"Tomorrow, I'll go back to being funny... but your show will still blow."

[ Still the man. -k]

Stewart's Post-crossfire comments..

[ Go down to the 5th from last, or just paste this in yer browser :

http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/Voting_Machine.wmv

-k]

eVoting humor

biochik007 wrote:
] w1ld wrote:
] ] mp3 of Kerry support both sides of many issues.
]
] That rox! sad but true, sad but funny...

Actually, its not true. Its standard issue political dishonesty, and the people who buy into it are the problem with this country. I mean it.

Political issues are complex. The way that politicians manipulate you is by pretending that they are not.

...

This is how politicians fuck you. Bend over. You are being fucked.

[ Hear hear! What Decius enumerates is one of the most asinine and insidious threats to public discourse in this country, and the republicans fucking love it. And no, i'm not saying it's never been done by a dem, but it seems to be a part of the standard playbook on the red side of the aisle.

It's patently dishonest and it's only the fact that the public gets turned off by the word "lies" that we don't hear it called what it is. As Bill Clinton said of the Democratic Party : "When people think, we win." In other words, when you cut through all the bullshit, dem policies get support. The other side has a vested interest in confusing you. -k]

RE: Audio mp3 of Kerry doing the Flip Flop

] Audiopad is a composition and performance instrument for
] electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on
] a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music.
] One can pull sounds from a giant set of samples,
] juxtapose archived recordings against warm synthetic
] melodies, cut between drum loops to create new beats, and
] apply digital processing all at the same time on the same
] table. Audiopad not only allows for spontaneous
] reinterpretation of musical compositions, but also
] creates a visual and tactile dialogue between itself, the
] performer, and the audience.

[ Fucking dope. -k]

Audiopad

This is a long transcript of Al Gore's speech on the Bush presidency delivered at Georgetown on Monday. It's long and I couldn't find the text anywhere except on a forum site, so I include it here.

Whether or not you agree with his views, it's worth reading, and offers more analysis than Ron Suskind's NYT Magazine article on the "Faith based Presidency".

Adam

[ Really long! But excellent. So as to not overload the pages, I haven't reproduced the content... click on the thread link and view the original post.

The appropriation of language like "steadfast" and "resolute" as pertains to GWB is simply absurd. "Inflexible" and "stubborn" are more accurate. As Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Seems almost tailor made for our current president. -k]

Al Gore: Bush Policy Driven By Ideology Not Reality

] Within thirty years, we will have the technological means
] to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the
] human era will be ended.
]
]
] Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can
] events be guided so that we may survive? These questions
] are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further
] dangers) are presented.

[ I've read this before, but came across it again today and thought it worth memeing. Though a decade old, it's still an interesting read. I wonder how it could be updated today? Vinge is among my favorite writers... one of the greats. -k]

Vernor Vinge on the Singularity

] In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?
]
] Neal:
]
] You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let
] me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when
] we did fight.
]
]
] The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came
] out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books
] in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended
] his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce
] Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I
] had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been
] regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had
] crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure
] barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the
] regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had
] been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in
] the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped
] it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos
] pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his
] aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from
] between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He
] deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my
] wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and
] set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I
] dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly
] I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying
] Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique.
] But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get
] out of the place. The streets were crowded with his
] black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of
] locusts and fly back to Seattle.

[ While slashdot "interviews" tend to be dubious at best, Neal Stephenson is always a pleasure to read, regardless of the format or topic. And there are quite a few topics covered here... very entertaining and sometimes enlightening. -k]

Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor

] Why should hackers care especially about civil liberties? Why
] programmers, more than dentists or salesmen or
] landscapers?
]
] Let me put the case in terms a government official would
] appreciate. Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or
] a quaint American tradition. Civil liberties make
] countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs.
] civil liberties, you'd notice a definite trend. Could
] civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an
] effect? I think so. I think a society in which people can
] do and say what they want will also tend to be one in
] which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those
] sponsored by the most influential people. Authoritarian
] countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor;
] and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a
] Laffer curve for government power, just as for tax
] revenues. At least, it seems likely enough that it would
] be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Unlike high
] tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns
] out to be a mistake.
]
] This is why hackers worry. The government spying on
] people doesn't literally make programmers write worse
] code. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad
] ideas will win. And because this is so important to
] hackers, they're especially sensitive to it. They can
] sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as
] animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

[ Interesting read. -k]

Good Bad Attitude

] Don’t write comments. We’ve said it before and
] we’ll say it again: what’s the point of all this? To
] create a program, i.e. code. Non-executable stuff is
] unnecessary and explanations are an insult to a
] programmer’s intelligence - after all, he or she can
] read the source, right?

[ Some good shit in here. Funny. -k]

How NOT to go about a programming assignment

] Tuesday's public dry run had to be postponed until Friday
] because a computer server that tabulates data from the
] touch-screen machines crashed, said county elections
] supervisor Theresa LePore.

[ Color me nervous. -k]

E-Voting Machine Crash Deepens Concerns (washingtonpost.com)