29 February 2008 – 10:19 am +0800
Hillary!™’s campaign is running a new TV ad against Obama. It’s brilliant, to the point, and insanely stupid all at once:
ABC News’ David Wright, Sunlen Miller, Andy Fies & Nitya Venkataraman Report: Closing in on the March 4 contests, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., debuted a campaign ad on Friday with ominous undertones.
“It’s 3:00am and [...]
28 February 2008 – 11:39 am +0800
Britain’s Prince Harry is soldiering in Afghanistan:
The prince spent Christmas Day in a former Taleban madrassa, sleeping on a camp bed and having to wash outdoors.
In an interview while in Helmand Province, Harry - a member of the Household Cavalry - talked about life as a soldier on the front line.
“I haven’t really had a [...]
27 February 2008 – 4:26 pm +0800
I’ve had the necessary posts from Benevolent Misanthropy backed up as text files for a little while now, and last weekend attempted uploading a database backup, but it didn’t work. Apparently, I must first delete the present version of the database before I can restore a backup.
Which I’m reluctant to do. Even though [...]
27 February 2008 – 12:50 pm +0800
The Hubble has taken a picture of the dust-ring around Fomalhaut, and it looks like… well, go and see for yourself.
Horse Lords and wee folk with furry feet won’t help us much this time, I fear.
(þGeekPress)
26 February 2008 – 10:38 am +0800
Dirty Harry over at Libertas challenges all and sundry to name their five favorite actors, and specifies that “these are men whose mere presence elevates everything to at least watchable”. So:
Humphrey Bogart
Cary Grant
James Stewart
Toshiro Mifune
Lau Ching Wan
(I’ll note that I was sorely tempted to put Takashi Shimura in Mifune’s place, but I’m less familiar [...]
25 February 2008 – 1:24 pm +0800
I’ve known that Baen published a collection of Spider pulp novels for a while. What I didn’t know is that they also made a promotional CD-ROM to go out to reviewers and others in the industry.
And that CD-ROM is now posted for you to download, burn, and enjoy the living heck out of.
Seriously, how [...]
25 February 2008 – 12:38 pm +0800
Gee, it’s too bad that American troops are despised, feared, and hated everywhere they go, isn’t it?
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Narito, of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, gives a child a high-five during a patrol in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, Feb. 17, 2008.
(þMurdoc)
24 February 2008 – 1:32 pm +0800
I’m in the process of putting together a Linux recommendation post (or possibly two, since the two people who would benefit directly have completely different needs), but for the moment, two more low-end distributions have come into being, which I noticed through DistroWatch Weekly.
First up is Fedora 8 XFCE Spin, which is apparently out of [...]
23 February 2008 – 9:19 am +0800
New York Times editor Bill Keller makes a rather stunning admission (þLFG):
“I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot,” Keller added.
The problem, Keller went on, is that readers [...]
19 February 2008 – 11:55 am +0800
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (because, yeah, hey, we need an armed and belligerent bureaucracy looking over our shoulders for three perfectly legal commodities, especially the one that’s constitutionally protected) turns out to be nearly as guilty of hypocrisy as their agency-in-arms, the IRS:
Since the ATF demands 100% compliance out of dealers, it [...]
18 February 2008 – 8:08 am +0800
The air moves, churns, eddies and crests
on the shore of your skin
The tide of passion is high and surges up within you
pulling, tugging, molding, compressing you within
from your loins through your heart, against your lungs so hard
that a gasp forces itself through your lips
and cold fire blazes up your arteries to seize your brain.
You move [...]
9 February 2008 – 3:38 pm +0800
Did a standard software update this morning, because Xubuntu said I should. Upgraded Firefox, the Ubuntu-approved Flash plugin (which wasn’t working), and the Linux kernel (plus something else kernel-related).
And, wonder of wonders, Flash now works. I can watch YouTube videos again! (Not well, the machine has too little memory to play them [...]
5 February 2008 – 1:09 pm +0800
I haven’t really been reading Sir Walter Scott for the past year (I may have overdosed on him the year before), but for most of that time I’ve been wondering why the heck his nephew’s biography of the man wasn’t available online.
My wonders have been dispelled.
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I [...]