the blog quebecois

i have run
i have crawled
i have scaled these city walls

u2

Hours before U2's May 21 gig at Madison Square Garden, the band did an impromptu rooftop concert for hundreds of delighted (and some skeptical) fans.

Except it wasn't the real U2; it was a group of improv comics who specialize in guerilla theatre and practical jokes. And this was a big one, with probably a hundred people involved in the planning and execution before the police arrived to shut it down.

Cop: So you were supposed to be Bono? Slocum: Yes. Cop: (looking up and down at 1st generation Korean-American Agent Jinn): And who were you supposed to be? Jinn: The Edge.

Hilarious write-up of it here. There's also a video (Quicktime).

Long ago I was active in the Fidonet (ask your parents, kiddies) FLAME echo. We thought we were bad d00dz, but about the worst thing we ever did was send an unordered pizza to some twit in Georgia. I'd say that this guy has definitely got us beat.

This thread (warning: Profane language) is from the admin of a message board called pirate969.org:

BRUCE YOU NEED TO STOP THIS MAN. The only reason I'm keeping this thread open is for some closure for the families and so that hopefully we can talk some sense into you. YOU KILLED TWO PEOPLE BECAUSE OF A STUPID INTERNET ARGUMENT.

Bruce, who appears unremorseful at best, is continuing to put up taunting, threatening posts:

I can't tell you where I am, but I can tell you I love free wireless internet. I know some of you like those fools, but they were trying to front and I can't let that lie. If anyone sees my brother, let him know that band practice is cancelled.

It goes on like that. I wasn't sure what to make of it -- you meet no shortage of braggarts and blowhards in flame wars, and it's possible that a couple in the group were murdered and he was taking false credit for it. Or that he was claiming to have killed some people who hadn't posted for longer than usual.

But no; according to this BBC story, it's for real, and he's the guy sought by police:

The online argument started in a thread (link) discussing a local band promoter. Bruce Pastuer, now wanted on two counts of homicide and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, was one of the participants in the discussion.

Apparently two other board members and Pastuer exchanged insults, at which point Pastuer drove to the home of the two victims at approximately 3:00PM, and shot them both with a borrowed 12 gauge shotgun. The police have not recovered the weapon, and the names of the two victims have not been released pending notification of their relatives.

In the course of the shooting, two neighbors came to investigate, and Pastuer reportedly fired at them as well. His location is unknown, and anyone with information is requested to contact the San Diego Police Department (link).

If the cops can triangulate WiFi signals, his fugitive days might be over soon; if not, I'll see if I can nail him with a deep-dish double-cheese with anchovies.

Update: This story is most likely a hoax. See comments for details.

This is interesting and well done. I don't have a clue what it's about other than it seems to have some sort of religious theme. (There's also kind of a weird, scraping soundtrack that you might want to turn down if at work.)

Ah, the dream of a personal rocket pack. Previous versions depended on hot, polluting propellent gases -- this one uses abundant, eco-friendly compressed air. They might want to work on some kind of gyroscopic stabilization, though. (Warning: There are some pr0n and sex-related banners on the site. Nothing explicit, but you might want to be careful you don't accidentally click on one of them.)

This one is definitely not safe for work. Why? Well, for one thing, there's music.

For another, there's Celine Dion. Celine Dion doing a Michael Jackson . . . tribute, I guess. Need I say more?

Update: Commenter SYNiCal (and how appropriate a name is that?) points out that I've been had on this post from a couple of days ago. The BBC page is fake, and no California papers mention anything about the story; nor does the San Diego PD mention it on its webpage.

A clever little publicity stunt, then. Two points that the prankster might want to consider: I don't know anything about California law, but it just might be that publishing false information about police inquiries qualifies as public mischief. Maybe I should email and find out.

I would also think that if the person named is for real and if he was named for malicious purposes, he would have cause for a libel suit.

My apologies for printing this in the first place. I'll try to be more careful in the future.

The Montreal Gazette:

Homolka's lawyer, Sylvie Bordelais, said her client would respect the conditions imposed on her. But she added she and Homolka might look into the possibility of an appeal: "Except for a short period of her life, she has always been an obedient citizen, respectful of the law."

I hear ya, sister. You know, you rape and murder just a few girls and they never let you hear the end of it.

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee's Quran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim holy book was splashed with urine.

Continuing the episstolary theme:

Librarians in the US have had to admit they are baffled by the case of the urine-stained library books.

Hundreds of books at two libraries, just 13 miles apart in Cleveland, have had to be thrown out.

Linda Yanko, manager of Geauga West Library, told the Plain Dealer: "I can't even believe we're discussing something like this. It's appalling and disgusting."

She said librarians had been finding new cases or urine-related vandalism about once a month with the recent case coming just this week.

Get with the times, ladies. They're called p-Books.

Oh, drat. This meme has been ricocheting around for the last week or so and I thought I'd ducked it but The Meatriarchy had me in his sights:

Number of books I own:

Probably three or four hundred, not counting textbooks and technical manuals.

Last Book I Bought:

A hardbound collection of Somerset Maugham's short stories that I found at a garage sale.

Last Book I Read:

The Face of Battle by the British military historian, John Keegan.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me:

Trying to narrow this down was taking me way too long. I think that the most important books that we read are the first ones, the ones that inculcate a love of reading. So here are a few categories and impressions:

Encyclopedias: One grandmother gave me a set of Encyclopedia Americana (I think that was its name), printed in 1935. The other grandmother, a bit more up to date, bought a new volume every couple of weeks of some encyclopedia offered by a grocery store for 2 bucks if your grocery order was above a certain level. So I know everything in the world, but only in alphabetical order.

Gulliver's Travels, by Swift. One of the first books I can remember reading, it was an abridged version included in a big book of fairy tales, Aesop's fables, kid-friendly rewrites of Greek mythology, etc.

Science fiction: I read science fiction voraciously, but got burned out on the genre in a few years. I remember H.G. Wells' The Time Machine fondly; there was another one by Issac Asimov, also on time travel, that I found fascinating. I'd need a for-real time machine to remember the title, though.

The Hardy Boys. Don't laugh -- I used to eat these up like popcorn. When I ran out, I'd start in on my sister's Nancy Drew novels. OK, you can laugh at that.

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Probably the first Serious Book I read, when I was thirteen or fourteen. It inspired me to become a tragic, moody Russian writer. That didn't work out too well, so I instead became a moody Canadian blogger who posts weird things he finds on the Internet. Kind of tragic, in its own way.

Tag Five More:

Everyone I can think of has already been hit up on this. I might as well shoot for the stars, and offer a group challenge to Huffington's Post. I'll bet they can't scare up three books among all of them.

(The picture above is via the Cynical-C Blog; it's part of a project by Livio De Marchi, who constructed an entire house out of books, or at least sculpted representations of same.)

he's a victim of his own time
in his vintage suit and tie
he's casualty dressed to the teeth
in the latest genocide

green day

"We are watching the birth of a hybrid man. ... Why not put on a pink-flowered shirt and try out a partner-swapping club?" asked [French marketing and style consultants Nelly Rodi's managing director Pierre Francois] Le Louet, stressing that the study had focused on men aged between 20 and 35.

Sociologists and other experts spent three months analyzing some 150 magazines and books and 146 Internet sites, as well as interviewing a dozen experts from Europe, the United States and China.

The traditional man still exists in China, Le Louet said, and "is not ready to go". But in Europe and the United States, a new species is emerging, apparently unafraid of anything.

"He is looking for a more radical affirmation of who he is, and wants to test out all the barbarity of modern life" including in the sexual domain, said Le Louet . . ."

Methinks about the only "barbarity of modern life" he's going to be testing out in that getup is the business end of a glory hole.

This is so explosive I was tempted to steal it outright. But that would be wrong. Credit must go to the hard-chargin' newshounds who dug it up. Take a bow, boingboing!

Two high school girls in Livermore, California ran a social experiment on preppy retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and mall punk outfitter Hot Topic. Shannon Nichols, 18, is blonde, bubbly, and has perfect grades. So she dressed like a goth and applied for jobs at the stores. Nichols's friend, Sarah Adams, stuck with her preppy look and also sought employment at the shops. From Inside Bay Area:

The most dramatic was how the Abercrombie employees treated Sarah in comparison to how they treated me," Nichols says. "As soon as she walked in, the cashier started talking to her and told her she could meet with the manager."

Adams explained that she had no retail experience, and really no job experience. That didn't matter, she was assured by a young man identifying himself as the store manager. In fact, she didn't even have to fill out a job application, she just needed to come to a group interview being held in the next two weeks.

Nichols experienced a far different response from store employees, who basically made it clear: Don't let the door hit you on your gothic backside on your way out.

Well, duh.

Today our focus is on safety at work. We begin with this animation of how one person ignoring a simple rule can lead to a cascading disaster.

True, not all jobs have obvious hazards. This idyllic day in the life of a reports analyst would seem to present no danger. Besides being caught by the boss, that is. (Warning: both of these first two clips have music -- jazzy, peppy, happy music -- but possibly NSFW nonetheless.)

This fellow, on the other hand, is going to have some splainin' to do to the company safety officer. Not to mention the photocopier repairman.

Ottawa is a-goggle with the Supreme Court's ruling that allows for private insurance (I can't be bothered to link to anything, but Canadians, at least, should be familiar with the issues) to cover for medical care when the government is content to let people sit in agony on waiting lists for years -- or until death intervenes -- until our bloated, inefficient system finally gets around to fixing them.

Security of the person and all that. I never thought I'd be saying this, but: Yay! Supremes!

"Free" health care = Da Canadian value.

Charter of Rights = Da Canadian value.

Charter vs. "free" health care = Does not compute! Division by zero! Stack overflow! Does not compu@#$234@$$@#$

Can we say "cognitive dissonance"? I saw an interview with Roy Romanow tonight and I swear he had wisps of smoke curling out of his shirt collar. If his head pops off in the next couple of days with a loud SPROINGG noise, maybe a private clinic can reinstall it.

"This summer you had all the time in the world, and instead of working you sang as loud as your little lungs would allow." The ant paused for a moment to let this sink in. "I suggest you take up the violin, and spend the rest of this winter playing a sad song for yourself."

With that, the ant turned the lock on his front door and returned to the raid. The grasshopper never did learn the violin. His night elf all but useless, the grasshopper's body shut itself down and he died alone and friendless in a remote snowbank.

Moral: Ants are hardcore. Hard. Core.

Something Awful puts a contemporary spin on old fables.

i think we are saved
it's falling from the skies
it's calling from the graves
open your eyes boy

patty griffin

CTV:

Finance ministers from the world's wealthiest nations have agreed to a historic accord cancelling at least $40 billion US worth of debt owed by poor, developing countries.

Britain Treasury chief Gordon Brown said 18 of those countries -- mostly in sub-Saharan Africa -- will receive much-needed relief of 100 per cent of the debt they owe to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank.

At the meeting of G-8 finance ministers in London on Saturday, Brown said that now was "not a time for timidity, but a time for boldness."

Here's a bold idea that will kill the debt problem for once and for all: stop this utterly phony cycle of pushing contingent aid (here's some money, but only if you use it to buy Canadian tractors/wheat/whatever) and then grandly forgiving the debts a few years later.

We last went through this at the turn of the century (the Jubilee campaign) and it apparently did as much good as all the previous debt-relief efforts, because here we go again.

You want boldness, Mr. Brown? Why not open your markets up to the products that poor countries produce? That'll benefit far more people than big showy wads of cash that at best get ground up by bureaucracy and at worst end up in Swiss bank accounts.

Sure, you won't get the glamorous photo-ops with the likes of Bono and Bob Geldof, but that's a perk I'm sure you could do without. I know I could. (Especially with Geldof. Is that guy sleeping on a park bench or what?)

Just an educated guess on my part, but I think that beer definitely contributed to this.

Via Bourque

From my inbox:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is conducting an important academic study regarding weblogs. We are investigating the role of weblogs in the lives of their authors. Does your weblog make you more connected to the rest of society? Does it increase your chances of getting a job or finding information that you are looking for? To answer these questions, which are very important to our research, we ask for your help.

Top of the world, Ma! MIT wants to know my Secret Blogging Techniques!

So I completed the survey. Nothing too surprising. Stuff like age, sex, credit card #, schooling, the most terrible and damaging secrets of my life, how many hours I devote to this per week, etc, etc. Took about ten minutes in all. The results are expected out in mid-July and I'll post about them if they're interesting. Or even if they're not.

Speaking of MIT, I ran across this guy a couple of days ago. His name is Simon Greenwold, and he is (or was -- his resume ends in 2003, at which time he had completed his masters' thesis) a researcher in the Aesthetics and Computation group at the MIT Media Lab.

A list of the projects he was working on is here. A couple that caught my eye:

I Like To Watch/CopVision is a program that scans the TV show Cops and attempts to pattern-match visual and audio elements in it. Mr. Greenwold explains it better than me:

CopVision learns its language from closed captioning subtitles transmitted in the television signal. Everything that is said on COPS is tucked away in its memory to help it understand what it's seeing. It analyzes every frame, searching the field for outlines that remind it of something it has seen before. When it recognizes a contour it tags it with a guess as to what might be going on, gathered from its experience of words and pictures that go together. It sometimes tries to put words in the mouths of the characters. CopVision is funny when commercials come on because it doesn't know that it isn't COPS, and it keeps watching the same way.

The screenshot is somewhat unclear; here's a video that'll more clearly demonstrate what's happening.

Another idea he had was for water-based communication. Now, any system that can represent data in a 0/1 binary format can in theory be used for that purpose and Mr. Greenwold, after consulting with professional fountain designers, thinks that the technical difficulties can be overcome. Of course, if you couldn't reduce the size of the data bits to molecular-or-smaller scale, it'd be at best an interesting (and probably messy) idea. The frame at left is from a Java applet showing what a proposed installation would look like. It shows two kiosks exchanging information. Assuming that it would have been located on the MIT campus, I think that the wandering orange Shmoo-like creatures are intended to represent MIT students. Or students and faculty.

Or students and faculty and Shmoos, oh my!

This isn't about anything in particular, but it sure is purdy. It's by artist Carolina Melis and uses software to generate abstract patterns. (Warning: Music.)

If you've played Counter-Strike, no explanation for this will be required. If you aren't familiar with the game, it's an online first-person shooter. You need a copy of the original Half-Life game and then download an elaborate mod that overwrites all the characters and weapons. You log on to one of the hundreds of games going on at any time, day or night, and become one of a team of ten-or-so terrorists or counter-terrorist troops. The premise is that the terrorists have planted a bomb in a building and the counter-terrorists have two minutes to find it and defuse it.

It's all very exciting -- you race through dark corridors, smashing into walls and crates; and then you race through more dark corridors, smashing into different walls and crates while you try to remember what the "crouch" key is; and then an enemy sniper kills you.

At least that's the way it usually worked for me. So I don't play it too much these days.

Anyhoo, these guys did a live-action version of it and it's a pretty accurate rendition, complete with out-of-synch radio traffic, jittery connections, and the, er, oddly mincing, gyrating style of the combatants. (Warning: Gunshots. Also laughter, if you've ever played the game.)

I've never heard of The Chalets before. Or this song, "Feel The Machine." I'm not sure how well it'd hold up to repeated listenings, but it's a peppy little number.

What's remarkable, though, is their video for it, which is the cleverest thing I've seen in ages.

This isn't about anything in particular, but it sure is purdy. It's by artist Carolina Melis and uses software to generate abstract patterns. (Warning: Music.)

If you've played Counter-Strike, no explanation for this will be required. If you aren't familiar with the game, it's an online first-person shooter. You need a copy of the original Half-Life game and then download an elaborate mod that overwrites all the characters and weapons. You log on to one of the hundreds of games going on at any time, day or night, and become one of a team of ten-or-so terrorists or counter-terrorist troops. The premise is that the terrorists have planted a bomb in a building and the counter-terrorists have two minutes to find it and defuse it.

It's all very exciting -- you race through dark corridors, smashing into walls and crates; and then you race through more dark corridors, smashing into different walls and crates while you try to remember what the "crouch" key is; and then an enemy sniper kills you.

At least that's the way it usually worked for me. So I don't play it too much these days.

Anyhoo, these guys did a live-action version of it and it's a pretty accurate rendition, complete with out-of-synch radio traffic, jittery connections, and the, er, oddly mincing, gyrating style of the combatants. (Warning: Gunshots. Also laughter, if you've ever played the game.)

I've never heard of The Chalets before. Or this song, "Feel The Machine." I'm not sure how well it'd hold up to repeated listenings, but it's a peppy little number.

What's remarkable, though, is their video for it, which is the cleverest thing I've seen in ages.

greenpeace is snaking all our loot
for that humongous monster that they think is cute
i bet if I were swimming way out at sea
one of those things would make lunch outta me

faction

Indeed. Sure, if you live in a city or something like that, getting eaten by a whale is probably not a major worry of yours; but with summer coming and people heading out to the lake for vacation, you might want to keep it in mind. The BBC's h2g2 (a sort of wiki-like project) agrees and provides some practical advice:

Once inside, sit tight and try not to touch anything if at all possible. Gastric processes are invasive and skin does not recover well from encounters with digestive fluids. The process by which gastric acid handles food is slow and wearing clothing, especially of the synthetic variety, is likely to buy you some time.

Via MonkeyFilter

a lone, a lone, a lone, a lone wolf
a lone, a lone, a lone, a lone wolf
a lone, a lone, a lone, a lone wolf

corey hart

Arooooo!

That's by way of introduction. I'm a bit of a "lone wolf," so I like to say Arooooo! a lot. 'Cause that's what a lone wolf does.

When I say Arooooo! at social events, people smile nervously and back away slowly, leaving me with my vodka-and-tonic. This is good, because you don't want to get between a lone wolf and his vodka-and-tonic. Arooooo!

A lone wolf doesn't join things, like the local Shriners' club. 'Cause if he did, he wouldn't be a lone wolf anymore. He'd be a Shriner. I'm sure that that's a worthy organization, but I just wouldn't feel right saying Arooooo! at meetings. And if they don't serve vodka-and-tonics, it would be at best a pitiful, sad-doggie Arooooo!.

So I was surprised to get an email from Stephen Taylor a day or two ago, asking if I'd like to join the Blogging Tories. I had thought that it was reserved for card-carrying Conservatives who wrote about, like, politics and stuff.

I'm not a CPC member, though I do support the party in general. As to politics, this blog, believe it or not, started out as a political site. That was before I discovered that I really kinda sorta hate writing about politics. I'm also usually at least 24 hours behind the newscycle, too, so anyone coming here expecting a minute-by-minute account of the FLQ crisis (I've been meaning to get to it Any Day Now) is going to be disappointed.

Bearing all that in mind, I signed up (the blogroll is on the left, down the page). To all my new friends at the Blogging Tories -- welcome, and I hope you find the blog entertaining, if not precisely what you expected.

Arooooo!

she walked up to me and she asked me to dance
i asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said, lola
l-o-l-a lola, lo lo lo lola

the kinks

Don't fall for it, dudes! "Caroline" is, like, a boy!

Warning: SFX.

These sort of look like my woodworking projects, except that I don't start out intending them to look like that.

They're the work of Judson Beaumont -- the gentleman pictured here, I'm guessing -- and his Vancouver-based company, named (probably ironically) Straight Line Designs, which creates children's furniture (and custom one-of-a-kind pieces and projects for children's hospitals, etc.).

Ominously, there's no mention of prices on the site. If you have to ask, you probably
can't afford it.

Bad table! (Hey, that's what it's called.)

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Women may be able to fool their partners by faking an orgasm but a brain scanner will catch them out every time, a conference heard Monday.

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have used scans to show that different areas of the brain are stimulated during an orgasm but are not activated when a woman fakes it.

Right. I can see that the monitor beeping could be a major turnoff. Also, attaching the electrodes.

I wonder if reversing the polarity on those things might generate some good lovin'-dovin'?

Or possibly an epileptic fit.

Inasmuch as I ever think about the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the image that comes to mind is of a sour old misanthrope who wrote a bunch of indigestible books and who also boinked the equally unappetizing Simone de Beauvoir, a feat of swordsmanship that earned him the Croix du combattant volontaire from a grateful French Government.

It recently came to my attention that the young Sartre, in an attempt to broaden his appeal, worked (unsuccessfully) on a cookbook. A few fragments from his diaries remain:

October 3

Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4

Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6

I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

NealeNews has this up on his site:

......EXCLUSIVE..............

Nealenews has learned that Heritage Canada has been planning Brian Mulroney�s state funeral for the last couple weeks and expects him to �pass away any day now.� Although I have been unable to confirm this information with Heritage Canada, it does come from an employee within the department.

Brian Neale
Nealenews
06/22

Update: Nothing on CBC or Bourque as of now.

Ditto for CP, CTV, and Global/Canada.com

I'm certain that these organizations are aware of this by now and are checking it out, but there probably won't be much more on it until tomorrow. I first saw the Nealenews piece on Truth Laid Bear's aggregator (it's since scrolled off) at around 9:40pm or so, and I doubt that there's anyone in Ottawa ready to speak on or off the record.

June23 Up-update: Bourque has this (no link, but it's at the top of the page): "Better: Ex-PM Mulroney to be discharged as early as next week ...

Time will tell, I guess. Or maybe Newsweek.

Rick Mercer as quoted in the National Post:

I ask you: Is there anything more pathetic than sitting indoors while the sun is shining reading a blog written by Monte Solberg?

Why, yes; yes there is: reading Rick Mercer's blog.

Michael Jackson, you may have beaten the charges: but you will pay, I swear you will, for what you have done to this young man.

Speaking of Idol rejects, here's a bumper crop of 'em. To be fair, singing in a stadium is a tricky business, what with echoes and dead spots and no monitors or earpieces that I can see.

It also doesn't help to have 50,000 people laughing at you. To be fair, these guys are just plain awful.

To cleanse your palate, as it were, here's some theatre-arts types getting frisky in class. Judging by the reaction of the professor and the other students, it was a successful ambush.

Warning: The third clip has music (and a somewhat stagey, but enthusiastic performance, perhaps imitative of a young Tommy Tune). The first two clips have, respectively, "music," and "You call that music???"

and once he's caught by the law, he can't go to jail
cause he's nothin but a little piece of matter for sale
usin' people like pawns in the game of chess
and he is the king, more powerful than the rest

kool moe dee

(To get pedantic on yo' ass, the Queen is considered the strongest piece; the King the weakest, because it cannot be put in check without immediately defeating the threat or the game is lost. But I digress.)

You might remember this story from a couple of days ago:

Yahoo! has shut down its user-created chat rooms after a TV station reported that some of them were being used by adults to promote sex with minors.

The chat rooms were shut down in the last week but Yahoo!'s other chat rooms are still up, according to a Yahoo! spokeswoman.

I was listening to a typically reasoned ("They're coming for our children! Aiieeee!") discussion of this on the radio when one participant said that "chat rooms are the crack cocaine of the Internet."

Uh-huh. I preferred Dave Barry's description of them: "CB radio with bad typing."

What perked my ears up, though, was his use of the phrase "the crack cocaine of" which previously I'd heard almost exclusively referring to gaming machines, as in, "Video Slot Machines are the crack cocaine of gambling."

Thinking I might have caught the leading edge of a trend, I searched for "the crack cocaine of".

I really must get out more. Here's the first page that Google returned:

Porn is the crack cocaine of political hearings

Spam is the crack cocaine of modern advertising

Big Brother is the crack cocaine of reality television

Fox news is the crack cocaine of TV

Cyber-sex is the crack cocaine of sexual addiction

Anti-drug legislation is the crack cocaine of politics

Oil dependence is the crack cocaine of the US economy

white bread, peanut butter, and mashed banana: the crack cocaine of sandwiches

There are another 2,680 citings if anyone cares to find out what they are. As for me, I'll just note that it seems that crack cocaine is the crack cocaine of cliches.

There's been a palace revolt at Autonomous Source! Max and Talia have overthrown their oppressors -- and worse, have figured out how to work the computer!

Oh sure, locking their parents outside in the snow seemed like a good idea at first. After all, they did get to eat all the goldfish they wanted and there was no one to stop them from banging the pots and pans in their kitchen rock band. Plus, they hadn't had to brush their teeth or wash their hands all day. But now Mommy and Daddy were all cold and still. Neither Suzy nor Callie could work the VCR. How were they going to watch their Barney tapes? Not to mention the vast quantities of bloomer pudding accumulating in their pampers. Maybe Operation Get Rid of the 'Rents wasn't such a great idea after all.

Okay, it isn't really Max and Talia. It's from a site called Threadbared, which is a couple of women who put up the covers of dressmaking patterns, knitting guides, etc., and proceed to weave bitchy fun at their expense. You'll be in stitches.

Progressive Thai farmers steal a march on Canada:

Two dwarf brahman cattle are to get 'married' in Thailand in what's thought to be a world first.

Krachang Kanokprasert, owner of the bull, originally wanted to buy the bride - who stands 70cm tall and weighs 50kg - but her owner refused to sell.

Instead, the farmers agreed to join the diminutive breeding stock in matrimony, with the date set for July 10, reports local media.

The ceremony, in the province of Sa Kaew, east of Bangkok, will be conducted with all the usual wedding pomp.

Over to you, Prime Minister.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Airline flight attendants wouldn't be ignored during their pre-flight safety briefings if they could perform like Lt. Col. John King - or at least use his stage props.

Speaking to 280 fellow soldiers before they boarded a chartered DC-10 at the start of their marathon flight from Savannah to Kuwait City earlier this week, King was thunderous, blunt and well armed with an M-16 rifle slung over his shoulder.

"Interfering with a flight crew is a serious crime," he told them. "Don't be stupid. Don't be a moron. Don't even joke about going to Havana. That's not where we're headed today."

King, who in civilian life is the Doraville police chief, rolled his eyes at the FAA regulation that requires soldiers - all of whom were armed with an arsenal of assault rifles, shotguns and pistols - to surrender pocket knives, nose hair scissors and cigarette lighters.

"If you have any of those things," he said, almost apologetically, "put them in this box now."

Via GeekPress

I really have a terrible time sometimes trying to think up a title for a post. For this one I eventually grabbed my nearest dictionary and swore to use the first word I saw. Epicycle.

The definition is from geometry: Small circle rolling on circumference of a greater. [C.O.D., 1964] Which is a perfect introduction.

Google has renamed their previously subscription-only "Keyhole" service "Google Earth" and made the basic version free. Not to be confused with Google Maps, this enables you to tilt and rotate the camera, giving a much improved 3-D view. Or you can enter an address and pretend you're a missile zooming in on a target. (Unfortunately, no missile sound effects are provided -- I find a reserved, genteel ssssss SSSSSSS ZZZZ zzzz ... KABLAMMO!!! works well.)

More information here, or you can throw caution to the wind and download it (10MB file) here.

Minimum specs (Mac isn't supported as yet):

Operating system: Windows 2000, Windows XP CPU speed: Intel� Pentium� PIII 500 MHz System memory (RAM): 128MB 200MB hard-disk space 3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 16MB VRAM 1024x768, 32-bit true color screen Network speed: 128 kbps ("Broadband/Cable Internet")

Everybody and his dog has already linked to this, which is my cue for bringing it to your attention. It's a weird little flash piece showing a bikini-clad woman falling through an endless array of spheres. She's very acrobatic, possibly as a result of having no bum. If she gets stuck, you can click and drag on her to send her on her way.

It'd be neat to convert it to a screensaver, but I don't know if that's possible.

Like you always assume that a gun is loaded, you always assume that a webcam is on. This woman, taking part in a videoconference call, apparently thought her connection was down. It wasn't.

Warning: audio, and also possibly otherwise NSFW.