Not at all fair and balanced. The anchorette puts the boots to the filthy lunatic.

PS, how do I do that cool think where you link the image, embedded, right in your webpage? That always looks kewl.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (49)
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Rewriting-- actually, I kinda think this is funny, and not overly tasteless.

In context, you understand.

Reporter Jacob Bernstein, in a "Memo Pad" item in today's Women's Wear Daily, wrote that he received a message from a New York Times source saying that Friday's powder mailing -- which included an Xed-out Times editorial and what ended up being corn starch -- "makes all of Ann Coulter's comments a little less funny. I wonder if she considers herself at all responsible when lunatics read her columns and she says that we should be killed."

Coulter, whose column is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, has "joked" that maybe terrorist Timothy McVeigh should have blown up the Times building and that maybe Times Executive Editor Bill Keller should be executed.

"Memo Pad" sent an e-mail to Coulter's AOL account and according to Bernstein, received a reply claiming that she was the sender of the mysterious powder.

"'So glad to hear that The New York Times got my letter and that your friend at the Times thinks I'm funny,' she wrote back. 'Good luck in journalism and please send me your home address so we can stay in touch, too.

"P.S. If we get hit again, don't forget to ask the NYT if they consider themselves responsible since they have repeatedly exposed classified government programs designed to prevent another terrorist attack.'"

When I first read the headline, I introduced the story with the line "a sense of taste, an internal editor, some assembly required," but given the jerkoff's accusation against Coulter, I think her flippancy is justified.

As for his basic point -- that attacks by Coulter on the patriotism of journalists is marginally decreasing their safety -- well, Old Bean, it's like this. When you publish inflamatory stories and classified information sure to put Americans' and soldiers' lives marginally (or worse) at risk, you defend it by saying "the public has a right to know" and the "risks of the truth are outweighed by the benefits of the truth."

That has a broad application. If the truth -- that you are anti-American bigots who unconsciously or deliberately attempt to put American lives in danger or compromise the war effort for the purpose of petty partisan point-scoring -- makes you marginally less safe, well, the truth is too important to be suppressed over such trivial concerns.

Which is not at all to say I support harming reporters, or sending them terroristic threats in the mail.

I'm saying precisely what I'm saying -- that we cannot suppress the truth in order to spare someone some additional risk of being harmed or even killed.

Did Michael Moore's Farhenheit 9/11 make it slightly more likely that an unhinged man would attempt to kill Bush? I think this is pretty undeniable. And yet I don't hear Jacob Berstein calling on Michael Moore's inflammatory flim-flam just to decrease the risk of harm to the President.

You taught us that, boys. You are, as far as I know, still foresquare behind that proposition. If you begin to doubt it, please let me know. Maybe we can have a "constructive dialogue" about the irresponsibility of publishing certain "truths."

PS: I have many times slammed this sort of terrorist threat when made by the left, as well as when made by the right. Whether we like liberals or not (or whether they like us), we are fellow Americans, and the tools and even paradigm of warfare should not be in use between Americans.

These are our (drooling, imbecilic) political rivals, not our enemies in war.

Even before Glenn Greenwad began calling upon conservatives to condemn the "a tree, some rope, some assembly required" faux-lynching taunt, I made ti clear here that, while I wouldn't ban such I comment, I considered it over the line and beneath us. Beneath anyone, really. What modest humor value it possessed was far outweighed by its suggestion of poltiical violence.

So I condemn the sending of the fake-anthrax death threat to the New York Times, as well as any suggestion that their reporters should be killed. Or even beaten up.

However, I do think they should be prosecuted for revealing classified information. And if such hot talk puts them at risk, I repeat: the mainstream media has piously instructed us over and over that merely increasing the risk that some lunatic and/or terrorist may kill an American in response to such inflammatory information is no reason to suppress publication. Or, at least, it's not a good reason. It's a reason that gets considered "soberly" for five minutes and then chucked out the window.

If we believed this notion -- one mustn't inflame anyone's passions against anyone else, lest some lunatic decide to terrorize or harm that person -- well, that's pretty much the end of political debate. Much political advocacy is by nature inflammatory. If you're not pissing your audience off from time to time, you're not doing your job right.

And, in fact, you're David Broder. And no one wants to be David Broder.

Do violent movies and violent videogames marginally increase the chances that a nutjob will act violently? Of course they do. But we have collectively decided we don't want to live in a perfectly safe, Barney-the-Dinosaur world of endless pap and inoffensiveness. It would drive too many of us insane.

So, until we repeal this basic consensus position, I think Jacob Bernstein should just treat himself, on this hot day, to a nice cold glass of shut the fuck up juice.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (31)
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This sounds... vaguely familiar.

Okay, so it's obvious. What-ev-er.

Boston's $15 billion "Big Dig" was meant to inspire awe, an engineering marvel on scale with the Panama Canal that would thrust U.S. cities into a new era.

Instead, it faces a crisis of public confidence after a fatal tunnel collapse that could derail plans for other U.S. urban mega-projects.

...

ost overruns, leaks, delays, falling debris, criminal probes and charges of corruption plague the nearly completed 15-year project, giving ammunition to opponents of similar plans in other cities considering tearing down aging elevated highways built in a construction boom in the 1950s and 1960s.

Now, with motorists afraid to travel through Big Dig after a woman was killed last week by falling cement, those skeptics have their most persuasive case yet.

"When things leak and certainly when things fall down that aren't suppose to, clearly that undermines people's confidence in government's ability to deliver," said David Luberoff, a Harvard researcher and co-author of "Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment."

Seattle, he said, will struggle to convince voters that replacing the earthquake-damaged Alaska Way Viaduct on its waterfront with a $3 billion to $3.6 billion tunnel is worth the cost. Brooklyn, whose waterfront could be transformed if an elevated expressway were buried, faces a similar problem.

And a commenter was discussing just that in the Big Dig thread.

Another thing to hate Ted Kennedy for. This wa big-government urban-improvement liberalism, but it happened to be big-government urban-improvement liberalism I'd've liked to have seen work.

They can blame themselves for the end of their dreaming.

Fairness Update: Most of the project was presided over by Republican governors. (Kind of liberal ones, though.)

But whichever way you slice it, this stands as an indictment of the government's basic competence, and the corrupt, clueless, mobbed-up machine-politics governance of cities especially.

And let me say this: conservatives split on their objections to big infrastructure improvements and mass-transit projects and the like. Some object to them on principle, believing the government has no business in such matters.

Others -- like myself -- object to them not in principle, but for practical reasons. I have no objection in principle to big civil engineering projects, or new mass-transit systems. In fact, I rather like them... in theory.

But I object to them because I know the government is going to screw them up beyond belief and cost the taxpayers' billions for their shoddy execution.

I put such thoughts out of my head because I really was enamored with the idea of getting rid of the huge, ugly, elevated parking lot in the sky and replacing it with underground, swiftly-moving expressways. I thought they'd actually do it right for a change (albeit at a cost four times the original projection).

They didn't, and this is one conservative who won't be making that mistake again any time soon.

Restoring the once-inspiring Penn Station in New York? One of Pat Monynihan's pet projects. I love the idea of it.

But only the idea. I won't be supporting that boondoggle anymore.

It's like Instapundit always complains with respect to the Democrats: Give me something to work with on national security, he begs. Give me a reason to vote for you.

I am not knee-jerkedly adverse to projects like this. I like the grandness of the vision. It's that Speer thing that of course all fascist rethuglicans share, deep in their Aryan hearts.

But for the love of everything holy, if you want to do these things, give us something to work with. Do NOT obfuscate on the cost, do NOT allow projects to go drastically overbudget, and, please, do NOT deliver us shoddy merchandise at the end of the transaction.

PS: How's Those Multimillion Amtrak "Accela" Train Running? It's travelling as fast as it was supposed to, right? There aren't basic problems of shoddy workmanship on the million-dollar trains, like bathroom doors that won't shut or stuff like that, right? Having achieved the planned high-speeds of the Boston-to-New-York or New-York-to-Washington routes, it's now very successful and very in-demand, a nice compromise between standard, slow train travel and quicker jet travel, right?

It's New York to DC in just over two hour, and without having to get from a far-flung airport to the city. You just go to the middle of one city, jump on the train, and in a little over two hours -- as was predicted -- you're in the next city. A smooth, fast ride whose prices are kept down because so many people are eager to ride the rails, right?

Right?

Oh, wait, no. You charge almost as much as plane fare just to shave off forty minutes from the trip? And so no one really rides the Accela, unless it's the only train available?

So that was all a big failure too, wasn't it?

I'm sensing a pattern here.

Once again: I supported the Accela. Until it turned out, rather predictably, to be total crap that cost the taxpayers, what, half a billion dollars or something?

Guys: I can only be stupid so many times. You realize that, don't you? My capacity for stupidity and naivite is vast, but I assure you it is not endless.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 AM | Comments (44)
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Getting a lot of tips about funny stuff I haven't seen. You probably have, but if you haven't:

The Vader Sessions. Darth Vader's dialogue replaced by wildly inappropriate dialogue by James Earl Jones in other movies.

Japanese family potty-trains their cartoon tiger.

Wolverine's shameful past.

Thanks to Dave and Pupster.

Posted by: Ace at 08:28 AM | Comments (13)
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The singularity, man. (NYT link. Here's the good stuff

Though most of the truly futuristic projects are probably years from the commercial market, scientists say that after a lull, artificial intelligence has rapidly grown far more sophisticated. Today some scientists are beginning to use the term cognitive computing, to distinguish their research from an earlier generation of artificial intelligence work. What sets the new researchers apart is a wealth of new biological data on how the human brain functions.

“There’s definitely been a palpable upswing in methods, competence and boldness,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is president-elect of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. “At conferences you are hearing the phrase ‘human-level A.I.,’ and people are saying that without blushing.”

Cognitive computing is still more of a research discipline than an industry that can be measured in revenue or profits. It is pursued in various pockets of academia and the business world. And despite some of the more startling achievements, improvements in the field are measured largely in increments: voice recognition systems with decreasing failure rates, or computerized cameras that can recognize more faces and objects than before.

..

Another well-known researcher is Robert Hecht-Nielsen, who is seeking to build an electronic butler called Chancellor that would be able to listen, speak and provide in-home concierge services. He contends that with adequate resources, he could create such a machine within five years.

Although some people are skeptical that Mr. Hecht-Nielsen can achieve what he describes, he does have one successful artificial intelligence business under his belt. In 1986, he founded HNC Software, which sold systems to detect credit card fraud using neural network technology designed to mimic biological circuits in the brain. HNC was sold in 2002 to the Fair Isaac Corporation, where Mr. Hecht-Nielsen is a vice president and leads a small research group.

Last year he began speaking publicly about his theory of “confabulation,” a hypothesis about the way the brain makes decisions. At a recent I.B.M. symposium, Mr. Hecht-Nielsen showed off a model of confabulation, demonstrating how his software program could read two sentences from The Detroit Free Press and create a third sentence that both made sense and was a natural extension of the previous text.

For example, the program read: “He started his goodbyes with a morning audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, sharing coffee, tea, cookies and his desire for a golf rematch with her son, Prince Andrew. The visit came after Clinton made the rounds through Ireland and Northern Ireland to offer support for the flagging peace process there.”

The program then generated a sentence that read: “The two leaders also discussed bilateral cooperation in various fields.”

It should be noted, though, that the program always says that. It just seems to work with anything.

...

At the moment, the Stanford team is working on the first steps necessary to make the robot they are building function well in an American household. The team is focusing on systems that will consistently recognize standard doorknobs and is building robot hands to open doors.

“It’s time to build an A.I. robot,” said Andrew Ng, a Stanford computer scientist and a leader of the project, called Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot, or Stair. “The dream is to put a robot in every home.”

H/t Allah at Hot Air, where I finally get to listen to some of Michelle's Vents.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 AM | Comments (48)
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You're welcome.

The New York Times Co. (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plans to narrow the size of its flagship newspaper and close a printing plant, resulting in the loss of 250 jobs, the company said in a story posted on its Web site late on Monday.

...

The newspaper will be narrower by 1 1/2 inches. The redesign will result in the loss of 250 production jobs, the company said.

The New York Times said it expected the changes to result in savings of $42 million.

The narrower format, offset by some additional pages, will reduce the space the paper has for news by 5 percent, Executive Editor Bill Keller said in the article.

The Times will join a list of several other papers from The Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times that have reduced their size as they cut newsprint and other production costs and try to stem a loss of readers and advertising to the Internet and other media.

Posted by: Ace at 08:07 AM | Comments (17)
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KevinJ sent me to this link, which had a lot of people griping about having no sound on Flash.

Actually, I was missing system sounds too, which I didn't mention, because who cares about system sounds? I was also, for some reason, missing the little speaker icon in the task-tray. It just went and vanished when all of this happened.

Anyway, here's the advice that fixed it, for anyone else who may have this problem. Spyware removal seems to be a culprit:

Finally !!!!!! And so simple.....

It was Registry problem.... caused by clean-up with Spayware Doctor.
Nothing to do with hardware.
So if Flash sound AND System sounds don't work here is the solution....

Get K-Lite Codec Pack 2.69 Standard
h**p://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm

Install Package and then go to

**/K-Lite Codec Pack/Configuration/ and Run "Codec Tweak Tool"
tick "Fixes / [ Registry ] Fix Non-working system sound "
Run tool...

AND ..... system sounds are back and Flash sound is back......

I want to also thank ErikW for helping me with this, and a lot of other readers who have offered to help or suggested different fixes.

No more posting stuff I haven't heard yet! Whoo-hoo!

Celebretory YouTube Video: Celebrity Idol, with the guy who did the Snakes on the Plane Auditions.

I forget who sent me that. Good stuff, though.

Also Not Bad: F--- You, a response to current pop culture. Basicaly just singing f' you over and over to pictures of celebrities.

Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager: Darth Vader as grocery store assistant manager.

Thanks to Craig C.

Posted by: Ace at 07:13 AM | Comments (19)
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Sobek nails it. I mean Dostoyevski nails it. I mean Sobek nails Dostoyevski nailing Excitable Andi and Juan "Shakes" Cole and other members of the Perpetually Outraged Brigades.

A man who lies to himself, for instance, can take offense whenever he wishes, for there are times when it is rather pleasant to feel wronged -- don't you agree? So a man may know very well that no one has offended him, and may invent an offense, lie just for the beauty of it, or exaggerate what someone said to create a situation, making a mountain out of a molehill. And although he is well aware of it himself, he nevertheless does feel offended because he enjoys doing so, derives great pleasure from it, and so he comes to feel real hostility toward the imaginary offender.

Posted by: Ace at 07:01 AM | Comments (10)
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Safe-for-clicking link to TigerHawk:

If the reports coming out of Lebanon can be believed, the Israelis are only sometimes striking known Hizbullah safe houses or facilities or missile emplacements. A lot of their bombardment appears aimed at punishing civilian populations and forcing them north to Beirut. Such an approach would help explain the high number of civilian casualties. That is, there may be an element of ethnic cleansing in Israeli tactics.

After quoting a bit of the Blair-Bush exchange containing the s-word (and also Bush's "unnuanced" observation that these crises break out when Muslims murder and kidnap Israelis, not the other way around), Juan Cole goes into full Excitable Andi mode.

Via Tushar, a no-click link to the terrorist-apologist turtle:

So, the whole blow-up is Syria's fault, for putting Hizbullah up to making mischief. No reference to Israeli actions in Gaza. No reference to, like, the wholesale destruction of Lebanon by the Israeli air force. And no blame for the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora. And Bush thinks that Nasrullah of Hizbullah takes direct orders from Damascus. And he thinks that if Bashar al-Asad orders Hizbullah to stop firing its little katyushas and give back the two Israeli soldiers, everything will suddenly settle down.

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who's puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. Israel doesn't appear as a protagonist. It is purely reactive. Stop provoking it, and it suddenly stops its war.

Since Israel is just being provoked and has no ambitions of its own, in this reading, it is useless to begin with a ceasefire. That treats the two sides as both provoking one another. Here, only Hizbullah matters, so you lean on Syria to lean on it, and, presto, peace breaks out.

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

I've never been prouder of my vote.

Professor Juan "Shakes" Cole

A brave seeker of the truth, much in the mold of courageous and undauntable Shaggy Rogers of Mystery, Inc.

It's a spooky Jew-Ghost, Scoob! Zoinks!

Posted by: Ace at 06:51 AM | Comments (21)
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Lets see, rumsfeld states on 9/10/01 that he cannot account for $2.3trillion of pentagon funds [DOD2001,CBS2002], he was grilled by congresswoman McKinney on this. It is reported by investigator Karl Schwartz that a $1.6bil. bond scam involving Nicholas Brady (former treasury secretary) and bush sr., both were being investigated by the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), on 911 alleged flight school dropout Hani Hanjour(who could barely fly a single engine Cessna 172) MAKES AN INCREDIBLE 270 degree turn and hits the ONI, killing, accountants, investigators and evidence. What an amazing coincidence!!! Oh sorry, I'm part of the 'tinfoil' hat crowd. -- "Jeff"

Good stuff, good stuff.

"Jeff" also seems to believe that paragraph breaks are a Neocon plot to waste precious screen-space.

On the other hand, exclamation points and CAPTIAL LETTERS and "quotation marks" are to be used up as quickly as possible, lest Halliburton confiscate them and build bombs out of them.

Posted by: Ace at 06:28 PM | Comments (85)
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