Monday, December 31, 2007

RIAA goes psycho

Now the RIAA is claiming that "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you're stealing. You're breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages."

And they mean making one personal localized copy from a CD to your computer.

Are they nuts?

Read more here.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

7 languages



Found this on thedailydish.com. Good old Andrew Sullivan, a clueless *Republican* fag, but still good for a laugh.

I hate Borat part7

Good, now that Borat is dead, Mr Cohen is turning is acting skills to something hopefully more worth while.

THE creator of Ali G and Borat has been persuaded by Steven Spielberg to move from comedy to serious politics by playing a hippie opponent of the Vietnam war.

In The Trial of the Chicago Seven, Sacha Baron Cohen will portray Abbie Hoffman, a figure from the 1960s counterculture who used a series of pranks to campaign against the war. Baron Cohen is expected to be paid about £3m for the film.


Read more here.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Orangina ad



Furries ad for Orangina.

Ewww

Friday, December 28, 2007

Young or not, you're an idiot

Bitter bitter bitter. It was predicted long ago this kind of crap would start to appear once the Boomers reached that delicate age...

Listen to this diatribe against Baby Boomers, with nothing backing it up other than the fact it seems to amuse the writer...

The first official Baby Boomer, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, will be eligible for social security benefits this year. In the coming years, 80 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 will be re-shaping the face of retirement.

Nice job, Boomers. You guys are like insecure children, needing praise and attention for every developmental milestone. The Greatest Generation has been forced to smile through your painful piano recitals for decades, and Generations X and Y are sick of you. But, of course, one must respect his elders, so in honor of the aging Boomers, we've asked Generation X to guest-edit a Baby Boomer edition of AARP magazine. Enjoy, you old hippies.


from www.236.com.

Web icon set to be discontinued

I'm sad to see it go, it was the browser of the 90's. I haven't used it this century though...

The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users.
Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%.


Read more here.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Dogs of War strike in Pakistan

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, aides said.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

It's worse than we thought...

Harper may be as dumb as Bush afterall...

When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to explain in a year-end interview why he'd met the Dalai Lama in his Ottawa office, it was clear he wanted to show respect for the exiled Tibetan leader.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite come out that way.

"I met the Dalai Lama in my office but I meet everyone in my office. I don't know why I would sneak off to a hotel room just to meet the Dalai Lama. You know, he's not a call girl," Harper told OMNI television.

He quickly added: "As I say, he's a respected international spiritual leader."


Read more here.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

From a more civilized age



R.O. Blechman CBS Christmas Bumper (1966)

Scandinavians invented ice skating in 3000 BC

Other than the interesting early date, the rest of the article spends its time stating the obvious.

Read more here.

Out of the mouth of babes

“Who is your favorite author?” Aleya Deatsch, 7, of West Des Moines asked Mr. Huckabee in one of those posing-like-a-shopping-mall-Santa moments.

Mr. Huckabee paused, then said his favorite author was Dr. Seuss.

In an interview afterward with the news media, Aleya said she was somewhat surprised. She thought the candidate would be reading at a higher level.

“My favorite author is C. S. Lewis,” she said.

Monday, December 24, 2007

WeTube

lol

Have an audience with her Highness here.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Saxon burial at Prittlewell

Record-breaking haul from Gaul discovered at farm in Brittany

Asterix and Obelix, had they existed, might have paid for their mead and other magic potions with gold-silver-copper coins stamped with elaborate images of men and horses.

The largest treasure trove of pre-Roman, Gaulish money ever to be found has been discovered in central Brittany.

The 545 coins – each worth thousands of euros to collectors but priceless to historians and archaeologists – could overturn much of the received wisdom about the complexity, and wealth, of pre-Roman Celtic society in France. Why was such enormous wealth, a king's ransom at the time, buried in the grounds of a large Gaulish farm 40 miles south of Saint-Brieuc in the first century BC? Why was the hoard never recovered?


Read more here.

Just what does "saw" mean?

Mitt Romney.

Fuckin guy, caught lying (again), tries to dance his way out of it.

Sad.

Read more here.

Girls just awanna have fun

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Sacha Baron Cohen Kills Borat

It's a beautiful day in the neighbourhood.

Read more here.

Top 10 Archaelogical Discoveries of 2007

from Archaeology.org:

Hardly week goes by without a major archaeological discovery or the publication of a radical new theory about the human past. Reducing a year's worth of these stories to the 10 most important was a tall order, especially since our intent was to go beyond the headlines and select those we thought made a significant impact on the field--ones that will be talked about for decades.

With that in mind, here are our picks for the 2007's most important finds...


Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru
Nebo-Sarsekim Cuneiform Tablet
New Dates for Clovis Sites
Early Squash Seeds, Peru
Ancient Chimpanzee Tool Use
Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria
Lismullin Henge, Tara, Ireland
Polynesian Chickens in Chile
Homo habilis & Homo erectus
Greater Angkor, Cambodia

Read more here.

Friday, December 21, 2007

5½-minute tracking shot dazzles in 'Atonement'

Quarterbacks throw "Hail Mary" passes. Tightrope walkers work without nets. Opera companies tackle Wagner's complete Ring cycle.

All these showboating moves are risky yet surefire crowd-pleasers.

But when filmmakers want to display their skills, no other camera trick impresses quite as much as the tracking shot, a long sequence that runs several minutes without an editing cut.

Many top directors are masters of the art, such as Martin Scorsese (his best is the trek through the Copacabana in Goodfellas) and Paul Thomas Anderson (the opening of Boogie Nights).

The latest filmmaker to impress with such a bravura segment is Joe Wright, whose tracking shot arrives midway through Atonement, a tragic romance set during World War II starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.

The 51/2-minute tour de force depicts thousands of Allied soldiers — dazed, drunk, disgruntled and determined to go home — crowding a bombed-out beach in France while awaiting the evacuation of Dunkirk in June 1940.


Read more here.

Now that's a souvenir

Human remains believed to be 2,000 years old were found this week by two sisters near the ruins of the ancient city of Caesarea.

Julia Shvicky of Kibbutz Barkai and Janet Daws, visiting from England, found some bones that had washed up on the shore during a stroll by the beach.

"I love taking strolls at this spot. I always look for special stones and coins from the Roman era," Shvicky said. "Just as we started walking I said to my sister: 'Wouldn't it be fun if we found something interesting?'" At first, the sisters did not know they had found human bones. They took them to the kibbutz nurse who told them the bones were part of a human spinal cord and hip.


Read more here.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Rudy Giuliani



These people are nuts. What the fuck is a "constructionist judge"?

Pepo en bolas



Civilized urban life. The People have Spoken.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Aphex Siamese Murmur

Star Wars Christmas Special in 5 minutes



And those 5 minutes are unbearable.

Pimping for Jesus

The Beatnix

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Bwana Beowulf

A discussion of Hollywood's latest attempt to thrust 3D upon us.

Read more here.

Holy Christ





Scary stuff..mommy mommy there's a floating cross!..shiver...

Monday, December 17, 2007

Let there be light

Saturday, December 15, 2007

The Four Horsemen



On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen.

StarTrek.com

The geek world is in shock tonight with the news that StarTrek.com is no more.

Read more here.

Friday, December 14, 2007

The War on Democracy



By John Pilger.

Government retreats on copyright reform

The bill would have made such activities as the time-shifting of television shows, file-sharing of music and video, and copying files to CDs or MP3 players illegal.

That alone should alert everyone as to the backwards nature of this proposed new law.

It must be stopped.

Read more here.

Ancient Toolkit Gives Glimpse of Prehistoric Life

Before the end of the last ice age, a hunter-gatherer left a bag of tools near the wall of a roundhouse residence, where archaeologists have now found the collection 14,000 years later.

The tool set -- one of the most complete and well preserved of its kind -- provides an intriguing glimpse of the daily life of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer.


Read more here.

"Good men have to know how to do bad things to do good"

The lack of morals in these people is shocking...Americans are really not that special, but oh boy do some of them think they are...

Americans aren't above resorting to torture to gain intelligence from suspected terrorists -- and it would be a mistake if they were, according to Fox News military analyst Col. David Hunt.

Hunt, who appeared on the Fox and Friends morning program to discuss the CIA's admission that it destroyed at least two videotapes depicting severe interrogation techniques, described waterboarding as a devastatingly painful tactic that was a necessary evil of intelligence gathering.


Read more here.

It will be open season on captured Americans.

House Passes Restrictions on Interrogation Methods

In a statement this week, the White House said the president would veto the bill, as a ban on harsh interrogations “would prevent the president from taking the lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack in wartime.”

If you have to use such methods Bush, you don't deserve to be protected.

Criminal.

Read more here.

PS, 199 voted against, Against. Sad times indeed.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Blow me

This post at Shakespearessister sums up yet another stupid statement from Pope Ben.

Read more here.

The Fall of the Roman Empire



With Emperor Obi Wan.

El Cid



Subtle.

Taras Bulba



Omg, Taras Bulba. I am speechless.

Update: of course someone has had it pulled..so here is a trailer for a Russian remake!

The Conqueror



John Wayne, Genghis Khan, atomic radiation! Who could ask for more?

Mankini



This will scar you for life.

Sen. Kit Bond: Waterboarding Is Like ‘Swimming’

These people are sick fucks, definately dangerous.

Yesterday on PBS’s Newshour, host Gwen Ifill asked Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Bond replied that the technique is actually more like “swimming“:

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.

Choking Game

Idiots, never to be outdone, have found a new game now that tombstoning has gotten old.

Students at a middle school in Orange County have been experimenting with what is believed to be a new variation of the choking game, where teens hold their breath and get punched in the chest until they blackout.

Read more here.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Unacceptable part II

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who asked the hypothetical, pushed [Brigadier General] Hartmann on his answer, asking him directly if it would be a “violation of the Geneva Convention”:

GRAHAM: You mean you’re not equipped to give a legal opinion as to whether or not Iranian military waterboarding, secret security agents waterboarding downed airmen is a violation of the Geneva Convention?

HARTMANN: I am not prepared to answer that question, Senator.

After Hartmann twice refused to answer, Graham dismissed him in disgust, saying he had “no further questions.”


These people really are lowlifes, aren't they..

Read and watch more here.

Unacceptable

A Mississauga man accused of killing his teenage daughter was remanded in custody this morning after a brief court appearance.

Muhammad Parvez, 57, stood silently in the prisoner’s dock during the hearing in a Brampton courtroom.

Handcuffed and wearing a prison-orange jumpsuit, he mumbled the single word “yes” when asked if he understood a court order not to communicate with his son, Waqas Parvez.

The two men were charged after Aqsa Parvez, 16, was found critically injured Monday morning in the family’s Mississauga home. She died in hospital late Monday night...

...The 16-year-old clashed with her devout Muslim family over strict rules.


Father and son need to have the Koran thrown at them, then lock them up and throw away the key. *Any* so called religion that allows this kind of crap to happen deserves zero respect in a modern advanced culture.

This is Canada, not Rikitikistan.

Read more here.

Paris Hilton is a dog

drink up

Paris Hilton is behind a new line of *canned* champagne...ummm tasty.

Her pose does bare a certain resemblance to a certain album cover...

You decide. Strangest Living Curiosities indeed.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Fukudome

Fukudome

Yes, it's a real name

A real name that the media will have to use.

It's the real name of Kosuke Fukudome, a Japanese baseball player that U.S. teams might be interested in.

Please oh please, let him come to the West, so we can hear his name mangled in a hundred different ways.

Fuku Fukme

Speed Racer



Geekdom is a'twitter over this one

Canadian ISP tests injecting content into web pages

Oh no, this story is about Rogers, and as anyone who lives in the Toronto area knows, Rogers is humble.

So they remained a famous sports landmark after themselves after they bought it, and defaced an award winning building with an oversized corporate logo.

Oh right, and then there was the reverse billng issue..and..

But anyway, Rogers would never never never think of doing something like this...

Advocates of network neutrality frequently express concerns that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will use sophisticated network filtering technologies that facilitate Deep Packet Inspection to track and modify the content of web pages as they are being served to end users.

The ability to modify Internet content at the network level could potentially be abused by ISPs to insert additional advertising into web pages or perform selective, automated censorship. Although no mainstream ISP in North America engages in such practices, proponents of network neutrality have discovered that Rogers—a Canadian cable Internet provider—is trialing similar technology to inject notices to subscribers in regular web content, leading some to fear that more abusive content manipulation may occur in the future.


Read more here, if Rogers lets you.

Inner sanctum of first Roman emperor to go on show

Augustus

Four frescoed rooms in the eastern wing of the house of Augustus, where he lived before becoming Rome's first emperor, will open to the public for the first time next year after three decades of restorations.

Italian archaeologists said on Monday the rooms dated from around 30 B.C. and had been buried -- which may explain why some of the paintings are so well preserved -- after Augustus moved to another residence on a higher level of the Palatine Hill.


Read more here.

A trip to a Roman doctor

An ancient doctor's surgery unearthed by Italian archaeologists has cast new light on what a trip to the doctor would have been like in Roman times. Far from crude, the medical implements discovered show that doctors, their surgeries and the ailments they treated have changed surprisingly little in 1,800 years.

Read more here.

Monday, December 10, 2007

He's baacck

snakes, why'd it have to be snakes

It had to do with Cuba, right?

White House press secretary admits she didn't know what Cuban Missile Crisis was...

"I came home and I asked my husband," she said on air. "I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?' And he said, 'Oh, Dana.' "


Omg, the level of ignorance astounds me.

Terrorist Poetry: Thought crime or threat?

I think her actions were dumb and in shocking bad taste, but not criminal...much as naming a bear Buddha or something...If the pen is mightier than the sword, is violent poetry tantamount to terrorism?

That was the judgment of British prosecutors after they read some of Samina Malik's poems titled "How to Behead" and "The Living Martyrs."

The 23-year-old store cashier, who called herself a "lyrical terrorist," became the first woman convicted under Britain's tough terrorism legislation last month after writing the poems and downloading material off the Internet.


Read more here.

NSFW™

Fark.com trying to get trademark on "Not Safe For Work"

Are they kidding? I am so glad "FOADYPOMG" (fuck off and die you pack of moronic geeks) isn't copyrighted yet.

Fark is seeking exclusive rights over the phrase as it's currently used across the Internet. Here's what the trademark would cover, according to the application:

Entertainment Services namely providing a web site featuring photographic, audio, video and prose presentations featuring comedic captions regarding current events and online discussions and/or reviews of web materials of an adult nature; Entertainment services, namely, providing a web site featuring musical performances, musical videos, related film clips, photographs, and other multimedia materials; Entertainment services, namely, providing on-line reviews of photographs and /or web postings of an adult nature.

Ron Paul

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Happy Birthday John

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Roman finds in London

Wine buckets, bowls and dishes with an elegant beaded design are among a spectacular Roman hoard of international importance that has been discovered in London.

Archaeologists have unearthed more than 1,100 objects dating from the first to third centuries AD that they described yesterday as unprecedented in size and scale.

The finds, which will give dramatic new insight into Londinium, the Roman city, include the most complete timber door to have survived anywhere in the Roman Empire, as well as shiny metal vessels in an exceptional state of preservation and the large-scale remains of an entire Roman streetscape.


Read more here.

Embarrassed to be Canadian

At least with Harper at the helm. I really am sorry World, I really am, and we will try to rid ourselves of him asap.

A leaked government document suggests Canada could derail talks to reach a post-Kyoto agreement at the UN conference in Bali, Indonesia, with a set of priorities that go against Kyoto principles, climate activists said Saturday.

As over 180 nations are gathered in Bali to hash out a blueprint for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol - which expires in 2012 - Canadian negotiators will ask to create binding emission targets for all major emitters, including industrialized developed nations and poorer, developing nations, such as India and China, suggests a federal document obtained by the Climate Action Network, an international network of environmental advocates.

"To be asking countries with hundreds of millions of people in poverty (to accept binding targets) is not a position that is going to move along things here in Bali," said Dale Marshall, representative of the David Suzuki Foundation, a member of the action network.

"It is going to derail everything."


Read more here.

Friday, December 07, 2007

You sick fucks

Lecture: All I am Saying is Give War a Chance.

Join the UMass Republican Club for yet another lively and edifying political discussion on the costs, necessities, consequences, and benefits of war. A question and answer session will be administered after the initial lecture.

Jonah Goldberg, 38, is a rising star in the conservative intellectual movement as the editor-at-large for National Review Online and a contributing editor for National Review.


Read more here.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

And I think we're dead



Idiot policeman...and his wife.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

And so it begins

Four students at Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law School are accusing Maclean's magazine of violating their human rights over an article titled The Future Belongs to Islam.

They've filed complaints with the federal, Ontario and British Columbia human rights commissions over the October 2006 article.

The article discusses the high birth rate among Muslims and speculates that Islamic people could become the majority population in Europe. It also says some Muslims are violent radicals.


Omg yes, how offensive!

Faisal Joseph, a lawyer from the Canadian Islamic Congress who is representing the four students, argued that journalists can't write just anything.

"You have to be responsible. There are limits on freedom of expression, people seem to forget that," he said.


Fuck you baby. If you are using the old "shouting FIRE in a crowded room" argument...yawn.

This is Canada, not Sudan, Egypt or Pakistan, where the press is stifled.' —Sohail Raza of the Muslim Canadian Congress

Bingo!

Read more here, while you still can.

Mormon cartoon

Democracy in Action



The complaints only started after the poll was cancelled. I paid my $33 for the dinner and vote. A $5 option was also offered to vote after the festivities. We patiently listened to the guest speaker support Fred Thompson and talk on the issues of water and budget problems in California. They then held a raffle, while all the "cheap" voters waited in the lobby. When they finally let them in, the room was flooded with Ron Paul supporters and the organizer notified us the poll was cancelled. I started the video after the initial announcement and pandemonium broke out. The sudden cancellation and an attempt to change the rules, understandably, upset quite a few people.

Rare ancient wooden throne found in Herculaneum

An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there.

Read more here.

Amazing Jesus

Jesus came first

Monday, December 03, 2007

Proof of Liverpool's Viking past

The region around Liverpool was once a major Viking settlement, according to a genetic study of men living in the area.

The research tapped into this Viking ancestry by focusing on people whose surnames were recorded in the area before its population underwent a huge expansion during the industrial revolution. Among men with these "original" surnames, 50% have Norse ancestry.

The find backs up historical evidence from place names and archaeological finds of Viking treasure which suggests significant numbers of Norwegian Vikings settled in the north-west in the 10th century.


Norwegian Wood indeed...

Fuck Christmas

Read more here.

But, what of the bear?

A UK teacher has been released and handed over to British officials in Sudan after being jailed for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was freed after eight days in custody. She had been given a 15-day jail term.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir pardoned her after talks with two British Muslim peers.


Read more here.

In a statement read out by Baroness Warsi, Mrs Gibbons said: "I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone and I am sorry if I caused any distress.

Why in God's name are you saying you are sorry? In this instance, said religion has acted like a very spoilt child and deserves a bit of riducule...more than a bit..

Sunday, December 02, 2007

The Spice Girls



Why not?