the blog quebecois

hey joe where are you going
with that gun in your hand
going down to shoot my old lady

-- cher

They must be rolling their eyes at the DNC when the phone rings and some Hollywood celebrity bonehead is on the line offering advice.

The Corner today linked to a story in which Cher called for Joe Lockhart to be fired or demoted. Aha, I thought. She must have been peeved at Lockhart's insulting remarks directed at Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi during his recent trip to Washington:

The ugliest treatment of all came from Mr. Lockhart, the former Clinton White House spokesman. After the Allawi-Bush press conference Thursday, Mr. Lockhart said that "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips."

Er, no, that wasn't it. Apparently Lockhart's corporeal bulk is entirely too much for the fastidious diva:

During preparation for the debate, Bob Shrum, Kerry's top strategist, had a telephone conversation with singer Cher to thank her for holding a fund- raiser for Kerry. Cher took the opportunity to advise Shrum to pull Joe Lockhart, the campaign spokesman, off the air.

"He's too heavy," the sturdy Lockhart, with chagrin, quoted Cher as saying. "You need thinner people on TV."

I'd love to hear Cher and Babs Streisand discuss strategy as they attempt to get their synapses firing. It'd probably sound like a battle between defective lawn mowers.

I'll be away for a couple of days, so you might as well do some travelling too.

This is a collection of panoramas from Europe, Asia, Africa, Central America and Mexico. (Oh, and Mars, too -- click on the sphere on the location map.) Some are of famous sites and attractions, but there are a lot of beach and other scenic shots. Just use your mouse to scroll through the full 360° view.

Click on "Case Studies" at the bottom of the page to go to virtual tours of some impressive Italian villas and hotels.

Via The Presurfer

Like MacArthur, I have returned. I think.

In unimportant news of the blogosphere, the long-rumored-deceased Andrew Coyne has also returned, if only to the extent that he's posting his recent National Post columns.

My server hasn't crashed yet, so I thought I'd offer reflections on the VP debate in the States:

Cheney won, easily. He killed Edwards in the first thirty minutes, on foreign policy. He held his own in the second. By the third (thirty minutes) I was as drunk as Edwards was (punch) drunk, so I tuned out.

That said, I don't think it matters much. The Bush-Gore debates in 2000 were in many ways pivotal, but this time they(the debates)'re not going to bump the numbers.

and the roses will die with the summer time
and our roads may be far apart
but there's one rose that dies not in Picardy
'tis the rose that I keep in my heart

-- Weatherley/Wood

A remarkable set of color photographs from World War I by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud. I at first thought that they were hand-painted, but the technique actually predates the war:

Louis Lumière had already invented instant photographic plates and the Cinematographe when, in late 1903, he and his brother Auguste patented a new process for producing colour photographs : the Autochrome. Before the invention of the Autochrome, colours were separated using a complex three-colour process whereby three successive exposures had to be taken and then superimposed onto each other. Louis Lumière, however, devised a method of filtering light by using a single three-colour screen made up of millions of grains of potato starch dyed in three different colours. This mixture was then laid out on a varnished glass plate, which would be ready for use once it was coated in a black and white emulsion. Developing the plate entailed applying the same process as was used for black and white photographs at the time, with the impression being processed to reversal.

As with pointillist painting, the colour effect is rendered by viewing the image in its entirety, since the colours are created from the juxtaposition of the multitude of dots; indeed, the essential charm of these photographs derives from that very juxtaposition.

You can view the others here.

The Guardian:

"It's accurate to say she is not cheerful," Peter Ayrton, the English publisher for Elfriede Jelinek, said yesterday. "But reading her is a totally exhilarating experience."

He was rejoicing at the Frankfurt book fair as word spread that the severe, feminist and dissident Austrian writer had unexpectedly won the $1.3m (£750,000) Nobel prize for literature.

So some shrewish scold takes the trophy, eh? Quelle surprise!

I'm not qualified to judge Ms. Jelinek's literary merits, as "severe, feminist" books for me rate in reading enjoyment somewhere between subpoenas and Korean VCR manuals. The Swedish Academy, too, has a long and ignoble (pun intended, haha) history of promoting hacks who nonetheless fit the politics of the age.

Behold, then, from Ms. Jelinek's crappy* website, her impeccable credentials:

Do you know him from before? Have you heard the name Halliburton and the name of Cheney, the holy lord, offspring of I don't know what or who, but certainly of a mother, and since then he has wrestled with the numerous soft feelings. Dick Cheney. But his feelings won't win. Halliburton will win, the company, they can build cages in Cuba, well, even I could build a cage if I had to, but it would only be strong enough for rabbits, if anything, they also built Corpus Christi in Texass, they managed that. And it earned its name. He will rebuild everything, the lord of the energy industry, Mr. Chairman of the Board, lord of the fiddled books , lord of jobs for the boys. But such boys are only found in Arabia. You can bet on it that this company will win irrespective of whoever else wins. Hang on, and what about the British with all these brave guys who so diligently butchered foreign flesh, and of course also the other way round, because nobody wants to owe the other a favour, but sometimes it has to be. They have dragged themselves to the foreign land, illusion of the avenger incarnate, and now several of them are six feet under, in the sand, and now they should get nothing?

Oho! Texass, did'ja catch that? Not exactly a Joycean level of wit -- but then, James Joyce never did win the Nobel, so maybe she's on to something.

That was from one of the few pieces on the site not in German, so maybe it lost something in the translation; but it doesn't strike me as anything a moderately clever poli-sci student couldn't have done, albeit with fewer comma splices.

* (All the links on her website seem to be broken, no doubt due to increased traffic. It's worth taking a look at, though, if only to wonder at its ceramic Bambi centerpiece.)

This has been posted at a number of sites, but it wouldn't work for me when I tried it until today. Use the up and down arrow keys to zoom in or out.

I didn't look at it for too long, but people seem quite impressed with it.

Happy Thanksgiving to Canuckian readers -- Merry Columbus Day (or however you say it) to our American friends. I'll be going for dinner at my sister's place, so I'll probably be incommunicado until Monday.

President McChimphitlerster further destabilizes the Middle East:

Dear Boy Assad,

My Air Force is bored and has a bunch of new bombs. It wants to try them out on something. Your thoughts?

Hugs 'n' kisses,

Dubya

cc: Ayatollah whatever, Tehran.

Haaretz.com:

WASHINGTON - Syrian President Bashar Assad is offering to make peace with Israel and says he is ready to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Iraq, a former senior State Department official said Wednesday.

"Something is going on in Syria and it is time for us to pay attention," said Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state for the Near East and U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.

What with Halloween coming up, I thought that I should post this warning.

Don't give me that crap about witches being peace-loving skyclad nature worshippers. Instead, they like to fly around on brooms, snatch up innocent kids and put them in boiling cauldrons, presumably for a late night snack, and this proves it.

Via Diversionz

How to tell when I've got absolutely nothing to talk about?

This might be a clue . . .

Q: Dear Ask Mr. Computer Guy,

Will magnetic fields destroy data?

Damned if I know. Try PC World.

For venerable floppies, this statement holds true. We placed a 99-cent magnet on a 3.5-inch floppy for a few seconds. The magnet stuck to the disk and ruined its data.

Fortunately, most modern storage devices, such as SD and CompactFlash memory cards, are immune to magnetic fields. "There's nothing magnetic in flash memory, so [a magnet] won't do anything," says Bill Frank, executive director of the CompactFlash Association. "A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells," says Frank.

I'm going to be busy for the next few days. Back on Monday.

Via Fazed

d00d1111 th3s3 r so k00l i kant w8 to get one11111

Via Linkmachinego.com

Trying to turn the world around
Trying to turn the world around
I’ve come to turn your world around.

-- midnight oil

You might have heard of a British newspaper's attempt to influence the U.S. election, by handing out addresses of Clark County, Ohio voters and encouraging its readers to write to beg them not to vote for President Bush.

Grateful Americans have bombarded the Guardian with thank you notes, such as this:

My dear, beloved Brits, I understand the Guardian is sponsoring a service where British citizens write to Americans to advise them on how to vote. Thank heavens! I was adrift in a sea of confusion and you are my beacon of hope!

Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don't use big, fancy words.

Set me straight, folks!
Dayton, Ohio

Er, I think he was being a bit sarcastic. Well, there's plenty more here, though I should say that a lot of them are unprintable.

Then again, the Guardian did print them, so I guess they are printable after all..

Sort of a conundrum.

This whole effort was spearheaded by Aussie blogger Tim Blair, and you can get up to speed on it here.

Tim has gone on to other good works, such as mocking these fools:

Go and read. (Make sure beverages are not within spewing distance of computer.)

Via NealeNews.com

Damn the legal consequences -- I'm going to drive the traffic up on this blog, and if I have to post links like this, it's worth it.

Here you go, you degenerates. Hot, steaming kitty porn.

I feel so . . . so . . . dirty.

Via The Presurfer

People say that Orientals all look alike. This is true. They all look sort of . . . Oriental.

However, I find that there are significant differences between nationalities. Chinese generally have broad, flat faces. Japanese faces are narrower, more sharply-featured. Koreans are somewhere in-between.

To confirm my thesis, I took this test, which shows 18 pictures of people and asks you to class them as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

I got four right. I might have to fine-tune my thesis a bit.

Via J-Walk Blog

The midnite hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'awl's neighborhood

-- michael jackson

I don't know about you, but I don't plan to answer the door this Halloween. At least not if they've sold a lot of these.

You just know that a link named Big Nipples Are Attractive isn't going to be safe for work, and you're probably right. It's pretty funny, though.

It's a TV ad -- Australian, if I heard the accent correctly -- for breath mints.

This is a cute, if sexist game. Check out the oddly-mincing minxes, but don't let your girlfriend catch you, because then she'll hit you in the head.

Safe for work, but don't let your boss catch you, because then he'll hit you in the head.

I found myself watching Rough Cuts on CBC Newsworld. I'd seen the promos for it -- a "documentary" or more accurately an opinion piece called Stupidity and I wasn't much interested in it. But it was the only thing on TV at the time, so there I was, stupidly watching it.

From the production company's website:

Stupidity sets out to determine whether our culture is hooked on deliberate ignorance as a strategy for success. From Adam Sandler to George W. Bush, from the IQ test to TV programming and the origins of the word 'moron', [Albert] Nerenberg examines the "dumbing down" of contemporary culture.

Stupidity careens at warp speed through sound bites on topics from television news and reality TV shows, to Internet sites and popular films. Featuring opinions and comments from some of today's most recognizable figures, cultural critics, authors and academics, including John Cleese and Rick Mercer, Noam Chomsky and David Frum, Salma Hayek and Michael Moore, Stupidity reveals that, despite our culture's extensive access to knowledge and information, humans continue to choose stupidity. The film suggests that unless stupidity is dealt with, we may all be doomed.

Yes, yes; and to echo Keynes, we're all dead in the long run anyway.

About half the show, as you might expect, was dedicated to the proposition that George W. Bush is stupid stupid stupid and they trotted out prize pig Michael Moore to hammer home the point. (Note: There is no link, as CBC, unlike real news organizations such as CBS, doesn't offer transcripts [OK, they do, but they charge $45 for a 1-hour program] so I had to wait for the weekend when the show was rebroadcast so I could tape it and make sure the quote was accurate.):

I mean, really think about the United States, okay? Here we are, a country where one of the founding fathers discovered electricity. Look what we have devolved to. A guy who is proud he was King of the Keggers. [emphasis added]

Odd. I never got the sense that Bush was bragging about his dissolute youth. Never mind that, though. More pertinent is Moore's assertion that Benjamin Franklin (I assume that's to whom he's referring) "discovered" electricity.

Franklin certainly contributed to the theoretical understanding of it, but he was by no means the first to observe the phenomenon. From Wikipedia:

According to Thales of Miletus, writing circa 600 BC, electricity was known to the Ancient Greeks, who found that rubbing fur on various substances, such as amber, would cause a particular attraction between the two. The Greeks noted that the amber buttons could attract light objects such as hair, and that if they rubbed the amber for long enough, they could even get a spark to jump.

[ . . . ]

In 1600 the English scientist William Gilbert returned to the subject in De Magnete, and coined the modern Latin word electricus from (elektron), the Greek word for amber, which soon gave rise to the English words electric and electricity.

[ . . . ]

In June, 1752, Benjamin Franklin promoted his investigations of electricity and theories through the famous, though extremely dangerous, experiment of flying a kite during a thunderstorm. Following these experiments he invented a lightning rod and established the link between lightning and electricity. If Franklin did fly a kite in a storm, he did not do it the way it is often described (as it would have been dramatic but fatal). It was either Franklin (more frequently) or Ebenezer Kinnersley of Philadelphia (less frequently) who created the convention of positive and negative charge.

You want stupidity? Stupidity is airing a quote from Michael Moore without first fact-checking it sixteen ways 'til Sunday.

When I think of Honda's EU diesel engine division, I of course think of lovable bunny rabbits scampering around a grid, gobbling up carrots and smashing things with a large sledgehammer. Or maybe it's another one of those pesky acid flashbacks.

Via Fazed

There's still time before Sunday, folks, to outfit your kids in one of The Worst Halloween Costumes of All Time. Spooky stuff.

How many poor kids that got stuck with this one had to hear, "Hey Rubik, how about if I rearrange your face?" This very well may be the least popular costume of all time, 2nd only to the failed Parcheesi costume of 1974.

Via Who Killed Theresa?

you’ve got me turning up and turning down
and turning in and turning ’round
i’m turning japanese

-- the vapors

From a guide to museums, temples, etc., in Japan. This is just a hunch on my part, but I'm guessing that English wasn't the writer's first language.

Animal Tei EDOYA
Animal residence EDO shop

Even the inside of Izu which a strange thing is abundant in, most. Suggest coming in if it gets tired of the traffic jam. Even if fatigue increases further, it isn't responsible.

IZU Andy land

The tortoise of the world, you who is familiar and whom it wants to feel. The spot which a tortoise maniac can't miss. Again, the spiritual world, to you of familiar Mr. Tetsuro Tanba fan whom it wants to feel as well.

ATAGAWA banana wani en
Atagawa banana & crocodile garden

If Atagawa is said, banana wani en. But, are you a crocodile if it is a banana in Atagawa because of what? I am about to want to go without thinking deeply. A way has prospects evil it is narrow. It is careful of the accident.

Via Bifurcated Rivets

No negotiations with these bastards. Someone go over there and help him find his saw.

The Arabic television station Al-Jazeera has broadcast a second video of kidnapped blog worker The Commissar, who took himself hostage last week and threatens to behead himself with his own circular saw, unless his demands are met.

. . .

In the video broadcast on Wednesday, a confused-looking, bearded Commissar, wearing a plaid shirt, was shown in a dimly-lit room. He claimed that his circular saw was "right there in the basement, provided I can find it amidst all the junk."

My fearless prediction: George Bush wins reelection comfortably, with around 300 Electoral College votes. Minor gains for the Republicans in the Senate and House.

This will lead to two positive results:

a) the saving (at least in the near term) of Western Civilization; and,
b) a drastic lowering in air pressure as the heads of most of Canada's media babblers implode.

I'll be live-blogging the election, so I've got to get caught up on a few things to clear the deck for Tuesday. See you then.