When you are feeling down and need a pick-me-up laugh, follow the da link. When you are feeling happy and want to feel down follow this link. Bush is the Moran!

Sick but funny!

So, this is one of the funniest pieces of flash I have recently seen and it is especially great for all you Linux/Apple lovers out there. What I like about the parodic play (and do see the Mac Ad first) is that it essentially captures everything about Apple that I personally can’t stand. I mean, yes, I love their computers, I can’t but help drool when I see a titanium wanting to nab it from my friend when they least suspect it and I think that they have perfected the “touch” of keyboards but their own marketing/image department makes me want to… barf.

So, what drives me crazy about Apple is that they have created this image of themselves as this company that is really “deep dish cool” to the core, so much so that taking a bite of the Apple will make you, him, and her be way cool too, and also free and fun and hip.

And yes, many of their products are great but their such strong, explicit forms of advertising makes it almost too obvious how marketing in our society functions to psychologically remake selves, selves that are happy, cool, content, fulfilled, and in the case of Apple, free!!!! and really, really, really cool!!!! Yes, it is what all advertising does but I think they try just too hard and look like fools in the process.

They also use advertising to try to paint themselves as a different type of company than the likes of M$ but they fight, and fight just as hard to protect their IP. In some ways, I sometimes feel like ok, at least M$ ain’t trying to hide behind some weird veneer of coolness which is what Apple likes to do. But anyway, the flash piece drives home the point I just tried to make so check it out!

This was the first year that I karaoked on Christmas as was also the first holiday that I have yet to buy a present (hmmm except chocolate covered almonds but they melted, probably in the mouth of the wrong receipient). I was lazy and just not in the mood to shop but come to think of it, maybe it was because I was missing that special credit card, Hax0r Card to do my holiday shopping. It finally came in the mail today! Just in time to get some presents for my family as I leave for Puerto Rico on Monday

So, I am always saying, hackers, “they are sooooo funny.” And this ad says is a gem of humor crafted by our very own praveen (aka DMH). This sucka is licensed under the BSD License.

Your very own personal Debian package name

I decided to start reading the Guyana Chronicle again to keep up with a part of the world that is rarely covered in the mainstream or independent media. I did not think that I would read about such a burning free speech/civil rights case going on in Australia in the Guyana Chronicle.

But next door to Australia, in New Zealand, there is a slightly more pressing (but ever more slight) legal situation. They are thinking of passing a DMCA-like law but are first accepting comments, including international ones. Here is what you can do:
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New Zealand’s incumbent government prides itself on being
highly consultative, so you’ll have the ability to tip the
scales in favour of the consumer and the private citizen.
The more New Zealand can be swayed to a less oppressive
position, the more force there’ll be towards efforts to
repeal/mitigate the DMCA in the USA, because NZ can then be
cited as a positive example.. So it’s actually in *your*
interest, in the USA and other countries, to make a
submission.

Submissions must be received before Friday, February 21,
2003. Please don’t delay unduly – it’s easy to blink twice
and discover that the date has already passed.

Snail Mail is probably best, sent to the following address: Digital Technology and the Copyright Act 1994
Attention: Victoria Pearson
Regulatory and Competition Policy Branch
Ministry of Economic Development
PO Box 1473
WELLINGTON,
NEW ZEALAND

Email submissions are also accepted -
victoria.perason@med.govt.nz

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So, you know, there are times when scientific studies can yield some really interesting information. This is not
one of them:

Oven Fries Beat Deep Fried Chips for Health, Safety
Despite high-profile government campaigns, chip pan fires continue to be the single largest cause of casualties in house fires,” they write. “Changing cooking behavior in low income households may be feasible if the alternatives provide the same quality and convenience as home fried food at an acceptable price.”

They conclude that a decrease in the numbers who choose to deep-fry, alongside other fire-prevention methods, “may have important repercussions for public health in the UK.”

Now they will need a study for a counter argument:
Deep Fried Chips Beat Oven Fries for Psychological Well Being and Gastro-Satisfaction

I have been reprimanded. Patrice, a true hippie and hellster, reprimanded me about my desire for a high-speed train in CA:

Now why I am skeptical about HSR (High Speed Rail):
- It is very expensive to build
- It is very damaging to the environment (though less than a Motorway). HSR is not *that* energy efficient – because of hi-energy needs for speed.
- It is expensive to run & hence to use. ICE in Germany attracts huge fare surcharges. The French TGV is affordable, because subsidized.
- It does not serve local communities well, prioritizes (big) point to (big)point trips.

It would be preferable immo to build a more conventional, but state-of-the-art, comfortable & relatively fast (100 Miles/h) train system, with many more stops, and affordable fares. Basically like the existing Caltrain/Bus transport system, but better & more frequent.

So, Patrice you are right, I have changed my mind but I still, ask you:
What Would Jesus Drive?. I heard about this campaign on NPR a couple of weeks ago and I am glad that they have a nice web page up which is not as titillating as jesus.com (and is there anything as bewitching as that site?). Seriously, I am intrigued by this whole Christian environmental turn…. I have a penchant for cultural/ethical/religious forms of political action in which a strong ethic underpins political arguments. And I wonder what all the Christian Republicans who like LOVE oil so much they probably bathe in it as our dear friend Jesus bathes does with woman, think about the Christian tree hugging turn?

But seriously, again WWJD?? I mean, the guy can walk… on water. He could like use his heavenly powers to walk, really fast, like a highspeed train, (but minus the train), so that he would not cause all those problems Patrice pointed out to me. Yeah, that is what the J-Man would do, for sure.

University of Chicago’s slogan is “Life of the Mind.” Though dramatic, this tends to be true being that there is not much one can do in the isolated neighborhood of Hyde Park. The university’s gothic architecture and Chicago’s gray skies reinforces that you are there, for one purpose, and one purpose alone, to cultivate that feeble mind of yours. It takes only one excursion to the athletic facilities to really know why the University of Chicago is a place that can only cultivate the mind. It is a dungeon of a place, with no windows, gray interiors to match the lovely weather. It exudes an oppressive and depressive atmosphere, and contains only a smattering of exercise machines for those students who feel that though indeed they have good hearty minds to cultivate, they have also come to the amazing intellectual conclusion, that they too have, bodies. And I am one of those students so when there, I grudgingly make my way to the gym. Yet, I find a means to still cultivate my mind by scheming imaginative stories about other students who dare to use the dungeon. My last two visits to the U of C have been marked by this indulgent fascination with this one particular undergraduate student who has this very, well, now I can say for certain, pathological relationship to the “Precor” elliptical trainer, a relationship borne of the desire to thin her thighs.

Every Time and there was no exception, I went to the gym, she was there, whisking her legs with unnatural, yet highly effective, elliptical movements, as fast as humanly possible (she would indeed win the “World Precor Championship”, if there were such a thing). With a sour expression gripping her face just as tightly as her hands on the sidebar, she could only be thinking one thought. Though a lovely young woman, with only a minimal layer of of horrendous blubber on her physique, I know she was thinking with every whisk of her legs:

“I HATE my thighs, MUST skinnify my thighs, I HATE, wait, no, I mean LOATHE my thighs, must, must thinnify my thighs” the noise of the swishing and swoshing of the machine the backdrop of her religious mantra.

My keen sociological and anthropological mind felt that there was no other explanation but thigh thinning for her crabbed expression and unmatched Precor intensity. So as I whisked away on my own Precor, probably not all that happy about my thighs, I created a whole fake persona around this young woman who did have nice thighs, though I have to admit, they did lack a certain tight definition. Along with creating fake childhood scenarios as to why she grew to hate her thighs (like her supermodel mother denying her Twinkes in the name of “The Thigh”), I found myself perplexed as to how she managed to stay on this ungodly machine for well over an hour when the rule in the dungeon is that you have 1/2 hr slots although there are small exploits enabling a 45 minute session. It was an exploit that allowed me to stay on the Precor the day that I finally clashed with this woman who was growing to inhabit a figment of my imagination. What I was to discover was that everything I concocted about “the World Champion of Precoring” was in fact, true.

I arrived at the gym at around 11:35 am, dutifully signed up for the 12:00 slot and after I changed, I hopped onto my machine 15 minutes early at 11:45 as the 11:30 person was a no-show (I know, a lame exploit, but still an exploit). 5 minutes later, “thunder thighs” arrives, and makes an immediate dash to the sign-up board, and is utterly dismayed that there was NO 12:00 slot for her, I mean for her thighs. It was as if God had told her: “Ms Precor, on average your thighs will grow 1.3 inches per year and the goddam Precor ain’t going to do anything about it.” She paced back and forth from the black board to machines, destabilized by this tragic turn of events. At the time, there were three unused machines (lots of 11:30 no-shows), so she hurriedly gets on one and 10 minutes later is promptly kicked off by the next user. She then decided to externalize her despair and anger towards, yes, me, the woman who obsesses over her obsession. My endless imaginative machinations of what caused her tragic compulsion with “thigh thinning” led to her attack of me, an attack based on that 1/2 hour rule. She trots over to me and asked why I have remained on the machine given the The Rule. I was… aghast. How did miss thunder thighs have the nerve to accuse another fellow Precorista of rule bending when she is the Queen of such exploits. But then using my rational mind that has been delicately cultivated by the University of Chicago, I concluded that those who obsessively want to thin thighs and, on the Precor, are not reasonable creatures, even those from the University of Chicago. So, I explained that like the lady next to me I got on my machine 15 minutes early as there was a no show. And then I reminded her that she too was privy to such “shady” practices. She humphed, snorted, and using her strong thighs to turn around in defeat, she then paced around for the next half hour in disgust of me and I am sure her thighs growing thighs.

What I could not understand for the life of me is why she would not get on one of the other many willing exercise machines: stairmasters, bikes, treadmill, rowers. It was as if she made a pact with satan himself (or the CEO of Precor) that she would not use any other machine if her thighs were kept, you know, “just right.”

At 12:30, she trots back to me and demands my immediate departure as my time is OVER. I was not in the mood to fight with her pathological obsessions so I did just that–dismounted.

I am back in San Francisco now where I don’t have to go to a dungeon to par take in my inner obsessions or see her outer obsession. But I am sure Thunder Thighs is relieved that I am, gone. You see, I am convinced that she lived up to the great Chicago tradition of cultivating her mind by scheming a usage and statistical model of the “best time” to use the Precor based on numbers of people attending at certain time segments. After carefully collecting data over months, and running them through some statistical software, she picked the time slot between 11:00-1:00. I being a mere visitor for the week, ruined her entire scheme. Although, being that she is a University of Chicago student, I am sure she is back at work, cultivating her mind by integrating “random visitor” variables into her statistical model so that she never has to face the prospect of a 1/2 hour off her beloved, her Precor Machine.

DINNER