A few months back, I was called by a political polling organisation. I was rather busy at the time* and anyway I hate political polls because they are, frankly, full of shit. So I told the nice young lady on the phone that I wasn't interested in taking part in her charming poll and hung up.

Now, I'm not exactly normal, but I can't be the only one to do this. So I'm just wondering how many people might be telling the pollsters to, well, shove it, and what the distribution thereof might be.

* Sleeping. It was a Saturday, and that's what I do on Saturdays.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:39 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I haven't done my Blog of the Day for quite a while, but this absolutely not-to-be-missed weapons-grade rant at Cold Fury deserves nothing less:

Christ almighty, what is it with you people? You’ve spent a couple of years asking why we didn’t prevent 9/11, calling for an investigation, asking ‘how much did Bush know and when did he know it?’ You blamed us for something we failed to prevent after eight months in office, and yet to this day you give the Clinton admin a free pass, even though he had eight years—eight fucking years, people—to do something about al Qaeda and didn’t do one goddamned thing.

You finally get your investigation, the results of which confirm most of what we’d been saying all along, but you don’t want to hear that any more than you wanted to hear about the fact that one of the Democrat commissioners, Jamie Gorelick, was responsible for the so-called “wall of separation” prohibiting information-sharing between the FBI and CIA, which nearly everyone now acknowledges was one of the biggest problems preventing any effective defense against terrorist networks. You do deign to acknowledge that problem, but the part you originally claimed to be most interested in—who was responsible—is suddenly not so interesting anymore the moment you realized you couldn’t reasonably blame us for it.

You insist that Condi and Bush must testify publicly to the commission (even though Condi had already testified once), but it doesn’t seem to bother you when Clinton gets to testify behind closed doors. You laud Richard Clarke’s and Joe Wilson’s credibility, but when it’s clearly shown that they’re liars you don’t seem to want to bring it up anymore. You hint at all sorts of sinister skullduggery on our part, but when Sandy Berger openly admits to stealing classified documents for God only knows what reason, you couldn’t care less.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Michael Gene Hendrix and Cold Fury. No finer place to get your mellow harshed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

This is the source of our capital.

Thanks to the snail prohibition, the price for these guys has gone through the roof.

Enter the madness!

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

"Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" Let us analyze that sentence for a moment. If you're a stickler, you probably think the singular verb "is" should have been the plural "are," but if you read it closely, you'll see I'm using the intransitive plural subjunctive tense. So the word "is" are correct.

In my sentences I go where no man has gone before...I am a boon to the English language.

(More here)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:25 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Damned if I know.

You might have already seen the ad produced by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. On its face, it's pretty damning for Kerry. I can't speak to the truth of the allegations, but the accusations do not sound out of place, nor do the accusers seem to be unreliable.

There are a number of ways you could respond to this: Release all your military records (which Kerry refuses to do); bring out witnesses to counter the allegations; try to smear the veterans; simply state that there is no truth to it.

But having your lawyers send threatening and misleading letters to radio stations instructing them that they should not play the ad seems, somehow, counter-productive. Not to mention, tone-deaf to nuance. Isn't Kerry supposed to be the nuance candidate?

More at Roger Simon and Instapundit and, I suspect, a hundred other blogs. Ace of Spades has more, Patriot Paradox has a note about John McCain's views, and Physics Geek notes another Democratic Party attempt to stifle dissent that is sure to backfire.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:20 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ow ow ow!

Ow owwie ow ow!

Ouch.

Fortunately, it only hurts when I move.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:42 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 What did you do ?
Not your back too I hope...

Posted by: Kean at August 05, 2004 07:51 PM (2xCxk)

2 Yep.
I went to turn out the lights in the bathroom and IYIYIYI!!!
Won't try that again in a hurry.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 05, 2004 07:54 PM (+S1Ft)

3 Oy; well refuah shelamah, a complete healing.

Posted by: Rachel Ann at August 05, 2004 10:56 PM (IWm2D)

4 It's better to poop in the dark anyway. That way nobody can see who made the stinky.

Posted by: Jim at August 06, 2004 02:47 AM (IOwam)

5 The odd thing is that the last couple of times I hurt my back I had no idea how or when it happened.
This time I know the exact moment and the exact action that caused it. It just makes no sense.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 06, 2004 02:51 AM (+S1Ft)

6 I've had my back go out due to sneezing, coughing, reaching, stooping, standing and sitting. I try to avoid all these activities whenever possible to prevent a re-occurence...

Posted by: Susie at August 06, 2004 10:17 PM (CSnd4)

7 So Susie... what do you do all day? Lie down and try to move things with your mind?

Posted by: frinklin at August 07, 2004 03:11 PM (7VjNn)

8 Do or not do. There is no try.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 08, 2004 10:08 PM (+S1Ft)

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I was just over at Q&O, and in checking my recollection of the history of Charles Martel, I realised something:

In the time since the American War of Independence - since when the United States has had a single, continuous government (setting aside that unpleasantness in the 19th century, which didn't really represent a break in that continuity anyway); in the time since Australia was settled by the British - since when Australia has moved peacefully from being a colony under a British-appointed governor to being an independent, democratic nation; in just over two hundred years France has burned its way through two kingdoms, two empires, an occupation government, and four republics.

Seems wasteful to me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:04 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A fascinating look at Europe's view of America: Hating America.

Unfortunately, at some point the article encountered some piece of Microsoftware and was effectively moronized. If you can get past all? the ?random? question?marks, though, you?ll do fine.

Update: Rob points out that if you change the encoding in your browser to Western / ISO 8859-1, the article looks much nicer. From the menu, choose View->Encoding->Western European in IE, or View->Character Encoding->Wester (ISO 8859-1) in Mozilla. This is supposed to work automagically, but in this case, doesn't.

(Via Ghost of a Flea)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:33 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

165 episodes of MST3K available online... Need bandwidth. More bandwidth!

Currently downloading season zero (yes, zero) which is 13 gig. After that I'll get season one, which is another 9 gig. If you are familiar with BitTorrent, you can find torrents for these seasons at SuprNova.org. Scroll down to ◊ Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (yes, they have a lot of different shows, don't they?) and click. Then go and do something else for a couple of days (or if you're in Australia, a couple of weeks). Then sit back and watch 30 episodes of MST3K goodness!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:36 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

While they didn't use my brilliant title, the book I wanted is out:

The Anti-Chomsky Reader does not seek to deprogram members of the Chomsky cult. But it does offer a response and antidote to the millions of words Noam Chomsky has emitted over the last 35 years, and tries to explain to those who do not yet accept him as their rinpoche what he has stood for during that time. Some of the ideas on his intellectual curriculum vitae that are discussed in the following pages—his defense of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge; his support of holocaust revisionism—may surprise those who know Chomsky only generally as a critic of U.S. foreign policy. Other of his commitments—the assertion that the U.S. as a world power is continuing the program of Nazi Germany and his fierce hatred of Israel—will, unfortunately, be more familiar. But either way, as Chomskyism continues to grow at home and abroad, it is clearly time for a reckoning.

Meanwhile, busy busy time is over, so I'll be back starting tomorrow.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:25 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Kenya, yet again.

(The management accepts no responsibility, you understand. None at all.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:34 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Just... Well, doing stuff. Back soon.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:00 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Today on Pixy's Science Theatre: Tales of the Very Small!

A micron, or micrometre, is one millionth of a metre, 10^-6 m. A typical human hair is about 80 microns thick (the range is rather large, from 18 to 180 microns). A human red blood cell is 6 to 8 microns across; the average bacterium is between 1 and 10 microns. The wavelength of visible light is around half a micron - ranging from 0.38 microns for violet to 0.74 microns for red. The smallest features of today's computer chips are just 0.09 microns wide.

An Ångström is much smaller, one ten-thousandth of a micron, one ten-billionth of a metre, 10^-10 m. Atoms are around one Ångström wide - half an Ångström for hydrogen, the smallest of all atoms. X-rays have a wavelength of around an Ångström. The double-helix of DNA is about 20 Ångströms across.

The Fermi is far smaller still, one one-hundred-thousandth of an Ångström, one quadrillionth of a metre, 10^-15 m. A proton or neutron is about one Fermi in diameter.

The Planck Length is really ridiculously small: about a tenth of a billionth of a quadrillionth of a Fermi, 1.6 x 10^-35 m. According to current theoretical physics, that's as small as you can go: any distance smaller than a Planck Length doesn't actually exist.

62 orders of magnitude in length
83 orders of mangitude in mass

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:32 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 So a half a Planck Length is not physically possible or is it not metaphysically conceivable?

Posted by: Jim at July 22, 2004 04:32 AM (IOwam)

2 Not physically possible - if the theory is correct.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 22, 2004 10:21 AM (+S1Ft)

3 The (untested) string theory explanation is that since particles are not points, but extended strings, about planck length long, it doesn't make sense to talk about distances or sizes smaller than the strings.
There must be a conventional quantum explanation, but I don't know it. I think it relates to the uncertainty principle, that even with the largest energy uncertainty a particle can have, its position uncertainty is still nonzero, about planck length. You can't locate a particle to within a fraction of a planck length, so distances that small don't matter. Finite sized strings just make more sense to me, though.
I remember reading somewhere that it's even more weird than that, in that in some weird 11 dimensional way, distances smaller than planck length really aren't smaller. Half a planck length in some sense is the same as two planck lengths. I have enough trouble with 3 dimensions, though. I think 11-dimensional physics will remain forever beyond me.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at July 22, 2004 04:23 PM (8M5Yp)

4 As I understand it - which is to say, not very well - distance may be quantized just as (say) electrical charge is. And that quantum is the Planck length.
Your explanation also makes some sense. I'm really not comfortable dealing with distances below a picometre or times shorter than an femtosecond, so I'm a bit out of my depth.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 22, 2004 05:28 PM (kOqZ6)

5 1035 planks are about a mile. Maybe we can reform the metric system to bring it into line (so to speak) with traditional measurements.

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at July 22, 2004 05:56 PM (Zblwc)

6 At least in all my experience, Angstrom is becoming deprecated. It is 10^-10m, and so isn't one of the standard fractional units. The nanometer (10^-9m, 10 Angstroms) is the preferred SI unit of distances in the former Angstrom range.
Pretty soon we are going to need a shorthand for nanometer like "micron" for micrometer. Nanon? (Picon for picometer?)
In my laser physics classes, we always just called it a nano -- "The laser wavelength is 633 nanos." And yes, we would routinely deal with nanos, especially when dealing with interferometry. We could measure the length (ok, the change in length) of an interferometer or optical fiber to within a few nanos. We had one device which could measure the change in wavelength of a laser to better than 0.1nano.
Now that the chips are getting down to 90 nanos, the nano is becoming an increasingly important unit of distance. The only problem with calling them nanos is that the chip guys probably use nanoseconds at least as often.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at July 23, 2004 08:20 AM (sCYzS)

7 I don't have notes in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that 10^-15m is the radius of a proton, not the diameter.
I'm truely truely sorry for this comment.
;P

Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 24, 2004 11:18 AM (5TORB)

8 Next time on Pixy Science Theater 3000... Exponential growth, as exemplified by the interval between posts.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at July 27, 2004 01:04 AM (sCYzS)

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Update:

Iraq's Interior Ministry dismissed as "stupid" a report in a local newspaper on Wednesday that said three nuclear missiles had been found near the town of Tikrit.

A senior U.S. military official told reporters he had no information on the report in the newspaper al-Sabah. He said officials were checking the report.

Asked by Reuters about the report, a spokesman at the Interior Ministry said: "It's stupid."

1. Eeeeek!

2. We have at most twenty-four hours of grace before being told by the Left that WMDs were never the issue.

Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday.

The official daily al-Sabah quoted the sources as saying the missiles were discovered in trenches near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"The three missiles were discovered by chance when the Iraqi security forces captured former Baath party official Khoder al-Douri who revealed during interrogation the location of the missiles saying they carried nuclear heads," the sources said.

If it does pan out, where the hell did he get nuclear warheads from? We know he never got close to making them himself. The only country in the Middle East with nukes is Israel, and I somehow doubt that is the source. North Korea might have one or two, but would they sell their ace-in-the-hole? India and Pakistan are more worried about each other than about bringing in a few bucks. The US and UK we can rule out. One would certainly hope we can rule out France, and China hasn't been acting that stupid lately. So, did the Russians lose track of some of theirs? If so, we have a hell of a problem.

Probably jumping at shadows. Probably.

(California Yankee via Evil Glenn)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:55 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

My current boss went to visit my former boss, who is now semi-retired and owns a bookstore (Dymocks on the corner of Pitt & Hunter, open 'til 7pm weekdays) and bought a copy of Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, which my former boss who now owns the bookstore got in specially from the US because it isn't available through his Australian distributor.

How cool is that?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:33 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Well, I've always hated the Nazis, but I didn't know until today that their extermination program extended to sufferers of Huntington's Chorea.

So if they'd had the chance, they would have murdered my mother's family as well as my father's. Bastards.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:34 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce:

Law enforcement sources said archive staff told FBI agents they saw Berger placing items in his jacket and pants, and one archive staffer told agents that Berger also placed something in his socks.

That allegation drew sharp responses from two of Berger's associates. President Clinton's former spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said Berger "categorically denies that he ever took documents and stuffed them in his socks.

"That is absurd," said Lockhart, who is now advising Berger. "And anyone who says that is interested in something other than the truth."

Former Clinton aide Lanny Davis challenged any unnamed official who accuses Berger of stuffing documents into his socks to come forward and level that charge publicly.

"I suggest that person is lying," he said. "And if that person has the guts, let's see who it is who made the comment that Sandy Berger stuffed something into his socks."

Thank you, CNN.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:13 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I hate doing server migrations. You can't start until everyone else has logged out and gone home, and then you have to be the first one in the next morning in case anything breaks.**

Bleah.

Meanwhile, barbecue at Susie's place!

* Burn your own posts.
** Something always breaks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:51 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Geeze, it's only July and already the Democrats are circling the drain.

I was hoping for more entertainment than that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:44 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 O S M R

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Y'know, blogging - and indeed the internet as a whole - is pretty much a case of Think locally, act globally.

Don't know that this is particularly profound, but it's all I've got right now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:58 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 What's that in regards to? It's marvellously cryptic.

Posted by: Mitch H. at July 16, 2004 05:35 AM (iTVQj)

2 Not in regards to anything specific. It's just that I find the greenie mantra of "think globall, act locally" to be really patronising and irritating. And then I realised that when you blog, you are doing exactly the reverse of that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 16, 2004 10:48 AM (kOqZ6)

3 We're showing "Day After Tomorrow" this week. I keep telling the customers it's a documentary, but only one ever laughed.

Posted by: Susie at July 16, 2004 02:50 PM (d81Pj)

4 We just had a discussion on F-9/11 here at the office. My boss is now eager to get his hands on a copy of Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 16, 2004 04:24 PM (kOqZ6)

5 I like the concept - it works for me! And the Global Greenie mantra gets on my nerves - what do they want - everyone back in caves, huddled round the fire?

Posted by: The Gray Monk at July 20, 2004 03:10 AM (U5kQV)

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Oh look, a new urgent security update!

Really, the difference between open-source software and closed-source software is not the number of bugs, but the manner in which fixes are announced. Err, and the price too.

But this time I managed to completely rebuild MuNu's Apache server with all its attentand modulary without breaking anything! As far as I know...

Update: DOH! Why the hell does the Apache install script in CPanel reset the permissions on everyone's home directory, forcing me to manually correct the settings for 113 users?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:40 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Proof that you wuv us. You weally, weally wuv us.
And YOU ARE THE BESTEST!

Posted by: Emma at July 15, 2004 03:36 AM (NOZuy)

2 Now's your chance to do what makes Open Source great: Find the bug in the install script, fix it, and send the patch in.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at July 15, 2004 10:33 AM (8+XGc)

3 Unfortunately, the original bug is in an open source package, but the install script isn't open source.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 15, 2004 10:41 AM (+S1Ft)

4 And now that you've done it manually, why can't you do something like this to fix the permissions?
cd /home
find . -type d -exec chmod 700 {} \;
where 700 is whatever the permissions should be. I understand the problem shouldn't happen in the first place, but 'find' does most things I would normally consider doing manually like that.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at July 16, 2004 06:33 AM (sCYzS)

5 There are some directories in there that will break if I change their permissions from the default. So when I say manually, I mean I wrote a little script but had to carefully edit a list of directories. That's about as manual as I get.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 16, 2004 09:07 AM (+S1Ft)

6 Urg. What a mess. I'm sorry. But thank you, Pixy! Thank you very muchly! You *are* the bestest!

Posted by: Linda at July 17, 2004 07:10 AM (ktJme)

7 I might be a victim of this scourge. Getting this error:
Writing to '/home/nick/www/index.php.new' failed: Opening local file '/home/nick/www/index.php.new' failed: Permission denied

Posted by: Nick Queen at July 18, 2004 06:33 AM (gBeRV)

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The database archive server failed a perfectly good disk out of the RAID-5 set. A quick raidhotremove and a raidhotadd - and a 20-hour resync - and it's back again. It would be better, though, if Linux didn't fail disks out of RAID-5 volumes every time a gnat farts in the computer room.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:11 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

New Janet Evanovich novel. Byee!

Oh, okay, I'll do some welcome emails first. Ppppt!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:48 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

This is a sad story but such a perfect example of the thesis I'm working towards in Thought that I have to comment on it. Via LGF:

The images from the explosion kept running through Sammi Masrawa’s mind as he lay in his hospital bed — a young female soldier with the back of her head missing, a heavily pregnant woman lying on the sidewalk, legs mangled ... screaming “my baby, my baby.”

Sunday’s blast at a Tel Aviv bus stop had changed his world view.

The 29-year-old Arab Israeli from Tel Aviv was the head of a local committee calling for coexistence between Israelis and the Palestinians.

Now he wants them kept apart.

“A month ago I went to protest the fence,“ he said, referring to the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank. ”Now I believe it can only strengthen us.”

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:54 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Well, that was weird. No mouse, reboot, no Windows. Boot from CD, chkdsk, reboot, no windows. Put CD back in, reboot... Windows. Eh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:47 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)