You know the old joke about stupid people breaking their computer's "cup holder"?

Well....

(I'll bet Sean puts this on his Wish List, pronto!!)

It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault.

Except, though -- it's not.

Via an e-mail loop I'm on, some Japanese computer-error messages that are naturally in the form of haiku.

........................................................
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
--------------------------------------------
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
-----------------------------------------------
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
------------------------------------------------
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
-------------------------------------------------
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
-------------------------------------------------
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-------------------------------------------
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
-------------------------------------------------
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
-------------------------------------------------
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
-------------------------------------------------
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is
not here.
-------------------------------------------------
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
------------------------------------------------
Having been erased,
he document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.
-------------------------------------------------
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind.
Both are blank

Opposing War Is Good, But Not Good Enough

Faleh A. Jabar is an Iraqi dissident who offers an interesting perspective especially if you oppose the war but are also against leaving Iraq to stew in its own juices until Hussein dies of old age (a.k.a. the "containment" policy).

Opposing the war in itself is good but not good enough. Letting the Leviathan off the hook is a grave mistake for which we will pay sooner rather than later. Opposing war, which is an instrument of politics, should not lead us to forget the crux of the things political. It is not weapons of mass destruction that count most; what really counts is the political system that controls them. Ignoring this fact by the forces of peace simply serves the war camp.

Dozens of nations have chemical and biological weapons. None has deployed them, except Saddam's regime, first against the Iranian forces, later against Iraqi civilians. Governments should be held responsible for such crimes. Ironically, the United States let Saddam get away with no punishment for the actual deployment of chemical and biological weapons back in 1988, but it is now adamant about confronting him for a possible deployment of such weapons in the future. This is the logic of preemption. Yet there is no law, domestic or international, that permits a prosecutor to go after an ex-convict for a future, would-be offense. There is every law to bring a culprit to trial for actually breaching human norms in the first place.

In all the decades of struggle and international lobbying, one approach has never been tried: a meaningful political process to disengage the various components of the regime from each other--above all, a drive to split the ruling class-clan.

Here's what I think ought to happen. One, threaten Saddam with indictment. Two, give him an alternative for safe passage at the same time; this may create a crack in the ruling class-clan. Three, send a list of thirty or so of his aides who are persona non grata and demand that they leave the country with him. This ought to convince the rest of the class-clan members that they are not threatened en masse--only those who were most responsible for the offenses of the regime. Four, encourage this class-clan to oust Saddam into exile and sweeten the deal by offering a mini-Marshall plan. This mini-Marshall plan would be made available provided power was transferred to a civilian, interim government.

Such continued pressure, a political onslaught, should be backed by threat of force. A few warning shots may well be sufficient. This would help split the ruling group and embolden the people to take matters into their hands. A painfully slow process of regime disintegration has already been going on, and this political pressure would hasten the process along. An invasion, on the other hand, would wrench matters out of Iraqi hands and would risk untold consequences.

OK, I don't normally mess with these, but this one struck me as pretty funny.


How Republican Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

What scares me is the likelihood that the people this guy talks to are registered and active voters.

Are Europeans Really So Much Worse Off than Americans?

From the Economist:

Taking account of how Americans waste a chunk of their income on heating, air conditioning, prisons and the like, while also attaching value to Europe's superior public transport, Mr Gordon suggests that perhaps half of the current gap in living standards between America and Europe, as measured by GDP per head, is illusory. Add in the value of their extra leisure time and Europe's living standards are now perhaps only 8% behind America's, he suggests, not the 23% suggested by official data. Indeed, on Mr Gordon's broader measure, Europeans' productivity may have overtaken that of their poor American cousins.

(via sixdifferentways)

Another one of those email scams

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITES STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE.

I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ.

MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER...

[More...]

Putting God on Notice

Life is the frontier we explore deeper and deeper with every breath. It's as basic and as complex as anything we know.

Now, there's something new happening with the creation of life, and no one is sure what to make of it. No longer is the act of creation seen as the sole province of God or nature or the Great Whatever. Tomorrow belongs to me. And to you and other humans.

Former President Ronald Reagan turned 92 today.

We all know that he is the patron saint of today's American conservatives, but here's one commentator who thinks that Reagan's legacy isn't as conservative as we might at first believe.

Curtains for Saddam?

Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN

NEW YORK.- The "Guernica" work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. The reason for covering this work is that this is the place where diplomats make statements to the press and have this work as the background. The Picasso work features the horrors of war. On January 27 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work.

Fred Eckhard, press secretary of the U.N. said: "It is an appropriate background for the cameras." He was questioned as to why the work had been covered.

A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.

This work is a reproduction of the Guernica that was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller to the U.N. in 1985.



Also mentioned in the New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr. Scott! How much longer on those damned upgrades of the Universal Translator you promised me!

I haven't read both of these articles yet, but I'm guessing they're good and could foster some pretty good discussion:

Anti-Americanism in Europe

and conversely,

Anti-Europeanism in America. (via aldaily)

Ok. I have to ask. I'm getting into part III of the Brothers Karamazov, but I've taken about ten days off. Where are you all? Sean, have I caught up to your breaking point yet? Can we still mull some discussion off of this? If we do another book read, I think we need something a little less, um, heady and long and literary, to say a few words. I'm just saying, for an experiment, it probably wasn't the best piece to pick. But I was all for it at the time, so I'm definitely not coming down on anyone. Thoughts?

Stars, it turns out, eat their young. Wow.

Iraq gets a 'B'.

Ummm....OK.

Setting aside the issue of whether academic metaphors are really appropriate in the whole discussion of war with Iraq, should we really be impressed with a grade of 'B' when the course was presumably being taken "Pass/Fail"?

Just a bit of incongruity that struck me as funny.

Sometimes I wonder if the greatest force in the universe is not gravity, or the strong nuclear force, or love, but black humor.

Response to a letter received from Tom Daschle

Senator Daschle,

I agree with you. The night of November 5th was long and difficult. The Republican control of Senate (along with the presidency) does put a lot of things that I belive in, that I find importance in, at risk. I agree that it would be preferable to have a Democratically controlled Senate. I appreciate your offer to join the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, but I'm going to decline. Here's why:

In the months after the terrorist attacks, you personally voted for, and led the Democratic Senators to follow suit, to allow President Bush free reign over the money and armed forces of this country to go on any whim that he found fanciful, putting our lives and the lives of millions around the world at risk. During the President's campaign to bomb Iraq, I've not heard you nor any of the Democratic leaders calling out for a rebuttal. You've consistently stood by his side, patting his back, and nodding in assent to every item that he's set out on the agenda.

You state that "with the Republicans in the majority, there will be no action on affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of Americans without health insurance. There will be no accountability for the corporations whose recklessness has sent Americans' 401(k) plans plummeting. There will be no serious discussion on helping Americans who are out of work find new jobs ... no chance for better child care benefites .. no hope of raising minimum wage for those who are struggling to make ends meet in low-paying jobs ... and more."

This is true, Tom. However, in the elections last year, none of these issues were raised by you and your Democrat partners during their campaigns. You painfully ceded all of the issues that the Democratic Party supposedly stands for, opting instead to align yourselves with Bush and the "war against Terror" and Homeland Security. You and your party failed to establish any difference between yourselves and your opponents, deciding instead to play on the fears that the media has been feeding the public for the past year and half. To try to separate yourselves from the Republicans, you decided to make personal attacks on your opponents past history, further burying the issues that I and several million like me hold dearly and desperately want to be raised. You and your people failed us Tom, not the other way around.

Don't tell me that you need funds to stop the Repbulicans. You made your bed. Now we all have to lie in it. Not only have you failed to address any of the issues above, but we've seen thousands more getting laid off in the past year. We've seen Ken Lay and his cohorts escape justice. We've seen Dick Cheney with-holding documents about his company's dirty dealings in Afghanistan and Iraq under the false premise of "National Security". You've allowed people to get away with the destruction of people's lives only to find themselves the benefactors of Golden Parachute clauses and million dollar dream-houses. What happened, Tom?

I'm aware of the fact that some of the very few truly progressive Democrats are up for re-election in 2004. Should I choose to support any of them, I will make a check out to their personal campaigns, Tom. But you sir, you will not be getting a single penny from me. Thanks for the offer, but I politely decline to join you in another year of lip-service and doublespeak. And should you, sir, through some twist of fate become the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, rest assured that I will again be supporting a third party candidate.

Goodbye, Tom.

Methinks we've been discussing somebody a little often.

A left-wing blogger named Ted Barlow has been on a roll as of late, doing -- I kid you not -- lightbulb jokes. Like this:

Q: How many Green party voters does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Dude, we shouldn't have to change lightbulbs. GE has this secret lab in Costa Rica, and they made a lightbulb out of hemp that totally lasts forever.

Start here and then just scroll down through them all. And then, for extra credit and hilarity, someone else has, in the same vein, done a wonderful Den Beste lightbulb joke.