Annoying Game

Pong meets Teeter Totter.

Yet another solid reason to hate the French. My best so far, 26 seconds. Click the British flag if you'd prefer to be insulted in English.

Beer and Wheels

Normally I don't even open the forwarded-joke-email-spams, a subspecies of humor that both men and Democrats alike agree is lame. But this one struck me as funny.

Full disclosure: even after five years of being a post-postmodernist, I still have been unable to give up raw fish and beer with lime.

HISTORY LESSON

Humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer & would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer.

These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into 2 distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early human ancestors were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as "the Conservative movement."

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women.

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy and group hugs and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass. Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done . Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.

Another interesting revolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals.Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't "fair" to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat andstill provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, Marines, athletes and generally anyone who works productively.

Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than
Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tame and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.

David Zucker Presents...

I'm the last one to put this up, but that's out of laziness and travel. Hilarious, and would even be funnier if the consequences of what he mocks so effectively weren't so deadly serious.

Computer Theater v.1 Presents: When Harry Met Sally

Created by April Winchell, who clearly inherited her dad's brains.

Deal or No Deal Model Theatre Presents...

From the man, the myth, the magic of Dave Dore'.

Fastest Street Legal Car

2000 horsepower. 0-60 in one second flat. Total cost: $100,000.

The man who created this car seems to be a rare breed of Englishman these days. No effete PoMo EUnuch would dare dream of something so beastly.

Scrybe

As a finalist in this year's Least Organized Man contest, I'm actually intrigued by this product, especially its ability to work offline, which is a major drawback to moving key software off your computer and onto the web, like some of the innovative products being offered by Google and the like -- great idea, assuming you ALWAYS have an internet connection.

WaPo's Neologisms, 2006

Once a year, the WaPo publishes something I approve of whole-heartedly. Besides Krauthammer. This year's neologisms:

1. Coffee (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.) appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.) impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.) to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.) a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adoptedby proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n) a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation
with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.) (back by popular demand): The
belief that, mwhen you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

I Like Mitt

As Homer Simpson would say, "it's funny because it's true."

If this man weren't Morman, he'd be the odds-on favorite to be our next President.

TV Is Dead, Long Live Maui

I'm in Maui. So at the moment, I don't really care that TV is dead, the internet having devoured another industry whole. Actually, it's one of the reasons I'm here. In Maui. MMMM. Maui.

The sun is now down, but dinner is almost ready, so no comment on this Steve Gillmor blog entry for now, but it's a Deusey (sp?). Having been caught in the crossfire at two tv network slaughters in the last year, I can assure you that he is correct:

TV IS DEAD

YouTube, Digg, and MySpace took out TV a few months back, and now the corpse is sitting up and taking notice. Latest evidence is the incipient obliteration of Studio 60, the West Wing sequel which is terrific and therefore doomed, in favor of 30 Rock, which is not and therefore not. At least we don't have to go through Commander in Chief clones one after the other, but at the same time.

But that's not why TV is dead. TV is dead because of the Internet. TV is dead because we don't have time for it. TV is dead because the computer lives. TV is dead because of the stupid blogosphere, the so-called "new" medium of podcasting, TiVo, RSS, and HDTV. TV is dead because TV now sucks more than all of the previous.

I watched Scoble's video of Cisco's amazing videoconferencing teledesk, or whatever they called it. The best part was when Robert zoomed in on Mike Vizard and the quality never turned to shit, even though Mike was in NY. It reminded me of the Haunted House ride at Disneyland, where you could peer into the banquet room and watch the ghosts cavort with the 3D heads as you moved around them. The first Star Wars movie rendered a 3D projection of ObiWan or somebody in similar delight at crossing the time barrier.

That's what this is about, tricking time, teleporting yourself across the country. We all wish Doc could actually enjoy his new house instead of rocketing off to Berkman one week a month. I could imagine the Gillmor Gang using the TelePort room from time to time. Remember that the next OS/X enables recording of iSight cons. It's on the way.

Meanwhile TV is dead. The kids still argue over carving out enough time to watch Heroes, the only consensus family show left alive. At the movies over the weekend (imagine a comedian becomes President, not the bonehead we'd be laughing at if we weren't so damned angry) they ran a preview trailer for Children of Men, where humans have lost the ability to reproduce. TV has lost that ability.

I like Grey's Anatomy and Studio 60. Heroes is fun with the family. We're all semi-addicted to All My CHildren, but in recent months I opt for synopses from those who stay vigilant. I fast-forward through the news. Meet the Press and Stephanopoulus are time-shifted to podcast and then mostly discarded. Cable shows: Huff was cancelled, Sopranos is about to drop, The Wire is good but is stacking up, Entourage I finally deleted all to clear space for the new season, and now I've whittled the new season down to Grey's Anatomy and Studio 60 and Letterman and the Scottish guy.

Hollywood Video put the penultimate nail in the coffin with its Premium service, a knockoff of Netflix where you rotate 3 unlimited movies without late fees for 30 bucks a month. Goodbye cable. Goodbye broadcast. Goodbye blockbusters. Goodbye Studio 60. Aggregated to death.

The only good news: just what it was like in February '64.

Will comment more on this later, when there isn't a three-pound chuck of fresh cut Hawaiian ahi wrapped in tin-foil, drenched in butter and fresh-picked lemons, burbling on the Weber.

Great website of the day: Vast.com

Search through every classified ad online from one website: Vast.com.

"Tracking 25 million classified listings across 70,000 sites"

Great idea.

Paperback Writer

First Four Minutes of Borat

Could be the funniest movie ever. Can't wait.

Tricorder

The Trojan Horse

An Elephant-Sized Reason the Republicans Deserve to Lose

The Mexican border is so poorly patrolled you can drive a truck through it -- or an elephant.

The elephant bit starts at about four minutes. The guy on it is Raj from The Apprentice, who is running for Congress in Pennsylvania, and who, until he ran for Congress, was mainly famous for hitting on Anna Kournikova and Robin the Receptionist during the show. Not that there's anything wrong with that. At all.

The elephant metaphor is apt, as the Republicans and Bush have done close to nil to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, who have overwhelmed the schools and hospitals, especially here in Southern California, or secure the same border from other "illegal immigrantss" like this nice fellow Adnan from crossing at will.

Here's a bit of logic from reality land, fellas: You can have open borders, or you can have a welfare state, but you cannot have both at the same time... unless you have infinite resources.

We don't. Ask a teacher. Or an ER nurse (if the hospital in your neighborhood is still open, that is). This simple bit of reality might matter to you if you're ever in a car accident, and the nearest hospital has been closed due to insolvency.

The only problem is that the Democrats are even worse than the Republicans on this issue. Most will concede, if pushed, that they more consider themselves citizens of the planet than citizens of AmeriKKKa. There's a word for them: transnational-socialists, aka "tranzis."

To quote extensively from John Fonte's seminal piece, The Ideological War Within the West, the key points of transnational socialism, which he calls, "transnational progressivism," are as follows:

TRANSNATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM
The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:

The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born.

A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Transnational ideologists have incorporated the essentially Hegelian Marxist "privileged vs. marginalized" dichotomy.

Group proportionalism as the goal of "fairness." Transnational progressivism assumes that "victim" groups should be represented in all professions roughly proportionate to their percentage of the population. If not, there is a problem of "underrepresentation."

The values of all dominant institutions to be changed to reflect the perspectives of the victim groups. Transnational progressives insist that it is not enough to have proportional representation of minorities in major institutions if these institutions continue to reflect the worldview of the "dominant" culture. Instead, the distinct worldviews of ethnic, gender, and linguistic minorities must be represented within these institutions.

The "demographic imperative." The demographic imperative tells us that major demographic changes are occurring in the U. S. as millions of new immigrants from non-Western cultures enter American life. The traditional paradigm based on the assimilation of immigrants into an existing American civic culture is obsolete and must be changed to a framework that promotes "diversity," defined as group proportionalism.

The redefinition of democracy and "democratic ideals." Transnational progressives have been altering the definition of "democracy" from that of a system of majority rule among equal citizens to one of power sharing among ethnic groups composed of both citizens and non-citizens. James Banks, one of American education's leading textbook writers, noted in 1994 that "to create an authentic democratic Unum with moral authority and perceived legitimacy, the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power." Hence, American democracy is not authentic; real democracy will come when the different "peoples" that live within America "share power" as groups.

Deconstruction of national narratives and national symbols of democratic nation-states in the West. In October 2000, a UK government report denounced the concept of "Britishness" and declared that British history needed to be "revised, rethought, or jettisoned." In the U.S., the proposed "National History Standards," recommended altering the traditional historical narrative. Instead of emphasizing the story of European settlers, American civilization would be redefined as a multicultural "convergence" of three civilizations—Amerindian, West African, and European. In Israel, a "post-Zionist" intelligentsia has proposed that Israel consider itself multicultural and deconstruct its identity as a Jewish state. Even Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres sounded the post-Zionist trumpet in his 1993 book , in which he deemphasized "sovereignty" and called for regional "elected central bodies," a type of Middle Eastern EU.

Promotion of the concept of postnational citizenship.In an important academic paper, Rutgers Law Professor Linda Bosniak asks hopefully "Can advocates of postnational citizenship ultimately succeed in decoupling the concept of citizenship from the nation-state in prevailing political thought?"

The idea of transnationalism as a major conceptual tool. Transnationalism is the next stage of multicultural ideology. Like multiculturalism, transnationalism is a concept that provides elites with both an empirical tool (a plausible analysis of what is) and an ideological framework (a vision of what should be). Transnational advocates argue that globalization requires some form of "global governance" because they believe that the nation-state and the idea of national citizenship are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the future.

File under: why I am no longer a postmodernist....

Helping Old Ladies Across the Street

"You're so old I should get two merit badges."

What Olmert Should Have Said

Just ran across this riveting piece by Israeli journalist Ben Caspit, on the speech Olmert should have given last summer if he'd had the stones, which quite clearly he didn't.

July 31, 2006
Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.

A voice for six million citizens, today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish race off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.

And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility.

Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.

The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya? What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly.

We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.

And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. What did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London.

An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent. What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't?

In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.

I, for one, welcome our new robotic clone overlords

Westworld a-comin'.

Ted Turner Can't Pick Sides in the War on Terror.

I'd be astonished if I weren't so totally unsurprised.

If you want to know why CNN is so biased against America, Israel, and the West in general, remember the Chinese expression: "The fish rots from the head down."

I'm on the road, and largely offline, will resume furious posting when I get back home.

The Face of Things to Come

It won't be long now before we all have robo-versions of ourselves that can be a physical presence in a meeting we'll just log into remotely. Talk about telecommuting!

Second prediction: you're looking at the face of first "man" to walk on Mars.

Plus, there will be other kinds of robots.

The World's Greatest Driving Road

From Edmunds, via Pajamas:

The Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the greatest driving road in the world. Stretching for 7.3 miles and climbing nearly 4,000 feet, it boasts 60 corners and a surface so smooth that it would flatter a racetrack. It could easily be described as the eighth wonder of the world, but almost nothing is known about its creation...

...The view beyond the Mini's hood could have been rendered by a computer game designer, after a Red Bull too many. Three lanes of immaculate highway — two up and one down — are carved into the limestone mountain in one continuous squiggle.

Short, rapid straights are interspersed with sweeping curves that merge seamlessly from one to another. Some are to be taken at high speed with a single steering input and plenty of commitment; others are tight and technical, requiring patience and precision. The size of your brain is just as important as the size of your manhood.

Attention Location Scouts

Bolivia's Rodovia Da Morte is calling you.

Best Bar Ever

White Shed owns! Built in the late 1800's this is one of the Portland areas oldest bars

This amazing bar is about 75 square feet, About 15 maximum occupancy, and serves nothing but straight up or on the rocks hard alcohol and 2 beers on draft. No mixers, end of story.