Current mood:	good
Current music:	Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu, Junya Nakano - Ending Theme (Final Fantasy X)

Long days take their toll - 06 November 2007
Luckily, I have exact change. And may be on my way to achieving Quantum Zen, if I haven’t already hit that point a couple times.

Occasionally, really fresh sushi may give you digestive troubles because of a parasite. If it’s been commercially frozen, however, the parasite is killed.

Clive Thompson, in his Wired gaming column today, claims to have learned the mindset behind suicide bombing, all thanks to Halo 3. In the game world, if you can’t snipe and circle strafe someone, the best way to kill them is to run straight at them and then plant a plasma grenade on them. You die, but they die, too. And then if you start putting more together, one grenade kills plenty. And there you go - now you can rationalize your death in that you get to kill plenty of other enemies. According to MI5, terror organizations are recruiting and training children to accomplish their ends.

Ted Rall is disappointed that a large amount of the candidates for President will not immediately renounce the Bush Administration, in thought, word, deed, and any sort of action that W has taken or his Congress passed. This comes on the heels of Mr. Bush having nearly 50% of the country say they "strongly disapprove" of his job, among other poll questions. The fantasy is that by wiping off the slate from 2001-2009, the country could return itself to at least a neutral state to begin building again, under a new president. Yet most of the candidates are more than willing to build on the legacy of their predecessor, all the way through authorizing the use of torture as a viable interrogation method. Although the current Congress seems pretty unwilling to do anything about reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, which might be an excellent start to reversing the damage of this administration. Mr. Bush also threatened to veto the farm bill discussed a few days ago, which may win him some points with those who want to trim out pork spending.

For those who want to have an iron-clad border between the United States and whatever undesirables they want to keep out, be ready to fund and train the Customs and Border Service agency, which had several faults found with it, according to the Government Accountability Office. They’re short-staffed, double-shifted, undertrained and guarding a very large and porous border.

Ron Paul's followers raised $4.3 million dollars for him in a single day yesterday, 5 November . Calling the technique a “moneybomb”, it appears to have been a way of the supporters showing their solidarity in addition to giving their money away. If Paul should fail to capture a major party nomination, would he run as an independent? (And if so, how will he affect the turnout?)

In life-giving or extending properties, curcumin, the flavor component in tumeric, commonly found in curries, may have effective cancer-fighting properties. Yay! Reserachers have also injected mice with a genetic component that makes them metabolize differently, live long, and run for long periods of time, but also makes them very agressive and hyperactive. So no injecting yourself with some sort of super-metabolizer and endurance booster.

Starting small with stupidity of our fellows, a lottery game was withdrawn after several players were confused about the goal - the idea was to find temperatures below the target. Most of the target temperatures were negative. But a significant number of people kept running into problems because they thought -6 was a lower number than -8. And thus thought they had won when they had not.

odilla, keeping tabs on the AFA, points out the AFA will send 1,000 buttons to a school because a school administrator requested that Christmas be replaced with Holiday, but at the same time, 31 October is now simply a Harvest or Autumn Festival, rather than Halloween or Samhain. And Kossack dogemperor documents dirty, dirty tricks in progress by the Kentucky wing of the organization, including falsely claiming to be another organization in automated calls.

ABC news is running social experiments, much to Michelle Malkin's disgust. And the conservative comment crowd chimes in with many more suggestions for ABC to embark upon that would fit their view of being persecuted. I’m sure that both sides could find plenty of material to confirm their own opinions, and cherry-pick away to their heart’s content. After all, it’s only the stuff that nets a reaction that gets on the television.

Warming up the oven and starting the quiche-baking is David Limbaugh's hot air about the need for the GOP to reassert itself as the mediators of language. Rather than flinching away from labels like “supports torture”, they should proudly say “We’re at war. Torture saves lives, so of course I support it.” And that prisoner abuse cases are isolated actions by rogue soldiers, not systematic events authorized by the government, and that the Democrats are doing al-Qaeda’s work for them by believing that the United States regularly abuses prisoners in offshore facilities. Y’know, the kind of stuff that would probably make Bill Clinton’s “is” bow down and say “We’re not worthy.”

Adding salt, spice, and significant amounts of heat to our quiche is the Value Voters Summit, which includes reformed homosexuals, people who think homosexuality is something curable, evangelicals that still think Romney’s Mormonism is a real problem, Guliani’s multiple marriages and divorces (and pro-choice stand) are problematic, people who would abolish public schools, and candidates who think that there wouldn’t be immigration problems if we didn’t abort so many babies. The Slacktivist takes that and makes a point about how authoritarianism tends to subject religion and politics alike to its own impulses. (And how some tail-eating arguments arise from that as ways of not having to listen to objections to those impulses.)

Getting hot on the quiche with the story of a Jehovah's Witness mother perished from a sudden hemorrhage after giving birth to twins. Because the tenets of the religion refuse transfusions of blood, the twenty-two year-old woman died after giving birth. Yep, even the technology of our age cannot save someone who doesn’t want it.

Even more heat pours on, and the quiche cooks up to completion with The United States Government also argues that e-mail through work, your ISP, or just about any other service has no Constitutional guarantee of privacy. Because, apparently, by consenting to use the service or logging on to your employer’s network, you gave away any expectation of privacy in your communication. So the government can simply request your e-mail without a warrant or court order and get it. At least, that’s the conclusion the article draws. I prefer requests for data by government that can be considered private to have court orders attached to them, thank you. If this particular precedent holds, I wonder if library records would also be subject to immediate turning-over without a warrant, since many people use the Internet to do library work like placing requests or renewing books. For an example, in some ways, of how having no privacy at work can hurt you, delve into the story of the employee disciplined for sexually harassing her boss - by confessing her crush on him to a fellow co-worker over e-mail and voice mail. Suspended without actually saying anything to the person supposedly being harassed. Interesting, yes?

A screensaver utilizes images from more than 600 cameras that have network/Internet capability. If you wanted to look in on what the cameras are seeing while your computer sits idle, that is. Although it would probably be disturbing to see your own image in the screensaver at some point.

Our “Mad Mod” department presents the clockwork laptop modification, running a very familiar brand of Linux.

Our Googlewatchers, however, may be a bit distressed at Google's intent to provide a customizable mobile phone/internet platform. Possibly using the Google ad-driven model, it might become inexpensive to place the calls/surf the web from such a platform. Of course, that puts even more data into Google’s hands. What they might do with your telephone calls (search and index, tag, what?) is yet to be seen.

Leaving on a lighter note, though, 88 lines about 44 fangrils. Best experienced with the original song’s melody bouncing in your head. And now, to bed once more.