Lapham & Wolcott

Lapham has now entered our language as a term for reporting an event in the past tense before it has actually occurred. We have a similar opportunity presented to us by one James Wolcott, who writes:

I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.

....

Hurricane Frances also has a heraldic quality. Camille Paglia observed on Salon in February, 2003 that the explosion of the Columbia shuttle on the eve of the war on Iraq was a "stunning omen," one that would make a Roman general think twice. A catastrophe strewing death, fire, and human remains across Bush's home state of Texas was inauspicious to our undertaking; and so it has proven to be. Frances is the second hurricane to afflict Florida, home of brother Jeb, in rapid succession.

The gods are not pleased.

Okay, so Wolcott is clearly nuts, a good 8.5 on the SDL* scale. But we need to define this new term better than that. A verb, perhaps: wolcott v. To wish for the mass destruction of one's fellow humans, in the smug assurance that this could never happen to you.

More at Tim Blair and Dave Barry.

* Standardised Delusional Lefty

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:08 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Fifteen Minutes of Winter

Right outside my front door...

And down the steps...

The neighbourhood looks... different...



more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:26 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Holy Fucking Crap! My Goodness!

We're being shelled! No - no, it's hail. Holy crap!

And damn! The battery in my camera is flat! Damn damn! The whole park across the road is covered with hail, the roads, everything. Never seen anything like it.

Update: Good thing my camera charges fast! Photos should be along shortly.

Update: And my memory card was full. Let that be a lesson to you! Well, I charged the camera, copied everything off the memory card, and ran out again to take more pictures. The streets aren't covered with white anymore, but now there are people out enjoying our fifteen minutes of winter.

Pictures to follow.

Update: Help! My computer's broken!

Update: No, it's just the mouse. Bad mousie!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:01 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

John Kerry's Bad Day Out

Pentagon to check Kerry war record:

In a fresh blow to John Kerry's flagging presidential campaign, the Pentagon has ordered an official investigation into the awards of the Democratic senator's five Vietnam War decorations.

News of the inquiry came as President George W Bush opened an 11-point lead over his rival - the widest margin since serious campaigning began - according to the first poll released since last week's Republican convention.

A question mark has been raised over one of John Kerry's awards

The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the inspector-general's office of the United States navy, for which Sen Kerry served as a Swift Boat captain for four months in 1968, making two tours of duty.

He was wounded in action and subsequently awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. But for the past month, the exact details of Mr Kerry's military service in Vietnam have become shrouded in a controversy that the navy has now decided warrants a full-blown search for the truth.

Can we gloat just a little bit?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:03 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Bounce?

Right now, the AOL Straw Poll has John Kerry comfortably winning... DC. George Bush takes every state for 535 out of 538 in the Electoral College.

Somehow I suspect the real thing will be closer than that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:00 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I Know That Sound

Blibit-squeak. Blibit-squeak. Blibit-squeak.

Another one bites the dust. Disk drive, that is.

But the joke's on you, forces of darkness! It's mirrored! Bwahahaha!

Of course, the computer won't boot if it's got a 0GB disk drive inside it, but that was easy to fix.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:43 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Carnivalia

Carnival of the Vanities is at mu.nu again, this time at Blogo Slovo. Go check it out!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Didn't Think So

Anyone want 786MB of spam? Free to a good home. Or a bad one.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:34 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Because I Can, Part 39

I now have an automated RSS feed that replicates my blog into the mu.nu forums. Not just little excerpts, either, but complete HTML-formatted entries.

Why? Because I can.

Update: Apparently I can't. All the entries went across just fine, but now it doesn't seem to want to transfer this entry. Foo.

Update: Oh. The feed software works out that it's already imported an article based on the title. So I must have previously used "Because It Was There" as a post title. Now that I've renamed this, it should work fine. Let's find out, shall we?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:10 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Little Piece Of History

With the Republican Convention upon us, and with it the CounterConvention, it is worth revisiting this little piece of history, which I had the foresight to save shortly before their hired monkeys returned from lunch and deleted the whole thing.

Enjoy.

P.S. The wretched formatting is as per the original site.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:56 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

My Name Is Pixy, And I Have A Problem

I have a points system running on the MuNu forum, whereby people can earn points for posting (or getting comments to their posts), spend points to play games, and win points by getting high scores on games.

The points are named pengos, after the Hungarian currency up to 1946, which during the 40's suffered the worst inflation in history:

In 1941, the Pengoe was valued at 3.46 to the U.S. Dollar. Both during and shortly after World War II, however, the government printed billions of Pengo to offset the tragic results of war on the Hungarian economy. By March 3, 1946, 1 U.S. Dollar was equivalent to 10.3 million Pengoe. In the same year, a new currency unit was issued, Known as the Mil-pengo, which was equivalent to 1,000,000 pengoes. Soon after, the Bil-pengo denomination arrived. What you see here is a note valued at 10,000,000,000,000,000 Pengoe! On the last day of July, the rampant inflation ended with the issuance of the forint, an entirely new unit valued at a rate of one per four hundred million quadrillion pengoes.

Studium Magazine

I have added a small tweak, which transfers pengos spent in the games arcade into my account. Having done that, I'm now curious as to how many pengos are being issued by the system, and how they are being spent. In fact, I want to develop a proper double-entry book-keeping system to keep track of pengos.

It's an occupational hazard, I guess.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:16 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Go Australia!

Yay! More gold for us, and we've equalled our 16 golds at the Sydney Olympics and pulled into third place by the traditional ranking. Russia had a good day too, so we'll have to stay on our toes.

Not that I've actually, like, watched any of the events...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:41 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Can't Blog, Clowns Will Eat Me

I haven't blogged much lately, because (a) I OD'd on blogs a bit over the past month, (b) I've been watching old episodes of Charmed* and (c) I've been setting up the all new MuNu Portal.

Better portal<->blog integration, RSS feeds and stuffs like that will be coming soon. In the mean time, you can register and just play the games.

Update: Oh, and let me know if you do sign up so I can give you some coins for the arcade.

* Wow, does this show have some bad acting or what? I only watch it for Alyssa Milano...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:17 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Taking Out The Trash

The usual suspects are trashing Unfit to Command in a series of factually-challenged and often revealing reviews at Amazon, giving the book an average - indeed, unanimous - rating of one star. And in return:

4 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
3 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
2 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
3 of 35 people found the following review helpful.

Who will review the reviewers? We will.

Oh, and the revealing part?

The accounts are vague at critical junctures, and each and every claim has already been refuted by Democrat operatives.

Democrat operatives? VLWC, anyone? From the inside?

Of course, the only point directly addressed so far by the Kerry campaign is the famous "Christmas in Cambodia" story, which has now morphed first into a "Christmas near Cambodia" story and then into a "Late January/Early February in Cambodia" story. I think all that searing might have affected someone's brain.

(Pixy Misa is messing about with the MuNu forums and the new MuNu portal, and will return soon. This gratuitous sniping at the Campaign To Elect Someone Who Isn't George Bush was brought to you by a bottle of Cherry Coke*.)

* Bottle of Cherry Coke does not represent the opinions of the Coca-Cola corporation or its employees or shareholders. I am Pixy Misa and I approve this message.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:25 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Squirrels? Would That Be Metric Or Imperial?

The great thing about SQL is that it's so well standardised, so that it's trivial to transfer data from one SQL database to another, or to move an application to a different SQL platform.

(Bangs head on desk.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:00 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Them!

Giant Mutant Ant Colony Found In Australia!

Melbourne, to be precise. Bwahahaha!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:55 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sydney Morning Herald Delenda Est

The Squeeze Is On

Today we see the new and energetic Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, struggling in the fist of Prime Minister, John Howard, the Machiavellian monster threatening to crush the neophyte leader much as he dispatched the past three Labor leaders - Paul Keating, Kim Beazley and Simon Crean. But unlike those three, Latham has flared briefly into the public view and, if crushed now, could well be remembered, like John Hewson, only as the man who promised greatness but lost in his moment of testing.

Today, front page, above the fold.

Why don't you just rename yourselves the Sydney Morning Leftist Rag and have done with it?

Paul Keating was never in the public view? What the hell? He was only the bleeding Prime Minister of Australia for five years. Could someone find out what the people at the Herald - sorry, the Leftist Rag - are smoking, and take it away from them?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:59 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I Can See Your House From Up Here!

I live over on the right hand side of this picture, and I work over on the left.

(via Slattsnews)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:40 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Joy Of Running A Hundred Blogs

Out of the last 1200 comments, there are 776 comments on entries for which you have editing privileges that match your current blacklist. Select the ones below which you would like to delete.

If it weren't for Jay Allen's MT Blacklist, we'd be toast.

Update: Jay won the MT 3.0 plugin contest! Yay Jay!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:18 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Happy Fun Hardware

Okay, at 1:30 AM my ADSL dropped out and wouldn't come back. Not the end of the world, it was almost time for bed anyway.

At 4:18 AM /dev/hde in Yuri, my Linux box, had an unrecoverable error. Fortunately, I'm running RAID-0. Because if I'd been running RAID-5, I might have lost everything.

You see, if Linux detects an error on a software RAID-0 volume, it will forcibly unmount the volume and then attempt to remount it read-only. If it sees an error on a software RAID-5 volume, it will remove that device from the raidset... Even if it has already failed a disk out. In which case it will reduce your anime collection precious data to Purina Computer Chow.

So I now have a 1TB read-only disk. I can reboot, and it will almost certainly come back okay. Almost certainly. And anyway, it's mostly backed up. On 231 DVD-Rs.

Might as well get started backing up the rest.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:13 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Do You Want Your Possessions Identified?

Explorers find world's deepest hole, plunge to their deaths, only to discover that they were carrying an amulet of life saving all along.

Okay, I made that last bit up.

(Thanks to Rayra on LGF)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:57 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

And It Started Out So Well...

Editorial in the Toronto Star:

What do Americans need in their president, post-9/11? Strong leadership, of course. Clear vision. Common sense. And in a dangerous, fast-changing world, the capacity to learn from past mistakes would be helpful.

Senator John Kerry, the Democrat who hopes to elbow President George Bush from office on Nov. 2, promises all of the above and more. But there was little of it on display Monday, when Kerry responded to Bush's challenge to spell out where he stands on the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Fair enough. Kerry is, as always, trying to stand on both sides of the fence.

Rising to Bush's bait, Kerry said he would have cast the same Yes vote in Congress that he did on Oct. 11, 2002, to authorize the president to launch a pre-emptive war that began March 19, 2003, even if Kerry had known that Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al Qaeda terrorists, no weapons of mass destruction and posed no real threat to the world.

Which is something of a flip-flop for Kerry, but we'll leave that alone.

"I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry now says. Only he would have used that power more "effectively."

Now, the real question here is what would Kerry have done differently? Specifics. We want specifics.

Does the Toronto Star ask this question? No. Instead:

This amounts to a sweeping claim by Kerry that America has carte blanche to make war on even bogus grounds, and in defiance of the United Nations and world opinion, so long as the war is waged effectively.

While Kerry's statement could be taken to mean that, we know where this is really going.

It's depressing from a candidate who has attacked Bush for "misleading" the nation, who promises a better direction and who claims to want to re-engage with the world.

I'd say it's pretty much on form for Kerry, but if the Toronto Star wants to be depressed by Kerry's form, I can't argue.

Kerry's vote in 2002, while misguided, was defensible. Bush had exaggerated Saddam's threat, and had won over 7 in 10 Americans to the view that the Iraq war was justified.

How, exactly, had Bush exaggerated Saddam's thread? Specifics. We want specifics.

But since then, the U.N. has been vindicated. Saddam was contained; there were no ties to the 9/11 terrorists; and Iraq had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

BWEEET! Foul!

Saddam was contained? Only with a permanent force of U.S. and British troops present, and at the expense of the Iraqi people.

No links to the 9/11 terrorists? Saddam has not been tied directly to 9/11, but he has been shown to have had connections with al Qaeda. The links are there.

No nuclear weapons? But not for lack of trying.
No chemical weapons? You mean, except for those Sarin gas artillery shells?

That leaves most Americans feeling misled, or duped.

Unsupported assertion.

They can see the damage to U.S. prestige internationally.

The French don't like America. But then, they never did. All that has changed is that the mask has slipped.

The loss of more than 1,000 American and allied lives, and 16,000 Iraqi lives.

Even if 16,000 Iraqi lives have been lost (and I'd like to see the source for that figure) we can note that these largely fall into two groups:

1. Bad guys. Baathist thugs of all sorts and Islamist militia.
2. Ordinary Iraqis killed by group 1.

And how many people would have been killed by Saddam's regime in the past 15 months if we hadn't invaded?

A $200-billion cost.

Yes. Ballpark.

And they see no easy exit.

They're Americans. And British, and Australians, and Poles, and others. They didn't go in looking for an easy exit.

Unlike some.

All this is baggage Bush should carry to the polls, alone. But Kerry has just re-endorsed his misguided policy, if not its clumsy delivery.

And here come the ad-homs.

No wonder Kerry is struggling to pull ahead in a race with a president who has not delivered promised jobs and who is seen as a friend of the rich and powerful.

There's a kernel of truth in the jobs remark.

But to say that Bush and not Kerry is seen as a friend of the rich and powerful takes a truly amazing level of bias.

Practical politics undoubtedly prompted Kerry's reply.

Perhaps.

He is loath to admit he cast a foolish vote in 2002.

Or possibly he doesn't consider it a foolish vote?

Well, who the heck knows what Kerry thinks anyway.

He does not want to alienate voters who were similarly duped

Duped? About what? By whom? Specifics, please.

and who are not keen to be reminded of it. And he must not be seen as "soft" on Saddam.

Well, I should bloody well hope not!

Saddam Hussein was one of the bloodiest tyrants of the last few decades. He oversaw a regime of murder, rape and torture. He used poison gas on his own people, massacring entire villages. No-one sane would want to be seen as "soft" on Saddam.

But Kerry comes off looking like "Bush lite" on Iraq, rather than as a candidate with better values and a sounder program. He seems weak. Muddled.

True.

Has he learned nothing from a slew of American investigations that have exposed the sloppiness of U.S. intelligence and the shabbiness of the rationale for war?

Has the rest of the world entirely lost its moral compass?

Yes, the intelligence was not up to scratch. But the moral foundations of the war are absolutely unshakeable.

This is a letdown for American voters who yearn for a real alternative, and a healthier direction. It is not good news for the world, either.

I agree that the failure of the Democratic Party to come up with a viable candidate is bad for America and bad for the world. But a truly viable candidate would have views on the Iraq war closer to Bush's than to Kerry's. Which is not, I think, what the Toronto Star is looking for. And in any case, Joe Lieberman did not get the nomination.

What they want to do is to go back to the holiday from history we enjoyed from 1993 to 2000. But that world is gone, never to return, and we are at war. It's not a war we started, but it's a war we must finish. And the hapless bleatings of dying newspapers like the Toronto Star* cannot be allowed to weaken our resolve.

(And worst of all, Debbye Stratigacos of Being American in T.O. should be doing this, but she hasn't posted in over a month. If anyone has heard from Debbye, please drop us a line.)

* "Buy the Saturday Star and get Sunday to Friday FREE!"

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:14 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

No Shit, There I Was...

The Liberal Case Against John Kerry by Matt Taibbi.

After listening to John Kerry's acceptance address last week, I did a little experiment. I decided to remove everything that was bullshit and see what was left. I invite New York Press readers to follow me on this journey, step by step.

Read the whole thing.

For those slackers who don't have time to read it, here's his final analysis of Kerry's speech: more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:11 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

When All Else Fails

Spread a meme:

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate—the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is:

as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst

The above GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that participate, which may take several days or weeks. To locate the full data set, just search for any sites that contain this GUID.

Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL: http://rocketjones.mu.nu/

(Well, that's the third time I've seen it, but anyway.)

(2) I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing the Web” or “Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Browsing the Web

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://ambientirony.mu.nu/

(4) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 10/08/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 21:21

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Sydney, NSW, Australia

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS:

(7) My blog is hosted by: Meeee!

(8) My age is: 37

(9) My gender is: Male

(10) My occupation is: Computer Consultant

(Thanks Ted! Half the answers don't even need editing!)
(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: none

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: MovableType

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 14/04/2003

(14) My web browser is: Mozilla

(15) My operating systems are: Fedora Linux and some Microsoft thingy

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:24 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cheap At Half The Price

I should have another couple of 25-packs of DVD-Rs around here... Somewhere. Upstairs? Nooo. Downstairs? Nooo. Hiding under the pile of shirts I've yet to iron? Nooo. Sitting by that chair in the bag from the store? Aha!

Hang on, I paid how much? $29 for 25 DVD-Rs? I was robbed! I can get 50 DVD-Rs for $40! Well, now I can. These ones I bought, oh, at least two months ago.

(Pixy is currently fiddling with new software to be installed on the MuNu server and will return soon.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)