Mac Games

While iBooks do come with OttoMatic and Deimos Rising, they do lack those silly, time-waster games perpetually in the Windows Start Menu. But I've found if you look online there's many free versions to be found. Here's a few of my favorites:

MacSolitaire: If you play it enough, the card backs will change to cartoon versions of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Freecell: Solitaire for pros! Very simple, but it will give you hints if you're stuck.

Bommo Sweeper: This Minesweeper clone offers several more difficulty levels and the ability to change the tile colors -- both top and bottom.

Pac the Man: If you grew up in the 80s, you know what this is.

Jewel Toy: Why pay for Bejeweled (or go online to use it) when you can get the original for free? This game has been a near-obsession for me. You can customize the jewels.

Glider Pro: At one time this was a commercial game from Casady and Green, but when the company went out of business, the rights reverted to the author, who decided to give it away. It's much easier to maneuver than in the cell phone version.

OneCard: A fast-paced Uno clone that allows for either normal or challenge scoring.

Cocoa Poker: We used to have several handheld versions of video poker sprinkled throughout our car. This one lets you determine what the lowest pair value that scores is (i.e., a pair of nines nets you a point but a pair of deuces gets you squat) and how many virtual dollars each hand is worth. Don't forget to turn on casino-style graphics in the preferences.

MacMAME: This isn't really a game but an arcade emulator. But keep in mind that MacMAME's site can only point you to a couple of games that the makers have made freely available because most of those old games still belong to the original companies (i.e., downloading the ROM images is illegal). Still, it is the Internet -- Mario Bros. and Arkanoid are out there, if you can find them.

Candidate? Anyone-But-Bush

The Nation: The Online Beat: "Many New Hampshire primary participants decided to skip the formalities and simply vote against the president in Tuesday's Republican primary. Thousands of these Bush-bashing Republicans went so far as to write in the names of Democratic presidential contenders."

You'll have to read it to believe it, but one in seven voters in the New Hampshire Republican primary -- the one that's basically a formality on the way to Bush's second nomination -- one in seven voters wrote in a Democratic candidate for their party's nominee. And so a Democrat took second. And third. In the Republican primary.

No joke.

Yay!!!!!!!!

Yahoo! News - NASA to Review Plan to Phase Out Hubble: "The decision prompted letters from Mikulski and a joint letter from all members of Congress from Maryland, from where the orbiting platform is operated. Hubble's fate has also become a cause for amateur and professional astronomers worldwide.

E-mails have poured in to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which coordinates the use of Hubble's instruments.

'It's been overwhelming. My e-mail is overflowing,' said Steve Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

'Every day, we've had offers of ideas, political support and even money. Every day, I get people who want to know how they can contribute to keeping Hubble alive.'"

Copout

833786 - Steps that you can take to help identify and to help protect yourself from deceptive (spoofed) Web sites and malicious hyperlinks: "You can paste the URL in the Address bar of a new instance of Internet Explorer. By doing so, you may be able to verify the information that Internet Explorer will use to access the destination Web site. In the scenarios that Microsoft has tested, you can copy the URL that appears in the Address bar and paste it in the address bar of a new session of Internet Explorer to verify the information Internet Explorer will actually use to access the destination Web site. This process is similar to the step that is discussed in 'Things that you can do to help protect yourself from spoofed Web sites' section earlier in this article."

Paste the URL?! This is Microsoft's idea of protecting its customers from a major flaw in Internet Explorer that has been known about since at least December?!

To the 95 percent of you that use Internet Explorer: First, stop. Other browsers are more secure (e.g., they can't have their home pages "hijacked" or automatically download "browser helpers" that are spyware), they offer more features (such as tabbed browsing, which sure beats having 10 tiny IE boxes on your Taskbar, and integrated pop-up blocking) and actually release updates when a major security flaw is found.

Second, stop. This time because putting an XML declaration at the top of a page causes Windows IE 6 to enter quirks mode rather than standards mode, which is a huge bug.

Third, stop. Because Microsoft invests more time in creating proprietary functions for Internet Explorer to the neglect of certain standards (see the second reason) that lock out people using other browsers or other platforms from certain sites (Mac IE, as I've said many times, is not Windows IE's equivalent). This is all a big corporate plot to monopolize the Internet so that Microsoft can dictate standards to its liking, which usually means making them incorporate proprietary Microsoft technology that people then must pay Microsoft for the privilege of employing.

Fourth, stop! Using IE right now could lead to identity theft! All a criminal has to do is put certain numbers and symbols between, say, "http://www.paypal.com" and "evil-credit-card-number-stealer.com" to take you to a page that is designed to look just like a Paypal page, down to nothing but "http://www.paypal.com" in the Address bar or Status bar. However, updating your credit card or bank information on this page is just like handing your wallet to a pickpocket.

If you don't believe me, check out this page: Secunia - Internet Explorer Address Bar Spoofing Test. While this page isn't going to steal your personal information, it will show you how these criminals exploit IE users. When I click the sample link in Mozilla Firebird, I'm taken to "http://www.microsoft.com%01%00@secunia.com/
internet_explorer_address_bar_spoofing_test/." But if you use IE, it will appear that you're at "http://www.microsoft.com," despite the big Secunia logo on the page.

How can Microsoft be so irresponsible? Type the URL indeed! The only other solutions they offer are typing in some obscure JavaScript that the average user wouldn't want to touch (and those who would are already using Mozilla) or making sure there's a padlock in your status bar indicating a secure site, something I doubt most people instinctively check. But even if they do, they'd have to know to double-click the padlock to check the digital certificate where the real URL is hidden. Now I seriously doubt people make a habit of this.

But there's a much simpler solution to all of this -- Microsoft could release a patch to fix it! Even taking into account Microsoft's new policy of releasing updates only once a month, they had the chance to fix this in the January update and didn't. What's stopping them? How much does Microsoft care about you as a consumer if they're willing to let you fall into this trap? If Microsoft is going to dominate the market (like they do), then they need to take responsibility for all the novice users pulled into their fold.

And for those of you who already use Netscape/Mozilla/Firebird or Safari, go ahead and feel good about yourselves.

The Illogical Human

I've been treated to a double-dose of idiocy today. Aren't I lucky? First, there's this Times' review of Dennis Miller's new CNBC show, which admittedly I never expected much of but which is apparently really bad. It seems Dennis is a "Sept. 11 conservative" (not that this "champion of the white male" with "frat-boy humor" could have been much of a liberal to begin with) who spends most of the show engaging in fawning interviews with his favorite conservatives. And when he's not metaphorically drooling, he's making his classic obscure references that, even when you get them, just aren't all that funny. But that's the key to Dennis Miller's success, isn't it? Styling himself a comic and then making everyone afraid not to laugh at the jokes they don't get for fear it will look like they don't get the reference. It's a form of psychological tyranny, isn't it?

And then, of course, there's the Daily's Forum page, a sad, sad display of how bratty and unintelligent (or perhaps just dense) Northwestern's elites really are. The first letter to the editor today featured some kid giving a conservative counter-rant to some column that apparently dissed the Bush space plan. (Note: While my conscience aches on many levels in doing so, I can't help but think that going to Mars would be supercool. Heck, I've been gunning to go myself since at least ninth grade.) He decried the "lost liberal left" (let's take apart that phrase -- "leftists," I'm sure, are gasping with horror at being called "liberal," and mainstream "liberals" are probably already forming a mental argument distancing themselves from the "left" -- but beyond that, when will there be a "found liberal left"?) for hampering technological process in the name of funding something so ridiculously unnecessary as, say, education. I quote his parting blow:

But alas, short-run logic seems to be the mainstay of the liberal platform, as evidenced by their failure to recognize that both social security and Medicare will soon be bankrupt and dumping oodles of money into education is like putting money through a paper shredder.

Needless to say, that's probably the first place Miller would spend NASA's budget.

Wait, saying he'd spend billions of dollars on education is supposed to make readers not like the op-ed author? Somehow I doubt this letter-writer isn't a graduate of a private or overfunded suburban public school, so you'd think he'd make the connection between "lots of money" and "good education."

And then, of course, there's the Firing Squad. You're probably better off not reading that unless your eyes are in need of some exercise.

Still Working

"What?" you say. "You're still working on your paper? Aren't you supposed to be in class right now?"

"But wait!" I respond. "I AM in class right now."

"Then clearly you must have finished your paper last night," you reply.

"Not so!" I aver. "I might have, had I started it sooner and not fallen asleep in the middle of writing."

"Tsk, tsk," you chide.

I plan to finish the whole thing off between this class and next. I hope this doesn't become a pattern.

Killing Motivation

Sometimes, I start building momentum to write a paper. The ideas start flowing, the evidence falls into place, and I start making notes. And then, once I reach a stopping point, I stop. I stop, and I do something else as a "reward" for progress. And this is a very, very bad idea.

So here I am, after having spent half an hour or so reading web sites, no further along on my paper than notes on its progression. And now I'm tired in addition to being bored. Great. And when was I supposed to write the Turkey paper tonight?

WildCard in the Wild

I nearly lost my WildCard again this week. Considering I still haven't bothered to trade the original in for one with the new ID numbers, it's always a little nerve-racking when this happens, though less so than when it was my bank card, too (take that, LaSalle!). It's turned up in some odd places over the years:

Twice I've left it in the library copiers. They have card readers so that you can pay for copies at a discount by using a debit system. Once I left it in a copier on the third or fourth floor in my rush to get to poetry class and didn't realize it until I was a good deal farther away from the third or fourth floor of the library. Fortunately, it was still there when I got back -- though someone had so kindly emptied the card of its remaining cash balance in the meantime. And then just a couple of weeks ago I left it there again, only to discover I had done so when I received an e-mail from the circulation desk saying it had been turned in. Unluckily for this good Samaritan, there were only eight cents left on the card at that point.

Once I lost it in my desk drawer. I had developed the bad habit of throwing all of my credit cards and loose change into the drawer rather than keeping them in a purse or wallet. Not only did this lead to me not having my WildCard when I needed to pay for meal plan food quite often, but stuff tended to slide around the drawer and disappear with great frequency. However, I only really stopped keeping my stuff there when my WildCard started to crack from being kept unprotected in my back pocket so much.

The strangest loss had to be the time I left it in the shower, though. Not the actual wet part of the shower (that would be very strange) but tucked between the towel rack and the wall in the PARC bathroom. I guess it had been in my back pocket again and slipped out, but instead of landing on the floor, it nearly disappeared behind the bolted-to-the-wall hooks. What possessed me to look there and what luck I must have had to see the edge peeking out still I'll never understand.

And where did it turn up today? Exactly where I thought I'd put it after the first time I went to Blomquist this quarter: my coat pocket. Why is this odd? Because it was the first place I looked . . . and the 10th place I looked . . . and the 20th place I looked . . . not until I had made some significant headway in straightening up my room did I go by the door again and, lo and behold, glance a spark of white in the very same pocket I had pulled apart already.

Perhaps it was merely being held hostage until I folded my laundry.

Rating Hot Dogs

From Real Simple:

Lightlife Tofu Pups

$3.00
60
2.5/1
Smells like old socks; weird flavor and orange color.

Yum -- don't you want some, too?!

The Return of the Squirrel Chronicles!

Alas, after moving out of my PARC fourth-floor penthouse, my observation of Northwestern's squirrel population declined due to lack of a good vantage point. But today I came across some most interesting squirrel behavior while walking near the Rock.

A chattering sound filled my ears as I approached the end of the sidewalk, and looking around, I saw one of Northwestern's many squirrels sitting atop a nearby trash can. Not an abnormal site, to be sure, but this squirrel was clearly angry.

I stopped for a closer look. Peering around to the other side of the trash can, I observed that the squirrel was nibbling something white - a Styrofoam takeout container, in face. He took a petite bite, chewed angrily then spit it on the ground by the trash can, where it blended in with all the snow.

And he did it again. And again. And he clearly did not anticipate that each new bite would be as inedible as the last, no matter how much it smelled like stir-fry.

Of course, the squirrels are mysterious creatures. He may have been taking out his inner squirrel aggressions by chewing on the Styrofoam box. In fact, it may have been a squirrel statement condemning our continued use of non-biodegradable materials in our doggie-bag industry. We will never know for sure.

Ugh

John Kerry appears to be winning New Hampshire. Why???

On the iPod Mini

I admit, I was surprised, too, when the iPod mini was tagged with a $249 price tag when the 15GB iPod is only $299 (I was surprised they introduced it at all, despite all the rumors), but two bits of information Apple assumed people would know and so didn't say have changed my mind:

1. Small things usually cost more. This is pretty obvious, but we tend to forget it. Think in terms of the iPod versus those tiny flash players -- as I've learned by searching for flash cards for my camera, you have to pay a lot more for flash memory than you do for a big computer hard drive.

2. The market Apple is going after, the flash-player market, is full of comparably priced products that provide far less storage capacity. The iPod mini is a viable alternative there, but Apple consumers are so attuned to the iPod and comparable hard drive players that they have no idea how the other half lives (or the other 20 percent, I guess).

Note: The iPod has 30 percent of the market. Flash players have 20 percent altogether. What's up with the other 50 percent? I assume it belongs to other hard-drive players with less individual market share. Perhaps the better way to see it is an 80 percent market share for HD players, with the iPod having the biggest chunk?

Here's an article that shows how the iPod mini's price may have justification: Mac.Ars takes on the iPod Mini.

I Hate Crummy Wooden Floors

Just a few minutes ago the old, splintery wooden floor in our apartment tore a big hole in the bottom of my only pair of comfortable black socks, which I just got for Christmas. I think it's time to break out the industrial sander.

Webcams

Northwestern has several webcams at points around campus, so I figured I'd make a compendium for the curious.

Rock Wildcam
If you don't believe me when I say that we've had way too much snow here the past few days, here's the evidence.

Lake Michigan Wildcam
When it's actually nice out, this is a lovely view of the Chicago lakefront. The same feed is available on the School of Communication's site, and they also purportedly have a live version of it, though it didn't work when I tried it.

And what may be the best of all . . .

Digital Media Services Creature Cam
This is a live, 24/7 feed of someone's fish tank. The focus is so close that the fish appear larger than life. The refresh rate is about one image per second, so you can actually see the fish "swim." Beware opening it in a tab if your browser supports tabs (i.e., if you're not using IE), though, as the picture seems to bleed onto the other tabs in Mozilla Firebird for OS X at least.

Issues with Re-posting

As you might guess from the many entries for today, those entries weren't originally made today. I don't remember when they were made, either, so they're likely to remain out of order.

Sorry About the Changes

I had to clean this page up last night in order to turn in a copy as one of my Teaching Media application clips. I fear it will be a trial fixing the page now since Word, where I stored the original code, seems to have crashed. Oh well. I'll go through and un-Draft the rest of the posts I took down shortly.

I was up until about 4 a.m. working on that stupid TM application. I spent a good deal of the time decrying the whole process. Personally, I think if I end up stuck somewhere that requires a car, when I've written at least three times on the application that I don't have a car and can't get one, I will reject TM altogether and start furiously studying French in order to transfer. Yeah, I'm that desperate.

Part of my ire stemmed from the knowledge that I had an RCB meeting at 8 a.m. AND had to turn in my application at Fisk before 9. I don't understand why professors make things due at 9. I think departments only open at around 8. Clearly, when something's due at 9 it's really due at 5 p.m. the previous day, but they don't SAY that so that when you casually check the time your project's due the day before, figuring it must be sometime in the afternoon, they can send you into panic mode and force an all-nighter.

At any rate, my alarm went off at about 6:30, although I couldn't wake myself until 7. I did the meeting thing and decided two things: 1) Plex breakfast is still not worth getting up for, even when it's free (they make pancakes using those disgusting all-in-one mixes, the kind you don't add eggs to because there's oh-so-delicious powdered egg in the mix), and 2) that there was no way I was getting through the rest of the day. And so I went home and slept on and off until 3. Yeah, it'll screw me up for the rest of the week, but I feel much better.

Eyesightless

I just went through and responded to the comments left on my site for the past few weeks. I had to take a break from reading Central Europe because my eyes are driving me nuts. I'm having loads of trouble focusing them today (and sometimes on other days, too -- it's becoming a problem). The blurry monitor on the work-study computer at the poli sci department didn't help. I spent about four hours looking at it today, trying to ignore the thick gray lines stretching across the monitor and backgrounding every line of text.

I don't know what's going on here. At times I feel like I must have mixed up my contact lenses (my left eye is more near-sighted than my right). Or perhaps I'm just becoming more near-sighted in general. Since the odds of me seeing an optometrist before spring break are negligible, I fear I will be combating this problem all quarter. It bodes well for me getting my reading done, for sure.

Cold in More Ways Than One

From today's ABC World News Tonight e-mail: "The growing problem with obesity that our nation is facing has now attracted international attention. The World Health Organization is drafting a plan that would tax junk food advertising and require restaurants to show calorie information. The Bush administration is fighting the plan, saying it's too tough on the food industry."

So we know who matters most to the Bush administration, and it's not the waistband-stretching American people. Why don't more people notice this stuff?

In other news . . . How sad is it that when I woke up this morning and saw online that the current temperature was 22 degrees, I felt excited?

So Much Confusion in the World

Republicans: Kerry Is Seen as Strong but Beatable: "Unlike Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, whose record on Capitol Hill includes many votes that deviated from liberal orthodoxy on both domestic and foreign policy, Mr. Kerry, they said, has a record -- especially on social and economic issues -- that is easier to portray as too far left for the country."

What?

First off, I'm concerned about how conservative this country must have become if some Democratic senator can be too far left (and is not Paul Wellstone, to give some credit where it's due). When did Republicans begin to feel they had a right to be smug and confident in claiming they represent all Americans?

Second, who's giving the Bush camp the idea that Lieberman would be the most difficult candidate for them to beat? That's some seriously out-of-wack analysis there, which at least gives me hope that their eventual campaign will be a disaster. While Lieberman might be a strong contender to take on Bush in the Republican primary, I honestly doubt he has the potential to motivate Democrats to get up off their lazy butts and vote on Election Day, which is the only possible way to win this election. He may be Not Bush, but he leans dangerously close to Bush Lite.

Rendez-vous matin

Fatigu�.

L'anglais est difficile.

J'ai voudrais dormir.

Mac Case Mod

Macintosh 2004

I must say, as interesting a concept it is to put a modern computer in the old Mac Plus case, the fact that it runs Windows is pure heresy.

Happy birthday to the Mac! (It turned 20 yesterday.)

Back and Forth

Rivals Mine Kerry Senate Years for Material to Slow Him Down: "But unlike some of his colleagues with long records to defend, Mr. Kerry has never been especially popular with other Democrats in Congress and the party establishment. They have accused him of being too eager to be in the majority, too quick to position his vote for political advantage."

While clearly this article is using the premise of political opponents mining Kerry's record as an excuse for the Times' to mine Kerry's record, I don't really care since I don't support Kerry. To me, he seems to epitomize the flip-flop politician, as described above. And if you don't believe he's the kind of leader to take positions based only on their political convenience, then you have to believe that he's a big fan of ending teacher tenure, publicly funding religious charitable programs, the Iraq war, the No Child Left Behind Act and other conservative positions. It's bad either way.

Be Careful

Slashdot: Scam Combines Patriot Act FUD With IE Bug: "LostCluster writes 'CNET, Reuters, and the AP are all reporting this morning about a circulating e-mail scam that claims that people will lose their FDIC bank account insurance because they are suspected of violating the Patriot Act unless they confirm their bank account information with a website. The scammers then use the already documented bug in IE that allows a site in Pakistan to get 'www.fdic.gov' to appear in the URL bar. Where's an MS patch when we really need one?'"

Let's say it again: When you get e-mails that have forms asking for personal info or links to sites asking for personal info, they are scams. The Paypal one is perhaps more notorious, but here's another way that identity theft may not be coming from those evil hackers stealing your credit card number but from you blindly giving it out.

Everything Bad Online Starts With the DMCA

The Tyranny of Copyright?: "Lawyers and professors at the nation's top universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left aren't wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the United States is becoming less free and ultimately less creative."

As an aspiring writer (of some sort or another), I am most definitely not opposed to copyrights in general. People who put in the time and effort to create something deserve to be able to control how it is used, at least for as long as they live. I'm not saying I need to make money from all my work, but I wouldn't want anyone else taking credit or profiting from it. Without copyrights (and patents, too), people with brillant ideas can be taken advantage of.

But copyright and patent abuse these days has simply gotten out of hand. Just about every day on Slashdot, there's a story about how some monolithic corporation is threatening people with lawsuits under the DMCA or about how some other company is trying to patent some hardly unique concept (one-click ordering, anyone?) or to enforce a long-neglected claim purchased from someone else (cough-SBC-cough). These sort of claims aren't protecting artists; they're squeezing money out of innocent people for the sake of some executive's bonus.

New Site

It's not perfect yet, but the new Fischer Family web site is up and running. It's moved to http://fischer.notlong.com, and it now includes a family blog. There's not much there yet, but we're working on it. I still have to pressure my brothers to sign up.

Note

The article is fine, but I would point out a problem with the underline/nut graf/readout/whatever that kind of subhead is: "Senate panel's GOP staff pried on Democrats."

Yeah, that's right. "Pried."

I think the copy editor must be feeling a distinct lack of pride right now.

Watergate Redux

Boston.com / News / Nation / Infiltration of files seen as extensive: "Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

"From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics."

Yikes

The Pop Life: Forget Radio, Musical Path to Success Is TV, TV, TV: "To many in the music industry the question is whether the new breed of television-bred pop stars will have lasting careers, considering the nature of their exposure. But perhaps there is a more serious matter at hand. It is fortunate, for example, that a forthcoming vote-in reality show, 'American Candidate,' in which would-be presidential candidates will battle to be No. 1, will be on Showtime and not on a major network. If the ratings are as good as those for 'American Idol' or 'Survivor,' there's a chance that the candidate could actually end up in office. And that's potentially a much scarier prospect than seeing Paris Hilton (who's recording a CD) at the top of the pop charts."

And I could see it happening, too.

Huh?

ABCNEWS.com : Dean's Raucous Iowa Speech Lives On: "Gerry Chervinsky, who is polling New Hampshire for The Boston Globe and WBZ-TV, said Dean's favorable rating had dropped 11 points, from 67 percent to 56 percent, in the last week. He said the drop wouldn't all be attributable to Monday night's remarks, but added: 'That speech could not have helped him in any way.'

Dean, the one-time Democratic front-runner grinned, rolled up his sleeves and tried to rally supporters in Des Moines by shouting out a list of primary states.

'Not only are we going to New Hampshire ..., we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York,' he said. 'And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. To take back the White House. Yeah.'

Dean explained the enthusiastic speech Wednesday, saying: 'I was rallying a group of 3,500 kids who'd come to Iowa to work for me and were waving American flags. It was a pretty emotional, pretty terrific scene.

'They worked their hearts out for three weeks. I thought I owed them everything I had, and I gave it everything I had,' Dean said."

Did anyone see this speech? What's everyone so upset about? You'd think the guy had told the American people to go suck a lemon or something. It can't be that he just shouted a bunch of state names. What the heck happened?

What a Jerk

Year-by-Year Analysis of the Bush Tax Cuts Shows Growing Tilt to the Very Rich

Giggle

Slashdot: Lie Detector Glasses Coming Soon: "Zelphyr writes 'The EE Times is reporting on a product soon to be released by an Israeli company that allows the wearer of special glasses to tell whether the person they are talking to is telling a lie. Not only that, they can tell you whether someone loves you! Apparently a PC version of the 'love detector' is in the works as well. Think my Windows box will be upset when it knows how much I hate it?'"

And from the article itself: "Besides lie detection, Watson said, the technology "can also measure for other emotions like anxiety, fear or even love." Indeed V Entertainment offers Pocket PC "love detector" software that can attach to a phone line or work from recorded tapes. It's available for download at www.v-entertainment.com. Instead of color-coded LEDs, a bar graph on the display indicates how much the caller to whom you are speaking "loves" you. V Entertainment claims the love detector has demonstrated 96 percent accuracy. A PC version is due next month."

Bandanna Ban

Here's News for Cowboys: Bandanna Can Be Religious: "Mr. Ferry blamed tension between Jews and Muslims for recent anti-Semitic attacks in France, and said he wanted to calm things down. 'I tell representatives of Islam, `Do you want your children to fight at school?' ' he said to the deputies."

Some advanced society we are (or France is, more specifically), if we believe the way to stop fighting among schoolkids (or among adults) is to deprive them of religious symbols. Look how well that's worked for Turkey, where the government operates with extreme caution in case the army decides they're getting "too religious" and initiates a coup.

I also thought this was a telling quote: "The proposed French law prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols in public schools was initially interpreted to include Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses." (emphasis added)

This Was Just Too Amusing . . .

News Flash: 07-12-03: Dr. John Hagelin Launches U.S. Peace Government on July 4: "The U.S. Peace Government�a knowledge-based, complementary government�is composed of 400 of America�s top scientists, health professionals, educators, and other leading experts on the deepest principles of Natural Law, representing all 50 states. Over 100 Cabinet members and representatives packed the July 2 press conference, along with more than a dozen members of the Washington press corps, including reporters from the largest newspapers in the U.S., India, China, and Japan."

Funny, I've never heard of it until today.

A Sad, Sad Day

Yahoo! News - NASA Decrees Early Demise for Hubble Telescope: "CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA announced on Friday it would cancel a space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, a decision that dictates an early demise for the most storied science program in the space agency's history."

NASA says the reason for allowing Hubble to die is safety -- the space shuttles don't carry enough fuel to get from the Hubble to the space station in case of an emergency or damage to the shuttle that needs repair before re-entry (new policies resulting from the Columbia disaster).

However, considering the timing of this announcement, the real reason appears to be lack of funds. It costs $500 million a mission to service the Hubble, and it would cost even more to develop a system to check the shuttle's tiles for cracks and make repairs while not docked at the space station. With W now decreeing NASA build a moon base and send humans to Mars, there's just not enough cash leftover to maintain the telescope beloved by astronomers and everyone else for the discoveries it enables and the marvelous peek at the universe it provides.

Getting Crafty

Go buy an issue of the Chicago Tribune today if you can. Or just go look at it and save yourself the cash. The headline on the upper right reads:

Bank deal sews
a culture clash

And the debate begins: Considering the strained stitching metaphor in the lead, did they really mean to say "sew," or did something slip past the copy desk?

In a Nutshell

The world economy, in one page or less: CIA World Factbook.

And Where Lies the Truth?

As Paul O'Neill backs off some of the more controversial comments he's made, we have to ask: What's really going on?

But first let's back up. Paul O'Neill said in the WSJ reporter's book: "From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country," O'Neill is quoted as saying in the book.

"And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it -- the president saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"

There's no denying this was said, at least. Only the meaning has been questioned.

Everyone wants to jump on both the initial statement and retraction as evidence of the correctness of the left or the right, essentially. But critical reading skills need to come into play, preferably before the emotional outburst but at least very soon thereafter.

We'll treat it like an investigation. What is the motive? Who stands to gain by each statement?

First things first: Paul O'Neill was fired by the Bush administration. (The Bush administration basically chalks that up to incompetance, but the media tends to be pointing to the fact that O'Neill disagreed with the tax cut, among other things dear to Bush's heart.) Clearly, he has a bone to pick with the Bushies. He may well have exaggerated early meetings in which Iraq policy was discussed to make the administration look bad, especially if he didn't agree with the Bush Iraq policy. If O'Neill bears a grudge and also disagrees strongly with Bush's positions, he may want to hurt Bush's chances for re-election.

The counterargument for this? It's a little early yet to be attacking Bush's re-election chances, as we're not even into primary season. Also, pettiness seems like an insufficient motive to take to the national stage. It's not like O'Neill will be winning his position in the administration back by doing this (far from it), and considering his political orientation, he's unlikely to be taken up by a Democratic president.

And now for the retraction: Let's face it -- the Bush administration, like them or not, is full of bullies. You may consider this a good thing if you favor aggressive foreign policy "to keep America safe," or you may, like the rest of us, dislike bullies in general. But they do throw their weight around and act imperiously, such as when they barred noncoalition nations from bidding on reconstruction contracts (because we all know Guam and the Marshall Islands have thriving reconstruction industries that could easily take this project on and make supercompetitive bids). Odds are, when O'Neill criticized them, they didn't take it lightly. In fact, they launched an investigation of Paul O'Neill (obviously a terrorist), a move that smacks of the Nixon administration in some ways. O'Neill naturally must feel some pressure from the powers that be to tone down his statements if he doesn't want to end up taking an extended vacation in Guantanamo Bay.

Against this theory? Well, it makes a lot of sense for the administration to have had some discussion of Iraq during their transition into office, considering the Clinton administration had tussled with the country several times. I even remember us dropping bombs on occasion. And if you consider that Bush was not well-acquainted with the intricacies of foreign policy, it makes sense that he would need the situation explained (and that he might make comments about Iraq policy that displayed poor judgment). As for them being bullies -- hey, I can't explain that away. You try taking on Donald Rumsfeld and tell me that you didn't feel intimidated by Mr. New Trier.
So where do you stand?

Apples

I have decided that Golden Delicious apples are one of my favorite varieties of apples. They are sweet but not cloying, and they are very juicy. This makes them better than Granny Smith, which are very tart, and Red Delicious, which are always dry. I can't say much for other varieties of apples as I haven't tested them consistently over a long period of time as I have these three varieties. The only one I foresee myself trying in the near future is the McIntosh, not because of its relation to Apple but because aside from the Golden Delicious, it's the only variety available regularly for 99 cents a pound.

Hope for November

For a little of what Paul O'Neill had to say on 60 Minutes and a lot of justifiable political ranting, prolific blogger Wil Wheaton's recent entry is worth reading.

Though I have to say to the author of the second posted e-mail, in my view, most "reasonable people" don't believe that there's probable cause to root through the shirts, socks and other unmentionables of a 21-year-old, American college student returning from winter break before loading her suitcase onto the plane, among other things. But maybe I'm just one of those crazy liberals who doesn't like to have her pants in a bunch.

Alternablogger

In case anyone's interested, I stopped over at LiveJournal today, and apparently they've started giving accounts away for free now (before, to get one for free you had to know someone who already had one or you had to have some knowledge of the programming they use). LiveJournal is a blogging site, like Blogger, but it's based on open-source software.

If you're interested, here's a list of the features available. They include threaded comments and an option to post your current music selection.

And Why

I neglected to give the real reason why Nadir Hassan interests me when I have chosen to ignore all of the other crazy columnists. The chief thought that has occupied my mind while reading his last two columns has not been, "Is this guy out of his mind?" but rather, "Is this guy putting us on?"

Is Hassan really an arch-conservative blowhard, or is he a typical, laconically conservative frat dude with too much time on his hands deciding to demonstrate his obviously superior coolness capacity by attempting to pull one over on the knee-jerk leftists for his own and his friends' amusement?

In some ways, his prose seems too out-of-left-field to be real.

What the . . . ?

In its long tradition of punctuating its parade of boring weekly columnists with a wacko, the Daily Northwestern has brought us someone who may be more off his rocker than any of the columnists I've encountered in my three years here. Nadir Hassan is not only staunchly extreme-right-wing in his politics (which, for some reason, seems to be a quality that shows up a lot in the wacko columnists and in media figures in general -- but here we get a chicken-and-egg problem: does the craziness result from a life of right-wing ostracization, or does ultraconservatism result from some sort of inborn eccentricity?), he apparently has no idea what he's talking about.

The kid can't seem to form an argument. In this week's column, he accuses the activists protesting Michael Bailey's allegedly unethical work of "academic totalitarianism" and hindering free speech. He only touches lightly on the serious accusations against Bailey (namely, that he didn't secure the consent of the people he used as research subjects and that he had sex with one of his research subjects), which are things he can't explain away and so simply ignores. He also doesn't see the contradiction inherent in most free-speech arguments of this sort: by telling the other side to "shut up and mind so-and-so's free-speech rights," you're basically fighting to suppress their free-speech rights.

Behind logical flaws, the column sports factual errors. Anyone heard of the "Southern Policy Law Center"? Certainly the people here haven't, who did a bit more thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the activists' claims that Bailey is helping turn back the tide of science and promote negative stereotypes, such as the idea that still holds currency in some circles, that homosexuality is a "disease."

At least Hassan concedes that if Bailey is found guilty of the actual accusations against him, he should be punished. Of course, this only comes at the end of a column lionizing Bailey as an academic-freedom fighter. Because we all know academic freedom consists of having your work unchalleneged by your peers.

At least Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly put up something of a challenge. Why does this guy make it so easy?

In the end, you just can't help feeling bad about the time wasted in producing this column.

Discoveries

Two things:

1. The site I designed for RCB does not render correctly in Windows Internet Explorer, although it works in everything else, including Mac IE. Big surprise, I know.

2. Half.com has raised the percentage commission it takes from your sales. Before, the commission was less than the money you received for shipping and handling (which Half.com stuck its fingers in before giving it to you, too). Now the commission is nearly twice the shipping allowance. Because we all know Half.com must spend so much to warehouse and ship all those products.

Envelopes

I spent most of Wednesday afternoon opening envelopes as part of the Great Graduate School Applications Project.

Each packet had to be opened, its inner manilla envelope removed and opened if necessary and all 500 of its enclosed recommendations and transcripts, each in its own separate envelope, had to be opened as well.

As I opened these envelopes, I worked on perfecting my letter-opener technique. The trick is to get the blade through half of the top in one sweep, then drag it over and up to tear open the rest of the top and about an inch of the side.

Also as I opened these envelopes, I developed a hatred of those who paper-clipped duplicate envelopes together and those who sealed their envelopes so securely that there was no opening to slip the letter-opener through.

Subconsciously, I took revenge upon the faceless masses by slipping my opener into one envelope, pulling extra hard to overcome the unusually strong paper resistance, and massacring some poor fool's official transcript.

The Time Has Come . . .

To show that, despite Bert's connections with Osama bin Laden, that Ernie has greater, more insidious evil lurking behind that childlike smile. Look beyond the rubber ducky, my friends, and you'll find yourself caught in the fiery gaze of the true Beelzebub.

Orange Alert

My flight from Erie to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky (connecting to O'Hare) was canceled today, leaving me in Erie until tomorrow afternoon. Here's to cutting it close, eh?

For the record, the flight was canceled because of "mechanical problems."

Happy New Year!

Even though at the moment no one can see this page due to some DNS error, I still wish you the happiest of new years, whenever you may read this.