No More Fanaticism as Usual

It's been quite a week in the wonderful world of Islam...Nigerian Islam's encounter with that powerhouse of subversion, the Miss World contest, has been unedifying, to put it mildly. First some of the contestants had the nerve to object to a Shariah court's sentence that a Nigerian woman convicted of adultery be stoned to death...

New York Times OP/ED, November 27, 2002

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Postmodernism Defined

For now, Mr. Gore can only attempt to explain what motivates the ceaseless lampooning he continues to face from America’s columnists and commentators. "That’s postmodernism," he offered. "It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism, and that’s another interview for another time, if you’re interested in it.

From New York Observer Interview, Front Page Noverber 28

Projects at the Information Awareness Office

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Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery (EELD)
FutureMap
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Genoa II
Human ID at a Distance (HumanID)
Total Information Awareness (TIA) System
Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization (TIDES)
Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment (WAE)

@@@@@@@@

What is the '@' sign called?

Ampersand, asterisk, tilde, comma, parentheses. Most of the commonly used symbols in the English language have particular names associated with them, so we can talk about them without having to say "you know, that squiggly symbol that kind of looks like the letter S." With the emergence of the Internet, and with it, the important role that the '@' sign plays in e-mail addresses, this once uncommon symbol now has a lot of people wondering what to call it.

Officially, this symbol is called commercial at. Unofficially, most people seem to refer to it as the at sign or just at. Recently, there has also been a movement to call it the atmark. There are also numerous nicknames for it, including snail, curl, strudel, whorl, and whirlpool.

From the Internet Public Library, University of Michigan

SUVs

It seems to me that if we use 3% less oil, the evil oil-producing countries will raise prices to make up the difference, and they'll be able to fund terrorism a few more years before running out of oil. Therefore, if you're not already driving an SUV, the terrorists have won.

Dogbert from DILBERT and the WAY of the WEASEL

I am an expert poofreader

Good News from Radio Shack

No more "May I have your name and address please!"

Read more...

Osama bin Laden's Letter To America

Excerpt:

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.

Full Text from The Observer (UK)

Quote

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
-- Charles De Gaulle, in "Les Mots du General", 1962

Bill Gates, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1977

From The Smoking Gun

Eye contact findings may change new-age technology

(Kingston, ON) -- Noting that the eyes have long been described as mirrors of the soul, a Queen's computer scientist is studying the effect of eye gaze on conversation and the implications for new-age technologies, ranging from video conferencing to speech recognition systems.

Dr. Roel Vertegaal, who is presenting a paper on eye gaze at an international conference in New Orleans this week, has found evidence to suggest a strong link between the amount of eye contact people receive and their degree of participation in group communications. Eye contact is known to increase the number of turns a person will take when part of a group conversation. The goal of this study was to determine what type of “gaze” (looking at a person’s eyes and face) is required to have this effect.

Two conditions were studied: synchronized (where eye contact is made while the subject is speaking) and random contact, received at any time in the conversation. The Queen’s study showed that the total amount of gaze received during a group conversation is more important than when the eye contact occurs. more...

Have a nice flight!

Einstein Explains The Wireless Telegraph

The telegraph is like a very long cat, stretching from San Francisco to New York. You pull its tail in San Francisco and it meows in New York. The wireless telegraph is the same only without the cat.

Implosion World

Kikkoman Soy Sauce

The dark side!

Quote

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
-- Al Capone

In Mind, 19 November 2002, Palm Beach

We heard an NPR news report this morning about how a second California college going to adopt the policy of asking for documentation of extra-curricular activities from their applicants. The story claimed that UCSD had adopted this procedure on an experimental basis last year and had randomly selected 300 applicants from whom documentation was requested. What makes this story interesting is the reported result of UCSD's experiment. Every one of the 300 students asked to provide documentation did so!

We find it hard to believe that nobody even changed their photography club office from secretary to vice president. In fact, the result is ridiculous. Even those who were 100% truthful would have some difficulty getting the documentation together.

Possible explanations:

- The young have always been good liars. Perhaps this experiment shows that they are evolving to become good forgers too.

- Left-leaning NPR's editorial staff believes that the practice is an infringement on privacy rights and fudged the result to infer that the policy is unnecessary.

- UCSD announced the policy and sent the requests for documentation. When the documentation arrived, it was opened and the paper clips and staples were removed. What remained was loaded into the recycling bin. They announced that everybody was honest to next years flock of liars and forgers.

- Real top honors high school students are threatening to bring a class action suit against the colleges for not verifying extra-cullicular activities. In response, the colleges are pretending to do something.

If you know anything about this or have ideas, email me

Weingartner Joins HRC - 11/12/02

Napster Co-Founder Sean Parker's New Venture

Sean is my wife Barbara's nephew. Can you imagine? There goes my claim to most prominent computer geek in the family!

Leaky Abstractions

from Joel on Software, a favorite of my friend Mark V, IBM Software Developer, Symphonic Trombonist and fellow alum of Susquehanna University math and computer science.

Farm Sluts

A short film from 20th Century Fox, in which a man’s life goes totally down the toilet after he receives a sexually-oriented Spam e-mail at his office. You'll need a quicktime player to see this. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen!

From Coyoteville by Steven Graziano.

I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it.
-- Steven Wright

Notable Billboards (from Stan)

QuickMath is a free automated service for answering common math problems over the internet. It is powered by WebMathematica. If you find yourself having to solve an algebra or calculus problem (for whatever bizarre reason - like helping your kids do their homework), try it. You wll be impressed!

Which Founding Father Are You? I am

Bad User Interfaces



from Isys Information Architrects User Interface Design
User Interface Hall of Shame:

Reports of the Death of Innovation Greatly Exaggerated

Is Jessie Jackson a Republican Double Agent?

-> Email from cousin George, a prominent immigration lawyer from Portland, ME:
I'm in mourning for the republic. Welcome to the new right-wing theocracy. Maybe Americans will start voting for Democrats when their children are forced to attend Baptist schools.

-> My reply:
Oh, chill out! A little Baptist preachin' never hurt anybody. The problem is that Democrats are right-minded, but they are bumbling idiots. Republicans, on the other hand, are generally competent, highly functional assholes. Don't worry, the Democrats will start winning again in a few years when the majority of the ununincarcerated population consists of lawyers.

-> George
Here is the solution--a large number of Democrats need to 'join' the Republican Party. Then they can slowly extirpate the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. Then the Republican Party will basically be vaguely moralistic Clintonites and will win every election.

-> me
The reason this wouldn't work is that Democrats have poor oral impulse control and couldn't repress it while working under cover. Furthermore, the Republicans have beat them to the punch. The democratic party is infested with Republican agent provocateurs.

-> George
Immigration Canada says they will accept me, wife and kids. Application fee is $4,000 U.S.

Notes:
- George likes the French because they admire socalist losers.
- This heretofore unpublished dialog is in it's 30th year.

Hakim and Bunga

"Please wait. Your call will be answered in the order it was received." This bugs me. I know it might be nitpicky but I can't help it. Maybe I studied too much math or computer science. But doesn't order apply to sets of things? What's wrong with, "Please wait. Calls are answered in the order they are received." Hey, I don't mind bad grammar, it's stupidity that bugs me. I'm trying to figure out where it started. At first I was thinking, how incredibly dumb that somebody came up with this stupid phrase and it caught on. Monkey hear, monkey speak. But I've noticed that the voice always sounds roughly the same (I think there are both male and female voice versions). Nortel and Edify are the top vendors of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. I wonder if one of them doesn't ship with the message built in. If anybody knows the answer, please email me.

Honk if you've never seen an uzi fired from a car window
Top Bumper Stickers, mostly about guns and blondes

BungaRucka (real audio)

Bunga Pads

Quote of the day:
I can't remember everything I have to do or what I did under normal circumstances.
--William Miller

Radio Free New Orleans

Cool Java Pool