[kiyote23]
 dorky.radiofreepirate.org

life on the dork farm

Tuesday, December 28, 2004 :::
 

It's really interesting, going back through the logs of this site. I've had a website since the web was young, almost ten years now, but it's only in the past couple of years that I've started looking at who was looking at my site. Now that I've started, it's hard to stop.

I started on BBSes, which are a little hard to explain if you don't remember them. A BBS was someone's computer which was hooked to a phone line, and people would dial in, leave messages for each other and on different general purpose forums, share files, play games, do most of the things that we do with the 'net now, only on a one-at-a-time, individual basis (most BBSes only had one modem, so only one user could be on at any one time). Yet still they were thriving communities, even in a backwater like Decatur, Illinois. My brother and I would cruise through at least three different boards at least once a day, and these were all local boards, because we didn't want to risk the wrath of our parents and dial a long-distance board, and sitting here on my couch with my laptop connected wirelessly to our DSL line that statement seems so silly now, so obsolete, but it was so true then. Our network was the five or six boards that people had set up throughout town. And we loved it.

I don't know if the post-'net generation can really grok it, but the thrill of connecting our Commodore 64 to another computer and sending messages back and forth was intoxicating, and through the howl of that first handshake, we were hooked. Suddenly, our bedroom didn't seem so limited any more-- we felt that we had thoroughly explored this digital room, and suddenly we found a door to another digital room, and another, and another. We were gamers, and we couldn't stop exploring if we wanted to, and then this exploration lead us to it's ultimate destination: starting our own BBS.

We co-opted our father's Zenith 386 portable, hooked it to a phone line and setup a copy of TBBS. We posted our number to all of the other BBSes in town, we crossed our fingers, and we waited for the masses to come to us.

And we learned the same lesson that everyone in the dot-com bubble would learn ten years later-- if there's no content, then no one is going to come. While we kept chit-chatting back and forth between ourselves, we never got an outsider interested in posting on our board. We kept it up night and day, and eventually lost interest in it, until at last an electrical strike during a thunderstorm took out both the phone line and the computer attached to it.

Now let's trip through the years to now, when I have a Blogger-powered website hosted by Avalon. It's not much to look at, but it does what I want it to, which is enable me to post quickly the websites and stories that I find interesting. I ran it for a long time without any sort of tracking service, not really caring who visited. But this fall, when I did one of my semi-annual revamps, I installed a Sitemeter, and the results have been interesting.

I'm big in the East, if I'm big anywhere. In the past week, I've gotten hits from Russia, India, and China. I'm not big-- I'm averaging 1 hit a day (hi! That means you!), but I've got some repeat visitors, most notably someone from Wholefoods.com, which is scary, considering they are my competition.

But the funniest part is that since I've installed the Sitemeter, I check it. Pretty much religiously, first thing whenever I start my surfing, I check who's checked my site, which is funny, because I rarely write anything like this, I mostly excerpt quotes from other pages and stitch them together into a fumbling, rumbling, stumbling narrative of these modern times, which I like doing, and I like reading, so I don't mind. And I don't mind that I'm only getting one hit a day, or that most of my hits are people who've entered in "LA anal MILF" into MSN search (hi! How ya doin'? Tired of scrollin'? 'Cause this is as titillating as it gets!).

'Cause while it's fun to know that people are looking at the site, I've stopped caring. I do it because I like it, and so that I can reference back to what I was reading in the past. But hey, if you do like it, and you're from China, Russia, or India, drop me line. I'd love to hear from you.


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/28/2004 08:39:00 PM
::: Comments:
Greetings....I've stumbled upon your site by clicking on the Iowa City part of my profile and scrolling through the results....I used to draw political cartoons for the Daily Iowan, but I quit because they refused to allow local artists on the comics page...So I'm finally getting around to putting my stuff on the web because I couldn't even get the Daily Iowan to sponsor an online comics page...Pathetic! You'd think that a college paper would be open to printing local artists, but apparently not. Anyways, I'm new to this blogging business, and I'm just trying to get my stuff out there...
# posted by Blogger dailyidiots : 1/05/2005 10:32 AM
 
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Thursday, December 16, 2004 :::
 

The Defense Secretary We Have (washingtonpost.com): "'Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip.'

So the Army is in charge. 'They' are working at it. Rumsfeld? He happens to hang out in the same building: 'I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon. . . . And that is what the Army has been working on.' Not 'that is what we have been working on.' Rather, 'that is what the Army has been working on.' The buck stops with the Army.

At least the topic of those conversations in the Pentagon isn't boring. Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armor, 'It's interesting.' In fact, 'if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up.' Good point. Why have armor at all? Incidentally, can you imagine if John Kerry had made such a statement a couple of months ago? It would have been (rightly) a topic of scorn and derision among my fellow conservatives, and not just among conservatives.

Perhaps Rumsfeld simply had a bad day. But then, what about his statement earlier last week, when asked about troop levels? 'The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control.' Really? Well, 'the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General Franks and General Abizaid wanted.'

Leave aside the fact that the issue is not 'the number of troops we had for the invasion' but rather the number of troops we have had for postwar stabilization. Leave aside the fact that Gen. Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task -- and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him that tens of thousands of international troops would be available. Leave aside the fact that Rumsfeld has only grudgingly and belatedly been willing to adjust even a little bit to realities on the ground since April 2003. And leave aside the fact that if our generals have been under pressure not to request more troops in Iraq for fear of stretching the military too thin, this is a consequence of Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the size of the military after Sept. 11.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. Rumsfeld acknowledged this last week, after a fashion: 'I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that's fine.' Except he fails to take responsibility.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?

In Sunday's New York Times, John F. Burns quoted from the weekly letter to the families of his troops by Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, an Indiana state trooper who now commands the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed just south of Baghdad:

'Ask yourself, how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone ages, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit, and their abundance of compassion?' Col. Smith's answer: 'They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or color or creed. . . . They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues.'

These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/16/2004 02:25:00 AM
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Tuesday, December 14, 2004 :::
 

Weekly Review (Harpers.org): "The fate of Pale Male, a virile red-tailed hawk residing on the cornice of a New York City building for 11 years, was uncertain after the family nest was removed by the co-op building's board; the next day Pale Male was seen carrying twigs from Central Park in a futile attempt to rebuild. Those supporting the eviction took exception to the occasional bloody carcass of a prey pigeon or rat falling to the sidewalk, but protestors bearing signs that read 'Honk 4 Hawks' began a daily vigil. Scientists were warning men not to place laptop computers on their laps since overheating the scrotum can reduce fertility. England's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents urged people attending office Christmas parties to resist photocopying body parts and dancing on desks, and to avoid flaming Christmas puddings at all costs. The Vatican disapproved of a nativity scene in Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London that depicted David and Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice, as Joseph and Mary, with George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and the Duke of Edinburgh standing in for the three wise men. 'There is a tradition in which each generation tries to reenact the nativity,' explained a spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury, 'but oh deary me.'"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/14/2004 12:18:00 PM
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Yahoo! News - Army Guard now says its Iraq troops figure was inaccurate: "Woodham gave two explanations for the error. In a telephone interview with USA TODAY mid-afternoon Monday, Woodham said the National Guard Bureau made 'an internal mistake' in compiling the numbers. He said that personnel at Guard headquarters had misread a series of numbers on a spreadsheet and that accounted for the lower figure.

In a second conversation about two hours later, Woodham said he 'misunderstood the question' when asked how many Army Guard troops had deployed to Iraq since the beginning of the war."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/14/2004 11:37:00 AM
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Telegraph | Arts | The demise of God's scourge : "While Welsh relishes the plotting and counter-plotting, her real talent is for period atmosphere. It would be hard to better the physical descriptions with which the book is laced: brawny milkmaids; stinking fishwives; the sails of the windmills on Highgate Hill; ale-houses packed with hump-backed fiddlers and blowzy whores drinking Spanish wine. Every vignette, every minor character, every sight, sound and smell, has the ring of truth."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/14/2004 01:38:00 AM
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Monday, December 13, 2004 :::
 

Yahoo! News - Bush monkey portrait sparks protests: "'We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night,' said show organizer Bucky Turco. 'Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild.'

Turco took the show down on Saturday and moved the art work to his small downtown Animal Gallery. Calls to the management of Chelsea Market for comment were not returned.

From afar, the painting offers a likeness of Bush, but when you get closer you see the image is made up of chimpanzees or monkeys swimming in a marsh."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/13/2004 11:52:00 PM
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Yahoo! News - McCain: 'No Confidence' in Rumsfeld: "'I have strenuously argued for larger troop numbers in Iraq, including the right kind of troops — linguists, special forces, civil affairs, etc.,' said McCain, R-Ariz. 'There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld on that issue.'

When asked if Rumsfeld was a liability to the Bush administration, McCain responded: 'The president can decide that, not me.'"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/13/2004 11:48:00 PM
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An Early History - African American Mental Health: "Benjamin Rush, MD (1746­1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dean of the Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania and the 'Father of American Psychiatry, 'described Negroes as suffering from an affliction called Negritude, which was thought to be a mild form of leprosy. The only cure for the disorder was to become white. It is unclear as to how many cases of Negritude were successfully treated. The irony of Dr. Rush's medical observations was that he was a leading mental health reformer and co-founder of the first anti-slavery society in America. Dr. Rush's portrait still adorns the official seal of the American Psychiatric Association. However, Dr Rush's observation-'The Africans become insane, we are told, in some instances, soon after they enter upon the toils of perpetual slavery in the West Indies'-is not often cited in discussions of mental illness and African-Americans, how-ever valuable it might be in understanding the traumatic impact of enslavement and oppression on Africans and their descendants."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/13/2004 11:39:00 PM
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Sunday, December 12, 2004 :::
 

Yahoo! News - U.S. Strikes Fallujah; Two Troops Killed: "As of Sunday, at least 1,289 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/12/2004 11:06:00 PM
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Yahoo! News - A Cabinet Setback for Bush: "Some analysts said that Bush had been in such a hurry to complete his Cabinet — and to name a hero of the Sept. 11 attacks and protege of former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to a leading role — that the White House did not catch obvious problems in Kerik's background.

'The president violated every rule that guides the nominating process: Don't announce until you vet,' said Paul Light, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who has studied the presidential appointment process. 'They announced well before Kerik had filled out the most basic of paperwork."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/12/2004 11:04:00 PM
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Tuesday, December 07, 2004 :::
 

Yahoo! News - Online School That Gave Cat an MBA Is Sued: "Trinity Southern University in Texas, a cellular company and the two brothers who ran them are accused of misappropriating Internet addresses of the state Senate and more than 60 Pennsylvania businesses to sell fake degrees and prescription drugs by spam e-mail, according to the lawsuit.

Investigators paid $299 for a bachelor's degree for Colby Nolan — a deputy attorney general's 6-year-old black cat — claiming he had experience including baby-sitting and retail management.

The school, which offers no classes, allegedly determined Colby Nolan's resume entitled him to a master of business administration degree; a transcript listed the cat's course work and 3.5 grade-point average.

The state is seeking a permanent injunction, civil penalties, costs and restitution for violating consumer law and restrictions on unsolicited e-mail ads.

Prosecutors said more than 18,000 illegal e-mails were sent out this year with links to Trinity Southern's Web address, including 300 that appeared to originate from the Internet servers of Pennsylvania companies and institutions.

Among the alleged victims are Penn State University and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as numerous Internet service providers, businesses and technology companies.

The defendants are the school; Innovative Cellular and Wireless Inc. of Corpus Christi, Texas; Alton Scott Poe of St. Cloud, Fla., vice chancellor and dean of admission for Trinity; and Craig Barton Poe of Frisco, Texas, president of Innovative Cellular.

A phone message left at Trinity Southern was not returned Monday. None of the other three defendants appears to have a listed or published phone number."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/07/2004 02:46:00 PM
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Monday, December 06, 2004 :::
 

Yahoo! News - We're Not in G-Rated Kansas Anymore: "Remote freeway offramps are X-rated in Quaker City, Ohio (pop. 563), and Nelson, Mo. (pop. 212), in Montrose, Ill., and Perry, Mich. The Lion's Den chain operates 29 stores in the Midwest, including this one in Abilene, off Exit 272, near the cows and hay bales of Dickinson County.

In these small towns, the arrival of big, brash porn shops has been unexpected — and divisive.

Debates about morality, obscenity and privacy have played out at church suppers and planning commission meetings — and sometimes, in court.

John Haltom, who owns the Dr. John's Lingerie chain, recently spent time behind bars in Nebraska and Utah for promoting obscenity and selling pornography to minors. He and other adult-store owners have also taken the offensive, suing city officials for trying to force them out of business or state lawmakers for censoring their billboards.

Here in central Kansas, the Lion's Den faces criminal obscenity charges; a judge will hear the final pretrial arguments Tuesday. The store has filed a federal lawsuit against Dickinson County for trying to restrict where and when it can sell sex-themed merchandise. That case will be heard in January.

Many locals find themselves conflicted. A hairdresser says adult stores are wicked, then admits she might like to try a few products to spice up her relationship. A sales representative says he supports free enterprise, but he hates to see his town collecting sales tax on obscenity.

'I haven't worked it all out yet,' said Amber Brook, a young waitress. 'I grew up in a Christian home, and I believe there's a right and a wrong. But I don't feel that gives me the right to impose my values on others.'"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/06/2004 11:18:00 PM
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Sunday, December 05, 2004 :::
 

Yahoo! News - Pastor Decried After Child's Arms Severed: "'I'm not saying that anybody suggested 'Go cut your baby's arms off,'' said Macaulay, a mental health counselor who lives with Schlosser's mother, Connie, in Canada. 'This diminishing of women, this diminishing of women's powers, women's importance, referring to women as jezebels, I think, further undermines an already fragile ego state that Dena's experiencing.'

That's absurd, the 72-year-old minister said.

'I'm an apostle and I'm a prophet,' Davidson said. 'I only teach what's in the Bible and that's what makes them mad.'

Davidson, a former veterinarian, said God told him to start Water of Life Ministries in suburban Dallas in the early 1980s. His sermons, based on literal interpretations of the Bible, are available on his Web site and broadcast on TV and radio in several states.

He refers to Methodist, Catholic and Baptist denominations as cults and believes the Ten Commandments apply only to the disobedient, not the righteous.

Davidson doesn't deny his teachings are unconventional. He said he avoids violent imagery, but he does teach that women are weaker and should submit to their husbands.

He also said he isn't well-liked by much of the religious community, and he was removed from the Daystar Television Network, a major Christian broadcaster, after his sermons offended top officials.

In September, Davidson was arrested on a public intoxication charge after a couple, longtime members of his church, called 911, alleging the minister attacked them at their home. Davidson said he was only trying to cast the devil out of the wife, who had become rebellious and rejected his teachings. He said he entered the home with the permission of her husband.

The couple told police Davidson choked the woman. The couple declined to press assault charges and several calls by the AP to their home went unanswered."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/05/2004 07:43:00 PM
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US admits the war for ‘hearts and minds’ in Iraq is now lost - [Sunday Herald]: "Referring to the repeated mantra from the White House that those who oppose the US in the Middle East “hate our freedoms”, the report says: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms’, but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing support, for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.

“Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypo crisy. Moreover, saying that ‘freedom is the future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronising … in the eyes of Muslims, the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. US actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.”

The way America has handled itself since September 11 has played straight into the hands of al-Qaeda, the report adds. “American actions have elevated the authority of the jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.” The result is that al-Qaeda has gone from being a marginal movement to having support across the entire Muslim world.

“Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic,” the report goes on, adding that to the Arab world the war is “no more than an extension of American domestic politics”. The US has zero credibility among Muslims which means that “whatever Americans do and say only serves … the enemy”."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/05/2004 01:37:00 PM
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Deir Yassin massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Fahimi Zeidan stated that she and her wounded siblings encounted a captured pair of village males and When they reached us, the soldiers [guarding us] shot them. When the mother of one of the killed started hitting the fighters, one of them stabbed her with a knife a few times. (Deir Yassin, Monograph No. 4, p.56, Kanani and Zitawi)

when one of his daughters screamed, they shot her too. They then called my brother Mahmoud and shot him in our presence, and when my mother screamed and bent over my brother (she was carrying my little sister Khadra who was still being breast fed) they shot my mother too. (Fahimi Zeidan, quoted by Kanani and Zitawi, 'Deir Yassin, Monograph No. 4,' 55.)

Haleem Eid, a woman, saw a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant (Kanani and Zitawi, 'Deir Yassin, Monograph No. 4,' 55.)"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/05/2004 01:38:00 AM
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Lehi (group) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "'Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can negate the use of terror as a means of battle.

'...We are quite far from moral hesitations on the national battlefield. We see before us the command of the Torah, the most moral teaching in the world: 'Obliterate - until destruction.' We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.

'But primarily terror is part of our political battle under present conditions and its role is large and great:

'It demonstrates, in clear language, to those who listen throughout the world and to our despondent brothers outside the gates of this country of our battle against the true terrorist who hides behind his piles of papers and the laws he has legislated.

'It is not directed against people, it is directed against representatives. Therefore it is effective.

'If it also shakes the Jews in Israel from their complacency, good and well.

'Only so will the battle for liberation begin.'

-- He Khazit (The Front, a Lehi underground newspaper), Issue 2, August 1943. The italicised quotation is a combination of two Biblical references to the Amalekites, Ex. 17:14 and Num. 14:45: Utterly blot out their remembrance...and destroy them completely."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/05/2004 12:34:00 AM
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Lehi (group) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Late in 1940, the Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik was sent to Beirut where he met the German official Werner Otto von Hentig and delivered a letter from Lehi offering to 'actively take part in the war on Germany's side' in return for German support for 'the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich'. Von Hentig forwarded the letter to the German embassy in Ankara, but there is no record of any official response. Lehi tried to establish contact with the Germans again in December 1941, also apparently without success."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/05/2004 12:29:00 AM
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Saturday, December 04, 2004 :::
 

Sharon Olds: Online Poems : "I Go Back to May 1937 (from The Gold Cell)

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/04/2004 09:55:00 PM
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Gay book ban goal of state lawmaker : "MONTGOMERY - An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for 'the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.' Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the 'homosexual agenda.'"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/04/2004 05:11:00 PM
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Yahoo! News - AP: Navy Probes New Iraq Prisoner Photos: "Some of the photos have date stamps suggesting they were taken in May 2003, which could make them the earliest evidence of possible abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The far more brutal practices photographed in Abu Ghraib prison occurred months later.

An Associated Press reporter found more than 40 of the pictures among hundreds in an album posted on a commercial photo-sharing Web site by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq after his tour of duty. It is unclear who took the pictures, which the Navy said it was investigating after the AP furnished copies to get comment for this story.

These and other photos found by the AP appear to show the immediate aftermath of raids on civilian homes. One man is lying on his back with a boot on his chest. A mug shot shows a man with an automatic weapon pointed at his head and a gloved thumb jabbed into his throat. In many photos, faces have been blacked out. What appears to be blood drips from the heads of some. A family huddles in a room in one photo and others show debris and upturned furniture."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/04/2004 05:05:00 PM
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Friday, December 03, 2004 :::
 

Yahoo! News - Police Follow Doughnut Trail, Solve Crime: "HARRISBURG, Pa. - Police followed a trail of doughnuts to find a stolen Krispy Kreme delivery truck. 'It has a happy ending,' Swatara Township Sgt. Robert Simmonds said. 'The evidence was brought back to the police station, and the cops are eating the doughnuts.'"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/03/2004 01:11:00 PM
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Thursday, December 02, 2004 :::
 

press-citizen.com | Local News: "Results from the EPA's July tests showed the highest levels of perchlorate, at 330 ppb and 272 ppb, were found in a grain field south of Hills Elementary School and City Park. Perchlorate levels greater than 100 ppb were found in 12 groundwater samples in four acres west of the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railroad tracks.

Smith reported that about 10 percent of the wells were increasing in perchlorate contamination during the four months between February and July testing; 65 percent were decreasing and 25 percent had mixed results.

With levels appearing generally stable, the EPA plans to reduce the frequency of well water testing to reduce costs. The agency has a spending cap of $2 million for current efforts in Hills.EPA officials said they suspect partially exploded fireworks got ground up during a harvest. Other theories from residents are that discarded flares used to signal a train crossing or fireworks confiscated by the Fire Department caused the contamination.

Researchers will be in town from Dec. 6-15 to do additional sampling south of the park and west of the railroad tracks. In addition, they will check groundwater and soil samples for fireworks remnants and use a magnetometer, an instrument likened to a sophisticated metal detector, to survey the area.

Meanwhile, city officials are reviewing a preliminary engineering report they received Nov. 22 from Shive-Hattery that looked at potential costs for a municipal water system versus connecting to Iowa City's water system. City councilors might discuss the report at their Dec. 13 meeting.

Preliminary estimates show it could cost about $2.96 million to link the town to Iowa City water, with an additional $100,451 annual operation cost, City Clerk Teresa Volk said. If the town started its own water system it could cost about $2.69 million to construct and $78,154 annually to operate it, she said.

Residents also could consider a private osmosis system to filter well water at a cost of $240 annually to maintain parts, EPA officials said. Another option is to qualify to be on the U.S. EPA Superfund National Priorities List to help with contamination clean-up efforts."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/02/2004 11:28:00 PM
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McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Seven Questions for the Guitar Solo From "Stairway to Heaven.": "Q: Is it true that you and the intro to 'Stairway to Heaven' haven't spoken in nearly 30 years?

A: We are both pretty popular, so everybody's always expected us to be best buddies, but we come from very different worlds. He is slow; I am fast. He is acoustic finger style; I am electric. He's always thought that I'm jealous of him, because he's slightly—and I emphasize slightly—more famous than I am. And you know what? He may be right. But everybody's got a position to play in the greatest rock 'n' roll song of all time. One of us leads off and one of us bats cleanup. One of us is delicate; one of us is more aggressive. More accurately, one of us is the sound of hobbits playing hide the cudgel and one of us is the clarion call of rock 'n' roll's everlasting triumph.

Also, one of us comes down with a bad case of the falsetto jackass, and one of us doesn't.

Q: Any plans to settle down?
A: You've heard the song, right? Heard it a thousand times? I'm a guitar solo.

(subdued) I rock on.

(with gathering intensity) As I've always rocked.

Alone!

Q: (air guitar)
A: (triumphantly) Alone! Alone! Alone! Alone! Alone! Alone! Alone! Alone! Alone!"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/02/2004 10:38:00 PM
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Kungfu Magazine: Magazine Feature Article: "Penis training is often ridiculed in the martial arts, perhaps out of envy, perhaps because it seems so absurd. Bring it up around the most macho martial arts men, and they will be crossing their legs and giggling like schoolgirls. But as Tu sees it, people train every other part of their body except their sexual organs. He considers his method as the only way to correct this oversight. While most people think the only exercise a penis gets is ejaculation, Tu's method treats the penis like an arm, a leg or any other part of the body. Tu comments 'People compete will all their four limbs, why not this?'"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/02/2004 10:00:00 PM
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Yahoo! News - All-Cereal Restaurant Opens in Philly: "Co-founders David Roth and Rick Bacher opened the first Cereality, a 200-square-foot kiosk in Arizona State University's student union, last year. Besides the 1,500-square-foot Philadelphia cafe in the middle of Penn's retail district, the Boulder, Colo.-based company wants to open more than a dozen Cerealities next year on campuses, hospital lobbies, airports and office buildings.

'We don't see this as (solely) a college concept, we see this as being relevant to the 95 percent of the American public that eats cereal,' Roth said. If college students — 'the most cynical market we can go after' — like it, Roth's confident that office workers and travelers will like it too."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/02/2004 12:31:00 AM
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Harper's Index for November 2004 (Harpers.org): "Number of dead bodies pictured in the New York Times during the first week of September : 16.5

Number of countries they represented : 5

Chances that one of them died in Iraq : 2 in 3

Number of U.S. soldiers returned from Iraq in the last year who have been diagnosed with mental-health problems : 5,375

Ratio of suicides worldwide in 2001 to war deaths : 7:2

Ratio of Americans killed by lightning since January 2002 to those killed by terrorism : 3:2"


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/02/2004 12:09:00 AM
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Chunklet Magazine: "If you rent the DVD — and I encourage people to rent, not buy — what you see is a much slower, less focused, much less funny movie in its first edit. We basically polished a turd; we didn't do any alchemy. So as the editing process went on, we basically influenced it with arguments, begging, kissing ass, and long emails thanking Jack Frost for putting jokes in that had been cut, and begging him to try other things that we thought would work. I feel like there's a chance that, based on the weaknesses of the script, and let's even point out my own weaknesses as a performer, maybe there's no great movie there. But I can't say that unless I get a chance to edit it first. The things that are wrong with the movie are that it shifts gears between being kind of dry and funny and a little bit harsh, which is very Mr. Showy, to being saccharin-sweet and strangely emotionally cloying, and begging for your sympathy in a very weird way with this music and these shots that have no sense of irony to them at all. So it's this really weird gearshift that happens constantly throughout the movie. It's one of the reasons the movie feels so long. It's a very short movie, but it feels really long.

I was talking to somebody about it, and it occurred to me that there's a lot of comedies that come out where people like only four or five scenes. I remember the last Austin Powers. You know, you'd talk to people about it and they'd go, “Oh, it's great! I didn't like Goldmember, but I liked this, and that, and this!” And they name, like—everybody names, like, three things. And it's like, “So you liked three things and that makes it a great movie?” And the difference between that movie, which I do think is a good comedy, and Run, Ronnie, Run, which I think is a bad comedy, is that when there's a weak joke in Goldmember, it still belongs in the movie. When there's a weak moment in the movie, it's not from another movie; it's just an attempt at an Austin Powers joke that maybe isn't the best, but somehow it all works together, and when you're done, you're thinking only about the parts that work. But with Run, Ronnie, Run, the parts that don't work and don't fit are so wrong in tone, they're like from a different movie, and they weigh the movie down. They drag it down. You can't just dismiss them and forget they happened after they're over.

The thing that's missing is the gap that exists between our reputation and movie studio executives' awareness. To “Mr. Show” fans and people who know us, it's ludicrous that we would get kicked out of the editing room of a movie that I wrote. But movie executives have never heard of “Mr. Show.” Ever. None of them. Except for the lower-level execs at pretty much all of the studios — they've heard of it and are fans. But all the top guys, these 50-year old German billionaires, they don't know “Mr. Show.” And they do pay attention to what goes on their networks, and they do pay attention to what movies they put out, and they've just now started to hear about, you know—they're barely gonna become familiar with Jack Black in the next year. He's a new face to them that just has never done anything before until this new movie comes out. They live in Aspen, they live in Europe, they live in, you know—they go to Japan and Australia, they just aren't living anywhere near the level that you and I live, and when these younger executives who are so excited about us and want to work with us, go to them, the guy who writes the check, and say, “I want to do a movie with this guy,” they say, “No fucking way, I've never heard of him.” “Well, he's got this TV show, and he's done this, and college kids like it...” “Well, I'm not a college kid, and I've never heard of it, so you can't have $8 million. No.” There is a major disconnect there. It's a strange thing, but it's really true."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/02/2004 12:03:00 AM
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Wednesday, December 01, 2004 :::
 

Wired News: Rocket Fuel in Milk, Lettuce: "Perchlorate is both a naturally occurring and man-made chemical. It is used by the aerospace and defense industries to help rocket fuel burn. In humans, high concentrations can disrupt the thyroid gland, which regulates metabolism and is linked to the development of motor skills in children.

Because the long-term effects of small concentrations of perchlorate on humans are still unknown, both the FDA and the Environmental Working Group cautioned consumers not to draw the conclusion that they should stop drinking milk or eating lettuce.

'At this point we don't know if there is any risk,' said an FDA spokeswoman. 'Therefore, we're telling consumers to continue to eat a well-balanced diet. We don't want people to alter their diet in ways that make them think they're removing perchlorate, when they're really removing the healthy benefits of those foods.'

In its survey, the FDA found an average concentration of 5.76 parts per billion of perchlorate in the 104 milk samples it studied. In 128 samples of green leaf, red leaf, iceberg and romaine lettuce, the agency found an average concentration of 10.49 parts per billion.

Federal and state agencies are still debating just how much perchlorate is acceptable in human diets. California health officials recommend that drinking water not exceed more than 6 parts per billion of perchlorate. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, recommends a stricter 1 part per billion."


::: posted by kiyote23
::: at 12/01/2004 10:26:00 PM
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