Sophont

A 2005 Rollick By James Lileks Behold: 2005 was the most important year in human history. Okay, maybe not. There have been better years, and worse ones. The Goths did not sack New York City. No plague. Asteroids didn’t deform the globe. The center held, and if some rough beast was slouching toward Bethlehem it appears he was diverted to a time-share in Branson for the season. Nothing blew up—over here at least. Despite the usual rash of false alarms, Americans no longer seem to be waiting for the other shoe bomber to drop. The economy grew much more than gloomy reporters expected. The Batman movie was good, for a change. No one on the Supreme Court tested positive for steroids. Politically, the Administration seemed determined to get the third year of its second term out of the way in the first."

Over on thisisbroken luser Susan Dombrow is upset with Symantec's response to her request that a question be answered in "plain english" and not "conmputerese" here is part of Symatec's response: Please note that the Email Protection feature of Norton AntiVirus works by monitoring traffic on the ports used by the POP3 email protocol. All data that enters or leaves your computer through these ports is stopped and scanned before being passed onto its destination. HTTP email services, such as those offered by America OnLine, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, do not use the POP3 ports, and cannot be scanned by Email Protection. I think that she would have been happier with the following: Please note that the Email Protection feature of Norton AntiVirus works by monitoring little dancing electric fairies that travel through the magic doorways used by the Garden Gnome's email protocol. All fairies that enters or leaves your computer through these magic doorways are s...

An Educational Voyage! : Sir, it is time for a real hard reality check for you and your administrators. Please show NYC teachers a floor plan of an honestly functional 'typical size' NYC classroom that has: 30-35 desks and chairs - arranged in cooperative groups (remember- larger children have larger furniture) A teacher's desk and chair A work space for an Educational Assistant. All adults deserve a chair. You have a chair, don't you? The Famous Rocking Chair A Classroom Library with a little space to browse. Usable Reading, Math, Writing, and Science 'Centers' that are not so crammed together that only one child at a time can fit at them. A Word Wall A Bulletin Board wall A Chalk Board Wall A Wall with Windows and A Computer area that allows a logical traffic flow that teachers and children can move around in comfortably. NYC school buildings were just not built for the class sizes we have today. 15-18 child classes are few ...

Forbes.com : "For centuries now the screw has held things together, and for almost as long it has been frustratingly inept at its central purpose. Concrete cracks when it is punctured by a screw. Plastic creeps away from the pressure, sliding down the threads so that even a tightened screw loosens almost instantly. Carmakers have to mold brass inserts into plastic parts to accept screws; otherwise they might loosen and cause a dreaded rattle. Kenneth LeVey has a better idea. A product development director at Illinois Tool Works, the nation's biggest screwmaker, he has reinvented what the company dubs the threaded fastener in a way that lets it grip tight where it used to let loose--and compete with cheaper screws made by offshore rivals. "

Times Online : "I SPENT the early part of last year in New Orleans recovering from gunshot wounds received as I was being robbed. It happened in the early evening as I walked down a quiet street with my girlfriend. There was a football game in town and the streets near the French Quarter were empty. The police presence was elsewhere. The incident itself was over in a flash but it plays over and over in my head and perhaps one day it will make sense to me. I found out later that there were fewer than 2,000 police in New Orleans at that time and it reached such a point that there was talk of the city was importing officers from Cleveland. Anyway, thanks to someone’s mobile phone, the police eventually got to the scene. Later, as I was carried into the emergency room at Charity hospital, a doctor reassured me that “New Orleans really is the best place to get shot”. They had, he explained, had plenty of practice." Ray Davies was lead singer of the Kinks. www.raydavies.info

"Monotremes are really weird. Everything about them seems to have been thought up past some kind of deadline. Take the method by which they reproduce: after mating, the female lays an egg (echidna) or two (platypus). Then she carries them around until they hatch. Monotremes are mammalian, even if what they have is a kind of free demo version of mammalianism without the really useful features like live birth, so they lactate. But they have no nipples. The milk just leaks right out of glands in their skin, and the baby monotreme laps it up with sweeps of its tiny bill."

mysanantonio.com : "I am disappointed. Women are going to lose their rights. Resolution 137 (which eliminates Iraqi family laws relative to women's rights and replaces it with Islamic legal doctrine) is coming back. Our civil family law will be canceled. We will go on Sharia law. We will be part of Iran. ..We, as constitution-drafting members, don't know what's happening. We finished on Aug. 15. The (big guys) started from zero. They changed everything in it. They are dividing the cake into pieces. It is personal. ... It is a shame we have reached this point. The big guys, every one counts how much he will benefit. My request to the women of San Antonio, my friends, can you please support the Iraqi women, to bring back our rights? Or it is our own case, nobody will help?" Dr. Rajaa Khuza, a member of the committee to write the Iraqi constitution, sent this e-mail Saturday.

SPACE.com : "In 1959, Cecelia 'Cece' Bibby found her way into the RCA graphics arts department located at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Arriving at the dawn of the space age, she would soon find herself surrounded by what was then the men-only world of high performance jets and rocketry. An artist by trade, talent, and self-determination, Bibby would become the first to design and paint a logo on the outside of a U.S. manned spacecraft destined for orbit. She would work with three of the Mercury astronauts to customize their craft and in the process see her artwork become as recognizable as the astronauts themselves. Bibby's path to becoming the first woman allowed on the launch pad was not one without its hurdles."

Independent Online Edition : "Their scheme is simple enough. Tommy and Leona advertise for like-minded souls to have sex for free on camera, then upload the finished movies and pictures on to their website. Subscribers pay $15 a month to access the pictures and movies, and the subscriptions are donated to save the world's forests. Though the product is amateur and invariably involves lots of twittering birds, insects and twigs as props, it seems even this kind of sex sells. The couple say they have collected more than $100,000 since the site went live in April last year. These days the site gets 800-1,000 subscribers each month, and extra cash is raised by selling their own branded T-shirts for $20 a pop. It's a success, they say, because their subject matter and charitable goal are intrinsically linked. 'Sexuality,' explains Tommy, as if I am a bit stupid, 'is a reee-ally natural thing. Like nature, you know? I think we're all a little bit afraid of the na...

Cold Fury : "Do you remember when the last Homeland Security Secretary, Tom Ridge, told us that to be prepared for emergencies, we should put together a readiness kit? I do. The kit layout is suggested at Ready.Gov. The portion of the kit for dealing with attacks and natural disasters should have, ideally, “at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food” and a corresponding amount of water - a gallon per day per person. Yet when he announced the suggested measures that we all take to prepare for potential terror attacks or natural disasters, he was met with nothing but mockery. So much so, that his name is synonymous with duct tape - since that’s the only thing anybody in the MSM (or for that matter the lefty blogosphere) cared to discuss. Thanks for undercutting it, my patriotic left wing friends, and calling it partisan scare mongering. What kind of a warped mind, can spin basic common sense as partisan bickering. So answer me this, how many of the displaced persons...

Tall, Dark, and Mysterious Alas, I don’t think that this meme will spread very well. But if I can get ti.com to the top of the Google results for "fucking graphing calculator" , my purpose as a blogger will have been fulfilled.

Yahoo! News : "NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York officials were red-faced on Friday after they discovered that clothing ads on city buses that appeared to promote reading suggested a love of books could be rewarded with oral sex. The advertisements that ran on about 200 buses across the city in recent months carried posters displaying a suggestively posed woman in hot pants kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan 'Read Books, Get Brain.' What unhip, unsuspecting local transportation officials did not know was that 'get brain' is street slang for oral sex. The ads -- from hip-hop clothing maker Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre -- was stripped off New York buses on Friday after transportation officials discovered the street slang meaning. Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly condemned the 'vulgar street phrases' in the racy ads he said were 'demeaning women.' 'To me and I believe to everyone else, while it wa...

Excite - News : "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has long lured recruits with the slogan 'Be All You Can Be,' but now soldiers and their families can receive plastic surgery, including breast enlargements, on the taxpayers' dime. The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free -- something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills. 'Anyone wearing a uniform is eligible,' Dr. Bob Lyons, chief of plastic surgery at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio told the magazine, which said soldiers needed the approval of their commanding officers to get the time off. Between 2000 and 2003, military doctors performed 496 breast enlargements and 1,361 liposuction surgeries on soldiers and their dependents, the magazine said. The magazine quoted an Army spokeswoman as saying, 'the surgeons have to have someone to...

Currently on c-span Rep. Tubb Jones is blathering on about the disaster relief as pert of a black caucus press conference. She is calling for cruise ships to come to house refugees (or the political correct term they're asking us to now use is "taxpaying american citizens"). Seems that she missed Brown discussing this on Wednesday, when he said the contracts were being negotiated. I'll bet there will be an announcement about this on Sunday, which she'll take credit for initiating.

edp24.co.uk : "The Hall family, who have been subjected to a six-year hate campaign by extremists, said they hoped the decision to close the business at the end of the year and return to traditional farming would prompt grave robbers to return the body of 82-year-old Gladys Hammond. Mrs Hammond was the mother-in-law of Christopher Hall, who co-owns Darley Oaks Farm. Her body was stolen from a grave at St Peter's Church in nearby Yoxall last October In a statement, the family said: “David Hall and Partners' involvement in breeding guinea pigs for biomedical research will cease at the end of 2005. “The business, which has operated for over three decades, will undergo a phased closure until then to ensure the welfare of animals involved.” A Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs spokesman, who has been protesting peacefully at the farm for six years, said: “This is the most fantastic day of my life. It's a victory for the animals and it's a fundamental victory fo...

Podcasts : "The Bob Rivers Show, August 24, 2005 The doctor who called the lady obese," jaynote: it starts about 1/3 of the way in, well worth listening to

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED... AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. MANY WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT. AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK. POWER OUTAGES MAY LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MANY POWER PO...

sfweekly.com : "She was retarded. Among the several hundred or so gathered for the concert, roughly 10 percent seemed to have some sort of developmental disability. Huey really is a phenomenon; it's not just with my clients. A bunch of people from a group home had set up camp on the opposite side of the stage, laying out blankets and picnic food. Bobbi recognized some of her friends and waved. 'Huuuuueyyyy!' they all yelled back. It was just like people who yell 'Bruuuce!' at a Springsteen concert, only more retarded. In fact, Huey Lewis is a retarded version of Bruce Springsteen. Think about it. All of his songs are three-chord chug-a-lugs about working-class schlubs trying to make it through this crazy thing we call life. 'Workin' for a Livin',' 'Walking on a Thin Line,' and 'I Want a New Drug' are all slightly less soulful embodiments of the Springsteen ethos."

The case against the "Kutztown 13" - a group of high school students charged with felonies for tinkering with their school-issued laptop computers - seems to be ending mostly with a whimper. In meetings with students over the last several days, the Berks County juvenile probation office has quietly offered the students a deal in which all charges would be dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility and a few months of probation. The probation department realizes this is small potatoes, said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half of the accused students. The 13 were initially charged with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention.">AP Wire | 08/25/2005 | 'Kutztown 13' hackers offered deal : "The case against the 'Kutztown 13' - a group of high school students charged with ...

The Globe and Mail : He notes that the Americans insist they are not in violation, although all of those interviewed found the reasoning of Rob Portman, the U.S. trade representative, ludicrous and incomprehensible. Language this strong usually comes from opponents of the FTA, NAFTA and the globalization movement. That the very architects of free trade between Canada and the United States should be speaking in such terms is, frankly, shocking. Even more shocking is that, to a man and woman, they believe Canada should impose retaliatory tariffs, or other restrictive measures, unless the Americans are prepared to negotiate a new softwood lumber agreement that accommodates Canadian, and not just U.S., concerns, even though such a move could lead to a trade war between the two countries. "I would sit them down and I would say to them, 'All right. Enough of this. You are out of line, and you know that you are out of line,' " says Mr. Reisman, who was chief negotia...