Blogs and Our Evolutionary Heritage

July 1, 2005 - 10:10pm

A few weeks ago, it was widely reported that blogs have failed to replaced radio, TV, and print as the public’s primary source of information. Though the news was hardly a shock, suddenly herds of self-assured pundits used the revelation as proof that blogs were an overblown“fad". With certainty, the pundits proclaimed the it to be the new pet rock. Nevermind that their reports had seriously misinterpreted the data. The media had spoken, and a truth was born.

The arguments (if that's what you call them) of these self-proclaimed soothsayers of technology deserve little to no attention. Anyone who bothers to think beyond the conventional wisdom of the week will see that the forces fueling the rise of the weblog are anything but fashion trends. The nourishing roots of the blogosphere are -- in fact -- older than the very cave paintings which signified the birth of media.

Bush Job Approval Unchanged by War Speech

June 30, 2005 - 10:09pm

It seems that Americans are no longer impressed by Bush's liberal usage of the word "freedom". Despite Tuesday night's speech, Bush's approval ratings continue to fall. According to the latest Zogby poll, the President's approval rating is now at an all-time low of 42 percent. In addition, 2/5th of Americans now support impeaching the president.

We best brace ourselves, for the great elephant will soon come crashing down. As was sung by Jimmy Cliff, the harder they come; the harder they fall; one and all.

Link: The Latest Zogby Poll

Rainbow Parties: Pathological Fantasies of the Sexually Repressed

June 30, 2005 - 9:03pm

File this recent story from the NYTIMES under "WTF?":

As explained in a new paperback novel for teenagers from Simon & Schuster, rainbow parties are group oral sex parties in which each girl wears a different shade of lipstick, and each guy tries to emerge sporting every one of the various colors.

Mr. Nerney, who gives presentations on adolescent risk-taking nationwide, said he first heard about rainbow parties about three years ago in Westchester County. He believes these parties do take place and usually involve middle school girls and older boys.

Mr. Nerney also totally lost his virginity last summer to this really hot chick who lives out of state. I know he's telling the truth, because he has a picture of her!

Spammers Hijack Google's Blogger Service

June 30, 2005 - 12:51pm
Recent reports indicate that at times up to 90% of the pings to services such as Weblogs.com and Technorati are from spam blogs. Others tell stories of not actually being able to find a legitimate blog by using the blog surfing feature at the top of blogger blogs. Sure, the problem isn’t unique to one particular weblog host or piece of blogware, but amongst the crowd of blog fraudsters and thieves one service stands out as the choice of the spamming scum, and that’s Google’s Blogger.

Link:The Blog Herald

The Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

June 30, 2005 - 9:58am
hunk
"On this page, I list wacky, bizarre, surreal and otherwise strange examples of technical documentation, particularly illustration. ...I'm not looking for just bad technical writing--there are plenty of examples of that. I'm looking for the inexplicable, the surreal and the strange." -Darren Barefoot

Link: The Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

Of Wizards, Geeks, and Nets

June 29, 2005 - 6:25pm
"The Net grew like a weed between the cracks in the monolithic steel-and-glass empire of traditional commerce. It was technically obscure, impenetrable, populated by geeks and wizards, loners, misfits. When I started using the Internet, nobody gave a damn about it outside of a few big universities and the military-industrial complex they served. In fact, if you were outside that favored circle, you couldn't even log on. The idea that the Internet would someday constitute the world's largest marketplace would have been laughable if anyone was entertaining such delusions back then..."

.Chris Locke, The Clue Train Manifesto

If Democrats are Wrong on Iraq, What Does that Make Republicans?

June 28, 2005 - 10:19pm

David Corn, the editor of The Nation answers that question with a list of follow up questions:

  • Who claimed there were stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq?
  • Who said there was a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq?
  • Who said the intelligence left "no doubt" that Iraq posed a direct WMD threat to the United States?
  • Who said Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs?
  • Who said "we found the weapons of mass destruction"?
  • Who said "we know" where the WMDs are in Iraq?
  • Who said Saddam Hussein was "dealing with" al Qaeda?
  • Who said the United States would be greeted as liberators?
  • Who said the reconstruction of Iraq would not burden US taxpayers and that it could be self-financed via Iraqi oil revenues?
  • Who said that it would not require hundreds of thousands of US troops to secure Iraq after an invasion?
  • Who said--after the invasion--that there was no insurgency in Iraq?
  • Who said the post-invasion looting was no big deal?
  • Who said that 140,000 Iraqi security forces were trained--when the more accurate number was probably less than one-tenth of that?
  • Who said the insurgency was in its "last throes" when military commanders said it could take years to quash the insurgency?

Who was that again?

Google Earth

June 28, 2005 - 4:16pm

Introducing Google Earth. Its free. And its the coolest web application that I've seen all year.

Link:Google Earth

Mac users, and people with 5+ year old PCs should ignore this post.

Can We Please Oppose the War without Praising Totalitarian Society?

June 28, 2005 - 1:42pm

The World Tribunal on Iraq issued a high profile condemnation of the war on Iraq:

The Bush and Blair administrations blatantly ignored the massive opposition to the war expressed by millions of people around the world. They embarked upon one of the most unjust, immoral, and cowardly wars in history. The Anglo-American occupation of Iraq of the last 27 months has led to the destruction and devastation of the Iraqi state and society. Law and order have broken down completely, resulting in a pervasive lack of human security; the physical infrastructure is in shambles; the health care delivery system is a mess; the education system has ceased to function; there is massive environmental and ecological devastation; and, the cultural and archeological heritage of the Iraqi people has been desecrated.

The press release claims that this decision was reached by a "jury". The word "jury" is dishonest; this so called jury had reached its conclusion long the WTI conference convened.

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