Time for another Odds & Ends.

Well-known evolutionary biologist PZ Myers (Pharyngula) was expelled from a viewing of a new creationist documentary, Expelled, last night. Wait until you read the punchline. There is a God!

Lost, one MacBook Air: Steven Levy explains just how he (thinks he) lost his MacBook Air.

It was St. Patrick's Day on Monday. Peter sent me the Muppets' Danny Boy video. Andrew told me that the Irish bishops had moved St. Patrick's Day. Monday was a holiday in Ireland, as is today (Good Friday) and next Monday (Easter Monday), so many people took Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off this week. Bastards!

Emma and I walked with the Wild Geese Players in the Seattle Parade last Saturday. I walked into a fire hydrant afterwards, while preoccupied with my camera, leaving me with a deep bruise on my thigh. I must get around to posting those photos to Flickr soon (along with many others).

In Martian Headsets, Joel Spolsky discusses Microsoft's recent decision to make Internet Explorer 8 be standards-compliant by default, which reversed their earlier decision to be backwards-compatible. He remarks that they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

In my opinion, Microsoft has erred too often on the side of backward compatibility. I'm firmly in the camp that wants IE to be standards-compliant by default. After struggling for months with IE6 (and IE7 to a lesser degree), I believe that we badly need to raise the level of standards compliance in browsers. As Jeff Atwood put it three years ago, IE6 is the new Netscape 4.7x: "the browser that we all wish would go away. The one that's a pain in the ass to support."

Confused about the current financial crisis? Watch Clarke and Dawe on subprime meltdown. And read Can’t Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club.

It's been too long since I last posted an Odds & Ends.

Henri is a very amusing short spoof of French ennui.

Back in January, Emma and I were being repeatedly shocked by static electricity. We would inadvertently discharge by kissing or otherwise touching each other, or by touching laptops or faucets. Eventually, I realised that it was due to a combination of the microfiber upholstery on our new couch and the dry, unhumid air. We solved it by a combination of rubbing an anti-static dryer sheet (Bounce) on the couch and buying a humidifier. That led to a spate of jokes about the spark being gone.

It's started coming back again. I think it's time to fondle the couch with more Bounce.

The Bad Sex Awards are, perhaps, Britain's "most dreaded literary prize". Read about the 2007 Bad Sex nominees in the Guardian, with excerpts. The late Norman Mailer won posthumously

Ian Welsh makes a case that it's not your money, in rebuttal to anti-tax libertarians.

A few weeks ago I read that the last German veteran of World War I had died. Yesterday, I read that the last French veteran had just died.

Regarding the Spitzer prostitution scandal: normally, I would have given a Democratic politician the benefit of the doubt for a sex scandal. After all, unlike the Republicans—see Larry ‘wide stance’ Craig; David ‘Diaper’ Vitter (brother of my former professor at Brown, Jeff); Mark Foley, et al—Democratic politicians generally don't make a big deal of “family values”. Spitzer had done a good job of fighting corruption, but breaking up prostitution rings had also been one of his signature issues, as had prosecuting johns. The whole thing bespeaks such massive stupidity and hypocrisy that I say good riddance to him.

Several of us went to see Barack Obama at Key Arena last month (photos here), the day before the Washington state primary. The crowd more than filled Key Arena, with at least 20,000 in attendance. We ended up outside, as you can see from the photos, which actually served us well, as Obama stood outside and talked to the crowd for a few minutes before heading into the stadium. We got closer to him than we would have inside.

Anyway, John McCain spoke at the Westin Hotel that evening and only managed to half-fill the ballroom, which accommodates 800 people. In other words, the then-presumptive Republican nominee could only pull as many people as attended my caucus the next day. There are hundreds of thousands of Republicans within an hour's drive of Seattle, but only a few hundred of them could summon the enthusiasm to see their guy in person.

I thought our caucus went well. I helped the convener organize the whole event for eight precincts. As the Precinct Committee Officer (PCO) for SEA 11-1945, I chaired our precinct's caucus and was elected as a delegate for Obama, which means that I will be attending the 11th Legislative District and the King County conventions next month. I have no intention of trying to proceed further. I don't want to go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.

Miscellaneous links.

• Via Dilip, the epic struggle between an animation and its animator.

• Sparky gets himself tasered. Deliberately. Geesh!

• We at Cozi partnered with Whirlpool to produce an edition of the Cozi software running on a fridge. It has been demonstrated at this year's CES (Consumer Electronics Show), where it's getting favorable reviews. Dory Devlin likes it. Watch Walt Mossberg talk about it too.

Title: The Fourth Bear
Author: Jasper Fforde
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Publisher: Viking Penguin
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0670037729
Pages: 382
Keywords: humor, crime
Reading period: 16-17 December, 2007

DCI Jack Spratt runs the Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading, Berks police. Investigative reporter Goldilocks is found dead, after last being seen at the three bears' house. The Gingerbreadman, a 7-foot psychopathic cake, is rampaging around, randomly killing people. Punch and Judy have moved in next door: when they're not beating each other up, they're very good marriage counsellors. And enormous cucumbers are exploding under mysterious circumstances.

An extremely bizarre story, replete with puns, nursery rhymes, literary allusions, and shaggy dog stories.

Entertaining, if silly.

Title: Triggerfish Twist
Author: Tim Dorsey
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harper Torch
Copyright: 2002
ISBN: 0061031550
Pages: 372
Keywords: humor, crime
Reading period: 16 December, 2007

Another book featuring Serge A. Storms, the almost-likable serial killer and amateur historian of Florida.

Serge, his coke-addict, stripper girlfriend, Sharon, and his stoner sidekick, Coleman, rent a house on Triggerfish Lane, Tampa. Their landlord is trying to drive out the few remaining homeowners on the block, so that he can bulldoze it for condos.

It's quite the neighborhood. a former millionaire who likes to test-drive expensive cars; the psychotic Little League coach with a pit bull; the student party house; the South American death squad guy in hiding; and Jim Davenport, a business consultant who gets fired by the new management for being too honest.

Add Serge and his coterie, various bad guys, random acts of stupidity and caprice, and stir, then watch the mayhem.

Entertaining and more coherent than the last book that I read by Dorsey.

Title: Hogfather
Author: Terry Pratchett
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 1996
ISBN: 0061059056
Pages: 384
Keywords: humor, fantasy
Reading period: 2-7 December, 2007

Last week, we watched the TV adaptation of Hogfather, which got me to re-read the book. The book is a lot funnier. Pratchett's written descriptions don't translate very well to the screen.

The Hogfather is the Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus: a large, jolly fat man who delivers presents to children on the longest night of the year. The Auditors, celestial bureaucrats who take a dim view of the messiness of human existence, decide to have the Hogfather killed. Death takes it upon himself to deliver the presents to children instead, while setting his granddaughter Susan on the trail of the assassin responsible for the chaos.

One of the better Discworld novels. Pratchett entertains us with his characteristic humor, while ruminating on the human condition, notably the nature of belief.

Recommended.

Title: Wilt in Nowhere
Author: Tom Sharpe
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Publisher: Arrow
Copyright: 2004
ISBN: 0099481731
Pages: 278
Keywords: humor, satire
Reading period: 19-21 November, 2007

In the Seventies and Eighties, Tom Sharpe was a bestselling author in Britain, pumping out a dozen hilarious satires, marked by their savagery. His particular targets were apartheid, the British class system, and political correctness. Then he dried up, producing only three books in the last twenty years.

Wilt in Nowhere is his fourth book about Henry Wilt, a lecturer at a third-rate community college, married to the formidable Eva and father of four ghastly quadruplets. Eva takes the girls to America to stay with her rich uncle in Tennessee. Henry goes on a walking tour of England. He inadvertently gets caught up in a case of arson, while she somehow becomes the focus of a narcotics investigation.

This is fairly funny, but nowhere near as good as I remember his earlier books.

About a year ago, I posted a link to some silly cat pictures. I just found the motherlode.

I was just watching the Colbert Report and Sam Waterston was on, touting Unity08. Except that both he and Colbert kept pronouncing it as Unity-oh-Eight dot com, not Unity-zero-Eight dot com. I knew what they meant of course, but I decided to see what was at Unityo8. Naturally, they don't own the domain, despite having existed for more than a year. Such incompetence.

As for their third-way platform, I expect that they would act as a spoiler, most likely splitting the Democratic vote, as Nader (cursed be his name) did in 2000. Their list of sponsors is quite suspect too. Irregular Times lists a number of problems with Unity08.

Via Andrew Sullivan, an extremely well cut YouTube mashup of Doctor Who and Monty Python.

I've seen a number of references to a Microsoft demo of speech recognition that went famously wrong, but it wasn't until this evening that I finally watched the CNBC Video that started the meme.

A TV reporter makes a snarky introduction then cuts to video of a Microsoft PM demoing the new speech recognition technology in Windows Vista. Dear Mom comma, he says. Dear aunt, appears in Word. It gets worse from there. Funny stuff. Go watch the original video.

But it's not the whole story. There's another video which sets the demo in context. Overall, the demo was reasonably successful and the speech commands worked fairly well.

If you think people talking into their cellphones is annoying now, wait until you hear them talking at their computers!

I found a series of amusing cat pictures, via Ned Batchelder's blog.

Update 2007/10/04: That site is gone, but fairly similar photos can be found at LOLCats.

Via AmericaBlog, an amusing video of a cockroach taking on a weatherman. Twice.

Via Peter, a site full of "inspirational" posters drawn from Star Trek in the vein of the satirical ones at Despair.com.

This poster of course plays on the trope of Kirk/Spock fan fiction, where Kirk and Spock are portrayed as lovers. Emma has long been a fan of slash, particularly pairings such as Solo/Kuryakin (Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1).

Sometimes spammers can be taken in by their would-be victims. Here's a hilarious, if long, story of just such a case.

It's even funnier if you're already familiar with the character of Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter.

Raven emailed me a link to this story in the Onion: Heroic Computer Dies to Save World From Master's Thesis:

"This fearless little machine saved me from unspoken hours of exasperated head-scratching and eyestrain, as well as years of agonizing self-doubt over my decision to devote my life to teaching," said professor John Rebson, who had already read through three drafts of Samoskevich's sprawling, 38,000-word dissertation, titled A Hermeneutical Exploration Of Onomatopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia. "It was an incredible act of bravery. This laptop sacrificed itself in order to put an end to Jill's senseless rambling."

Nothing like my own Master's Thesis, 3-D Text Objects in the Brown Animation Graphics System, which clocked in at just 8 pages. Mind you, it was backed up by tens of thousands of lines of C code.

David Neiwert writes:

Go smugly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in stonewalling.
As far as possible, leave no chance of surrender
and be on superior terms to all other persons.
Speak your truthiness loudly and garbled;
and never listen to others,
especially not the wise and the well-informed;
they can all just go to hell.

Rest here.

President Al Gore on Saturday Night Live, spoofing the disastrous six years of Bush.

Via Bootboy, a video of "Jesus" singing Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive.

I hang out on the SourceForge-hosted inkscape-user mailing list, where I pick up useful tips for the Inkscape SVG editor (vector drawing program).

For months, the list has been plagued with spam; largely because anyone can send to the list. The policy has been not to require new users to sign up for the list before being able to send questions. This is commendably friendly and user-centric, but the spam has become a real annoyance.

One of the Inkscape developers finally said that, if a dozen or more people said "yes, restrict posting to list members only" and no-one opposed it, he would lock the list down. I attempted to vote yes and got the following rejection letter from SourceForge:

 <inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net>:
 66.35.250.206 does not like recipient.
 Remote host said: 550-Postmaster verification failed while checking <george@reilly.org>
 550-Called:   205.158.62.206
 550-Sent:     RCPT TO:<postmaster@reilly.org>
 550-Response: 550 <postmaster@reilly.org>: User unknown
 550-Several RFCs state that you are required to have a postmaster
 550-mailbox for each mail domain. This host does not accept mail
 550-from domains whose servers reject the postmaster address.
 550 Sender verify failed
 Giving up on 66.35.250.206.

Such irony! I had received a similar bounce a few days before from the FlexWiki-Users mailing list, which is also hosted by SourceForge, when I announced Vim Syntax Highlighting for FlexWiki.

I don't own the reilly.org domain. It (and thousands of others) are owned by NetIdentity. I had an exchange with their postmaster, who said in part:

I did talk to sourceforge. They claimed it is an essential part of their spam filtering process to reject domains that dont have a postmaster mailbox.

I've tried that (at least on a test basis) myself and with all due respect to them, it is passe' ... doesnt work too well. And it has the added "advantage" of having to connect back to the sending mail domain every time to see if a postmaster for that domain exists. This holds up email and creates additional smtp connections - and hence even more load on mailservers, in the case of domains - with postmaster up and running - that are forged into spam.

I did suggest a few more rather efficient (and practical) filters they could use, but well, they didnt respond to those

He has since added a postmaster mailbox for reilly.org, so I can post to SourceForge lists again.

The Inkscape vote passed, of course. Only subscribers can post now. Non-subscribers can also use a webform to send questions, so it's not a big impairment.

On Saturday night, at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Stephen Colbert did something brave and unparalled. Standing 10 feet from George Bush and in front of an audience of hundreds of members of the Washington press corpse, Colbert, acting in his persona of a Bill O'Reillyesque pundit, flayed them with irony and sarcasm.

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will. As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

Because really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write, "Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!

What balls! To stand in front of that crowd and show them up for the fools they are.

Complete transcript. Video.

Update: A much more eloquent essay, The truthiness hurts, at Salon.

Update #2: www.ThankYouStephenColbert.org has over 50,000 signatures as of May 7th. And the Stephen Colbert Musical Extravaganza is very silly.

Doing the rounds. John Cleese at the Institute for Backup Trauma.

Via James Wolcott and Jane Espenson, a pilot for a sitcom called Depressed Roomies by Charlie Kaufman.

Funny stuff.

A friend sent me a Word document with a parody of the Department of Homeland Security's Ready.Gov website. I googled and found an HTML copy of the parody here.

If you are sprayed with an unknown substance, stand and think about a cool design for a new tattoo.

Seriously, there is some useful information on Ready.Gov. Which reminds me that Emma and I are long overdue in putting together some disaster planning.

Here are some links that I put together a while back:

• AlphaGeek's 5-part series on disaster preparedness at DailyKos

• 3 days, 3 ways

• City of Seattle Emergency Resources

• Scott Hanselman's 2006 resolution

• ICE (In Case of Emergency) entries in your cellphone address book

If there's any lesson that should be learned from Katrina, it's that you need to have your own disaster plan in place.

Via Dependable Renegade, it's Cheney playing Folsom Prison. (Not work-safe.)

Via AmericaBlog, it's Brokeback to the Future.

18 Ways to be a Good Developer, inspired by 20 Ways to be a Good User.

The Onion interviews Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report, politics, and improv.

Bill Shatner doing Elton John's Rocket Man: video. Be sure to watch the last 30 seconds or so.

Via DailyKos, the 25 Dumbest Quotes of 2005. Includes such gems as:

• 13) "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god… Anything specific I need to do or tweak? Do you know of anyone who dog-sits? … Can I quit now? Can I come home? … I'm trapped now, please rescue me." --Ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown, in various emails to colleagues and friends in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
• 2) "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" --House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 9, 2005

As the Twelve Days of Christmas approach, it's time once again to make fun of them. Strictly speaking, we shouldn't start until December 25th, the first day of Christmas, but the Xmas season starts earlier every year.

My favorite has long been Frank Kelly's Christmas Countdown, which was a big hit in Ireland and Britain in the early 1980s. It's couched as twelve increasingly alarmed letters from Gobnait O'Lughnasy to his friend Nuala. Here's Day Six:

Nuala,

What are you trying to do to us ? It isn’t that we don’t appreciate your generosity but the six geese have not alone nearly murdered the calling birds but they laid their eggs on top of the vet’s head from the pear-tree and his bill was £68 in cash ! My mother is munching 60 grains of Valium a day and talking to herself in a most alarming way. You must keep your feelings for me in check.

Gobnait

The rest of the lyrics can be found on the Highland Shepherd site. An audio version of the song can be found on the Denver Gaels Audio Clips Page. And an explanation of the traditional lyrics can be found at Carols.org.uk.

Via del.icio.us/popular, it's dozens of Bunny Suicides! Very twisted.

Update: Apparently, these are pirated scans from The Book of Bunny Suicides.

Via DailyKos, Will Ferrell as Dubya making a Special Announcement on Global Warming.

Via Larry Osterman, Triumph the Comic Dog delivering the weather forecast in Hawai`i. Very apropos, after yesterday's snow in Seattle.

Via Emma.

See what Thunderbird 1.5 RC 1's spelling checker flags as misspelled words.

Seems to be a known bug.

(Originally posted to Iraq at EraBlog on Wed, 23 Jul 2003 06:25:56 GMT)

[Found in my email. Original author unknown.]

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ('AP', played by John Cleese) walks down the street carrying THE IRAQI INVASION (played by an empty parrot cage). He walks into THE WHITE HOUSE (played by a cheesy storefront) and addresses COLIN POWELL ('CP', played by Michael Palin).

AP: Excuse me... boy!

CP: (turns around and stands up) What d'you mean, 'boy?'

AP: I'm sorry; I have contact lenses. At any rate, I wish to register a complaint!

CP: Sorry, squire, I can't talk to you now. It's Code Orange! (he hastily starts to put up a sign)

AP: Never mind that now, my fine fellow. I wish to register a complain about this military action, which you sold me just a couple of months ago.

CP: Oh yes, the Iraqi invasion. Lovely little war, that was. What... uh, what seems to be wrong with it?

AP: I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's empty, that's what's wrong with it.

CP: Oh, no, no, no. It's not empty at all. It's served its purpose, it has. Freed the oppressed people of Iraq, fed the homeless, brought everlasting fame and glory to our bulging leader.

AP: But when I purchased this dreary little police action from you, you assured me that the whole and entire purpose was to disarm Saddam Hussein and take away, quote, his vast stockpiles of ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction, end quote.

CP: Oh, there's some mistake. We went in to liberate the poor oppressed people of...

AP: Listen, mate. I took the liberty of recording your voice when you sold me that thing, and here's what it says. (produces tape recorder)

Tape: (CP's voice): "We know just where they are. We know just what they've got. They're buried in these bunkers right here, which our surveillance satellites have photographed not more than twenty minutes ago. They could not possibly be used for any purpose other than the storage of hideous, slime-dripping nuclear anthrax chemical weapons of mass destruction. Say, are you recording me?"

AP: Right. And when we "liberated" those poor bastards, the bunker was found to contain little more than a twenty-year collection of Penthouse and Hustler magazines, plus a dozen lava lamps and a mini-bar.

CP: Well...

AP: Well?

CP: Well, of course they'd cleaned it out before they left. Sold it all to their chums in the Taliban, they did.

AP: I happen to know that their 'chums,' as you so colorfully put it, hate their guts and have referred to them repeatedly as "scabrous lackeys of the internationalist secular state," end quotation.

CP: Well, they have to say that, don't they? I mean, it's all part of the grand scheme. Lovely little war, wa'nit? Liberated all them poor...

AP: Stoppit! All you've done is make their lives worse than before. That's why they keep killing our soldiers.

CP: Oh no, squire. They're grateful. That's why they pulled down that statue.

AP: I've seen the footage of the event, and the only Iraqis in the picture appear to have had their feet nailed there.

CP: Well, of course they were nailed there. If we hadn't nailed them, they'd've been crushed by the falling statue, wouldn't they? It was for their own safety. That's why we liberated the...

AP: Shut up. Did you or did you not allege on several different occasions that we had found the weapons of mass destruction and that therefore the entire ill-advised escapade was a rousing success?

CP: What, them trailers? Well, of course they was weapons of mass destruction. They could've used them for germs, or chemicals, or...

AP: In fact, they were used for hydrogen, and precious little of that. They didn't even have walls, for pity's sake.

CP: Well, hydrogen's pretty dangerous, isn't it, Squire? It could power tanks or jets or... and what about that Hindenberry thing? Let's see you stand in a room full of liquid hydrogen with nothing but a ripe boysenberry to defend yourself with, and you'll soon see mass destructive. Wouldn't want to be in your shoes then! And anyway, we liberated the...

AP: Liberation don't enter into it, mate. It was a bleeding sham.

CP: No, it was liberation!

AP: Sham, sham, sham! And you didn't find any weapons of mass destruction!

CP: Well, of course we didn't, Squire. They was... they was looted.

AP: Looted? LOOTED?

CP: Yeah. When our boys was busy not looking at the museum, they looted all them weapons out from under their noses. And anyway, we liberated...

AP: You're saying that starving peasants with no resources of their own simply looted vast stores of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons? With What??

CP: They carried them off on their bicycles.

AP: But a missile weighs several tons, and a bicycle can only carry, at most, a couple of hundred pounds.

CP: They used two bicycles, with a bungee cord between 'em. They're a nasty lot, Squire. Not like the ones that sang songs to us when we liberated...

AP: Will you shut up? Since when is it liberation to leave a people destitute, without food, water, electricity, or law enforcement?

CP: Those things was all shackles on them. We freed 'em, I tell you! They're grateful to us. They're singin' songs...

AP: Those aren't songs, you parsimonious prevaricator, they're protesting in the streets, and shooting at our soldiers.

CP: They're just exuberant. Like to fire off their guns a lot, now they're free and all. They don't mean nuffin' by it. They're just so happy to be liberated, with Hussein gone. You mark my words; he was the real weapon of mass destruction his own self, why, he...

AP: That's another thing. You didn't even get him, did you?

CP: Well...

AP: You don't even know where he is, do you?

CP: We got a tip...

AP: You've been blowing up caravans and bombing cities and striking about blindly, because your yahoo cowboy boss refused to listen to any intelligence that contradicted his beliefs. Which, when you come down to it, precluded the use of any intelligence whatsoever.

CP: I see. Quite. (pause) Well, then, we'd better replace it, hadn't we?

AP: With what?

CP: Well, them Iranis are gettin' pretty swaggery, ain't they?

AP: I thought you were encouraging them to rise up against their religious leaders, now that they aren't accepting any more cakes from your lot.

CP: Fair enough. How about something in a nice little Afghanistan?

AP: You've alr