2005-06-30 01:15:37 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
2005-06-29 01:17:15 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
2005-06-28 01:16:37 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
2005-06-26 01:16:18 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
Never one to avoid peer pressure, here’s my “5 by 5”.
I have a nasty completist streak: if I have, say, 2 or 3 CDs by a group or books by an author, I feel pretty compelled to have everything. So I end up with 70 Depeche Mode CDs or 22 of the 23 Gardner Dozois SF annuals (and, haven’t gotten that close, the $350 required to get Volume 1 is starting to sound reasonable).
2005-06-25 17:40:22 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Personal
Updating my previous list of Pan version names:
2005-06-25 17:40:22 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Software
2005-06-25 01:15:13 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
2005-06-24 01:18:09 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
Skipping lightly past torture, accusations of un-americanism against those against torture, and apologies for being against torture — not because they don’t depress me, but because I don’t know even where to begin…
I’m not surprised, but I am terribly disappointed. Under this decision, “projected higher tax revenue” qualifies as a “public use” sufficient to allow the state to force you to sell your land. Does Joe Connected want to buy your house, but you don’t want to sell? If he can convince his friends on the city council that he’ll repaint and pay $5/year more in property taxes than you do, they can force you to sell.
Some people seem surprised by the breakdown here — Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist in the minority, for the homeowner who didn’t want to sell — but I’m not. This is the kind of decision you get when you’re willing to stretch enabling clauses well past any logical limit.
Under these changes, anyone “who inserts on a computer site or service a digital image of, or otherwise manages the
sexually explicit content of a computer site or service that contains a visual depiction of an actual human being engaged in actual sexually explicit conduct,” is a “secondary producer” of that material, and thus must have complete records on everyone involved in such depiction. Every pornblogger in the US now needs an office open 20 hours a week, with paper files giving real names & addresses of every model anywhere on their site.
This is all to prevent child pornography, by the way. How will these records prevent child porn? Good question. People intending to produce child porn are already breaking the law and know it. People not intending to already get ID from models (and did even before the original 2257 regs), and passing it all the way down the foodchain won’t help. Oh, and fake drivers’ licenses will still get through, in those few cases of minors trying to be in porn (such as Traci Lords).
Rick Jore was a Constitution Party candidate for the Monta House of Representatives; according to the final tally by the local election board, the race was a tie between Jore and the Democratic candidate. The state Supreme Court eventually decided that 5 ballots that had two circles filled in, one of which was crossed out, didn’t express any voter intent and were thus invalid.
The district court has now decided that not only did Jore lose the election, he’s responsible for $15,000 in legal bills for the winning side. Even though there’s no allegation he did anything wrong, even though he didn’t file suit.
The penalty for almost winning elections is getting pretty high, at least for third-party candidates.
In which The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia finds no reason to suspect bias on the part of the Federal Elections Commission (by law, half Democratic and half Republican) when they saw no reason to suspect that the Commission on Presidential Debates “endorsed, supported or opposed political candidates or political parties” when they decided not only to not include Hagelin, Nader, Buchanen, Phillips &c. in the presidential debate, but to not even allow them to attend as spectators. This depsite the fact that the CPD was founded as a “‘bipartisan’ organization created ‘to
implement joint sponsorship of general election … debates … by the national Republican and Democratic Committees between their respective nominees.”, and is and always has been headed by former chairmen of the Republican and Democratic National Committees.
(The last two items via Ballot Access News)
2005-06-23 21:38:22 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics
Standard CD jewel box: perfectly acceptable, not terribly exciting. This is the basic form factor against which other optical disc packaging should be compared. If you aren’t using a standard jewel box, you ought to be able to explain how what you are using is better, preferably better to the consumer.
2-Disc version of the semi-standard DVD tall box packaging. There are lots of variations on this standard; this instance is one of the better ones (the “push here to release disc” button actually works, for one). Clunky to open and it feels cheap; the hinged unit which contains the front disc feels flimsy and the plastic clips holding the “DVD Guide” into the front are flimsy: one’s already broken off.
3 2-disc cases in a small cardboard box. The individual cases appear identical to the Incredibles case. Not surprisingly, this is a Buena Vista Home Entertainment release.
Acceptable, but not as nice as either the US “Buffy”-style foldout case or the UK “Angel”-style booklet-with-envelope style.
3 single-disc slim cases in a small coardboard box. Much like the Sports Night box set: acceptable, but what would be wrong with a 3-disc jewel box?
3 single-disc cardboard envelopes in a cardboard box. Completely unacceptable: just carrying it around, envelopes slide out of the box and discs slide out of the envelopes. The kind of packaging you’d expect for a freebie, not a “limited edition”.
Four standard 1-disc jewelboxes inside a thick cardboard box. So close to good, and yet so far. The choice of standard jewelboxes was just fine, and of course you have to put them in a box or it’s not a box set. But why choose such thick cardboard that it’s just barely too tall to fit into my CD case?
Single unit: cardboard exterior, four plastic CD holders, hinged together like a book. Each CD holder has the look & feel of a standard CD jewelbox. The front cover doubles as an envelope to hold the liner notes booklet. The whole thing is wrapped in a thin plastic sleeve to hold it closed.
Very nice! Attractive, good use of space, fits the shelving, and pleasant to use.
Imagine a jewel box stretched to the standard DVD size, given slightly rounded corners, and a clasp that holds it closed but is unlatched by your thumb when you hold it in the natural opening position. That’s what’s used here; I suspect it’s the jewelboxing Super Jewel Box DVD edition case. Altoghether pleasant, and it feels much more professional than the DVD cases used by, well, the professional DVD makers. Why don’t Disney and the likes use these? I’m guessing price, but it’s a shame.
2005-06-23 16:20:33 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel
2005-06-21 01:19:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
In June of 2003, I started getting Google hits for people looking for “Barbie Griffin”; at the time, I had no idea who she was, and asked about it
It turns out, she was a Hot New Character from Mac & Bumble. Before long, people were adding comments to that post informing me of that, as well as claiming she also used the names “Michelle McCurry”, “Sandy Reed” and others.
I posted a followup article including some basic information and some pictures. In July, I posted another article which gave more pictures, as well as listing all the names she seemed to use.
That article got Tracy Reed’s attention; she was Michell McCurry’s manager, and she was not happy at all. In a series of increasingly hostile phone calls, she threatened me with lawsuits for both copyright infringement and defamation. She assured me up and down that Michell McCurry and Barbie Griffin were different people; if memory serves, I eventually even spoke with Michelle McCurry, and she claimed the same thing. I posted an update saying they weren’t the same people. A week or two later, I got another phone call demanding I take down Michelle McCurry’s name entirely: she was an up-and-coming model, th estory went, and now whenever prospective employers searched on her name they got to my site which pointed them to those awful awful porn pictures she wouldn’t be associated with.
Skipping over the other copyright hassle Tracy stirred up, we get to March of this year. Michelle is now willing to comment here under the name “Barbie Griffin”, and Mac & Bumble is suing her for using the name “Barbie Griffin” on other sites.
I’ll refrain from adding any snarky comments of my own.
2005-06-20 01:57:22 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::PrettyWomen::WellKinda
2005-06-19 01:16:37 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
CNN is carrying this AP story about Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller, apparently a horrendous and prolific child molester.
The numbers provided, and apparently believed by both the police and the AP, just aren’t plausible though. The fellow is 63 years old; if we assume he started molesting when he was 13 (ignoring for the moment the question of whether 13 year olds even can meaningfully be said to ‘molest’ rather than just ‘experiment’), that gives him 50 years. His notebooks supposedly contain “more than 36,000 children’s names — mostly boys — and codes that appear to indicate how he abused them”. A later note indicates that the names aren’t unique, but if the 36,000 number means anything at all it’s presumably at least 36,000 separate acts.
36000/50 = 720. That’s 720 separate acts of molestation every year since the age of 13; if he started later, it’s even more. That’s nearly 2 acts a day every day, for 50 straight years. He was “arrested on child molestation charges in New York, Arkansas and Washington. He also served prison time in Idaho for child molestation in the late 1970s”; presumably while in jail and prison, he wasn’t molesting children, so those are days he’d have had to double up on. Did he ever get sick and have to take a break? More days to double up on. Surely there were some days he just couldn’t find a kid.
Think of every meal you’ve had for the past 50 years (30 years, if you’re an every-day breakfast eater). Now imagine, instead of eating, you were having sex. Is that believable? Now, instead of just having sex, imagine having sex with a new & different partner. That’s what the lead of this story wants us to believe this fellow did.
2005-06-17 20:22:01 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Newspapers
I like good Chicago-style deep dish pizza, but I don’t live anywhere near Chicago. To try to rectify this obvious problem, I occasionally treat myself with mail-order frozen pizza.
Tonight, I tried a Sausage pizza from Gino’s East (suggested by Anton Nym in a comment over at Making Light). It was good, but not as good as the ones from Loui Malnati’s, or maybe I just overcooked it — the crust was dry and crumbly, and not in the pleasant flaky way. Lou’s is cheaper, too, plus they’re available at Amazon.
I ordered 2 Sausage Pizzas and two Pepperoni Pizzas. What I got, though, were 2 Sausage Pizzas and 2 Cheese Pizzas with 7.14% Pepperoni; the same thing happened on my last Lou’s order as well (although the percentage was probably different), but not on my earlier Lou’s orders; the first time, I actually got Pepperoni Pizzas. It goes further than that, though — if you order from Lou’s own site, you can’t get Sausage Pizza either, just Cheese with Sausage. You can still order (but presumably not get) Sausage and Pepperoni from Amazon, though, and you can order Veggie, Spinach and Deluxe pizzas from Lou’s
So what’s going on here?
It seems the USDA used to define terms like “Pepperoni Pizza”, but they no longer do but as part of the transition they require this percentage labelling. Their Q&A Page addresses such questions as “What guidance exists for naming substitute cheese and real cheese on pizza-like products?”. I’m not sure this is the real, or full, explanation though: this rule went into effect October 22, 2003, and that predates Lou’s switch by at least a year. It also doesn’t explain why the Sausage Pizza is still “Sausage Pizza”.
Plus, it doesn’t explain the other note on the Gino’s pizza: “USDA requires 11%”. That seems to directly contradict the current rule. The mid 2003 Food Standards and Labelling Book says pepperoni pizza must be at least 10% pepperoni; sausage pizza must be at least 12% sausage.
So, am I missing a current rule, or are Gino’s and Lou’s both complying with the pre-October 2003 rule (and maybe getting the rule wrong)?
2005-06-16 21:49:04 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Misc::Food
Good news: Slastyonoff has new Aneli pics! Bad news: iBill keeps saying all my credit cards are declined. Their FAQ lists several reasons for this, but none seem to apply, and of course their error message doesn’t give any indication which it is (or even for sure if it’s them declining for some reason, or the credit card network). This has been happening for a week, now.
A week with new Aneli, which I can’t get to. What have I done to deserve this?
2005-06-16 18:54:39 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::PrettyWomen
2005-06-14 01:17:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
2005-06-12 01:15:33 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
2005-06-11 01:15:49 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
Kottke points to an interesting Grauniad article on movie trailers. The whole article’s worth reading, but a few of the more interesting tidbits are:
2005-06-10 21:25:33 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Movies
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports “council members were shocked last year to learn that some men masturbate while watching X-rated movies in [peep-show] booths”, and are dealing with the “problem” by requiring cameras in the booths:
O’Leary said each video store is responsible for buying, installing and maintaining the cameras. In addition, each store must keep five days’ worth of recordings and allow them to be examined by city officials at any time.
The city ordinance further demands that the video monitor that receives transmissions from the booths be placed in full public view so that anyone in the store will be able to see what is happening behind closed doors.
The ACLU isn’t getting involved because “there is no First Amendment right to masturbate.”
“I am shocked, shocked, to find that masturbation is going on here.” “Your semen, sir.”
(Via Ken, whose website is rather sparse at the moment.)
2005-06-10 15:01:55 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics::PoliticsOfTheInsane
Lord Lyon is the head of the Lyon Court, is the “heraldic authority for Scotland”. This court not only issues new coats of arms, tartans, it has criminal jurisdiction over their “improper” use — “Lord Lyon is empowered to have assumed coats of arms and whatever they are affixed to destroyed”. It’s nice to know that someone actually has power over these things, isn’t it?
Also, keep in mind that this body, with the power to issue new coats of arms, apparently chooses to use the one shown here.
2005-06-09 21:56:50 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics::PoliticsOfTheInsane
In my earlier article about the Tulsa Zoo’s Ganesh vs. Christ brouhaha, I made some suggestions for how Christianity could be given ‘equal time’ without sacrificing the zoo’s animal focus.
Alas, I somehow missed the best and most obvious answer.
The zoo should construct a statue of Jesus near the zoo animals he most resembles, much like they did with Ganesh (who isn’t, after all, really an elephant: he’s an elephant-ish god, with characterstics of both elephants and human). Yes, that’s right, there should be a Jesus statue right outside the primate house.
To go along with it, as other examples of how primates are viewed throughout human culture, there should also be a King Kong statue and a reproduction fo the Aperaham Lincoln statue from the pointless remake of Planet of the Apes.
I’m sure that’ll make the Christians happy.
2005-06-09 13:24:37 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Religion
First rule: blanking out the 38 separate instances of the word “shit” in a song does not in fact make the video ‘clean’. If the song wasn’t children with the “shit”s, the video isn’t suitable for a children’s TV network without them. (Note: I’m not saying it’s not suitable; I’m just saying that leaving out “shit”s that everyone knows are there doesn’t change its status.)
Second rule: requiring particular versions of particular browsers to view content is just wrong. It’s bad enough on Windows where Yahoo!’s video service won’t work with Firefox but will work with Netscape 7.1. On the Mac, it’s worse, much worse. There are a variety of good browsers for current Macs, and even Microsoft’s entry is acceptable, including some UI features still missing from other browsers and providing better standards compliance than IE for Windows.
So, what browsers does Yahoo! support on the Mac? Netscape 4.7 only, which isn’t native to Mac OS X, first released four years ago. And even when it was new, Netscape 4.7 wasn’t an acceptable browser.
I haven’t even bothered trying on Linux.
2005-06-08 21:28:58 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Music
CNN is reporting that the Tulsa (OK) Zoo is going to get a “display depicting God’s creation of the world in six days and his rest on the seventh, as told in Genesis, the first book of the Bible”.
This comes in response to a petition asking for such a display, which in turn apparently comes in response to a display of a Ganesh statue outside the elephant exhibit.
I hardly know where to start on this.
First, this is supposedly the progressive city in Oklahoma.
Second, does everyone get ‘equal time’, or just religions? The elephant exhibit also includes a Republican party elephant mascot; does the zoo need to add a donkey exhibit to have something to show the Democratic party donkey in front of?
Third, this is a zoo. The elephant is, you know, an animal. The creation exhibit isn’t. At the least, the Christians could have asked for an animal-related Christian exhibit. Several possibilities come to mind, and I’m no expert on the religion: an ichthys display in the aquarium; a display of the tempting snake from Genesis in the herpetarium; an easter bunny by the rabbits; an exhibit on exorcism into pigs in the swinehouse.
2005-06-08 21:12:52 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Religion
2005-06-08 01:16:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
2005-06-06 23:59:59 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Linkblog
This is hardly new, but I just ran into it again.
We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: “Sincerity is not enough.” We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn’t mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.
2005-06-03 14:38:52 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Motto
CNN is reporting that ICANN is moving ahead with a plan to create a ‘.xxx’ domain for adult (ie, porn) sites.
This is even stupider than .kids.us, and that’s saying a lot. Back in 2002, Congress passed the The Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act to create a safe haven for kids-friendly websites. Neustar has the contract to run it and keep it kids-friendly; back in late 2002/early 2003, they were very optimistic about how many sites there woudl be, or at least they claimed to be. The goal was to have enough content in .kids.us that parents could use a whitelist filter on the internet — if everything a kid wants is in .kids.us, or at least enough of it is, then they don’t need to venture out into the scary world of .com.
.kids.us registration opened September 4, 2003. More than a year and a half later, how many .kids.us domains are there?
As far as I can tell, the full list is:
Wow, 24 domains! Trampoline and Trampolines have identical content, but we’ll let that slide. Oh, yeah: a, info, music, space, games, us, newyork and news are all from the same people. And Summum and Mummies have the same content. Nick and NickJR are both Nickelodeon, of course. So those 24 domains are 22 unique sets of content from 14 different companies. Is that enough to replace the rest of the internet, you think?
So, will .xxx do even worse than this? No, I don’t think so — I expect there will be a couple hundred domains within the first few months it’s live, even at $60/year. But they won’t be new sites, and they won’t replace existing sites. They won’t do anything to ‘clean up’ the other domains. So, will it make it easier for customers to find their smut? Well, maybe, but it’s hardly ilke that’s hard now. So what’s the point?
The point is, it’s a way for a ‘legit’ company to siphon off $60/year from pretty much every major porn site. it’s a way for someone to make money from the smut industry without having to get into the smut business. I understand why ICM Registry Inc. is in favor of it. I don’t understand why ICANN is.
2005-06-01 23:13:14 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::DNS
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