Cause. ABC News reporter writes article about disgruntled soldiers stationed in Iraq (who are still dying one per day)
Effect. White House spokespeople launch smear campaign against said reporter, tipping off Drudge Report that reporter is gay and Canadian. Which he is, which I suppose suggests he is virtually a leftist pinko commie hippie.
Question: Have you ever tried to insult someone by calling them “Canadian”?
I think Vietnam has a great idea. I would also, as an advertiser, not even bother to advertise food after 8pm. After eating a full meal, seeing a gigantic, glistening KFC drumstick just makes my tummy heave. :nono:
Went and saw Sokurov’s Russian Ark, aka Russkij kovcheg tonight at Rainbow. Bloody place was packed, too. This is the film everyone is talking about that was shot in a single take – and in uncompressed HDTV format. One shot, 96 minutes. It takes place in one interior location, the Hermitage Museum, but involves hundreds of actors and actresses in period costumes, able to perform like clockwork.
Historically, it is very significant. Technically, it was a stunning achievement. Unfortunately, the plot left something to be desired (what was with the narrator anyway? Was he travelling through time? Or a dream?). I think if it took place in the Met or the ROM, it would be more relevant, but it’s in Russian and about Russian history, which I really don’t “get”.
First, it was the maintenance workers taking the Netscape letters off the AOL-Netscape buildings in Mountain View. Then, a new jazzed-up Mozilla.org website announces that the Mozilla open-source code and developers will be spun off from AOL as the Mozilla Foundation.
Today, the shoe finally drops – AOL dissolves Netscape, the web’s first techno-pioneer, the creator of the modern WWW browser, the cradle of Silicon Valley’s first dotcom millionaires. All staff are laid off.
Seems AOL has got what it wanted from the big N – a bargaining chip in lawsuits against Microsoft to get a favourable deal on IE engine licensing with the AOL browser. Mission accomplished.
So AOL gives the Foundation $2 mill as severance pay, no hard feelings, and they are still free to use Mozilla open source for Compuserve or AOL for Mac. Except they don’t have to pay for development anymore.
Asa Dotzler is keeping pretty mum. Ben Goodger has (half-jokingly?) posted a PayPal fund toward the purchase of his new G35 coupe.
They probably won’t fly, but they’ll have some neat toys on them.
The Volvo SCC concept vehicle has some smart ideas: adaptive headlights that narrow and swivel depending on if you’re turning, and how fast you’re going. An infrared eye scan that automatically adjusts the wheel and chair to your dimensions. And something I had proposed in Gr. 8, a rear-mounted camera view for when you’re backing up.
There have been other interesting ideas coming from other cars, such as alternative fuels (fuel cells, hybrids, hydrogen). Who wouldn’t want a multimedia-equipped, Bluetooth enabled car with electrorheological gel suspension?
But what is really cool is the ignition switch on the new Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The shifter knob flips up, like a missile launcher switch, and you can start the car with your thumb.
I was watching A and E, and a commercial for a prescription medicine for Alzheimer’s came up. For the international crowd, yes, in the good ol’ US of A you can market your prescription drugs on television like candy. The catch is, you must state all your major side effects. Of course, you are free to say them really fast and distract the audience with shots of happy people enjoying stuff. The Viagra commercials are actually well done.
Anyway, in the side effects spiel, they mentioned “being tired” and “not feeling hungry”. Wow, such scientific terms. Why not say “fatigue” and “lack of appetite”? Perhaps they are trying to downplay the side effects. After all, who doesn’t feel tired and not hungry every once and a while?
Words are powerful. Use them well.
Yesterday, I went downstairs to grab my laundry out of the washer, and I find out that some woman has already taken them out and put them in my basket. She was in the middle of heaping her particulars in the machine.
There must have been four empty washers when I came in, so I was too confused and stunned to give her a tongue lashing. Then I noticed her laundry “basket”.
It was a institution-sized garbage pail. You know, the kind that has its own wheels.
It turns out that Ms. Whites/Darks/Delicates Trash used FIVE of the six available washers. Must have been Laundry Month. It appears to have been such a complex, large-scale, pipeline processing operation, she even had Ziploc containers of food with her.
(note: I really wish they could set up a CCTV camera in the laundry. Or maybe a webcam. My dream would be to have all the machines web-enabled, so you can track exactly how much time is left in each machine. I could even write an app to hide in my system tray. God, I’m such a geek.) :lamer:
Shoot fireballs to grab the fruit in the ice cubes in Orisinal.com ‘s Firedragon, a flash game.
Went to see the 2003 Dragon’s Lair Jousting Tournament at the John Labatt Centre last night. It was 2.5 hours long, but pretty interesting. They had mount games (gauntlet), duels with broad swords, spears, half-swords, and of course, jousting.
There are two kinds of jousting: light armour and heavy armour. Light armour weighs almost 90lbs., not including the lance. Heavy armour jousting is even more brutal; lances are snapped in two, and sometimes riders are knocked right off their horses when they plough into each other. Pretty odd seeing grown men walking around in full knight armour taking swigs out of Aquafina bottles, though. At least these geeks get some exercise.
Silverlotus had a brainstorm. If they marketed jousting right, it could be just as big as professional wrestling! Think about it, the target market is the same (bumpkins), the appeal is the same (the possibility of someone getting hurt), and the knights already make dramatic entrances with theme music.
Not enough wenches, though.
Very cool…VIA Rail VIA 1 cars on the Toronto-Montreal corridor are now equipped with wireless Internet access. For the next 4 months, it’s free!
This is the first of its kind in North America.
Very clever too. The downlink is via mobile ExpressVu satellite dish, and the uplink is via Bell Mobility’s 1X wireless data network. The antennas are in two plastic bumps on the top of the railcar.
SSID: BELL-ACCESSZONE or BELL-ZONEDACCES
Configuration: Open
Security: None (Use IPSec encryption on VPN client if connecting to corporate network)