@=

Pilsner Trail

2007-04-26T18:05:00.000-04:00

USA 2004

Britain 2007

France 2007

Only countries with long, solid, liberal democratic traditions such as Mexico and Germany are safe (at least from my arrival).

"I'm gonna do a little back-pass..."

2007-04-16T19:57:00.000-04:00

That Was the Best Playoff Game I've Ever Seen the Sens Play

2007-04-12T18:05:00.001-04:00

I remember games 5 & 6 of the Conference Semis against the Flyers in 2003 being pretty good as well... but I think this was better. This was how I hoped they'd play, but never really believed they could. And they'll get better from here on in.

Also - Crosby was offside on the disallowed (4-2) goal. [Thanks to whoever uploaded this, from wherever I found it... maybe @ hfboards.com]

2007-04-10T08:19:00.000-04:00

A couple of links visited while bored at work this morning (the reading the internet at work thing is... kind of sad, I'd much rather have meaningful work):

http://battleofontario.blogspot.com/ - a Sens blog... that's interesting and well visited. Very glad to have found it. I hope it gets me "focused and serious" for tomorrow night's game, these being the conditions for admission to the "controlled environment"for watching the game on cable. Unfortunatley, I don't believe things will go well tomorrow. Wise words such as "a Bryan Murray playoff team is about as versatile as 50 Cent's acting career" will, in my opinion, be proven once again.

http://nhl.aolsportsblog.com/ - more on hockey, shockingly good... all the playoff previews are worth reading, if only for the links at the end of each piece.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2007/04/info_warfare_na.html - this is one of Robb's stranger entries.

Adventures in the Noosphere

2007-04-05T08:07:00.000-04:00

What "face" does Dr. Hilarius make that drives people insane?

Schwerpunkt

2006-08-12T19:06:00.000-04:00

Excerpt from George Orwell, "You and the Atomic Bomb" (1945)

"It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer to it—gives claws to the weak."

"The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans--even Tibetans--could put up a fight for their independence, sometimes with success. But thereafter every development in military technique has favoured the State as against the individual, and the industrialised country as against the backward one. There are fewer and fewer foci of power. Already, in 1939, there were only five states capable of waging war on the grand scale, and now there are only three—ultimately, perhaps, only two. This trend has been obvious for years, and was pointed out by a few observers even before 1914. The one thing that might reverse it is the discovery of a weapon—or, to put it more broadly, of a method of fighting —not dependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant ."

Rich Is The Life of The Believer

2006-05-15T18:09:00.000-04:00

I loved watching this team play.

At 25, I subscribed to cable TV for the first time just to watch Sens games. This time around the team was easily the class of the league. I'm still too angry or depressed to write at length; I'll just point out that it's sad.

This *was* the premier team of the League's relaunch. People cared about this team in a way that hasn't happened before in Ottawa. These guys blew it, and let lots of people down in a way I'm afraid many of them don't understand. There's more than a few people for whom this was the last game they'll ever see the team play. And too many of these guys didn't seem to care. Sens Suck.

Shooting an Elephant

2005-12-07T18:03:00.000-05:00

I never really quite got in what tone his print stuff was supposed to be read until I saw him on TV, and then realised that he actually expected to be taken seriously, at least some of the time.

Has anyone ever seen Hitchens appear on television and not be visibly drunk?

Ca Me Fait Chier

2005-11-28T23:19:00.000-05:00

I wish these non-confidence votes didn't entail complete disollution of government and an indeterminate period of wholesale rioting and street justice until another strongman comes to power. I still have the gold chips my father melted down when Clark when down in '79, so that should at least afford me a burned-out squat and double rations when the Rock Machine takes over this block.

Do You Remember The First Time?

2005-09-11T16:57:00.000-04:00

FINALLY!!!

2005-07-13T13:24:00.000-04:00

C204 Gravity Distortion Time Displacement Unit

2005-07-13T03:37:00.000-04:00

John Titor is the world's most accomplished time traveller.

The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out Of It's Tree

2005-06-25T03:38:00.000-04:00

"In an unparalleled technical collaboration, a team of artists, writers, engineers, literary scholars, and freethinkers are creating a lifelike, android portrait of one of America's well-known science-fiction writers Philip K Dick..."

...Black and White and Not Pregnant. Very Cute Also!

2005-06-21T22:46:00.000-04:00

The Department of Very Desperate Measures

2005-06-18T21:22:00.000-04:00

I'm particularly fond of the semi-autonomous, hunter-seeker type drones...

Ontological Argument Between the Pope and Derrida Unproductive

2005-06-18T16:19:00.000-04:00

 
"Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out. 
If the "Star Wars" movies are remembered a century from now, it'll be because they are such exact parables for this state of affairs. Young people in other countries will watch them in classrooms as an answer to the question: Whatever became of that big rich country that used to buy the stuff we make? The answer: It went the way of the old Republic."   .

"In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?

2005-06-13T01:30:00.000-04:00

You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when we did fight.

The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.

The second time was a few years later when Gibson came through Seattle on his IDORU tour. Between doing some drive-by signings at local bookstores, he came and devastated my quarter of the city. I had been in a trance for seven days and seven nights and was unaware of these goings-on, but he came to me in a vision and taunted me, and left a message on my cellphone. That evening he was doing a reading at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. Swathed in black, I climbed to the top of the hall, mesmerized his snipers, sliced a hole in the roof using a plasma cutter, let myself into the catwalks above the stage, and then leapt down upon him from forty feet above. But I had forgotten that he had once studied in the same monastery as I, and knew all of my techniques. He rolled away at the last moment. I struck only the lectern, smashing it to kindling. Snatching up one jagged shard of oak I adopted the Mountain Tiger position just as you would expect. He pulled off his wireless mike and began to whirl it around his head. From there, the fight proceeded along predictable lines. As a stalemate developed we began to resort more and more to the use of pure energy, modulated by Red Lotus incantations of the third Sung group, which eventually to the collapse of the building's roof and the loss of eight hundred lives. But as they were only peasants, we did not care.

Our third fight occurred at the Peace Arch on the U.S./Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver. Gibson wished to retire from that sort of lifestyle that required ceaseless training in the martial arts and sleeping outdoors under the rain. He only wished to sit in his garden brushing out novels on rice paper. But honor dictated that he must fight me for a third time first. Of course the Peace Arch did not remain standing for long. Before long my sword arm hung useless at my side. One of my psi blasts kicked up a large divot of earth and rubble, uncovering a silver metallic object, hitherto buried, that seemed to have been crafted by an industrial designer. It was a nitro-veridian device that had been buried there by Sterling. We were able to fly clear before it detonated. The blast caused a seismic rupture that split off a sizable part of Canada and created what we now know as Vancouver Island. This was the last fight between me and Gibson. For both of us, by studying certain ancient prophecies, had independently arrived at the same conclusion, namely that Sterling's professed interest in industrial design was a mere cover for work in superweapons. Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers' conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments."

Thirty Years of Maximum R&B

2005-06-04T19:24:00.000-04:00

"... Conservatism in the United States, for instance, has now become almost entirely a matter of campaigning around the world against regimes it doesn't like. Which seems to me to be a dodge. It doesn't help the fact that [at home in the US] schools teach rubbish, marriage is breaking down, that society is [inaudible]. What I have come to value above all things is liberty and liberty of conscience, without which we don't seem to me to be able to survive. The assault on the liberty of the subject and the citizen under the guise of this war against terror seems to me to be deeply shocking. To find in my lifetime that habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence are under threat and that we're going to be compelled to carry identity cards because we will have to be responsible to the state rather than the other way round - all as consequences of this supposed idealist campaign to bring liberty to Iraq and Afghanistan - seems to me much more important than flanneling away about how you dislike oppression abroad. We can do an awful lot about combating it at home." - Peter Hitchens via JR

2005-05-18T01:53:00.000-04:00

...

Warp & Weft

2005-05-02T11:19:00.000-04:00

"Of course I don't expect a dunce like you to be familiar with the Transnational Progressive phenomenon, even though you've been unwittingly coopted by it, any more than I expect you are politically literate enough to understand the postmodern left's philosophical pedigree of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzche, Heidegger, Marx, Lenin, Marcuse, Foucault, Derrida, et. al., and that this crazy bunch universally despises the enlightenment principals upon which our nation was founded, including reason, individual liberty and its concomitant, personal responsibility, and their economic and political offspring, free market capitalism and democracy. Instead they believe in an all powerful state, the supremacy of the collective and the submission of the individual. They posit that reality is purely subjective, leading to the moral relativism, narcissism, and nihilism that define and plague the modern left. And while Marx may have been pro science and technology, the current postmoderns are more closely aligned philosophically with Rousseau, who despised both as well as civilization itself, and who serves as the source for the common leftist notion of the imagined purity of the pre-civilized man and scourge on the planet that modern civilization is."

Will the Atomic Bomb Ever Be Perfected, and If So, What Becomes of Robert Heinlein?

2005-04-28T01:38:00.000-04:00

After watching an excellent documentary about Philip K. Dick, I did some searching:

The trailer for A Scanner Darkly, which looks really good, however much the "Keanu Moment" makes me uneasy.

This is PKD reading from same.

Real Audio version of the Hour 25 interview from 1977, in 1 & 2 & 3 parts. [Begins by going on, at length, about how he doesn't want to act as literary critic, then comments, at length, on the nature, history, and current-to-'77 state of SF. From there...]

Hour 25 rules! The audio archive contains hours of interviews with well-known SF authours. Listened to a couple of interviews with Kim Stanley Robinson (whose doctoral thesis was about PKD), a lively discussion of global warming, his critique of the SF publishing industry and, mass-market culture... plus the host works at JPL or something, highly recomended!

An oldtime radio version of "Colony".
A copy of "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart In Two Days".

When something as inherently progressive as SF retreats and loses it, what' s left?

Hey! Luciani

2005-04-19T01:05:00.000-04:00

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;

habemus Papam:

Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum,; Dominum Josephum; Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger; qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedicti XVI

Moonlight on Vermont

2005-04-06T16:27:00.000-04:00

Trans humanism

By Francis Fukuyama

For the last several decades, a strange liberation movement has grown within the developed world. Its crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates. They want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints. As “transhumanists” see it, humans must wrest their biological destiny from evolution's blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species.

It is tempting to dismiss transhumanists as some sort of odd cult, nothing more than science fiction taken too seriously: Witness their over-the-top Web sites and recent press releases (“Cyborg Thinkers to Address Humanity's Future,” proclaims one). The plans of some transhumanists to freeze themselves cryogenically in hopes of being revived in a future age seem only to confirm the movement's place on the intellectual fringe.

But is the fundamental tenet of transhumanism—that we will someday use biotechnology to make ourselves stronger, smarter, less prone to violence, and longer-lived—really so outlandish? Transhumanism of a sort is implicit in much of the research agenda of contemporary biomedicine. The new procedures and technologies emerging from research laboratories and hospitals—whether mood-altering drugs, substances to boost muscle mass or selectively erase memory, prenatal genetic screening, or gene therapy—can as easily be used to “enhance” the species as to ease or ameliorate illness.

Although the rapid advances in biotechnology often leave us vaguely uncomfortable, the intellectual or moral threat they represent is not always easy to identify. The human race, after all, is a pretty sorry mess, with our stubborn diseases, physical limitations, and short lives. Throw in humanity's jealousies, violence, and constant anxieties, and the transhumanist project begins to look downright reasonable. If it were technologically possible, why wouldn't we want to transcend our current species? The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnology's tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.

The first victim of transhumanism might be equality. The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal,” and the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human. Women and blacks did not make the cut in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned the declaration. Slowly and painfully, advanced societies have realized that simply being human entitles a person to political and legal equality. In effect, we have drawn a red line around the human being and said that it is sacrosanct.

Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project. If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the world's poorest countries—for whom biotechnology's marvels likely will be out of reach—and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.

Transhumanism's advocates think they understand what constitutes a good human being, and they are happy to leave behind the limited, mortal, natural beings they see around them in favor of something better. But do they really comprehend ultimate human goods? For all our obvious faults, we humans are miraculously complex products of a long evolutionary process—products whose whole is much more than the sum of our parts. Our good characteristics are intimately connected to our bad ones: If we weren't violent and aggressive, we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves; if we didn't have feelings of exclusivity, we wouldn't be loyal to those close to us; if we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love. Even our mortality plays a critical function in allowing our species as a whole to survive and adapt (and transhumanists are just about the last group I'd like to see live forever). Modifying any one of our key characteristics inevitably entails modifying a complex, interlinked package of traits, and we will never be able to anticipate the ultimate outcome.

Nobody knows what technological possibilities will emerge for human self-modification. But we can already see the stirrings of Promethean desires in how we prescribe drugs to alter the behavior and personalities of our children. The environmental movement has taught us humility and respect for the integrity of nonhuman nature. We need a similar humility concerning our human nature. If we do not develop it soon, we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls.

Francis Fukuyama is professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).

Street Fighting Man

2005-04-04T16:00:00.000-04:00

Tariq Ali on Enablers of Empire:

...add to that what has happened to the academy after the collapse of the Communist world: the popularity of Postmodernism, of Cultural Studies... all of which denigrate the study and pursuit of history as a grand narrative. And I think these people are now finding the resurgence of the Empire, and the fact that Bush and his Neo-cons are not scared of parading themselves before the world and saying: "We do this because We can, and We do this because We have to, and it suits Our interests, and that is What Matters". So the Bush Administration coming so nakedly, you know, dropping all of it's clothes and saying: "This is the Empire, naked and strong, love it or hate it, We are here to stay". And this is providing problems for that wing of the academy which had thought it could live in it's own world.

It wanted to be critical, but it was... also desired not to get involved in big debates: politics, history, these were Old Things; they were on to New Things, they would discuss tiny little fragments, tiny little episodes, they would discuss gender, they would discuss identity: these things were far more important. History has shown this is not the case, and that the academy has to become more critical if it's going to move forward...

Double Donuts Is Dead!

2005-03-30T03:25:00.000-05:00

I saw it with my own eyes - doors closed and windows papered over; the end of a St. Catherine Street institution, the unbelievable existence of Double Donuts (Chomedey & du Fort) is at an end.

Metal Mickey

2005-03-17T23:52:00.000-05:00

Enlightened Motorist

2005-03-12T20:11:00.000-05:00

"He [Axl Rose] accompanied Buckethead on a jaunt to Disneyland when the guitarist was drifting toward quitting, several people involved recalled; then Buckethead announced he would be more comfortable working inside a chicken coop, so one was built for him in the studio, from wood planks and chicken wire."

Amazing.

When Putsch Comes To Shove

2005-03-10T01:40:00.000-05:00

Regarding Hillary Clinton's running/winning in 2008, well, every nation deserves the government it has. Iraq was involved, to some measure, in the Oklahoma City bombing. President Clinton denied any Middle Eastern involvement and officially pinned all blame on Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, setting the stage for far worse attacks in the years to come. Hillary Clinton had to know this. If America's voters elect her to the presidency, they will indeed deserve what they get.

The Quantity Theory of Insanity

2005-03-02T04:16:00.000-05:00

Surely, the thinking behind this is to break some of the small market teams, and thus contract the league. Everyone except the player's union knows the league needs contraction; this is an evil yet logical way to go about it.

Starless And Bible Black

2005-02-27T16:14:00.000-05:00

Beef and Guinness Stew

What You'll Need:
~ Two Pounds Stewing Beef
~ 1/2 Pound Salt Reduced Bacon
~ 1 Pound Cooking Onions
~ 2 Pounds Carrots
~ 4 Cloves of Garlic
4 Pints of Guinness (~ 2 for the Stew, the rest for the cook, as this takes a rather long time, like, all day)
More Guinness to drink with the meal
Some water
A loaf of nice crusty bread
Some Flour
Some Black Pepper
Some Salt
Some Garlic Powder
2 Bay Leaves
Small Amount of Butter
Some Olive Oil
A Couple of Sprigs of Parsley

Preparation & Cooking:

Peel and coarsely chop onions and carrots, put them into seperate bowls.
Peel garlic cloves, set aside
Prepare flour mixture to coat beef cubes: Pour flour into a large mixing bowl. Mix in garlic powder, salt & pepper - mix this around for a while. Set aside.
Cut beef into slightly larger than bite-sized cubes.
Toss beef into your flour-bowl, coat chunks with flour - just enough to cover, shaking off excess.
Heat butter & oil in a *large* pan. Add in garlic, crushed, and bay leaf. Cook over low heat for a couple of minutes. Add onions. Cook until onions are clear and just very slightly browned around the edges. When cooked, put them back in the bowl
Fry the bacon, when cooked, set aside on a plate, covered in paper towel to soak up excess fat.
Add crushed garlic cloves and the other bay leaf to the fat. cook for about a minute. Brown beef in batches in the bacon fat. Remove to a plate or bowl, keep warm.
If there's tonnes and tonnes of excess fat, pour some off.
Deglaze the pan with a pint of Guinness.
Throw everything in the pan, mix around a bit.
Add water & more Guinness until everyhing is covered. Be careful with the Guinness to water ratio - too much (Guinness) will result in a bitter, unpleasant meal, too little and it'll be weak, and thus a waste. Guinness is the heart of the stew, practice makes the balance right. Bear this in mind.
Stew, uncovered over low heat, stirring occaisonally until done: at least 3 hours। You want to bring it to a boil quickly for half a minute, then reduce over a very, very slow boil. Also, the sauce is meant to be ridiculously thick, when the cooking nears its end, stir frequently to avoid burning.
Addendum - (March 2007) - adding liquid, beef flavoured BOVRIL made this the best thing that three people had eaten in a very long time.
[The secret ingredient: a couple of small spoonfuls of Marmite]
Add parsley as garnish
Serve with slices of bread & more Guinness to drink with the meal
Eat
Clean Up
Proceed to Port & Cigars

Feeds Four Hungry People

Addendum:

If you like, remove the bacon & just cook the beef in butter and olive oil mix.
The beef can be substituted for lamb, if you so desire.
Celery can be added to the stew.
I avoid potatoes in the stew itself due to the tendency of one chunk of one bad potato to ruin the whole deal. Potatoes make an excellent side for this dish.
I don't usually use precise measurements of time or ingredients, just whatever looks right. Any reasonably experienced cook should have no problem with this recipe, just think about how to do it, and it'll turn out great.
Cooking this in some kind of slow-cooker (crock pot) would be an excellent idea. (Addendum - March - suprisingly, this makes the stew very weak and un-delicious. Also, Joel & I had to cook the thing for 28 hours to get rid of all the liquid. DO NOT use this recipe for slow cookers)
Can be used as filling for a pie. This is insane, and unimaginably delicious. (Addendum - March 2007 - YES).

The Dose Makes the Poison

2005-02-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

Cicero's De Natura Deorum: "...the gods are the gods. Just don't fuck with them. None of what they do makes much sense. Who cares. You want the rain to come or not?". Interesting reading, but then again, I like Cicero.

BBC Radio Four continues to amaze. A weekly ritual, downloading In Our Time - this week's topic is Alchemy (Science ou Charlatanisme, indeed) - led to my screwing around with the site for a while. I found a series of Lectures given by Wole Soyinka, The Climate of Fear, which is predictably awesome. The files are in RealAudio format, so you'll need RealAlternative, unless you're using a Mac, then you're on your own (and probably OK anyway). There's enough good stuff on there to prove clichés: something for everyone.

Hilarious Query Letters pitched to someone in Hollywood, written up in blog form.

More very dry, very terrifying reading - US financial collapse? For the last 60 years or so, they've had the money and the guns. Soon, they'll only have the guns. The Bank of Korea is already moving away from the Dollar... the cork's out of the bottle.

Wacky opinion piece from the Telegraph that made me laugh out loud. Frightening opinion piece from the Herald-Tribune which did not. Just wait for Bird Flu, a Dark Winter? Insane opinion piece (on the same topic) from web site run by conspiracy theorist, misogynist Welfare-Liberterians. What does any of this have to do with "Father's Rights"?

Anyone who hasn't seen the recent Fifth Estate programme Sticks and Stones should do so. Two priceless moments:

Bill O'Reilly - no surpises, but it's amusing nonetheless
Ann Coulter - wondering how much coke this hag puts away

This is the infamous University of Maryland report showing what happens to your brain on Fox News. Rogers will be picking it up soon, and I'll spend hours transfixed by the insanity (yes, it's really that bad).

A recent article in the Sunday Times, (I've lnked to The Australian's version since Rupert Murdoch won't make me pay to read it's articles online) was the wildly improbable tale of an Iraqi sniper who learned his craft from Playstation and watching JFK. I'd like this to be true. A quote:

"Later, the sheiks treated him to a large lunch where Pepsi flowed like water."

[It seems the article's been removed from their server - this link should work]

A Bird In the Hand

2005-02-22T11:11:00.000-05:00

This is the last "bottle list" I made as a "Packer" at Loeb Glebe. More than six years, and sadly my handwriting has not improved.

This guy is fucking awesome! Anything that makes Jack Chick make more comics is a good thing. An exhaustive Chick Parody Archive.

My last mention of Eklund. I'm not sure this even merits comment, except as another example of "bloggers" changing the way news is reported or created, depending on your level of cynicism.

This is the archive of Hunter S. Thompson's ESPN column, Hey Rube.

For those of you who need your hockey fix, because, let's face it: it's OVER folks, Eastside Hockey Manager has been a free favourite of mine for a couple of years now, addictive and endlessly customisable, it comes highly recommended.

One of God's Own Prototypes...

2005-02-21T00:24:00.000-05:00

"We are living in dangerously weird times now..."

Outdoor Miner

2005-02-19T12:34:00.000-05:00

The cyberpunk dystopia has never been easier to achieve.

A note on the image - some have seen it before, some (who are doubtless not reading this space) will have only seen a recent photocopy... here it is in digital form, preserved for all time. I found the letter under a park bench in Kingston, Ontario near the end of September, 2001. It's written on the reverse of a "City of Kingston, Department of Social Services" application for social housing. It's also hilarious - note creative misorthography throughout.

"Dokaka is the Japanese beatbox artist whose acapella remakes of well-known songs have earned him a worldwide fan base.No War,but Music!!"

Sugar Shit Sharp

2005-02-17T21:35:00.000-05:00

- Or -
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
-Or-
FUCK!! FUCK!! DOUBLE FUCK!!

Robert Fisk's website: full of interesting articles.

Here's an article from Forbes magazine, condemning Gary Bettman, and I couldn't agree more. The man's tenure as NHL comissioner has been an unmitigated disaster, and the blame for the season's cancellelation falls squarely on his shoulders. "A fish rots from the head on down..."

Which brings us to this:

An awful choice for US intelligence chief, Negroponte has, for the past year or so, been Viceroy of Iraq, following a shocking career as a back room weasel and diplomatic "fixer". This is not good news.

Just browse this site for half an hour. I heard David Ray Griffin the radio recently, and he sounded perfectly sane and made reasonable arguments. Just another American political scandal with terrifying global political ramifications... fuckin' shit's worse than even I imagined.

Cool! Isn't this just how the First World War started? And the Second?

Nicely done, George. All we need now is North Korea to get in on the act, and we can have an honest to god transglobal war with three seperate enemies.

After the worst day, ending the worst week I've had in almost two years, there's only one thing to do:

Ace of Spades

(Klimister - Clarke - Taylor)

If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man
You win some, lose some, it's all the same to me
The pleasure is to play, it makes no difference what you say
I don't share your greed
The only card I need is
The Ace of Spades
The Ace of Spades
Playing for the high one, dicing with the devil
Going with the flow, it's all a game to me
Seven or eleven, snake eyes watchin' you
Double up or quit, double stakes or split
The Ace of Spades
The Ace of Spades
You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools
But that's the way I like it baby, I don't wanna live forever
And don't forget the Joker
Pushing up the ante, I know you wanna see me
Read'em and weep, the dead man's hand again
I see it in your eyes, take one look and die
The only thing you see, You know it's gonna be
The Ace of Spades
The Ace of Spades

2005-02-16T17:07:00.000-05:00

For Whom the Bell Tolls
John Donne (1624)

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Rave Reviews for @=

2005-02-13T21:53:00.000-05:00

"Your own blacknus is the heavs" - Ellis Island, Jr. (no relation).

"I find your photo very appealing and would like to get to know you better" - cheesemaster3000

"I like your site and i would like to know how you got the pictures on your site..." - ryan francis

"Fuck You!" - anonymous (posted by "Captain Obvious, King of the Wankers" to @= at 2/14/05 01:42:55 AM)

"hatch, whats going on man?....yikes/...." - a

"FOCUS MAN!" - Eric Carlson, Revolutionary

"What the hell is that?!" - Jigger

"After a long day of running from the hordes of assholes and their asshole kids trying to steal his pot of gold and lucky charms, Steve decided that it's better to be a short Irishmen with a pint to console him, than an Irishman locked into his house with nothing but reruns of stereotypical Irish with Scottish mixed in, type movies." - lynn

Third Uncle

2005-02-13T19:23:00.000-05:00

"We're probably living at the end of civilization." - I like this guy.

Q: What do you call a can of pop?
A: Even more proof that Red State America is full of deeply stupid people.

More about regional dialects, for the United States, and for Canada. I, of course, speak God's Own Tongue, or the Eastern Ontario dialect, sadly without even a hint of Valley Twang. My favourite Montréalism, "All-Dressed" ("Combination") Pizza, features promimently.
You can also hear the many quaint and curious ways foreigners use; vain attempts at fair language.

An American citizenship test, which is absurdly simple. I defy anyone to get less than 10/10.

Some interesting stuff from the Christian Science Monitor, which despite it's often kooky editorials, is a fine source of news:

A slideshow of pictures from Fallujah. What the fuck is going on over there?
An article about Valentine's Day, something I seem to be in no danger of having to worry about, ever...
Bloggers in Iran, and what they've got to say about being next on the hit list.
A take on whatever's not going on in the world of the NHL.
Something I'd forgotten was probably going to happen this year...

Fly On The Wall

2005-02-11T00:47:00.000-05:00

It seems experimental electronic music goes back a lot futher than I knew:

http://www.epc.buffalo.edu/sound/mp3/sp/artist_tellus/05_russolo.mp3
http://www.epc.buffalo.edu/sound/mp3/sp/balla_giacomo/balla_macchina.mp3

Essays and articles relating to this:

In case anyone's concerned, the diary of poor and bizzarre service at the Tim Horton's below the offce continues...

"Schnappi das kleine Krokodil" - a young girl's song about a small crocodile by the name of "Snappy"... the site seems to be written in Flemish.