BunkBlog

Shamelessly stolen from Jason.

Current.org | News viewers’ perceptions

The University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed a bunch of people and asked them to tell whether these three statements were true or false:

• Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or proven to be supporting al-Qaeda.
• Weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.
• International popular opinion favored the U.S. war against Iraq.

All three are false. But two-thirds of about 3,000 respondants said at least one was true. How likely you were to be suckered depended on your primary source of news:

• Fox — 80%
• CBS — 71%
• ABC — 61%
• NBC — 55%
• CNN — 55%
• Print media — 47%
• PBS/NPR — 23%

If you watch Fox News, you’re almost four times as likely to believe false things than if your primary news sources are public broadcasting.

The boy and I went to see the new Looney Tunes movie today. We were both amused. I suspect I appreciated more than he the surfeit of shots focused tightly on Jenna Elfman’s tight buns and long legs. She spent the vast majority of the movie in miniskirts and shorts. I guess that’s how they got the PG rating.

As for the rest of the movie (yes I did notice other things), it was pretty funny and goofy. It’s pretty much what you would expect from a Looney Tunes live action movie, but with a stupendous number of inside jokes. Ralph is hanging out with the sheep and wolf, the frog sings, “Hello my baby” and so on. At four, Alex laughed at many places, but I laughed at many more. I think it’s safe to assume the movie was written for folks who are adults but remember the 90 minutes every Saturday spent watching Wile E. Coyote blowing himself up with shoddy Acme products. And for the women, Brendan Fraser flexes a lot.

I noticed I have an 85 cent credit on my Cafepress account for a referral sale. I can’t see who lists me as a referrer, but whoever you are, “Congratulations!” It’s a bit of a pipe dream for someone with a full-time job (and school and family) to think they’ll make any money on CP, so it’s especially gratifying that I got a sale myself in this time. Someone bought a clock. I think I’ll use my next batch of CafePress Bucks to buy myself a DPRK calendar. That’ll look nice in my cubicle…

Autumn in West Texas is unlike autumn in the northern regions. Autumn here consists of one or two days of summer alternated with a day or two of winter. It’s as if Mother Nature decided that Texas in the fall should be an average instead of a steady-state.

Why would one take beautiful hardwood floors and cover them with shag carpeting? What in the world were people thinking in the 70s? And don’t get me started on multi-colored confetti-like carpet colors. Ick.

Stolen from Mark, who stole it from a complete stranger (to me anyway), who apparently stole it from somewhere else, based on its completely Japanese nature. I give you bullet-time ping pong. Yes, that’s right, a Matrix-esque effect created entirely by men in black. It’s hilarious.

This is not exactly news, is it?
N. Korea regime unstable: defector

Hwang Jang-yop, an 81-year-old former secretary of North Korea’s ruling Worker’s Party and secretary of foreign affairs, told members of the House Policy Committee, “the regime, albeit it takes great pains to show us it is stable, is in fact profoundly unstable.”

Good stuff today:

* Calzones turned out good, and the garlic/cheese breadsticks were ok.
* My computer didn’t reboot spontaneously all night.
* All my homework is caught up.
* My midterms have come back and I rock.

Bad stuff today:

* Forgot to take the svoulaki to work, so was forced to resort to a Butterfinger bar for lunch.
* Computer reboots still not solved.
* The new school week begins tomorrow, with more homework.
* I’m out of Ben & Jerry’s.

Seriously, those calzones were yummy. Someone did complain that it needed more cheese, but there was quite literally no more room in the shell. And it was over half cheese anyhow (parmagianno regianno, mozarella, and ricotta).

Libertarians Pursue a State of Their Own

Because our political system makes the tiny state of New Hampshire disproportionally important every four years, a bunch of libertarians want to take over the state and play with the political process. This should prove interesting.

The Onion | Muscleman Put In Charge Of World’s Fifth-Largest Economy

Political observers are struggling to understand exactly how, on Oct. 7, Arnold Schwarzenegger, an Austrian-born, movie-star muscleman with no political experience, was elected to govern the state of California, the world’s fifth-largest economic region.

“There were, in fact, figures from the pornography industry on the ballot who were better equipped to lead than the muscleman,” Gergen added. “A major adult-magazine publisher who could claim not only leadership and business experience, but also a working knowledge of First Amendment law, was in the running. The fact that the pornographer received only 15,454 votes is confusing, in light of the muscleman’s victory.”

Research conducted by equally confused political analysts failed to produce any evidence to suggest that the bodybuilder has ever held political office. The muscleman has not presided over any unions, boards, or committees, nor has he displayed any public-service ambition of any kind.

The governor-elect’s policies are said to be centrist-conservative, although it’s difficult to confirm this, as the beefy actor has offered only a few words regarding his plans for California’s future.

GOP to put challengers in black voting precincts

Jefferson County Republicans intend to place Election Day challengers at 59 voting precincts in predominantly black neighborhoods, a move that NAACP leaders yesterday called blatant intimidation.

The GOP election workers, most of whom live outside the targeted precincts in western and central Louisville, Portland and Newburg, will be on hand to challenge voters who they suspect aren’t eligible.

Jefferson County GOP Chairman Jack Richardson IV said the precincts were chosen at random or because the Republican Party has had trouble finding registered voters in those areas to serve as election workers. […] Richardson said the precincts weren’t chosen because of their racial makeup or voting patterns.

Yeah, right. It’s a complete coincidence. Sure…

That’s “Yet Another Insult Generator” for those acronym-challendged. The Arabian Random Insult Generator is the latest in a long-running series of gags online that help you fill up your fortune file (non-Unix people please ignore).

The coolest thing to come of Cafepress’s foray into on-demand publishing is the Sinfest book. Who’s yer deity?

Bush orders officials to stop the leaks

Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush–living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge–told his top officials to “stop the leaks” to the media, or else.

News of Bush’s order leaked almost immediately.

Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he “didn’t want to see any stories” quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.

Come on! One week after installing two critical updates which are required to keep crackers and malicious bastard code from invading my computer, I get an alert that four more critical updates are waiting. How many damned patches on top of patches does XP have by now, anyhow?

Suncomm claims shift key violates their intellectual property rights

It’s astounding. Suncomm is going to sue the fellow I mentioned the other day. They claim that telling people to hold the SHIFT key is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and that the perpetrator of this crime has disseminated information which facilitates infringement. Said Suncomm CEO Peter Jacobs, “This cat-and-mouse game that hackers and others like to play with owners of digital property is over.”

Yep, it’s amazing that he wrote this felonious paper which tells people that the Suncomm copy protection system simply doesn’t work. OK. The article also mentions that the author of the article came to false conclusions about the efficacy of the technology. Let me get this straight. It either works, in which case you can’t claim he came to false conclusions. Or it doesn’t work, in which case you can’t claim that it is infringing on any damned thing. You can’t have it both ways, Suncomm.

Quislibet has posted a Latin translation of one of the classics of West Coast rap. Here’s a quick excerpt:

magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri.
quis enim, consortes mei, non fateatur,
cum puella incedit minore medio corpore
sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos
virtute praestare ut velitis, notantes bracas eius

The latest copy-impairment technology, MediaMax CD3, is easily defeated by the expedient of holding the SHIFT key while inserting the disk in your computer. It is even easier if you use Linux. Just put the disk in the drive. That’s it.

The music industry claims they are unconcerned because they are only expecting to stop the casual copiers and have no hope of stopping the true technological wizards that can bypass their security at will. Yes, you too can be a computer geek. Just hold SHIFT and rip away.

The Official Blog of the campaign to reelect the President. Way to go Movable Type! Yes, there is an RSS feed for ubergeeks.