March 31, 2004

Sad, Sad, Sad

Why do people keep falling for this?

Mecklerania

The mercurial Alan Meckler has a blog here. It's certainly bold for a CEO of a public company to call out his enemies and irritants in such a public way. Seems tht his, uh, unique style has attracted imitators.

March 30, 2004

Firendster explained

by small world, thanks GMSV!

March 27, 2004

Beautiful Prayer

Lifted from the Wall Street Journal, but I suppose they don't have the copyright on the text. This is too powerful to not be let loose in the world.....

The following is the prayer, said on Monday for the victims of the terrorist attack in Madrid, by Javier Ruperez, Spain's ambassador to the U.S., at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington.

* * *
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine. Out of the depths, I call to you, Lord. Out of the depths of horror, of despair, of anguish, of the unanswered questions. Where were you, Lord, on the day they were killed, the day hundreds, thousands were wounded, the day bodies, and minds, and lives were destroyed, that dreams and hopes were shattered, the day, that damned March 11, when we all wished we could have died with them, when we shame ourselves for having survived? Lord, oh Lord, why have you forsaken us?

The memory of the victims convenes us here. And the shared willingness to pray for their souls, evoke their memory, remember forever their sacrifice. And also the firm and categorical willingness we owe them, the victims, which we owe to ourselves, the survivors, to dedicate all of the efforts we are capable of mustering to prevent that their sacrifice becomes another date in the collection of horrors. The collection of terrorism horrors. And we owe them, and we owe it to ourselves, the resounding and decisive reaffirmation, as if it were a Ten Commandments of civic faith, regarding the elemental truths which convene us here: that there is no cause or justification which allows or explains the use of blind and indiscriminate violence; that the dignity of human beings and the rights stemming from it are imprescriptible; that democracy is the best system to guarantee them; that the tolerance preached and practiced by that system is the result of centuries of suffering and learning; that the terrorists, no matter where they are, whatever their claims or ideologies, are not merely the murderers of bodies, but also, and especially, the Beelzebubs of modern times, determined to send us back to the darkness of the ages without a name.

Lord, grief paralyzes us, astonishment invades us, and the obscenity of terror confuses us. Can we consider those who, one early morning in Madrid, murdered workers, students, women and children as being our fellow human beings? Can we consider those who, on a September morning in 2001, murdered workers, students, women and children in New York as being our fellow human beings? What kind of aberration may have settled in the sick minds of the murderers to arrogate to themselves the right to unlimitedly have the lives of others at their disposal? Where are the serpent's eggs incubating now? Perhaps there where the prostituted versions of religion deprave with bloody claims? Perhaps there where the radical versions of nationalisms pretend to explain the subsistence of superior races? Lord, oh Lord, save us, for we are perishing.

In these moments of tribulation, wandering, as we are, in a dark and gloomy night, we are comforted by knowing that the hearts of the immense majority of humanity, of suffering humanity, are with us, with the victims, with their families. It has been and is moving and beautiful to feel in one's heart the expressions of solidarity and warmth from so many people on earth, many of whose representatives have wanted to accompany us, today, at this funeral, and certainly those from the American people, from their President down to the most anonymous citizens. Words are not enough to thank you on behalf of all of my fellow countrymen. I lack enough words to thank the U.S. government and all of their agencies for the continued and efficient help they are providing to my country in the fight against terrorism. We also know, and Spain's skin is torn due to this experience, that the fight against terrorism is a long and complicated one. But we also know that all of us, together, can make that final victory ours; that the sacred flag of liberty, of our own dignity, will not fall into the mud through which the murderers of innocent people pretend to drag it.

Lord, from the depths of our despair, I ask you to enlighten us in leading this apocalyptic battle, I ask you to provide us clarity in the purposes and perseverance in the effort to attain them, I ask you to bestow strength to all of the peoples of the earth who suffer from the blight of terrorism, so that they may never think that by yielding they can crush the beast, so that they may never abdicate their rights, so that they may never barter their freedom. And I also ask you that your power and mercy free us, in the future, from what we are suffering today. From the depths of our abandonment, Lord, you who are truth and life, in memory of all of the victims of terrorism, hear our heartbreaking prayer. Amen.

How Far is Your Language From Others?

I was somehow put on a mailing list (I do have an ongoing interest in linguistics, particularly historical linguistics) for this Test of Perception Distances between Germanic Languages.

Dear Mr/Mrs,

As part of a course at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) we developed a website intended for investigation of language perception. On the website 11 recordings of different languages and dialects can be heared, and the visitor is asked to rate the distance of the varieties with respect
to his of her mother tongue.

To complete our project we need many different people with different native languages to visit our website and do the experiment. We would like to ask you to participate in this experiment or to send this mail to students at your university so that these students can participate. The experiment is for scientific use only and will not be used for other purposes.

The experiment and more information about the experiment, can be found on our website:

http://www.let.rug.nl/perception

We thank you for your participation,

On behalf of the project team,

Jelmar Evenhuis
Wilbert Heeringa

University of Groningen / Faculty of Arts / Humanities Computing

SO if you speak one of these languages:

American English
Belgian Dutch
British English
Danish
Dutch
Frisian
German
Groningen
Norwegian
Swedish
Swiss German

Please go to the website and help these researchers out!

March 25, 2004

Use The Law to Defeat Terror

Senator John Kerry:

"But it's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world -- the very thing this administration is worst at. And most importantly, the war on terror is also an engagement in the Middle East economically, socially, culturally, in a way that we haven't embraced, because otherwise we're inviting a clash of civilizations. "

Fighting multi-state support for non-state terrorist entities using the FBI is dumb, proven wrong, and going to get more Americans killed.

March 24, 2004

The Crimson Room

Can you escape?

Lee & friends in the UK -- write off the rest of the morning now, OK?

Justice as Economics

This old article quoted by this prurient new article on 'The Economics of Faking Orgasm' asks "Remind me, why is it better to let 10 guilty people go free than to convict one innocent person?"

Criminal sanctions should be set at the efficient level -- the level at which false positive convictions and excessive jail terms are balanced by the net reduction of crime in society.

Set the bar too low -- New York City in the 1970s -- and you have anarchic chaos.

Set the bar too high -- China in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s -- and you have the mass repression of the populace.

Perhaps there is evena Pareto optimal level at which to set criminal sanctions.

Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women

I wasn't so sure about all this Bible stuff, but I'm starting to cotton to it!

1,000th Post!

So 1,000 posts on Stone -- it's been a great 14 months.

We've had bad album covers, penguin games, trans-atlantic conflagrations with some polite (and some not-so-polite) Europeans.

We've had over 1,000,000 visits to the site in the past year.

We've watched my executive job search site mushroom form 3 subscribers to over 58,000 today.

We've seen a book deal from Harper Collins USA materialize to tackle the wieghty issue of Worst Album Covers.

And we've had fun.

Lots of it.

So here's looking forward to our next thousand posts and a thousand more reader emails from you.

Thank you Stoners!!

March 19, 2004

Unit for Print

ZAGAT's comments that couldn't get by legal.

Human Fireworks Target: Dumbest Thing I've Seen....

At least he's wearing a helmet. Thanks, GMSV.

What a Jerk

Our Charlottesville Correspondenet writes in and mentions "This woman
doesn't know when to quit".

March 18, 2004

Republican Voters In Baghdad

John Burns, inveitably the best reporter in Iraq today punches out this priceless quote from a Baghdadi:

A block away, another group took a different view. After watching a weeping man rushing toward an ambulance, cradling the limp body of his small daughter, Zaki Mohammad, 41, an electrical engineer, halted a reporter and asked that a message be passed to L. Paul Bremer III, chief of the American occupation authority. "Tell Bremer to hang the people responsible for this in a park in the center of Baghdad," he cried. "The American policy here is tolerance, tolerance, tolerance, soft, soft, soft. This is not the way. The way is execution."

What is Senator Kerry's response?

More From Norway

Our Correspondent in Norway writes back:

I obviously tried to hard to make a point, because it seems I have been somewhat misinterpreted here. I don’t mean we should ignore the terroists. By all means, fight them and drag them to justice (such as it is…)! The problem is that a lot of people, and unfortunately a lot of politicians among them, seem to think that that is all we have to do. And the point I tried to make, was that that is only half the job.

Your quote from Hussein Massawi was quite fetching! :) But it isn’t an official Hezbollah statement or opinion. Their charter today clearly states that their goal is to throw out what they call Israeli occupants and then peacefully introduce Islam. Wether this is what they actually do, and if the way the do it is the right one, and wether they are terrorists, is quite frankly another discussion. Hizbollah sees themselves as freedomfighters, and has, like the Israelis, attacked military and civilian targets alike. The Israelis has, after UN and US pressure negotiated with Hizbollah, and made some peace treaties with them. That these have been broken is as much on Israels head as it is on Hizollahs. But to place blame is also another discussion. And a pretty futile one at that.

As for the Iraqi-war being a battle in the war on terror; I’m sure we could argue this till the cows come home… Saddam was a killer on a grand scale, no doubt about that, and he’s hardly missed by anyone. But using his violations of U.N. resolutions as an excuse to attack Iraq is a bit like getting Al Capone for tax-dodging; sure it gets him out of the way, but it’s also streching a technicality for all it is worth. And then some. Also, I’m not sure if I understood you correctly here, but Iraq was hardly a stronghold for fundamental Islamists. Sure, Saddam was Muslim, but hardly fundamentalist. He played the religion-card for what it was worth to get support, but was largely despised by the more fundamental Muslim groups.

I quite agree, an Arabic democracy is a good idea! However, to invade a country used to be ruled by a dictator for 40 years (and for ages before that too) and then force democracy on them in a matter of months seems like a bad idea. As it has become painfully apparent in Iraq, sudden freedom for those not used to it very easily turns to anarchy or chaos.

And there are more obvious countries for democratic attempts than Iraq. Iran, for instance, has both elections and an oposition. True, neither is much more than a joke, but it’s at least a fundation to build on. Not strictly Arabic, but nonetheless important to the Arabic world are countries like Pakistan and Egypt, which both has a fundation on which to base a democracy. Perhaps even without use of force. There are several good alternatives to Iraq, and it’s easy to see alterior motives for going after Saddam...

But enough of this, work is calling!

mvh,

Øyvind

IT-HF

Hmmm -- well-thought out answers like this deserve a considered reply. I'm enjoying this citizen-to-citizen dialogue, isn't the web amazing! Stay tuned....

Free Iran!

Is the revolution arriving?

Innocent Man Released From Prison; Charged For 16 Years Room and Board

Quite beyond the pale. I hope this actually is a hoax, but I fear not.

Mamma.com versus FindWhat.com

Apropros my last post, what does this graph portend?

Or this one?

Is Cuban's Mamma going to surpass FindWhat as the #3 player in the paid search business?

The Mark Cuban Blog

Guys who yell at sports game from courtside seats, or, worse, owner's boxes, just aren't my type of guy. So I was surprised that I actually like Mark Cuban's Weblog. The guy is a bombastic arriviste, with a Gulfstream V and a huge, empty house. (Hope I'm not offending my Gulfstream V, huge-house-owning audience segment).

So the blogs insights into the psychology of reporters and using the new media to turn the tables is a lot of fun. I think we're going to see more of this in the future, the utilization of blogs to raise your voice louder than the media's. Old Media should definitely be concerned.

The entire journalistic superstructure of the "editorial voice" is nonsense. All reporting is biased. Whether you accept democratic gobvernments as legitimate or not is a bias, whether you believe in the rights of women or not is a bias, whether you believe private property is a right or not is bias, all of which inevitably shows through in your choice of adverbs, verbs, and adjectives.

So hiding behind this patina of objectivity has always been a rigged game, in my view. It allows a reporter to take an alleged higher moral plane and deflect proper criticism. So the concept of fisking a reporter's writing about you, and moving from defense to offense as a subject of media attention, is immensely compelling.

Let's stay tuned.

Al Qaeda and Iraq

Some say they aren't connected.

While actually true in the narrow technical sense, it's wrong in the big sense. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is the diktat of realpolitick, and Al Qaeda and Saddam stand together on the same, wrong, side of history.

Get Your Guinness T-Shirts Here

Is it a bad sign that I'm actually considering paying $58 for a bunch of beer company t-shirts?

The answer must be yes.

Well, SOMETHING must be growing

We tried to buy 19" Flat Panel Monitors yesterday for our growing executive job search business.

Dell: Sold out.

Gateway: Sold out.

Sony: Sold out.

In the short term, that's bad for us. In the big picture, I think we've got a growing economy.

What You Can Look Forward To If We Don't Continue Our Press Against Al Qaeda

More missed opportunities:

Bob Kerry, a former senator and current 9/11 commission member, said, "The most important thing the Clinton administration could have done would have been for the president, either himself or by going to Congress, asking for a congressional declaration to declare war on al-Qaida, a military-political organization that had declared war on us."... NBC News contacted the three top Clinton national security officials. None would do an on-camera interview... We used military force, we used covert operations, we used all of the tools available to us because we realized what a serious threat this was, said President Clinton's former national security adviser James Steinberg. One Clinton Cabinet official said, looking back, the military should have been more involved, "We did a lot, but we did not see the gathering storm that was out there."

At the margin, actually, I'm only half-mad at Clinton. The political reality of September 2000 was a different era, and a reasonable person could "not see the gathering storm" without being entirely incompetent. And Clinton has been an ardent supporter of President Bush's actions.

Why is the Democratic Party pursuing this fool's errand of abandoning our defense to gain an office?

Henry Waxman Lies

This PDF makes clear: elect Democrats in November and forfeit your safety.

Rep. Henry Waxman collects "lies" of the following caliber:

Vice President Cheney made perhaps the single most egregious statement about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities, claiming: “we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

First off, that's not a lie, we do know that Saddam was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Secondly, "we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons" is a reasonable conclusion from the evidence. David Kay agrees.

Read through this whole crowing report. The Democratic method of dealing with terrorists -- i.e., don't -- is on full display in this snarky, ankle-biting report.

The "No Defense" defense led to 2,801 dead in my town. The "Wait Until The Bomb Drops" protection scheme came to within 30 minutes of seeing the Capitol raised to the ground, hundreds of congress people killed, and our democracy jeopardized. The "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" standard of evidence in wartime gives aid and air to the people who want to kill you, you freedom-loving Westerner! These psychotic mass killers don't just oppose gay marriage, a women's right to choose, and affirmative action for minorities. They actually oppose life and freedom for gays, women, and minorities!

How long are you going to cotton to this nonsense that we don't have a problem? How long are you going to keep your head in the sand? How long are you going to support appeasers like the new PM in Spain?

It won't work. These folks want you, and the people you care about, dead. Or at the very least, supine. Why are you down with that?

Snark Snark

A delightful little stab at AOL from the MWonk Collective.

Expiration Date: 2014.

Ouch!

Fallacies

Um, Josh, I had the intention and the ability to order a pizza from Due Amici earlier tonight, bt ended up going out instead. Stick to screed-mongering. Logic ain't your strong suit.

March 17, 2004

Sales Jobs $100K+ and Executive Level

My site for $100K+ and Executive sales jobs, SalesLadder.com, has been taking off. We've got over 30,000 subscribers now that receive 500 - 600 open, high-paying, great sales jobs each week.

The best part about it, honestly, is the reader email:

“You have the higher quality positions for the professional sales person and not the peddler jobs such as Monster.com and other sites that are more popular.”
K.H., Evergreen, CO

“All I can say is wow - what a fantastic resource! Saves a million hours a week, no doubt. Thank you for doing what you do!”

S.S., San Jose, CA

“Cool... thanks Marc!”
J.O., Los Angeles, CA

“This is the best service I have seen......was wondering why someone hadn't done something like this just for sales professionals before now and am so glad you did.  I appreciate the caliber & quality because time is money & I resent the hokey ads or co's/sites that will pub anything for the fee.  Some of the sites that use to be good 6Figurejobs and many more accept anything & then they become a joke.  Thanks for your service & the very best of luck.  I'll pass the word on.”
E.S., Miami, FL

“I am a recent subscriber to your SalesLadder.com site... I have been very impressed at the way in which you have compiled a list of key sales opportunities in one place.”
B.S., West Bloomfield, MI

“Thanks, Marc. Terrific resource... Great stuff as always. You consistently have better content than many of my usual suspects. ”
D.F., Chicago, IL

“Marc… Very nice website… thank you for including me.”
D.B.., Rochester, NY

It feels pretty good to have dozens of emails like this coming in every week!

I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

Well, we are breaking our "we don't quote the New York Times" rule here at Stone this afternoon for this:

Snator Kerry added: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

So perfect and so true to form.

Gibson Breaks the 10 Commandments

A clever peice from Hollywoodreporter.com on Gibson's movie-making genius for his epic "The Passion of the Christ".

I haven't seen the film, and don't plan to, and don't really have to sharp of a stake in one side or the other anyway, though I imagine on the whole I wouldn't like it that much (I don't like horror, Sunday school, torture, or spending my time analyzing whether a work displays anti-semitism or not or yes).

But the business story here, and in particular, the one-man-overcomes-all-to-achieve-his-own-vision story line, are absolutely compelling.

A huge bet, that could have ended up costing Mel $30 or $40mm for naught, has turned out to be just exactly what his audience was looking for. And the worldwide take, as the article points out, could be $1 bn or more. That is a great story!

And Martin Grove's clever "10 Commandments" hook really works in this article as well.

My Mom Remembers Days Like These

Boy Wins Rotten Sneaker Contest.

Yahoo! wins

Google's local search just launched. So I tried my current standard search test: can the service find Astor Wines & Liquors, the largest wine store in my zipcode?

Google doesn't.

Yahoo does.

Search wars are going to get interesting.

UPDATE:

The girlfriend insists that I've mis-typed the Google search term. Everytime I hit refresh, though, a different result comes up. Must be by design but I'm not certain about user experience.

More Trans-Atlantic Mail

Lee from the UK writes in with this Which OS are you? quiz, and mentions "This has just halted work (again) here. We're still laughing at the boss being a ZX81."

Enjoy!

Who Are We Fighting? And why?

Our old friend Øyvind, with whom we disagree vigorously about the war, writes in: (Since when do we use the royal we? -Ed. I don't know, I don't like it either.)

I read this piece today (http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/000971.html) , and I felt like provoking a bit, so here it goes. Allow me to play the devil’s advocate one moment here, and say: the war on terror is bogus. Yes, that’s right, bogus. Not only that, we are doomed to lose the war too. I can already hear people saying ”Whaaaat?! He’s speaking treason! Burn the heretic!” But hear me out here. The premise for this war is apparently to root out al-Qaeda-cells as we find them, and perhaps some affiliated groups if we can. Maybe bomb some minor country a bit after a terrorist attack. All fine and dandy, the public seems to like it. But it’s just treating the symptoms instead of the disease, isn’t it? You don’t fight terrorism by killing the terrorists. These people didn’t just get out of bed one morning and thought ”ah, what a fine day! What should I do today? I know, I’ll bomb some trains or hijack a plane!”. The ultimate goal of al-Qaeda or the suicidebombers of Jerusalem isn’t killing people. It’s to get rid of what they perceive as occupants and colonial forces in their own country/region. These are not evil people, these are desperate people, regarding themselves as freedom fighters (well, I’m not too sure about al-Qaeda, you have som really crazy and misguided people there, I think…). I’m not trying to advocate terror here. They are criminals, and should stand trial. But we shouldn’t neglect their reasons either. You can kill the terrorist, but you can’t kill the idea that made him, can you? Everyone is talking about terrorists, very few ask _why­_ they are terrorists. And I don’t think Bush sums it up when he refers to them as evil enemies of democracy and freedom. So, I’ll repeat; until we understand why terrorists attack, and remove their reason for doing so, we are doomed to lose.

mvh,

Øyvind

Norway

The root cause of terrorism is that these people -- terrorists, Islamo-fascists, Al Qaeda -- want to kill us. Instapundit had a great post yesterday linking to this quote:

Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

You can't negotiate with people who kill children for political purposes.

The war in Afghanistan was a direct battle in the War on Terror: root the bad guys out of thier lair. (By the way, if simple labels like good guys-bad guys make you queasy, you need to study the roots of this conflict further. On one side, you have the peoples of teh West engaged in the great historic experiment of democracy and liberliam in the sense of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; on the other, theocrats dedicated to the killing off not just Christian and Jewish civilization (to say nothing of the agnostics, athesits, and pagans you'll find here in my New York City), but even moderate Muslims who don't share their flavor of Islam. If you ca't call those good / bad, you are too weak to defend our fragile experiment.)

The war in Iraq was a strategic battle: Saddam's a bad guy who had been in material violation of 17 different UN resolutions. Now, there are a lot of bad guys out there. But you have to pick your battles. And the goals of this one were twofold: depose a homicidal creep who has billions in oil revenue with which to oppress his people and threaten his neghbors, and more importantly, establish the world's first Arab democracy.

Now why is establishing an Arab democracy so important?

In addition to being a good in itself, it's important because it gives democracy a foothold in Arab lands. And a foothold serves as a tutorial and an inspiration to all the Arab peoples, and as a scold to their rulers. Only by re-making the region into open, free, democratic societies (and, yes, those values are not contradictory with Islam) wil we succeed in addressing the root causes of terrorism -- ignorance, lack of education and freedom, the oppression of women (did you know women can't vote or drive in Saudi Arabia?), and Saudi state support for Wahabbiism. Al Qaeda do not, as you assert, view themselves as freedom fighters. They view themselves as muhdain -- warriors for God. And their pervasion of Islam requires vanquishing the infidel (including the re-conquering of Spain, by the way).

So, Øyvind, I do agree with you in part -- we need to address the root causes. But believing that Cole, 9/11, Bali, Mombassa, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Moscow, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul and Madrid, will simply go away if we ignore the problem, or acceed to their demands, is wrong.

And even if it weren't wrong; even if we could buy peace at the price of cowardice, it would be a temporary peace. For those who win by the sword, who profit by the bomb, rarely retire from the business merely because this year's goals have been met.

Scumbag

Confused Mom, from a few days ago, turns out to be jerk smoking cigarettes and weed minutes before birth.

My bad for giving this zombie-looking creature the benefit of the doubt.

March 16, 2004

He Wants to be the Apprentice

I Want To Be The Apprentice!!

Omarosa Round-up

Omarosa: Seriously, She's Really Nice.

Witty

I alwasy like political humor, regardless of viewpoint, if it's clever. This Bush Hotmail account spoof makes it into that rarified category.

March 15, 2004

Accidental Populist

Some good insights and some inane blather from Craig Newmark of Craig's List.

Ask for feedback. Read all feedback and summarize. Do something in response. Repeat. That's our fundamental pattern. I report to customer service. It's the job of customer service to tell the tech guys what features people need and how to create new tools so customer service can operate better. Customer service is something that I've obsessed about.

What have we seen over the years? People are increasingly media savvy. People can tell when someone is not speaking for real. People can tell when someone's speaking with a corporate voice vs. a human voice. You go to a Web site, there's a lot of happy, smiling people who are ecstatic you're visiting their site, and you're fairly disgusted with it. There are a lot of alternatives on the Web.

What have I learned about customer service? Customers are generally great at helping each other out. The first line workers know how to do things right, but it's not a hot area. They need management support. Even disgruntled customers will help you out. And you need to engage with customers, not provide some sort of "black hole."

You can actually trust people to do the right thing. If you do, they will. The number of people we have screwing around are a tiny minority. The customer service is run by people in the cities where there are Craig's List sites. If you have a complaint about an ad, you can flag it for removal. If enough people flag something, we remove it. We get 1.8 million ads every month. And we get hundreds of emails and phone calls every day. In the discussion boards, we're not as good with moderation. We starting to think about how to use social networking technologies so people can moderate the discussion boards themselves. Slashdot is a pretty good solution, but they're more of a technically astute audience.

Seems like good advice from a source that should know.

Our First Loss

Madrid looms larger every day as our first defeat in the War on Terror.

The scale of the loss and the implications should frighten you. The policies of a democracy have been changed by the terrorists.

Just really think about that for a good long minute.

Al Qaeda has invented for themselves the most awesome and horrible tool imaginable. By slaughtering more of your friends, your fellow citizens, your loved ones, at precisely the correct moment, they'll get the guardians of your freedom called home. We peer now at a future of an increasingly cowed Europe, abandoning its post to hide from hungry killers in the deluded hope that that will satiate them.

The people who have undeservedly demonized the US -- Michael Moore, Al Franken, Ted Rall -- have played a perfect hand for bin Laden. By ignorantly yabbling about the war being for oil (never mind that it would be easier to have just let Saddam produce the damn oil himself) and demonizing Bush for partisan gain and foreign reknown, they have set the spike delivered last week by people who blow up children to suit their needs.

The wages of foolishness have been paid by 200 coffins in Spain. How long till we see Al Qaeda defeat and depose our allies, and turn its wicked eyes back to our shores?

March 14, 2004

Kerry's Expenses

Fun link with all of the Kerry campaigns expenses in an Excel spreadsheet. The post after this one, on the "Roe Effect" is a bit disturbing too.

Here's wishing you a happy delinquency

Greeting cards from your credit card company.

Kittens

Of all different types.

A New Holiday for Men

SBJ Day.

Enjoy.

Better (and easier) than TV

Get your Law and Order story line here.

I Robot

Another Will Smith movie is almost always a good thing. This one looks delightfully creepy.

Your Favorite @#$%&*!

Swear words illustrated.

March 13, 2004

911 Days Between

With some mathematical stretching there were 911 days between September 11, 2001 and March 11, 2004.

Now to get there, you have to define between as being exclusive of the days themselves, so that there are 3 days between Monday and Friday and zero days between today and tomorrow.

Nonetheless, combined with the other numerological coincidences look for the "duh" nutjobs to come up with more conspiracy theories.

One Born Every Minute

Suckers that is.

Civil Disobedience

The one element of the gay marriage movement that I haven't liked much is the fact that these acts were illegal. Now, so were integrated facilities in the South within our recent memory, so I'm not equating legality with morality. But nonetheless, in a democracy, elected officials do have a duty to uphold the democratically determined law -- the alternative system of one man, one rule is thoroughly horrid.

So this clever twist mentioned by Andrew Sullivan, of four gays, two guys and two girls, all getting hitched, but to their genderiffically correct partner amuses to no end.

Perfectly legal, socially pointed, and persuasive toward the end of allowing gay citizens their equal rights by pointing out the inanity of the opposition.

March 12, 2004

Mother Murders Fetus

Is the sad story of this woman, and her apparently mis-informed fear of delivering via C-section. If law is created at the margins, this case forces

Rowland was warned numerous times between Christmas and Jan. 9 that her unborn twins would likely die if she did not get immediate medical treatment, the documents allege. When she delivered them on Jan. 13, one survived and the other was stillborn.

It was not the doctor's choice for how she should handle the medical care, but it is actually her legal imperative to follow their advice? Was she under any compunction from the state or explicit court order demanding her cooperation?

As the article mentions, is not following dietary advice next? Difficult, troubling case.

March 11, 2004

Hi, is Chris Rock there?

Jeff Jarvis and his commenteers discuss the hijinx that result from inheriting a celeb's cell digits.

My Favorite Spam Ever

From "Cummerbund Q. Snitches" -- what a fantastic name for a correspondent who promises me enlargement and ecstasy!

Notice the pithy aphorism at the start to draw attention and throw off the scent of anti-spam bloodhound programs.

There's a certain poetry to the way the words are awkwardly assembled -- "You are really anonymous!" -- again, to throw off the the anti-spam programs.

Finally, I love the artistic insertion and transposition of letters at random in the body of this message.

Enjoy:

HOLA! The fence around a cemetery is foolish, for those inside can't get out and those outside don't want to get in.

Marc, looking for a source to buy medicatiWqon?
High-Quality ViagtIra and CialdPis.
Quick weight (polyarticular codified) loss and antidepressant medicatiloxn!
Best price on ValiuHim and XanaHox.
Exceptional deals, 80 penrect off!
We are able to ship wlrodwide

Here you will find it:
http://www.willedxy.com/d13/index.php?id=d13
You are really anonymous!

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Someone has said that if spam keeps mutating to avoid anti-spam programs, it will sooner rather than later become unintelligible to its actual intended audience. I think we are on the way there!

March 10, 2004

Wow! What a day.....

My Way - My Way Today - This Day in History:

1496 Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere when he left Hispaniola for Spain.

1785 Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France. He succeeded Benjamin Franklin.

1876 Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful call with the telephone. He spoke the words "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you."

1945 American B-29 bombers attack Tokyo, killing an estimated 100,000 people.

A bit unfair that last one when taken out of context (not surprising these days, is it?)

Jayson Blair is a cokehead dwarf

OUCH! It is getting nasty over at Gawker!

Self-publishing for the masses

Self-Publish and Be Damned? Not Always is Andy Kessler's interesting look at how he published his book himself.

Great Local Maps

Yahoo's new SmartView technology is really quite impressive. Poke in your zipcode and you'll get a local interactive map where you can find hotels, transportation, convenience stores, etc. Might not be that amazing for those of you out in the country who know where everything is in your local neighborhood, but for a New Yorker, this is a fantastic resource.

Good job Yahoo! And I have to say, good news for web users. MSN has always been a bit of a slumbering giant, and with the Google guys increasingly falling victim to the arrogance of success, a very strong technological competitor in the form of a revitalized Yahoo! will provide great incentive for everybody to keep on their toes.

It looks like we are definitely in the second, and perhaps the third, inning of this internet boom!

Massive Anti-Spam Press Conference

I hope this is good news and not a typical cluster-fudge. This MyDoom virus has been cloggin up mailboxes and generating inordinate false positive reports on spammers. As somebody who writes executive jobs newsletters for a business, it would be a welcome relief.

Why Is Stone So Popular in Sweden?

Great letter from Other Great White North:

Hi.

You´re curious about why you´re so popular in sweden right now. I´d say you´re an example of what happens everyday here. If somebody (this time my buddy in Copenhagen) finds something stupid on the web, he passes it on the very next opportunity he has. And since we´re (as far as I know) the top country (countries perhaps, but Denmark is a slight bit behind) to be connected to the web, it moves like a pyramid game.

A few weeks ago an unknown guy in Denmark put up a small game on his site, where a caveman stood at the bottom of a cliff with his club on his shoulder. After a few seconds a penguin appeared on top of the cliff and took an Acapulco-dive down. I managed to whack the penguin 306 m (100 ft) with the club, but so many got the news about the game that in a few days the site shut down, due to overload.

But do not despair. In a month you´ll be totally forgotten until something entirely new is found on your site, and it explodes again. In the mean time somebody else will wonder; -What are these f--cking swedes up to now?

Finally, since I was around (and into heavy metal) when Manowar hit the charts, I must add that uglyness, as well as beauty, is born in the eyes of the beholder. My eyes were propably not so critical in the 80´s.....

Best regards
Tony Swärdh
R&D
Highland Motors

March 09, 2004

Reminds Me of My Punpkin II

I Can Make Things Right

March 08, 2004

Bulgarian Jumping Bar

Shut down for smoking.

March 07, 2004

Reminds Me of My Pumpkin

rave

Goodbye Omarosa

A round up from gawker of Omarosa goodbyes!

Useful email advice

MarketingSherpa has these pointers on how to write a good PR pitch email. In fact, the pointers are useful for every email you compose.

People don't want to read everything-in-a-bucket, dense, complicated emails. They want to read clean, clear emails that make them understand what's in it for them. You're competing against the other 200 emails in their inbox for attention, give them a reason to read.

March 06, 2004

Far Side Contest

An amusing Photoshop Contest to recreate Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons.

Ooops

Every MS Word document is an invitation to look at what your business partner was really thinking.

All the Penguins You Can Stomach

An internet fan gives the comprehensive overview of Penguinana:

Like many people, I found the penguin game to be an utterly addictive, yet ridiculously simple diversion. As I played the game, trying to top my best score, I began to think: Where did this come from, and isn't it curious how it spread so far so fast? Three versions of the game already existed by the time it hit America, so it was obvious that this particular meme picked up a lot of interest in a short amount of time. Almost every famous internet meme has spawned a slew of tribute sites and parodies, but at the time, the game was too new to have already formed a community around it. As a social experiment, I decided to research the origin and spread of the game and put up one of the first web pages on the topic. As new versions are created, I'll update this page to reflect the history of the game.

I dont see mention of the "bullseye" penguin version that incorporates a killer whale though.

Dork

John's trying too hard again.

Not viral at all. Not even bacterial.

The Republican National Committee came up with this lame KERRY vs KERRY "game". It's boring. I want to see "pro" Kerry battling "con" Kerry in some clever, unusual way. Instead, it just lists his positoins on each side (and not even in the frame -- one needs to click through to see the det