Nasty Habits

Contrary to wide-spread belief, I do NOT go first to the comics section in any newspaper I pick up. It depends on the newspaper.
For example,

• In the Wall Street Journal I first go to the photo and sports sections


• In the New York Times, however, I DO go to the comics first


• In the Whidbey News-Times, it's the Police Blotter and the Letters to the Editor; both of those sections read like the newsletter from the looney bin

Take that, Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter!

Another blast (from the past)

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.

All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

It works the same in any country."

- Herman Goering (second in command to Adolph Hitler ) at the Nuremberg War Trials

A blast from the past

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
— George Santayana

According to the Washington Post, "...Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in his office at the time of the crash. Rumsfeld ran to the site and helped with those who were injured, Quigley said, then went to the command center at the interior of the building ..." Additional reports state that this was done against the advice of his aides and bodyguards.

Don't claim that I never said anything good about Donald Rumsfeld. But don't expect more until he rises to that level again. ;o)

I was trying to think of something funny to say about the new US currency - but Argus Hamilton beat me to it

"The Treasury Department will unveil a new twenty-dollar bill next month. It has a peach background, a lime-green edge and a blue eagle. You know it's the end of civilization when Andrew Jackson is the guest on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
© Copyright 2003 Argus Hamilton. All Rights Reserved.

Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) -- "Big black holes sing bass. One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing, astronomers said this week.

"The intensity of the sound is comparable to human speech," said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, England. But the pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below middle C, roughly the middle of a standard piano keyboard.

This is far, far deeper than humans can hear, the researchers said, and they believe it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe."

Hmmmm. Maybe that was the voice on Ernie K-Doe's "Mother-In-Law" (early 60s). I always figured the voice was Benny Spellman.

On a related um, note :o) -- scientists have figured out why black holes hum. They hum because....

Energy Plan

"Congress returned to work last Tuesday anxious to learn details of the new White House Energy plan. It's no big secret. You pump as much oil as you can out of Alaska and trust the tanker captain when he says he has fourteen years of sobriety."
© Copyright 2003 Argus Hamilton.

New day, same old crap

Dubya proposed the following the turn around the stumbling economy
- health care reform (as long as it doesn't affect drug company profits)
- deregulation (like what built Enron and crushed Californians)
- lawsuit limits (those darn trial lawyers - they're to blame for everything)
- energy plan (as long as it sells more oil)
- free trade (but only when it's beneficial to campaign contributors)
- tax cuts (for the, um, wealthy)

This from a guy who can't get the lights on and the water running in Baghdad.

That was then, this is now

Don't you hate it when someone spits on your cupcake and then insists it's frosting?

Beauty

It's said that beauty is only skin deep.
Darn! I have such an adorable pancreas.

Démerdez-vous

So now the arrogant US leaders are going, hat in hand, to the UN to ask the world to pull us out of the Iraquicksand. I fully expect the Freedoms and the Germans to say something like Démerdez-vous.

Stay tuned.

And pass the Freedom Fries, please.

Microsoft: you can't live with 'em, and you can't live , um, with 'em

SEATTLE -- A plan by Japan, China and South Korea to develop an alternative operating system to Microsoft's Windows software would raise concerns over fair competition, the world's No. 1 software maker said on Friday.

Read the full absurdity of it

And on a related note, Microsoft demonstrates its leadership.

This week Microsoft Office once again affirmed its leadership in the office software world by releasing news of not one, two, or three, but five security holes. Meanwhile,OpenOffice.org, the primary open source competitor to MS Office, has no vulnerabilities to report. And OpenOffice developers say they have no plans to introduce Microsoft-competitive vulnerabilities, even though most PC users obviously consider insecurity a vital part of the computing experience.

This is a sad blow to the open source community. OpenOffice already trails Microsoft Office severely in price, since it is free while the "pro" version of MS Office costs $252 or more. Finding that OpenOffice can't compete on the insecurity front either is downright disheartening. ....

Microsoft has long held the leadership position in office software insecurity. We don't know how heavily this contributes to their market leadership position in the office software space, but it may be a major factor. Obviously, one of Windows's great attractions is the thrill of never knowing what new viruses, worms, spyware, and other Bad Things might suddenly come along and bring a user's system to a crashing halt. Compared to Windows, Linux is downright boring; it simply works, unaffected by viruses and worms, day in and day out.

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