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October 29, 2004
Good joke
This in the email today from Mike:
The FBI had an opening for an assassin. After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done there were 3 finalists: two men and a woman.
For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. "We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances. Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair. Kill her."
The man said, "You can't be serious, I could never shoot my wife." The agent said, "Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home."
The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, "I tried, but I can't kill my wife." The agent said, "You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home."
Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the same instructions to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, she wiped the sweat from her brow. "This gun was loaded with blanks," she said, "I had to beat him to death with the chair."
Posted by John at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2004
Top 15 Biblical Ways to Get a Wife
Some of these would pose a bit of a problem in modern society. What with the laws and all...
Posted by John at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)
subscribe to this
Logical tips, quickie little tips and tricks in your email, once a week, helping you learn to fix the little computer hangups that always come along at the most inopportune time, and grow more familiar with your PC setup. Perfect, painless, intro material for technophobes, and a good review for the more technically adept.
Posted by John at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2004
Meaning of Life?
David Seaman is asking Internet visitors to his site to tell him their answers to the age-old question, "What is the meaning of life?" He'll publish the "best" answers in another week or so (best according to what parameters?, one wonders). It's funny how even in this alleged quest for knowledge, where one would presume an openness to the widest possible range of possibilities, people's biases are revealed. David says that when you search for the meaning of life, "You'll check out religion, and if that's a good enough answer for you, then great. You don't need to keep searching for the answer, so why are you here?" Then, in his guidelines for submitting repsonses he says "Just don't send a link to the Bible."
If David were serious, he would be suggesting something different. Example: "If you think you have found the meaning of life through your religion, please explain what that meaning is and why it satisfies you (in 200 words or less)." Instead, he just pre-judges any answer based on religion as unacceptable.
Posted by John at 07:10 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Travel Size
If you travel a lot, you're always on the lookout in the bins at the supermarkets and drug stores for trial sized toothpaste, shaving cream, and so on. it's a catch-as-catch-can business, as the items stocked are never the same from one week to the next. Well, now you can solve that problem with Minimus. Where everything is trial-sized.
Posted by John at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2004
Deep in Enemy Territory....
Of my 40 closest neighbors who support either political party monetarily, 34 supported Kerry and the democrats, 6 are for Bush. Welcome to Marin County. What if I held a RNC block party, and nobody came??
Posted by John at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2004
Beautiful photo desktop wallpaper
Whether or not you want to use one as your new desktop, these wallpaper photos from Sensitive Light are gorgeous.
Posted by John at 09:37 AM | Comments (1)
October 11, 2004
Internet 10, Harvard 0
I've been participating in the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet & Society discussion forums, and it's been... well... pretty lame. One problem is the clunky comment interface they've adopted called H2O " communities built around ideas". I'm sure it must have MASSIVE benefits in administration of community forums that make up for the totally UNintuitive navigation, the tedious paging required to adequately explore any issue on the table, and learning the ridiculous nomenclature they've felt the need to reinvent (a discussion thread is called a "rottisserie" for-cryin'-out-loud).
But that's only part of the problem. For some reason, the group doesn't want to tackle real issues. Witness, for example, the latest question lobbed my way:
When would you say, as an Internet user, that you've had a direct brush with an Internet governor? What was it like? (Are you sure it was internet governance you were experiencing?) If you can't think of such a time, can you think of an instance where you wish there were a clear Internet governor to whom to turn for a particular problem you experience(d) or opportunity you think is missed?OK, so it's mildly annoying when a board moderator lets the flamers run amok, but then I don't go those sites any more. Part of what makes a good community site is the quality of the governor. I think that holds true in larger contexts as well, say in the dispute over the disposition of a particular domain name. What's the issue here? Is there some burning problem I missed?
What about access to pR0n by children? What about abusive popup ads that take over your screen? What about SPAM!? What about the dislocation of the music industry by file sharing? What about free speech on the Internet and the publication of terrorist cookbooks? What about the diminishing tax base caused by sales through Internet stores? Who can tax Internet sales, since sales taxes are administered at the state level? Should we tax Internet sales? What about rampant bandwidth theft that no one is tracking? What about fraud, spoofing and phishing? What is the appropriate paradigm for copyright in the digital age? Where is the truth-in-advertising legislation for the Internet? What about the records that are maintained by sophisticated Internet marketing firms, tracking your Internet surfing practices, purchasing habits, personal preferences? Who's safeguarding our privacy?
We've got serious problems, folks, and serious problems call for serious deliberation by serious thinkers. These Harvard staffers are rendering this community brainstorming exercise effete, sterile and shallow with their edge-case questions on issues of largely theoretical concern.
I had higher hopes.
Posted by John at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)
Disease Trading Cards
I'll trade you two measles and an HIV for your Ebola virus. I need it to go with my Ebola tie.
Posted by John at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2004
Fastest mouse in town
It's easy. Just click on the numbers, 1 through 15, as fast as you can. On about my tenth try, I got:
You Clicked all the blocks in 4.872 seconds
Dude... impossible
Posted by John at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2004
Lots of linky clicky goodness
I am SO far behind... I may migrate some of these to standalone posts in the next few days, but there's a ton of good stuff I just haven't had time to post about. Herewith, my notepad (online version):
- 50 tips to clean up your computer
- PBS does a special on Black Woodstock, circa 1973
- Graphic Novel Review (I Love graphic novels! but they get NO respect)
- Music Lab - Columbia U. - take a survey, help research, download free music, discover new bands
- For making historical figures come alive, nothing beats a Death Mask. Little graveyard humor there... Seriously, though, who knew Dante had a schnoz like that? Or what my namesake, John Wesley really looked like? Or that Mary Queen of Scots was a cutie? Do read the "Death Mask History" linked from the front page.
- Old time radio, downloadable as MP3 file from RadioLovers. (Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows...)
- Are we all singing from the same hymn book here? If not, let's refer to the Cyberhymnal (over 4,800 Christian hymns and gospel songs, including words and music - scored and MIDI forms – listenable MIDI, even!)
- Collar it and get your boots on, gates and queens. This 1944 Hepster glossary from none other than Cab Calloway is the mezz.
- Blue Note album covers. The Finest in Jazz Since 1939.
- Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here. Dive into Dante via his new linked hypertext site.
- The Question of God, another fine PBS special, examines the parallel lives of Signmund Freud and CS Lewis (for you non-religious types, that would be anti-God and pro-God).
- There's been a tremendous increase in criminal attacks on home computers, it's worth checking your exposure. HackerWatch will test your computer online, and point you a couple of other, in-depth scanning services as well. To do: Take them all.
- Educate Girls Globally deserves your support. Many third world countries only educate the boys. Probably a cause-and-effect thing there.
- World travel tips does Europe.
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is now offering a Rock and Roll Timeline.
- What the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest attempts to do for bad writing, The Hook Project attempts to do for good. Timeless prose awaits...
- The Face of Tomorrow.
- If you ever have reason to crack open that plastic housing on your PC, you should read this: Your Ideal PC.
That's all I got for now. I am soooooooo far behind.
Posted by John at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2004
Mummy dearest
Burial or cremation? Do you care? Or perhaps another option strikes your fancy, like burial at sea? I've always thought it would be a nice grand finale to be shot into the sun, but that's still a little bit beyond our current technology. There is, however, another option...
Perhaps the freakiest thing about this site - and this concept - is the line in the middle of the detailed explanation of the process:
The body is then immersed in a baptismal font filled with a special preservation solution made up of certain liquids, some of which are chemicals used in genetic engineering.What does THAT mean??? Is this done in hopes that you might, somehow, at some unknown future date, wake up? Or maybe you will wake up, but you won't be quite the same.
Posted by John at 05:54 PM | Comments (4)
