Utah Republican blames Satan for immigration. Who does he blame for our invasion of Iraq? [via Dave]
Evolution disproved with peanut butter [via Joshua]
Nick's always telling me how awful the Wikipedia is. Maybe he should try the Conservapedia instead. (This one's fun for Kris and Craig, etc.)
Verizon Math [via Jeff]
Science fiction becomes reality: Military builds robotic insects
I can always count on Dave for the best paranoid links, but this one even makes me a little nervous. Watch out for the RFID tattoos. Number of the beast, Tammy?
Waxy has the amazing tale of a sex-baiting prank on craigslist in which a couple hundred responders have been "outed". This is disturbing on many, many levels.
Joel Stein says what I've been saying for years: Elmo is evil. I hate that little red rag. [via scrubbles]
Web-hosting's dirty laundry You know those sites with "unbiased" reviews of webhosts? Surprise: they're simply large advertising venues.
Nightmare restaurant experience: take your table and shove it, a tale of a stolen reservation
One of the most evil men in Oregon is at it again: Lon Mabon comes out of the closet
A future with no bananas? "Go bananas while you still can. The world's most popular fruit and the fourth most important food crop of any sort is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed."
The CDC wants HIV testing for everyone. They're also pressuring Oregon (and presumably other states) to maintain the list of infected people by name instead of anonymously. [via Dave]
Congress readies broad new digital copyright bill, including jail periods of up to ten years for willful copyright infringement. Because, you know, it's a worse crime than driving under the influence. [via Dave]
Where should the U.S. attack next? Pardon me if this just re-inforces my already-held opinions...
The economic costs of the Iraq war: an appraisal three years after the beginning of the conflict [via gates]
Excessive Lawn Care? Writes Jeff (instead of coming into my office): "From the Lawn & Garden Tractor Forum [which he reads religiously]: Neighbor charged with shooting teen who walked on his grass
Hall of mirror for cats, designed to torture the poor felines. [via bb]
Pay off your credit card debt, raise a terrorist flag. This is just mind-boggling. What? Terrorists are running around paying off debt? And why the hell does Homeland Security need to know how much we're paying on our credit cards. [via Kris]
The skin you're in — "When Erika Thereian changed her Second Life skin from white to black, other things changed. Friends became distant, men made assumptions about her sexuality that they hadn't previously made, and there were blatant racist attacks." [via sennoma]
via Dave: Houston proposes surveillance cameras in apartment buildings and Chicago wants them in private businesses. Smile — you're on candid camera!
I just spent a long time on the phone last night talking another person through recovery from a PC virus/spyware attack. These things are all too common. What a surprise then to find this morning reports of possibly the first Macinosh OS X trojan.
Fuck the bastards: RIAA says ripping CDs to your iPod is NOT fair use. Here's the deal: if you comply with these greedy corporations, if you continually grant them greater power over the media and over the copyright laws, eventually they will be able to charge you for access whenever and whereever you want to use your media. It's time to take a stand, folks, it's time to tell Big Media to shove it.
Their own version of a Big Bang — why are religionists so scared of evolution? Why do they not even take the time to understand it?
Netflix sends frequent renters to the back of the line — the company's shady business practices go mainstream. I've become increasingly frustrated not because of the inability to get new releases, but because the turnaround from Netflix has dropped from two days to five days. That, my friends, is unacceptable. [via Dave]
U.S. company implants electronic tags in workers — would you allow this to happen to you? [via Dave, of course]
I know I already covered this in the main blog, but here's actual media coverage: Starbucks kills chantico [via kris!]
For all my friends who knit, perhaps you too can aspire to beautiful art made with knitting. I'd love to have the first one. [via ml]
Holy shit. Feds after google data. This is a Bad, Bad Thing. [via Dave, of course]
This is great! An anti-telemarketing counter-script. Turn the tables on the bastards! [via bb]
What's it like to win the lottery? The winning ticket! (Or is it? I hope they at least bought the guy a good dinner.) [via fotw]
Kill all the white people! Yeah, right. That'll solve all the problems in the world.
From Dave comes a pile of links on governmental surveillance: Judge grants government request for warrant-free cell tracking; Spy agency mined vast data trove; Bush was denied wire taps, bypassed them; and, finally, Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING!
Thanks to the spammers, I am closing comments in the flotch. I will also close comments in most of the old weblog entries, leaving open only those with enduring popularity. I hate spammers.
WTF? Prepare for the world's first musical sandwich [via betsy]
This is all over the internet, but it deserves all the exposure it can get. This guy had a terrible experience with PriceRitePhoto, an abusive bait-and-switch camera store.
Letter to Northwest Airlines: a tale of holiday hell
Conspiracy theories: 9/11 Pentagon attack and Hurricane Katrina [via Jeff]
Live with this, a chilling weblog entry about the US torturing of prisoners
Via Dave: opy protection problems come home to roost — viruses exploit Sony CD copy-protection. This is worth a longer weblog enry; I just wrote a ranting e-mail to Dave about this.
Anti-evolution is one thing, but anti-science? Kansas school board rewrites the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena. Don't like what science teaches you? Change the meaning of science! Frickin' idiots.
A history of the Iraq war told entirely in lies. All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers.
Republicans want to end birthright citizenship as a means to quell illegal immigration. [via Dave]
Subliminal harassment HOWTO — this stuff is just evil.
Fascinating: two stories of Digital Rights Management run amok. Sony, rootkits, and DRM gone too far. Also, DRM-crippled CD: a bizarre tale in four parts. Both are longish and technical, but simply vital reading.
The Parents Behaving Badly weblog documents the worst in breeders.
Prison time for woman who deliberately killed her cat in the washing machine. I sure hope so. This makes me so angry.