...anything in variance to the Eternal Sunshine in George Bush's Spotless Mind.

Remember those mobile trailers that had those biolabs which could be used to make WMDs? (With even this being a severe step down from what fears were told to fear from Iraq.)

Well, um, that turned out to be untrue as well.

But hey, it's those things that makes performances starring George Bush so very popular.

Instructions: Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List four neat facts, three births and two deaths in your journal, includingthe year.

October 18th appears to be national possession day, as that was the day the United States took possession of Alaska (1867) and Puerto Rico (1898), and musician Paul Kantner took possession of marijuana in Hawaiʻi (1969), who was only following in the footsteps of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who one year earlier discovered marijuana in their flat (1968).

Happy birthday to:
Chuck Berry (1926)
Terry McMillan (1951)
Wynton Marsalis (1961)

Sorry to see you go:
Charles Babbage (mathematican Dec 26, 1791 -- Oct 18, 1871)
Thomas Edison (inventor Feb 11, 1847 -- Oct 18, 1931)

A quickie link for something I've seen with lots of people - they've turned Bush into object of idolation or worship, as sort of a crusader against evil -- so much so as he gets a free pass for doing things that they would decry in anyone else -- like say in a hypothetical Hillary Clinton administration. But if you try to argue this point, or even if you just bring up the point that Bush is not all right, you get called traitorous.

Glenn Greenwald wonders why.

So did James Wolcott.

Jim Brady writes this...

Why are people so angry? It was a mistake, it was corrected. Part of the explanation may be the extremely partisan times we live in. For all the good things it has brought our society, the Web has also fostered ideological hermits, who only talk to folks who believe exactly what they do. This creates an echo chamber that only further convinces people that they are right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but an idiot or worse. So when an incident like this one arises, it's not enough to point out an error; they must prove that the error had nefarious origins. In some places on the Web, everything happens on a grassy knoll.

Background -- Jim Brady runs the "Post.blog" weblog on WashingtonPost.com which was the scene of a maelstrom that erupted over a inaccurate article written by Deborah Howell involving Jack Abramoff... That article was inaccurate, but it lead to becoming proof by many that the Washington Post is colluding with the Republican Party in deceiving the public, and so on, and when the Brady shut down comments, it proved the Post hates the blogosphere, are tools for the administration and many other ridiculous thoughts. Funny as when the Post prints an article bad for the administration, the same actors will add the piece to their arsenal, while not conceding that such behavior would be bad for a party organ. Likewise, actors on the other side behave in exactly the same way.

That said, I disagree with the belief that this is a function of increased political partisanship, as similar reactions can be see in many other fields. Just ask anyone who writes something disparaging about Apple, or the Macintosh.

I'd like to expand on this later...

I'm going to steal an idea from the online journaling community. I'd like to know who reads this site. I'd also like to know how you found this site, what you like about it, and (this will probably be frightening easy) what you dislike about this journal. Frankly, I want to hear from all the people who read this journal, but have never or only occasionally left a post in a comment.
( Why do I care? )

Over at the Waxy.org post about the sudden disappearance of Suck.com, there was a question to why the Internet Archive doesn't display the Suck.com archives. As per their policies, they do not archive any site where a Robots.txt file disallows web crawers. But in addition, such a newly placed Robots.txt will signal to the archives to block access to the entire history of the site. This is done for the benefit to the website operators who do not learn of the archival until after the fact. While this is a laudable gesture on their part, this presumes steady ownership and control over the domain, which the Suck hijacking shows that this isn't an accurate assumption to make. Frankly, I believe now every website operator knows of the existance of the Archives. Therefore, I think if a website operator wishes old, already archived content to be removed or purged, he or she should write a letter to the Archive stating so. Robots.txt could still be used to prevent archival of current texts. (Or course, whether blocking content like this to the Archive is in the best interests of the public is a separate question entirely.)

Suck.com has returned to its rightful duty of serving up old, but surprisingly relevant humor and commentary. What exactly happened is still a mystery. Speculation is that there was DNS poisoning, a credible conclusion given that Greg Knauss was able to set up a subdomain to point to the servers Suck resided on. Or the domain could have been simply been hijacked. Still, what was (and probably still is) one of the internet's best web journal is back. (Which is just as much commentary on how far the net has fallen since then, in my opinion.)

If you type up Suck.com looking for that old internet magazine Suck.com (still some of the best writing of then or now), don't type Suck.com. Apparently, that domain name was snatched by those who immediately purchase expired or expiring domains the instant they become available so they can put up porn, or Ad-Sense abuse sites (where they steal content and mirror it so they can skim Ad-Sense money from Google). The folks who stole Suck.com chose porn.

Suck.com, or at least the real content of the old site is still availble at http://suck.eod.com, (also at http://suck.mirror.theinfo.org) but who knows how long. I'd suggest to everyone to save the content if they really like it, but I do not know the legality of such a thing.

(January 2: Suck has, once again, returned.)

Instapundit obviously never heard of or fully understood the Samuel Johnson quote that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." There are several postings from last month where he suggests to President Bush to question the patriotism of his critics. Yes, I've read his clarifications, but they all belie the underlying assumption that an attack on the President or the Administration -- or specifically, the accusation that "Bush lied" -- is not patriotic. In other words, it is an act against America. Glenn Reynolds has conflated this Administration with the country, so that any criticism of one is criticism of the other. That's a nasty knot to untangle, but Reynolds is committing, at the very least, an ad hominem. George W. Bush is not "America". Yes, he sets America's policies, but even cursory glances at current polling shows that the American public (a group that can just as easily be granted the collective now "America") disagrees with most of all of Bush's policies. That's a quick way for me to try to stop people from making George W. Bush the externalization for the abstract concept that we like to think is embodied in America. (Though, there's nothing stopping them from corrupting it. See torture debate.)

Here is what was a good takedown of Reynold's follies of that week in middle November.

I'm going to have to bookmark this page of logical fallicies for use.

This was going to be a post about the exciting topic of reapportionment (I know, thrilling stuff. How can I be so cruel and torture you with promises of such excitement but keep breaking your hearts instead?) -- anyway, the post on reapportionment got derailed by this interesting TOS restriction over at xs.to, a service I've been using to upload some images. In the list of things prohibited from being uploaded, in addition to the expected like copyrighted images and pornography, there also is a prohibition on uploading maps. MAPS!. Hopefully, this isn't a case of overprotective limiting of the dissemination of knowledge due to irrational fear of the its potential application by terrorists. Tragic, since I could have been the first person to ever use the 2000 election county-by-county map to actually make a legitimate point.

Idiotic polarization leading to battles akin to Dr. Seuss' "Butter Battle", with banners and everything.



Update: These are two actual movements that were launched since the internet bubble returned, and weblogs start banding together into ad-networks. Here are the No-Ad group and the Pro-Ad group.

Well, since LiveJournal has introduced the "tagging" feature ("categories" for you non-blargh infected people), I've been trying to figure out what I should call each group of categories tags, and perhaps even label tag past posts. LiveJournal and Google sort of forced my hand in this. LiveJournal disabled their search (via Feedster), and Google stopped giving page summaries for LJ pages. Therefore, I'm not going to be able to find anything, unless I start categorizing tagging each post.

Of course, I'm trying to do it with an eye to what folks on the Internet are doing. (I'd rather not turn tags into the abused <Meta> HTML tag where people put 800 potential search engine subjects inside the tag.) Unfortunately, some websites are going to be less than helpful in this regard. Technorati shows what tags are related to the one you're looking at -- since what I may categorize tag as "drawings" someone else will categorize tag as "illustration".

or so I thought. . .

"Chronic Fatigue Syndrome"?