I Went To The Wrong School
It's so sad. Today I discovered that i made a bad choice many years ago and went to the wrong school. How cool it would have been to have gone to a school like Evergreen State College , just to be able to have a mollusk for a mascot. YEA!! Go Fighting Geoducks!
Geoduck factoids:
A developing geoduck burrows into sediment 1 foot per year. After digging about 3 feet deep, the adult geoduck settles in for 100 years or more.

The geoduck feeds on phytoplankton (single-celled marine algae), mostly diatoms and flagellates.

In burrowed adults, the siphon may stretch 39 inches to the sea bed.

For all you big time geoduck clam fans, here's even more info and photos.

It Approaches
Arnold Schwantznegger was elected by Californians a mere three weeks ago.
Fierce wildfires ravage an area of southern California larger than Rhode Island with no signs of abatement.
Coincidence? Only if you're not watching for signs of the impending apocalypse.

Yawn
I suppose someone somewhere wants to watch these shows....
New television shows that have either been canceled or put on hiatus for the November ratings sweeps. Their future is uncertain:

"Luis" Fox. Canceled.
An insult to hispanic folks everywhere. An insult to anyone with an IQ greater than that of a cabbage.

"The Brotherhood of Poland, N.H." CBS. On hiatus.
Barf. Gag. This was craptastic from concept onward.

"The Lyon's Den"' NBC. On hiatus.
It didn't totally suck ass, but it was totally boring and had been done much better, many other times. Another sterling example of Must Flee TV(tm).

"Coupling" NBC. On hiatus.
Apparently a good show on the BBC, then the ass-clowns at NBC had to tinker with it.

"The Mullets"' UPN. On hiatus.
It's stuff like this that will cause the first visiting aliens to vaporize the planet, lest we infest the rest of the galaxy.

A Crack News Reporter
Really folks, is it that freakin' hard to get the details right? Four lousy sentences, but what does the gibberish that passes as the 3rd sentence mean? "Rack and pinion"??!!??
WTF???!!?
[From the rocket scientists at: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/102003_nw_bodies_found.html ]

Bodies of Rock Climbers Found

IDYLWILD ­ The bodies of two Southland rock climbers who plunged to their deaths have now been recovered.

The tragedy occurred Sunday at Taquitz Rock, near Idylwild in Riverside County, a popular rock climbing site.

Authorities say a rack and pinion climbers use to scale rocky terrain snapped and the two men fell 6-hundred feet to the bottom of a ravine.

The victims, 32 year old Kelly Tugo of Anza and 41 year old David Kellogg of San Diego, were experienced climbers.

X10 Pop-Up Blocking Hack No Longer Needed
You can delete your X-10 cookie and the directions on how to stop their pop-ups for 3000 years. While I may feel sorry for their employees, this seems to be poetic justice for enduring all those annoying pop-ups and pop-unders all these years. Check that - I don't feel sorry for the ass-wipes that devised and wrote the ads or approved their use.

X10 files for Chapter 11

By Paul Festa
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
[complete report at: http://news.com.com/2100-1014-5095260.html

Story last modified October 22, 2003, 3:16 PM PDT

The company that only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
X10 Wireless Technology, which marketed its Net cameras through a vast campaign of Web pop-under advertisements, made the filing on Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington.

The filing came one day before the company faced a hearing in Orange County Superior Court for punitive damages following its loss to a tiny ad start-up called Advertisement Banners.com, based in Anaheim, Calif. That company had alleged that X10 had stolen its method of serving pop-under ads, or ads that show up beneath a Web page and remain on the screen once the window is closed.

On Oct. 7, the jury in the case awarded Advertisement Banners $4.3 million in compensatory damages, according to court records. The judge issued a gag order Tuesday in the case that will last until the jury is dismissed.

A Heard joke
What's the difference between George W Bush and Hitler?
Hitler was duly elected.

Reality Is A Problem For Conservatives
Came across an interesting quote today by media analyst Michael Parenti:

"The conservative problem is (that) reality itself is radical. The third world really is poor and oppressed. The United States usually does side with third world oligarchs. Our tax system really is regressive. Millions of Americans do live in poverty. Public services really are being ruthlessly cut. Corporations do plunder and pollute the environment. Real wages for blue collar workers have declined. And the rich have dramatically increased their share of the pie."

Despite their best efforts, there are limits to how much spin morons like Bill O'Rielly, Sean Hannity, the drug-addled Rush Limbo, and the voice of the radical right, the FOX Propaganda Network, can finesse these realities. Sometimes ugly fact just intrudes too strongly on deeply held fantasy. Consequently, to many stalwart conservatives, media reporting of and commentary on things like the costs and problems in Iraq or the tax breaks for the wealthy do prove a "liberal bias" in the media as far as they're concerned.

Dial-Up Modem Usage
Every now and then in some discussion group, an outspoken individual will proclaim that dial-up is dead, almost "everyone" has high speed broadband access, and that web designers don't have to worry about dial-up anymore. Often these individuals are college students with little world experience, but that's beside the point. What really matters is they couldn't be more wrong. I finally came across some recent numbers:

There are approximately 70 million people with internet access in the US.
Number who access with:
Internet TV: 1 M
DSL: 3 M
Cable modem: 5 M
Dial-up modem: 61 M
[source: Information Technology Association of America]

Obviously each site needs to determine it's own user base and if dial-up users are a significant (or important enough) fraction to warrant concern. However the implication is clear: if you want your site to be usable for the greatest possible number of visitors, the design must be optimized for fast loading on a dial-up connection. And that doesn't mean 56Kbps. A huge majority of phone lines and switches aren't clean enough to support even that speed. The sites must be optimized for 28.8Kbps and even at that, a significant number of dial-up users with 56K modems will actually connect at 14.4Kbps.

Court Antics
This time it's the D.C. Sniper case. Typically after this kind of decision, hilarity ensues.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - A judge granted sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad's surprise request Monday to represent himself, minutes before opening statements in the trial were to begin.

The proceedings had started nearly an hour late, and Circuit Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. immediately called a bench conference with Muhammad and defense and prosecuting attorneys. Muhammad and Millette spoke directly to each other for more than five minutes before the judge announced that defense lawyers Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Shapiro would only be assisting Muhammad.

``His attorneys are now what is known as standby counsel,'' Millette told the jury. He did not explain why Muhammad chose to represent himself.

Prosecutors would not say why Malvo was summoned. He had refused to testify at a recent hearing and instead invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Enjoy What You Said and Voted You Wanted!
OK California, I hope you got what you really wanted. At a moment when the stakes could not have been higher, you voted in an action hero who waved a broom. Some of the other politicians, at least the serious ones, had huge, reasonably well thought out platforms. You voted in a mediocre actor who spouted lines from his movies, gave no interviews of any substance, never really articulated any plans, and agreed to exactly one debate - where he knew the questions in advance.
Best of luck, guys!

The New Guy
Obviously this photo was taken when his inner machine was in dominant mode.


[AP/Reuters News photo]

This Just Leaves Me Speechless
From an AP news item about GWB and how he gets his news:

Bush insisted he was "not paying attention" to the Democratic race. He said he knew who the candidates are, but had not watched a Democratic debate.
Likewise, Bush's response to the Democrats' specific criticisms about his handling of the war in Iraq and the economy. "I repeat, I'm not really paying attention to it," he said.
Bush said he insulates himself from the "opinions" that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories.
"I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news," the president said. "And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

Where on Earth would we be able to find anyone with less perspective and curiosity about the world?

GWB Really Is A Moron
George Bush briefed reporters on his ongoing efforts to find out who leaked the name of John Wilson's wife as a CIA operative:

"I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official," Bush said. "I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth."
But, Bush said, "This is a large administration and there's a lot of senior officials."

I don't get it. Does he really have that much contempt for the American public? Does he really think we're that stupid? How can he possibly believe we'll find Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, but doesn't believe we'll find a felony criminal on his own staff?

Hamburger Anyone?
I'm not sure precisely what, but there's something strangely poetic lurking in this story:

REDDICK, Fla. — Florida, the lightning capital of the nation, lived up to its reputation when 20 prized, pregnant cows were killed by a bolt that hit an oak tree they were huddled under at a north Florida farm, police said. Two others were euthanized.

"The hole in the tree was the size of a watermelon," said Rose Mary Cameron of Clover Leaf Farm. "The ones that were under the tree did not move. They just fell over each other. They were all tangled up."

She said two others appeared brain dead, "so the manager put them down."

Paul Resler of the National Lightning Protection Corp. in Denver said trees are the worst place to seek shelter in case of lightning.

"Of course we as humans know that, but the cows do not know that," Resler said.

I also nominate Paul Resler as this year's reigning Master of the Obvious.