The ScratchPad

May 10, 2005 - 11:07pm

This site is one of my favorite timewasters. Its called "The Scratch Pad"... Basically, the idea is that you can draw on a page, and so can anyone else, the results are spontanious, and often Picasso-esque, as is seen below from one of my sessions:

Existentialism is a Humanism

May 10, 2005 - 9:02pm

sartreBy Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)

My purpose here is to offer a defense of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it.

First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.

From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to  the Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity — upon the Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to himself; a position from which it is impossible to  regain solidarity with other men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito.

Schwarzenegger does not want to destroy the moon

May 10, 2005 - 2:19pm

From IOL (South Africa):

In one of the stranger mea culpas from a major US news outlet in recent years, the commentator, Joe Scarborough, a former congressman, acknowledged on Friday that the governor's purported lunar outburst on the nationally syndicated radio show of Howard Stern was actually a spoof.Citing a British newspaper, Scarborough had quoted Schwarzenegger on the air as saying: "If we get rid of the moon, women, those menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get (pre-menstrual syndrome). They will stop bitching and whining."Scarborough chided Schwarzenegger for insensitivity, saying: "Hey, governor, way to make 50 percent of California's voting population turn frigid towards you."I don't know how it works in Austria, but let me tell you something, friend. Jokes about such matters, (are) not laughing subjects to women in America."It turned out the remarks Scarborough attributed to the Austrian-born governor were actually made by a Schwarzenegger impersonator who regularly appears on Stern's show as part of a running call-in gag.

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’

May 9, 2005 - 2:15pm

The Sunday Times (UK) seeems to tell a different story about the recent capture of al Qaeda's third in command:

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

...Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

One American official tried to explain the absence of al-Libbi’s name on the wanted list by saying: “We did not want him to know he was wanted.” [read full story]

Frontline: Memory of the Camps

May 8, 2005 - 6:59pm

FRONTLINE: Memory of the Camps [Watch Online]

From PBS WEBSITE: Sixty years ago, in the spring of 1945, Allied forces liberating Europe found evidence of atrocities which have tortured the world's conscience ever since. As the troops entered the German concentration camps, they made a systematic film record of what they saw. Work began in the summer of 1945 on the documentary, but the film was left unfinished. FRONTLINE found it stored in a vault of London's Imperial War Museum and, in 1985, broadcast it for the first time using the title the Imperial War Museum gave it, "Memory of the Camps."

FRONTLINE took the film, added the script and asked the late British actor, Trevor Howard, to record it. The aim was to present the film unedited, as close as possible to what the producers intended in 1945.

"Memory of the Camps" includes scenes from Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps whose names are not as well known. Some of the horrors documented took place literally moments before the Allied troops arrived, as the Germans hurried to cover the evidence of what they had done.

Twenty years after its first broadcast on FRONTLINE, "Memory of the Camps" remains one of the most definitive and unforgettable records of the 20th century's darkest hour.

Has Google Passed Out?

May 7, 2005 - 3:58pm
I didn't even know it was possible, but google appears to have temporarily died... What an altogether odd quasi-noteworthy-like event...

The Internet: 30 years in the Making

May 6, 2005 - 10:04pm

"Since its inception almost 30 years ago, the internet has been transformed from a primitive device for sharing thoughts and ideas, into a massive network where people pay to connect and read advertisements they don't want, while calling each other 'asshats'."

-The Lemon: The History of the Internet

Go to Hell, John Kerry

May 6, 2005 - 7:25pm

John "the ketchup kid" Kerry criticized the Massachusetts Democratic Party's expected approval to support same-sex marriage.“I think it’s a mistake,” Kerry said. “I think it’s the wrong thing, and I’m not sure it reflects the broad view of the Democratic Party in our state.”

Terrance from Republic of T summed up my reaction to this news best: "Screw you. You squareheaded, Herman-Munster-looking, bigot-pandering loser."

Google's Trifecta of Web Domination Nearly Complete

May 5, 2005 - 5:24pm

"If knowledge is power, then the Google Web Accelerator completes the trifecta of web domination:

  • Through its continued dominance in search, Google knows what people are looking for.
  • Through the Urchin acquisition, they know what people are buying and how they are converting.
  • Through the GWA, Google knows where people are going on the web.

If adoption of each product is successful (and its well on its way), Google will soon have the most comprehensive, complete understanding of user behavior the Internet Economy has ever seen...the modern-day successor to the Roman Empire."

-Prashant Desai quoted in SearchViews

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