Hmmmm

Cool name. Nice comic.

Free lunch! Wheee!

Don't read too much into this; I may do an expanded post more fully exploring the implications of this. But this is food for thought, so to speak:

If I could loan out my physical books without giving up possession of them, I would. The fact that I can do so with digital files is not a bug, it's a feature, and a damned fine one. It's embarrassing to see all these writers and musicians and artists bemoaning the fact that art just got this wicked new feature: the ability to be shared without losing access to it in the first place. It's like watching restaurant owners crying down their shirts about the new free lunch machine that's feeding the world's starving people because it'll force them to reconsider their business-models. Yes, that's gonna be tricky, but let's not lose sight of the main attraction: free lunches!

Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.

I have learned To spell hors d'oeuvres Which still grates on Some people's n'oeuvres

AN INTERESTING HYPOTHESIS ABOUT A WOMAN, THE PRESIDENCY AND LAME DUCKS

There's been a lot of brouhaha about the choice of Palin as VP nominee on the Republican ticket, and atleast some of this comes from concerns surrouding McCains' health. In addition to his somewhat 'statured' age (72), his tortuous and brutal treatment at the Hanoi Hilton (he can't lift his arms above his head; all those victory-cheer shots of him lifting his hands above head are done by his wife holding his hand and raising them for him) McCain has had a history of melanomal skin cancer, and in 2000 underwent an operation for that condition that left a noticeable mark on his face. 

All of this plays into the secret hope that McCain could shuffle off his mortal coil sometime during the next four years; or at the very least, have a recurrence of cancer or something serious enough to warrant the 'abdication' of his presidency. Schadenfreude has broken out.

However, even if mooseburger lady were to come into the top job at the Oval Office, she would have a tough time at the post. Simply put, she'd be a lame duck. She would have absolutely no credibility, and possibly even less power. The Dems will most likely control atleast one, if not both houses of Congress, and won't listen to her; and the Republicans (at the best of times) haven't been a women-friendly party. 

Unless we have some kind of October surprise where Palin bares her teeth and proves that she could use bully pulpit (emphasis 'bully') of the presidency, it's probably safe to say her (theoretical) presidency would likely be a deadlocked one.

Things are heatin' up

McCain picks his VP. Incredibly good political move.

Plus, she's a VPILF to boot.

Also, i'm writing this down and checkin' it twice, as to make a record; if McCain does infact win the election, you have to join Facebook. You know who.

Atlas Shrugged 2: Shrug Harder

That joke may very well make up for the Facebook.

I love student life. Sitting on homely couches at Stucco (this beautiful, gorgeous, amazing place in the middle of Newtown, with lovely doors and bohemian perfection) working out policy points, tuning lecture bashes, screen printing shirts; this is what it's about. Spending time with possibly the largest group of incredibly funny, smart, talented, dedicated people i'm ever going to meet in one place, wearing bear masks and getting paint everywhere. I'm tired. I'm exhausted incredibly, from going from one wonderful party to helping out PULP, hungover and 5 hours of sleeping on the floor.

I want to feel like this forever.

It's not all bad, though I agree on the jetpacks

See? The Internet is more than just a channel for the faster delivery of pornography and gossip! It can also deliver funny cat pictures!! LOLZ

P.S. Never actually do this to a cat. That would be horrifying, and hasn't Gotham got enough supervillains as it is?

Oh Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116: Reasons why people and children do not mix, and should never be allowed to happen. More to the point, parents using pataphysics would be a terrible name for a 'rock band'.

If you have a lot of these running as a flipbook

Cameraphone!? Paging Dr. Dali...

I wish I was this happy when eating strawberries. Also: TORTOISE!

Hot velocipedal action

It's a brand new day

Not what you're thinking

Joss Whedon new project!! Go watch now, because it's gone after 20th midnight of this month. Read the master plan too.

Also amusing: ads from the 30s. The last one is super great, especially if you enjoy fancy calligraphy/promiscuity/'being everyone's pal'.

Shamelessly cribbing off the best

Standing on the shoulders of giants, I prefer to call it. Or atleast crouching at their knees.

Exceeding moment of hilarity! Ran across this video today. While the advertisement itself isn't particularly great (it's about beer and soccer and cross-dressing or some such crap), the comments are priceless:

Headcrabb (4 hours ago)  
What the hell do you mean fake?

Its not a real commercial? 

Bittermanscolon (7 hours ago)  
of course it's fake, it's a COMMERCIAL! Fuck sakes. 

manupdude1 (7 hours ago)  
fake

Quick addendum:

SHOPPED

You're not very funny

That's just because you're not very smart

Pejoratives everywhere I look!

I know I shouldn't, I know I shouldn't, but Moonlight is just too damn nice a sonata for me to ignore like that. I realise that the first movement is just three fucking keys played over and over but c'mon! Guilty pleasures of Beethoven I suppose. I am resigned and doomed to a world of Cyndi Lauper and Aqua. Of the classical world.

Shit to do sirs! Have to change my units, unpack stuff, clean up room, wash things, go shopping for a few useful things, start eating again (seriously, what is up with this shit), install some flavour of Linux (shed the yoke of Windows, fellow technologists! Arise from ye inertive slumbers to don the mantle of freedom that is Open Source!...Ahem. For more, this.) and learn more about the Rhaeto-Romance family of languages. That last one, maybe not so much. YAYYYYY WEST WING

And to all you Mac users, fuck y'all.


----------------
Now playing: 1. Adagio sostenuto - Moonlight Sonata

Yet again the foolish fool spouts out more foolishly foolish drabble

Or so i've been told.

Leaving for trippin' tomorrie! Phrase of the day: "Ethical magic."

"I have absolute faith in the logic of my convictions."

Here be dragons

I'm going to talk today about dragons in garages.

In Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World, he opens with a passage about a dragon in his garage. Obviously, you're intrigued. He shows you his garage, but you see no dragon. Of course not, he replies, because the dragon is invisible. You try to touch the dragon, but that's no use, as Sagan says the dragon is incorporeal. You try to smell it, but no odour. This process continues so on and so forth, until you exhaust all your possible attempts to prove the existence of this dragon in some way. 

This leads on to a wonderful quote by Sagan: 

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?

Rightly, he concludes, there isn't. 

However, sometimes, there is a dragon in the garage. Newton had one such famous dragon: gravity. He could 'see' it; he could percieve its existence, and had to come up with a new mode of understanding (calculus) to prove it. 

Sometimes, some people's dragons are interesting purely for their imaginative quality. The New Yorker is running a review of a retrospective exhibition held in New York on the life and times of Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was either a eccentric visionary or complete madman; "Fuller’s schemes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals)."

Fuller was a strange, fantastic figure, who invented the idea of using geodesic domes as houses and gave eight hour lectures on everything, from environmentalism to architecture. Quote:

"instead of finding a job, [BF] took to spending his days in the library, reading Gandhi and Leonardo."

We need more people like this. I'm not saying that it would be a good thing if everyone were like this, but we do need more dream sellers.

If nothing else, they make the world less boring.

I think that's what I want to be. Penny for a dream?

This post cribbed and crafted from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Before I write something

Wondermark is super-rad.

An example of the exemplary mouseover.

the Court's almost obsessive focus on homosexual activity

Repressed gays on the Supreme Court?! Say it isn't so!

That one comes from awesome Harry Andrew Blackmun, who also authored the majority opinion on Roe v. Wade. Another great opinion to read, if you have the time. Actually, the Roe v. Wade opinion is one of the nicer legal decisions i've read, managing a surprisingly nimble balance between women's rights and public outcry. Mind you, it's a long opinion, which is somewhat expected I guess.

The evidence is conclusive

Jesus probably rode dinosaurs. 

I especially like the colouring hints. "Flesh of Christ"? What the fuck does that consist of? Communion wafer colours? Or actual flesh of Christ, if you're into the whole transubstantiation shit?

You can stop reading...now. Back to the picture.

Had a good couple of days, which is good, compared to the terribleness I felt for so much of last week. Learning a lot. I found a metaethics that i'm somewhat favourable on, which is positively good news. It's nice to not feel crappy for extended periods of time. 

Wondering whether I should write some things on hypocrisy. Being involved in rational modes of thought for significant periods of time seems to fuck you up in all sorts of good ways.

'My needs are meager. I don't even care if the world has stupid people in it; I just wish they would leave the smart people alone to get their shit done.'

Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self

For all you sexy chemists out there:

Periodic Tables don't come much sexier.

This is an outrage

Legal trouble, again. Actual, blood-boiling style outrage.

About fucking time. Seriously, this sort of bullshit has gone on for too long. 6 years?! Christ. What's even more appalling is the umitigated douchery of Scalia's dissenting opinion:

Of the two dissenting opinions, Justice Antonin Scalia’s was the more apocalyptic, predicting “devastating” and “disastrous consequences” from the decision. “It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” he said. “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.” He said the decision was based not on principle, “but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy.”

Yes. Habeus Corpus. A quaint, inflated notion of judicial supremacy. How these people get into power still baffles/saddens me.

That one was easy, if late. Now, in general, the RIAA are dicks, and their lawyers more so. But this...this is a new standard.

To summarise: The RIAA filed a 'making available' suit against Cassin, when said defendant filed a motion to dismiss aforementioned suit. Just before the judge made that ruling however, the RIAA submitted a voluntary notice of dismissal on the suit, and it was over. Or so we thought. 

The bastards then resubmitted the suit, only they renamed the defendants to 'Does 1-4' (in legal terms, John Doe is a placeholder name for defendants who are either unknown or anonymous). In addition, the fuckers filed another motion for ex parte discovery! 

To say that this is a gross violation of legal principles would be, frankly, an understatement. One needs Jon Stewartesque style to adequately convey the sheer gall and principled evil of these people.

I'm not even a fan

But RAD. I especially like the fact that some-bodys went to the trouble of dressing up as the Imperial Royal Guard.

I'm pretty sure the sixth movie lied to us about the Empire being gone...

But...But...I loved Caribbean Monk Seals!

So stop it! Stop with the dying!

If you didn't know: From the 6th of June 2008, they have been officially extinct.

So I is sad :(

Sad, and ornery, because people think stupid things sometimes. Terrible, terrible reasoning. I mean, i'm a pretty reasonable guy and all that, but seriously, when people use really terrible reasoning, I get all ornery like. Like a...orner. Or something like that. 

"A gay man has no need for women."
"Actually, that's not true. He needs them more than anyone else, for it reminds him what he misses, and thus strengthens his resolve."