lie | CorrenteWire

Unclear on the concept

The northeastern half of the nation will be whitened by snow through Thursday night.

Link: AccuWeather.com - Weather News Headlines - Weather News

Northeastern half? We're talking about the upper Great Lakes states and New England here - OK, northeast, if you count Wisconsin as northeast, but hardly half.

Meanwhile we, right here, are either on the exact boundary between snow to the north and freezing rain to the south (woohoo!) or in the one- to three-inch belt (yeah!) although one to three inches of what, exactly, is not specified (oh), depending on which AccuWeather map of tomorrow's weather forecast you believe. I don't believe either of them myself. I think it's going to be 85º and sunny.

Of course I might be wrong, but what are the odds?

Touring the blogs

When it comes to politics, former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca is generally not much of a player. When he has dabbled in politics, Iacocca is generally known for being a Republican — he was close with Reagan, he endorsed Bush in 2000, and backed Dick DeVos’ gubernatorial campaign in Michigan last year.

But if Iacocca’s new book is any indication, the retired businessman seems to be moving in a different direction.

Link: The Carpetbagger Report » Blog Archive » Iacocca: ‘Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason’

Yesterday it was Saddam Hussein. Today it’s Katie Couric. Will this mania for originality ever end?

Link: Connecting.the.Dots: Plagiarism, the Sequel

Ignorance of the law aside ( I understand that obstruction of justice and perjury are a tad abstract for simpletons like Cohen), does Richard Cohen honestly believe that repeating a falsehood ad nauseum makes it true? I really am getting tired of having to remind Cohen and crew that what Libby committed WAS a crime...

Link: Dependable Renegade: If wishes were horses, then wankers would ride.

Will this poor man ever get justice? Under Bush? Stupid question.

Link: spiiderweb™: Judge Rejects Padilla Torture Argument

Oh yeah...This'll wake you up

Lawyers should never ask a southern grandma a question if they aren't prepared for the answer....

(That's just the beginning. What you want to read is over there.)

Link: spiiderweb™: Don' ask...Don't tell

In South Korea, ringtone rage

An angry customer drove his car into the head office of South Korea's leading mobile phone service operator on Tuesday to protest at what he called poor service, police said.

The attack damaged a revolving door in the lobby of SK Telecom's building in central Seoul, Yonhap news agency quoted officers as saying. No one was hurt.

Link: The Raw Story | Driver rams phone company HQ in SKorea protest

OK, let's just skip “spring” and get right on with summer, shall we?

Because this “spring” thing sucks.

A WINTER STORM WATCH FOR A POTENTIALLY HEAVY LATE SEASON SNOW ALSO COVERS SOUTHERN VERMONT UP INTO CENTRAL NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Link: weather.com - Local Severe Weather Alerts Details

When “square” is just not square enough

When the public relations gurus at Quantum Communications could not find a conservative new-media network, they did what any frustrated, information-driven businessperson would do.

“We made one,” said Charlie Gerow, founder of the Harrisburg-based firm.

Today, Gerow and longtime associate Jeff Lord officially began QubeTV.TV -- a unique video, photograph and social network designed especially for conservatives.

That's right! Cube Tube.

I don't know what it is about these stalled conservatives (“Lord wondered how he could honor his father through something new and fresh for the stalled conservative political movement,” reports the rolling-right-along Pittsburgh Tribune-Review), but they've started their own fantasy-news network, their own 'pedia (Wackopedia, I think it's called), and now their own “QubeTV”; next thing you know they'll have their own house of pancakes. If they ever get themselves unstalled maybe they can have their own planet. That would be, come to think of it, pretty neat.

In the meantime, some journalism professor from the University of Florida explains...

“There are many different ways a story can be told,” he said, and creating a niche such as QubeTV can carve holes in the network that need to be filled.

Of course if they'd just cool it a little with the carving there wouldn't be so many holes in the first place, would there?

“Conservatives” (they don't seem to be much into conserving things, do they?) are apparently upset with YouTube because the tubers did some terrible thing to rightie sweetie-pie Michelle Malkin, I don't know what - but Malkin is no wimp (on the suicides of three Guantanamo Bay prisoners: “...the reaction to the suicides should be 'Boo-freakin-hoo.'”) it must have been something really, really mean.

Link: Web media upstart caters to conservatives - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Ummm, Mike? It'd be better to just shut up.

The Indianapolis Star helpfully holds Mike Pence's mouth while Pence inserts his foot.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Mike Pence said Tuesday he didn't mean to suggest that Iraq is as safe as Indiana when he compared a Baghdad market to “a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”...

“I would never have suggested that . . . a Baghdad market is as safe as the Bargersville (Ind.) flea market,” Pence told reporters in a Tuesday call. “I just meant that that's what it looked and felt like....”

Jon Stewart has film of Pence's comment in this Daily Show excerpt.

Which reminds me. I saw a sign on a convenience store while driving home from work this morning, said...

Republican and coffee, 89¢

I think the coffee all by itself, without the Republican, was $1.05.

Link: Back from Iraq, Pence explains market remark | IndyStar.com

And speaking of devices...

...I'm fooling around with a new newswidget in the sidebar. Please do not be alarmed. Do not blow it up. I'm not sure it's going to stay there but, you know, widgets are fun.

It's scarier in the Globe

Reporting this morning on an incident in Newton, MA, a Boston suburb, in which officials evacuated a high school parking lot (evacuated a parking lot?) on discovering four “suspicious-looking” backpacks emblazoned with advertising for a web site, the Globe waxes nostalgic about other anti-terrorisim highlights.

Officials called the incident reminiscent of a publicity stunt that threw Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville into turmoil in January. Roads and bridges were shut down as authorities investigated 38 small light-up devices that turned out to be part of a guerrilla advertising campaign for a Cartoon Network show.

The 38 small light-up devices were, you will remember, on a sign. That would be a single sign. One sign. Which the cops blew up. Lucky for us all, it didn't take them 38 explosions to do it. Just one.

And then there was that other time, when they blew up a suspicious-looking traffic counter.

The parking lot, as far as can be determined, is still intact. The fate of the backpacks is unknown.

Link: Array of school backpacks leads to evacuation - The Boston Globe

And I hope it's a triple-Excedrin eyebrow ringer too

A “back-channel e-mail and paging system” used by Republican operatives has become a White House “headache” now that Democrats are demanding answers, according to a report in Monday's LA Times.

What will it take to put these guys behind bars?

Link: The Raw Story | GOP activist: There is concern about what may be in these e-mails

Become a Dervish!

This is way, way awesome, babe.

The ULC grants religious titles upon request. The ULC has no hierarchical structure, however titles of position and authority are available for the independent new churches and ministries. You will receive a certificate with this title awarded to you by the church.

Link: Universal Life Church - Receive A Religious Title

Duck Flick

Duck Flick, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Where I draw the line

Mind maps. I have enough trouble with outlines - I do not want to mess around with mind maps. All I get from a mind map is lost.

And don't even get me started about rules. There's always somebody who wants to make rules. I'm reading in the NYTimes this morning...

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Right. How fat is that chance?

Here's a little 411 for ya, Bunky. This, the very blog you are reading now, according to the eminent Technorati, is the 859,669th most popular blog in the known universe. (And what does that say about how you spend your time?) So the maximum number of bloggers they are ever going to get to agree to their rules is 859,668. Even fewer, would be my guess.

So gimme a break. Seals of freaking approval? I think not. Codes of conduct? Ain't no way. Not that I'm against conduct, understand - conduct is grand. But I will be responsible for my own, thank you very much. And if it's not just like yours, tough shit. Go stick your seal someplace else.

These guys are probably all into mind maps, I'm betting here.

Link: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs - New York Times

Do your homework

A £2 billion project to answer some of the biggest mysteries of the universe has been delayed by months after scientists building it made basic errors in their mathematical calculations.

The mistakes led to an explosion deep in the tunnel at the Cern particle accelerator complex near Geneva in Switzerland. It lifted a 20-ton magnet off its mountings, filling a tunnel with helium gas and forcing an evacuation.

It means that 24 magnets located all around the 17-mile circular accelerator must now be stripped down and repaired or upgraded. The failure is a huge embarrassment for Fermilab, the American national physics laboratory that built the magnets and the anchor system that secured them to the machine.

It appears Fermilab made elementary mistakes in the design of the magnets and their anchors that made them insecure once the system was operational.

Link:
Big Bang at the atomic lab after scientists get their maths wrong-News-UK-TimesOnline

Ducks on Earth

If at first you don't succeed...

CHICO, Calif. - Elsie McLean thought she might have lost her ball on the par-3, 100-yard fourth hole at Bidwell Park. Instead, the 102-year-old Chico woman became the oldest golfer ever to make a hole-in-one on a regulation course.

Link: 102-year-old Calif. woman hits hole-in-1 - Yahoo! News

So it's Digital Restrictions Management then

If I buy a paperback book in a bookstore, I can read it anywhere I like; when I've finished with it I can give it away to Oxfam, lend it to a friend or sell it on eBay. But if I buy the same book in electronic format, it will come with DRM or licensing restrictions which prohibit all of these things. So let us have no more cant about DRM being about rights. It is in fact about restrictions.

Link: John Naughton: Why Apple wants freedom to cost a little bit more | Business | The Observer

Formerly Muddy Duck

Formerly Muddy Duck, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Hey! Get out of here! I'm trying to take a bath!

What if it's not?

Why do they even bother asking that question? You know the one I mean - after you punch in your numbers at the checkout counter and answer “Are you sure?” and “Are you really, really sure?” they ask you

Is $28.36 OK?

No, damnit, it's not OK. I want it for $14.28. Is that OK?

Dream on.

There's always some geezer, causing trouble

In Bombay...

More than 100 couples were rounded up by police this week for activities that in Western society would be regarded as innocent. In India, where kissing in public is technically illegal, they were deemed to be in “objectionable positions”. They were taken away in vans, fined up to 1,200 rupees for indulging in “obscene” behaviour and forced to endure the humiliation of calling their parents from behind bars....

Ramesh Dhatrak, 65, said: “We have no objection to them sitting and talking but kissing and other things, of which I cannot speak, are not. They can hire a room. This is India, not England.” The police say they are only combating gross indecency but many of those arrested claimed to be doing nothing more than holding hands.

Link:
City where the kissing has to stop-News-World-Asia-TimesOnline