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I apologize to those who have found this site looking for solutions to their companion's pain and suffering.
comment posted at 6:35 PM on Feb-23-06

The Blog of Captain Jean-Luc Picard The Diary of a Harassed Starfleet Officer in the 24th Century of the Star Trek of Life. Read the trials of tribulations of the most pompous Captain in the Fleet. Including Borg Recruitment, Worf being stalked, and Equal Pay for Holograms. Written as dryly as Patrick Stewart acts.
comment posted at 5:10 AM on Feb-23-06

Mad Mullah Rave Party Sensation. via The Religious Policeman.
comment posted at 1:11 PM on Feb-22-06

Vernon Shoo-Ins Shoo Outsiders. A little town in which 44,000 work, but only 93 live, fights against holding its first election in decades. [bugmenot for the LA Times]
comment posted at 3:05 PM on Feb-13-06

paved prophets house, put up a parking lot.. “What makes this demolition worse is the fact that the home of the Prophet is to make way for a parking lot, two 50-storey hotel towers and seven 35-storey apartment blocks; a project known as the Jabal Omar Scheme, all within a stone’s throw of the Grand Mosque. Yet despite this outrage, not a single Muslim country, no ayatollah, no mufti, no king, not even a Muslim Canadian imam has dared utter a word in protest. Such is the power of Saudi influence on the Muslim narrative.”
comment posted at 9:12 AM on Feb-12-06

We could bomb Iran. But we wouldn't really know what to hit because we don't know enough about Iran's nuclear program. If the Russians don't work something out, maybe helping Iran is the best way to figure out what they have and to stop them from getting the bomb.
comment posted at 7:17 AM on Feb-10-06

Anybody tried Songbird? A preview release of the "iTunes-killer" launched today. Interview with development team leader on Boing Boing. Works great ... but I see no iPod support.
comment posted at 10:39 AM on Feb-8-06

Oh, the irony. This season of Survivor (premiering tonight!), CBS will offer $1.99 video downloads of each episode on its own site, bypassing middlemen such as iTunes and Google Video. The catch? Your download "survives" only 24 hours after you buy it. Remember how well DIVX did?
comment posted at 1:09 PM on Feb-2-06

Western Union discontinues telegraph services. Truly, the end of an era.
comment posted at 10:35 AM on Feb-1-06

"In the criminal justice system, you're considered especially gorgeous!" is just one of the ten Law & Order: SVU themed Valentine's Day cards made by Brandon Bird. [via Gothamist]
comment posted at 12:34 PM on Jan-31-06

http://www.vahdet.com.tr/filistin/foto/arsiv1/foto301.html Here is a turkish photographer's images of Palestine in its everyday violent nature. Building demolitions by Israeli army, shooting innocent kids by Israeli soldiers, missiles and bombings by a westernized modern army against underdeveloped colonized people, and the occasional suicide bombings by HAMAS supporters, they are well documented in this fascinating piece. Most north americans don't have access to images like these. it's great to look at this photo diary. even if you're an ardent Zionist, these pictures will cause a dent in your ideological certainty. To see all the pictures, change the njumber in the html file name (foto301.html) to 302.html and so forth until "foto406.html" theres 105 pages of thumbnails and pictures. enjoy.... well.
comment posted at 11:52 AM on Jan-29-06

Tagebach in Bildern this very unboastful website provides a wonderful detailed view on everydays observations. Nothing spectacular you could say, but with a huge knowledge of species (zoological and botanical) she introduces us into the small but remarkable miracles of nature which surround us everywhere. This little website teaches us to train our more precise look onto nature! .
comment posted at 10:23 AM on Jan-29-06

A fake stone packed with sophisticated British spy devices sparks a UK / Russian controversy. More articles via Google News
comment posted at 6:15 PM on Jan-26-06
comment posted at 6:48 PM on Jan-26-06
comment posted at 6:48 PM on Jan-26-06

Opera Mini is now available worldwide, for free. A quality web browser for your Java enabled cellphone.
comment posted at 12:05 PM on Jan-24-06

Nine rules for trolling - David Pogue has advice on how to troll effectively. (NY Times site requires that you accept its cookies)
comment posted at 5:20 AM on Jan-22-06

Last night, in the middle of the leaders debate (transcript, realmedia) Paul Martin announced a plan to amend the Canadian Constitution to remove Parliament's ability to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause.<more inside>
comment posted at 7:56 PM on Jan-10-06

Google buys a 5% stake in AOL. For ... one billion dollars.
comment posted at 9:40 AM on Dec-17-05

An Atheist Manifesto. Another remarkable Truthdig article. Please read the entire feature before commenting on it, as the author addresses most of the usual apologetic arguments. Some of my favorite lines:
Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.
...a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma.
Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.
Also, kindly try to refrain from the tired old argument, "atheism is just another religion." It's disingenuous and intellectually dishonest/lazy.
comment posted at 2:54 PM on Dec-11-05
comment posted at 2:57 PM on Dec-11-05
comment posted at 2:59 PM on Dec-11-05
comment posted at 3:23 PM on Dec-11-05
comment posted at 3:37 PM on Dec-11-05

The End of Porn? The Ashcroft/Gonzales Justice Department has made obscenity prosecutions a top priority, with 60 prosecutions in the first four years of the Bush administration (compared to four for the entire eight years of the Clinton administration). Anti-porn advocates were dismayed in January when a federal judge in Pittsburgh, citing dicta on sexual liberty in the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision, dismissed an indictment in a closely-watched case. Today, however, the Third Circuit reversed, rejecting the defendant's arguments that (1) Lawrence protected their liberty interest in distributing pornographic material, and (2) earlier Supreme Court obscenity precedent should be revisited in light of the increased prevalence of Internet transmission. The result, undoubtedly, will be a new wave of prosecutions not seen since the Supreme Court set limits on First-Amendment based protections in the 1970s.
comment posted at 1:43 PM on Dec-8-05

sony tries counter culture to sell playstations - and gets beat down
or was it all part of the plan?
comment posted at 8:06 AM on Dec-8-05

Does the First Amendment matter on campus? A column in the Winthrop University (SC) student newspaper comparing today's racial climate for whites to the oppression blacks faced before the Civil Rights movement has caused quite a stir south of the Mason -Dixon line. The column by Christine Byington, who is biracial, criticized blacks who complain about the University. She eventually had to withdraw from school due to overwhelming pressure. Should she have known better than to write about a very touchy situation?
comment posted at 7:01 AM on Nov-30-05

"'We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don't want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears'.... [Police] officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats." While there have been no specific threats of terrorism against Miami, "'[t]his is an in-your-face type of strategy. It's letting the terrorists know we are out there,' [Deputy Police Chief Frank] Fernandez said."
comment posted at 5:39 PM on Nov-28-05

Ignatieff for Canada. The Liberals just lost a non-confidence vote and elections are set for January. In Etobicoke, Ontario, Michael Ignatieff, Harvard Professor of Human Rights and Author is set to run. Will this be the opening moves of a new intellectual Prime Minister? How will his views on humanitarian intervention and the idea of a lesser evil play out?
comment posted at 4:49 PM on Nov-28-05
comment posted at 4:49 PM on Nov-28-05

The Day the Sea Came. The stories of six people caught up in last December's tsunami.

Maisara did not look back. She could hear an odd, ever-louder roar. But she never actually saw what she was running from. Only Anis, looking over her mother's left shoulder, beheld the oncoming water. "Mama, what is that?" the little girl kept yelling.

I know, it's the Times, it's long, it's old news, but it's absolutely riveting. Great reporting by Barry Bearak, and for this you need a reporter, not a novelist, because you can't make this stuff up. Part 1 (printer-friendly), Part 2 (printer), Part 3 (printer), Part 4 (printer).
comment posted at 5:47 PM on Nov-27-05

I, for one, welcome our... Oh, the hell with it. Canadians want to start diplomatic relations with aliens.
comment posted at 3:43 PM on Nov-25-05

First they take Ugarte and then she walks in. On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether people must show "papers" whenever police demand them. Unlike Dudley Hiibel (discussed on mefi last year) who had (arguably) caused a disturbance meriting police attention, Deb was just riding the bus when she was "welcomed" to the Denver Federal Center.
comment posted at 2:16 PM on Nov-25-05
comment posted at 4:11 PM on Nov-25-05

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives. This list features my personal pick of the "best of the best."
comment posted at 2:50 PM on Nov-25-05

Folder Share is an online service that synchronizes multiple pcs, or just specific folders in multiple pcs, by creating a localized p2p network. You could use it, for example, to keep your work & home mp3 collections identical. Until recently, the service cost $50/year, thanks to corporate largesse (and doubtless, evil intentions on the part of the new owner, Microsoft), it's now free. Unless you place some value on not letting Microsoft catalog what's on your PC.
comment posted at 3:40 PM on Nov-21-05

In a landmark decision that is believed to have wide-ranging implications for trademark law, the Supreme Court of Canada today dismissed Lego's claim against Montreal-based rival Mega Bloks.
comment posted at 10:34 AM on Nov-17-05

Holy Crab! We're several thousand feet down, where the pressure is about 3300 psi. The pressure inside that pipe? About zero. The crab? A goner.
comment posted at 12:21 PM on Nov-2-05

The end of all other anonymous proxies? The only disadvantage I found - it's one-time login, if you disconnect, next time you'll have to get another user/pass pair. But vpnsecurity.org is charging $40 monthly...
P.S. Correct link is https://vpn.google.com/getpass/ but I couldn't use https in URL field.
comment posted at 4:41 AM on Oct-25-05

Sheehan arrested for... protesting. Will the ACLU please, PLEASE take this case up to the highest courts in the land. Enough with the police intimidation and ritual abuse of power.
comment posted at 11:21 AM on Sep-26-05

I was googling for 'breaking up' and I got this , what else does a geek do when the unthinkable happens ? "Walk up and loop the leash around the back loin of the dog by either threading the leash through the handle or use the clip", argh my head. I miss her, I am such a lonely geek that I post here... life sucks
comment posted at 7:19 AM on Sep-18-05

The Matrix shatters before the eyes of the nation (sorry, WMP link) -- and on Fox News! For those old enough to remember, it's so significant that Geraldo Rivera says of conditions in the New Orleans Convention Center, "it's like Willowbrook in there." (Rivera became famous in 1972 by exposing the horrendous conditions in a home for the mentally retarded called Willowbrook; finally, after decades of degrading himself, he remembers what his job is.) And Slate's Jack Shafer on "the rebellion of the talking heads" -- the refusal of reporters on the ground in New Orleans to regurgitate the official spin. [via TalkLeft]
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Sep-3-05
comment posted at 9:57 AM on Sep-3-05

Modern music software, by and large, is fantastic. It lets musicians create sequences of staggering complexity at the drop of a hat, work simultaneously and easily with both MIDI and digital data, and instantly subject audio to the kind of torturous manipulation that would have taken hours, or even days, with a razorblade and tape.

But do you ever really covet software in the same way that you covet hardware? Do you regard your music program with the same affection as your Moog Rogue or Fender Strat? Can something which exists only in a computer's virtual environment inspire the same pride of ownership as, say, that small silver box called a TB303 Bassline? If it's called Rebirth, maybe it can...

And now it lives again... for free
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Sep-1-05

Drowning New Orleans [2001]A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city By Mark Fischetti
comment posted at 5:56 AM on Sep-1-05

Rapex, the anti-rape female condom (Reuters link)
The invention of a South African woman, the rapex anti-rape female condom (worn like a tampon) has sharp barbs in it that lock into the rapist's penis and need to be removed surgically which makes it pretty easy to notify the police. Opponents are, understandably, concerned about an escalation of violence against the rape victim.
Rape statistics are sobering and saddening with some estimates that women, children and even babies are raped every 26 seconds in South Africa though Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, has refuted the findings. Virgins are highly sought for rape as there is an urban myth that sex with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS.
comment posted at 2:58 PM on Aug-31-05
comment posted at 3:07 PM on Aug-31-05
comment posted at 3:25 PM on Aug-31-05

Black people loot, white people borrow. Racist photo captions by Yahoo News/AP illuminate more than Katrina's aftermath. If these pictures are taken down, there are mirrors right here.
comment posted at 8:17 PM on Aug-30-05

Free Opera serial numbers. Want to try a new browser? For their 10th birthday, Opera is giving away free serial numbers for their web browser to anyone who registers. The codes are available today (August 30, 2005) only and remove the annoying ad bar. Opera is available for all major (and many minor) operating systems. You can learn more about the browser's features (like a built in BitTorrent client) or just go straight to the download page so you have somewhere to put that new registration code.
comment posted at 9:54 AM on Aug-30-05