] Members of the small East Waynesville Baptist Church say
] Chandler led an effort to kick out congregants who did
] not support President Bush. Nine members were voted out
] at a Monday church meeting in this mountain town about
] 120 miles west of Charlotte. Forty others in the
] 400-member congregation resigned in protest.
]
] Chandler told WLOS-TV in Asheville on Friday that
] the actions were not politically motivated...

This would be funny if it wasn't true.

[ This is great. The more unhinged people get, the more they undermine their own position. I'm all for it. -k]

N.C. Church Kicks Out Members Who Do Not Support Bush

] This morning, the DC Circuit of the US Court of Appeals
] struck down the loathsome Broadcast Flag, ruling that the
] FCC does not have the jurisdiction to regulate what
] people do with TV shows after they've received them.

[ whoa! -k]

Boing Boing: V-TV DAY: WE WON THE BROADCAST FLAG FIGHT!

] A group of lawmakers in Texas with nothing better to do
] would like to ban all forms of cheerleading defined as
] inappropriately erotic. How would contraband forms be
] determined? "I'll know it when I see it." Who will judge?
] A task force of middle-aged dudes who must review each
] performances for excessive hotness? Tough gig.

[ heh. -k]

Boing Boing: Texas house to ban

] Stephen Colbert, who plays a phony correspondent on the
] fake-news program "The Daily Show," is getting a real
] promotion.
]
] Comedy Central said yesterday that it was giving Mr.
] Colbert his own show: a half-hour that is expected to
] follow "The Daily Show" on weeknights and will lampoon
] those cable-news shows that are dominated by the
] personality and sensibility of a single host. Think, he
] said, of Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews and Sean
] Hannity.
]
] Where "The Daily Show" and its host, Jon Stewart,
] generally spoof the headlines of the day (and the anchors
] and reporters who deliver them), Mr. Colbert's program
] will send up those hosts who have become household names
] doing interviews and offering analyses each night on the
] 24-hour cable news channels. The program, which is
] expected to begin appearing on Comedy Central as soon as
] early fall, is being produced by Mr. Stewart's production
] company, Busboy Productions.

Yeah so think "the talking heads" version of the daily show...

'Daily Show' Personality Gets His Own Platform - New York Times

] Japanese Kids Say the Darndest Things
]
] These are things that kids have hit me with at some point
] in the classroom. Most are in English, or at least their
] best attempt. I swear I'm not making any of this up.
]
] During a quiz game, I asked "What's the name of the
] famous bridge in San Francisco?" They always guess
] "Rainbow Bridge" because that's the name of the famous
] bridge in Tokyo. Um, no. Not quite.
]
] One boy completely surprised me though. He slowly and
] timidly approached me, looked up, and hit me with his
] guess - "Gay Bridge."

The life and times of a black American teaching English in Japan. And yes, everyone keeps asking him if he has a big dick.

[ Some of it's hard to believe, but I'm not ready to write it off because some of it is pretty funny. -k]

I Am a Japanese School Teacher

] Now you can access your vehicle's electronic sensor and
] fault code data without a cable. You can receive full
] diagnostic information without a cable connection to the
] car. The OBD Bluetooth Transmitter connects to the OBD-II
] socket available in modern vehicle electronic systems to
] get the data you need.

[ Neat. I'd be worried about h4x0rs bluejacking my ride, though this device appears to be transmit only. -k]

Bluetooth for Vehicle Electronics :: Blueserker :: Berserk about Bluetooth

] Solipsis is a pure peer-to-peer system for a massively
] shared virtual world. There is no server at all: it only
] relies on end-users' machines.
]
] The shared virtual worlds of nowadays MMORPG strongly
] rely on privately owned servers. These servers are an
] expensive bottleneck that limits their scalability. In
] addition, these servers bound the freedom of the virtual
] world inhabitants and the imagination of the
] world-builders and developers. Solipsis solves these
] problems with a free and open-source system.
]
] Solipsis is a public virtual territory. The world is
] initially empty and only users will fill it by creating
] and running entities. No pre-existing cities, habitants
] nor scenario to respect...
]
] Solipsis is open-source, so everybody can enhance the
] protocols and the algorithms. Moreover, the system
] architecture clearly separates the different tasks, so
] that peer-to-peer hackers as well as multimedia geeks can
] find here a good place to have fun !
]
] The best approximation of what could be Solipsis in a
] near future may be Neal Stephenson's Metaverse.

Interesting.

Development is being lead by France Telecom's R&D division.

Solipsis: A peer-to-peer system for a massively multi-participant virtual world

Woo-hoo! Acidus and I are finally get out of this hellhole! Time to start putting my Mechanical Engineering degree and his in Computer Science to work. Opportunity costs be damned!

Of course, the ceremony is four hours of name calling, however the party that night will more than obliterate them from our memory (and probably a lot of other useless information as well).

-janelane

[ Congrats to both of you! I remember my graduation day well. The heat and discomfort, the endless string of names, the not having any honorifics attached to mine (cough-cough), the having to go back to packing immediately before getting kicked out of the dorms...

Just kidding. It was a great day... I'm sure yours will be too. And I *know* there'll plenty of drinks to help that along. -k]

Georgia Institute of Technology :: Campus Calendar & Events

[HA! It's a dictionary cart for the NintendoDS... what a great name. -k]

TOUCH-DIC

"I'm sorry to say it's not true - Gabriel wasn't actually able to see the film - but a healthy number of people will be watching it next week while I wail and clutch my boxed set. I clicked the link the moment I knew about it, but by that time a wave of browncoats had already crashed over the limited supply and absorbed every ticket.

I must have grieved for an hour. There is nothing I want more than to hear those beloved characters swearing in Chinese.

Those gifted with prescience or whatever, the ones who will caper and exult in the preview theaters, I hope they understand that there are some secrets propriety demands they hold until the film is actually released. I mean it. If you come up to me at San Diego and tell me "so and so is a robot" or some shit I will buy a bat'leth and I will cut you in fucking half. They sell things like that at the convention, legendary weapons, and believe me when I say that being rent stem to stern by a Klingon warblade is probably the least exotic death I could manufacture under the circumstances. "

[ Classic Tycho. Also, let me echo the sentiment. Death will come quickly to anyone who ruins this for me. I was tempted to not even watch the trailer, but passion got the better of discretion. Goddamn. May 5th is a lot sooner than September 30th. -k]

Penny Arcade - on Serenity