hulu

hulu test post

obama for (democratic candidate for) president

A speech given by Barack Obama, thanking Iowa voters for their support a week before the caucus. I think it's pretty rare to read or hear of something this inspiring - when was the last time you heard a Republican say anything with this kind of conviction and oratorical finesse?

I never thought it was such a bad little tree

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Luke 2:8-14

Web 3.0

Something crazy just happened.

I took my last turn at Facebook Scrabble aka 'Scrabulous,' and having finished my FB adventures for the day, was about to watch some internet cartoons on adultswim.com.

Lo and behold, atop my facebook page, was an ad for Adult Swim Video. Wanting to reward AS and FB for their advertising partnership, I clicked it, and was brought directly to the page. Until now, I had never seen an ad for the exact thing I wanted at the time. More importantly, I had never seen an ad where my expression of interest was enough to get me the desired product. A perfect harmony of content delivery and accurate demographic research.

Web 2.0 is clearly old and busted; Web 3.0 is the new, as-yet-undiscovered hotness. Web 3.0 can only be:

a) an internet that uses itself
b) an internet that already knows where you want to go

imo we're on our way

today in history

1192: King Richard the Lion-Hearted is captured in Austria on his way home from the Crusades.

1606: The Virginia Company sets sail from England to build the first permanent English settlements in America.

1803: The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.

1835: First signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence at Goliad, Texas.

1860: South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.

1945: Peter Criss, drummer for KISS, is born.

1996: Carl Sagan, author and astronomist, dies at the age of 62.

1981: Dustin O'Connell, pseudo-intellectual slacker, is born.

(Wikipedia)

I like embedding video, just because I can.

telecom immunity is illegal and ill-advised

long video, worth watching. Props to Sen. Reid for pulling the FISA bill from the floor after veto threats and half a million emails descended on the Senate when Americans found out that the President wanted to protect phone companies who have already broken the law, at the President's request:

arkansas 1, rest of USA 0

North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan recently co-sponsored an amendment to the farm bill currently being extruded from Congress making subsidies unavailable to farms with more than $250,000 in annual income. (There are fewer than 100 farms like that in America.)

It didn't work out. And Arkansas senator Blanche Lincoln shares the blame. It's a variation on a theme that Republicans have been using to jam up the Democratic legislative agenda. It works great, which is probably why Sen. Lincoln, a Democrat, used it on her Majority Leader.

There are other, less counterproductive ways to make the point that all politics are local. Certainly the state of Arkansas benefits, but it does so at the expense of a perfect opportunity to show genuine discipline and leadership.

ping

this is not an advertisement for GEICO, though they are my insurer of choice.

that is all, for now.

wait, no it's not.

I feel like I'm working on a tiny, insignificant part of the Drawball, and people keep coming over and erasing it or painting over it, sometimes on purpose, but sometimes just because they're painting their own stupid crap and it runs over mine and they don't notice. The problem is that I'm actually working on a piece of a large picture on the Drawball, and they're fucking it all up. (metaphorically.)

WTF? Knock it off. (seriously.)

And finally, can you blend hockey pucks?

i like rice, 'cause it's a grain

i like rice, so i'm not insane!

Give some free rice to hungry people by playing this word-definition game. I'm at level 43 and I've only had two incorrect answers so far...

but I've had more than two lucky guesses.

happy thanksgiving

Like many others, I'm going home for the holiday. I'm grateful it's a ten-minute drive. Without further ado, brought to you by YouTube for the holiday, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in three acts:

failure

I wrote a great post describing in detail Obama's health-care plan and comparing it to the plans of all the other Democratic candidates for president. Between research and typing, it took me almost two hours.

Despite a little bubble that pops up every five seconds saying, "Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically!" Blogger ate the post while I was trying to preview it and fix links. The introduction was still there, but all the actual work I did had disappeared.

I'm not spending four hours a day to write a long post twice. Fuck you, readers.

Mostly, fuck you, Blogger. I hate you.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/

the only poker post

from my favorite poker IRC channel:

rockshock: i got Rizen on my table
rockshock: to my right
rockshock: ;(
mrace7: who cares
mrace7: rizen ain't great or anything
rockshock: hah
mrace7: he's alright
rockshock: hes good
mrace7: if i were u
mrace7: i'd fear people like lilholdem, imperium, or bgizzel
mrace7: u know rizen and them won't mess around without a certain range
rockshock: but they aint on my table
mrace7: fear people with no ranges
mrace7: who are also good

indeed.

happy to serve you

Greetings! It's been 15 months since my last post. Here's to continuity.

YA RLY (poker brag)

recoculous is being massively updated, upgraded, and graduated to its own site. your patience is appreciated, and your eyes are welcomed, wherever my rants may be seen. updates are forthcoming.

Results from July 10th-31st:



I pwn.

bigger and better things

recoculous is being massively updated, upgraded, and graduated to its own site. your patience is appreciated, and your eyes are welcomed, wherever my rants may be seen. updates are forthcoming.

i figured out why it hadn't rained for two months in GF: I never washed my car. Here it is, not two days past the latest wash, and the pitter-patter of raindrops can be heard on the shiny white exterior of Carter, the little white Saturn. (yes, i finally found a name.)

Here is a link to the weblog I wish recoculous could be. It can't, though, because this site is called Neatorama. (and it is. neat-o-rama.)

Here's the obligatory political link. This one's about why it's so important for the Democrats to take control of the Senate this fall. Ted "The Internet is Not a Truck" Stevens would get the boot, Kent Conrad would move up to a chairmanship and the chair of a subcommittee or two, Dorgan would get a chairmanship, Leahy would take over Intelligence, and a bunch of other awesome stuff. It's all right here; read it, and vote for Kent Conrad in November. More on that later. Also, if you live in District 43 in Grand Forks (near the library and Red River HS), vote for Jamie Selzler for ND House. Anyone who coaches high-school debate, claims to be a Republican, and then gets sick of the party's mendacity and switches to Dem-NPL is A-OK by me.

bbv post (poker post, sorry paul)

so, internet poker has turned me into depressed, angry dusty today.

38 $16 turbo games today.
10 finishes in the money, for a net profit of... -200 or so.

1 first place.
8 2nd places.
1 3rd place.

Among the highlights are five busts when a worse pocket pair makes trips to beat my better pocket pair, and three 2nd place finishes where I had a 3.5:1 chip lead going into heads-up play. I know I took way too many coinflips and 55/45s for my whole stack, and I lost most of them.

this makes it 3 times in a row that I've tried to move up to the 16s and had my bankroll crushed by loose calls, horrible cards, and too many coinflips brought on by the resulting tiltiness. so it's back to the 6.50s yet again, for an hourly rate only slightly better than minimum wage (unless i'm running hot). shit happens, i suppose.

i really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to get drunk or smoke a joint or something, just to get out of my head for a little while. but... if I do that, I'll go to prison. that's a whole other side of depressed, angry dusty that we don't need to get into here.

i am helpless in the face of ill fortune's wrath.

/delete

f**k yeah

pure energy
Information Society is back.

Producer Paul Robb picked up the rights to the InSoc name from lead singer/producer Kurt Harland, who had since 1997 been mostly being goth and producing video-game music. Robb found Jim Cassidy, another original band member, and added two more people (and a variety of featured artists) to bring back MY FAVORITE GODDAMN BAND EVER.

YEAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

FUUUUUUUCK YEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

PSA
For the love of all that is good in the world, if you're using Internet Explorer right now.... stop. If you're at a public terminal, and they force you to use IE, show them this post.

Internet Explorer may be the worst piece of software in existence. Its unbreakable attachment to pretty much every program in Windows makes it the perfect vector to unleash all sorts of nasty viruses, hack attacks, trojans, and malware. Windows Update runs on my PC about once a week, and there is nearly always a security update for a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, usually having to do with its unquenchable desire to launch embedded Word/Outlook/Excel/whatever documents. Plus, it's slow.

Using IE is exactly like taking a razor blade, slicing open the end of your penis, and then having unprotected intercourse with every crack whore in New York. If you're not already terminally ill, you will be soon, and it's only a (very short) matter of time. "Oh, dusty, you're just being alarmist. Microsoft would never release software that was so dangerous!!!" No I'm not, and yes they would. They did. You're using it, and you're trying to make excuses why you shouldn't switch. No more excuses.

Click here to download Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is fast, supports tabbed browsing, has an excellent pop-up blocker, and is free. I use Firefox on my PC, but I'm considering switching to Opera.

Click here to download Opera. Opera 9 is brand-new, REALLY fast, and has BitTorrent support built right in. Plus, it masquerades as Internet Explorer if the website you're visiting is tracking the browser you use. (So? So, when we become the United Colonies of Microsoft, you won't be purged.)

You're welcome. That is all.

f**k

Wow, we finally did it.

The war in Iraq is over (we won); terrorism has been defeated (we even figured out that nasty bit about defeating an ideology). Nobody in America has to go hungry, and everyone has access to a doctor. Our kids get the best public education in the world, and we've figured out a way to let all the immigrants that want to come to the US get visas. Money no longer poisons every part of our government, and elections are fair and free. North Korea and Iran have given up on building nukes, and copyright infringement is a thing of the past. Net neutrality will be preserved, and competition between media companies has been protected.

Phew. Now that we've solved all other problems, we can finally ban gambling on the Internet.

Oh, what? We didn't solve any of those other problems?

Oh. That's too bad. At least we can still ban gambling on the Internet.

fuck you, america.

fun with things

pwnt in the face
this is hilarious. internet hijacked for benign mischief, news at 11. thanks delicious for the link


i hate to say i told you so
...but I did.

In all seriousness, this doesn't surprise me. People talk about mystical religious experiences in terms of depersonalization, disassociation, flashes of insight, and a general feeling of well-being; research into the effects of psychedelic drugs leads to discussions of "ego death" (depersonalization/disassociation), "euphoria" (well-being), and "you know, like, totally seeing stuff in ways that I'd, you know, never seen before. or something." (flashes of insight) And, of course, there's the well-established use of peyote, datura, ayahuasca, and other natural hallucinogens as religious sacraments by native peoples all up and down the Americas.

Reading all the ONDCP's little pamphlets about magic mushrooms always gives me a chuckle. Unwilling to admit that drugs may not be the worst thing that's ever happened to America, they reach as far as their little hands will let them to find reasons why mushrooms are a Schedule I controlled substance (which makes no sense, as anyone who has eaten the little buggers can tell you): "It is difficult to tell the difference between hallucinogenic mushrooms and other, possibly poisonous mushrooms." "Some users experience severe paranoia, accompanied by increased heart rate and perspiration." Note the conspicuous lack of evidence that mushrooms are an addictive/habit-forming drug, which is usually a precondition for being classified as Schedule I ("high potential for abuse with no discernible medical benefit").

Compare this to some varieties of religious experience: it is difficult to tell the difference between a cult and an honest religion (sometimes); it's difficult to tell whether or not your priest has an... uh... unhealthy interest in your teenage son; often times the threat of eternal damnation or a life of suffering is used to extract cooperation and submission from kids who are too young to decide for themselves whether or not they're being fed a load of crap. (what eight-year-old wouldn't become agitated upon learning that their name had been written in the Book of Death?)

Everyone needs a spiritual experience every now and then; spring cleaning for your mind, as it were. American life is such that we either don't have the time to become skilled enough at Zen meditation to achieve depersonalization, or we're so ADD that we couldn't stop thinking for ten minutes if we had guns to our heads. Some of us are disillusioned with the church we grew up in, or we didn't grow up in a church at all, and thus it feels a little strange to pray to something we don't necessarily feel like we believe in. There's no need for us to walk around, self-absorbed and steeped in our own misery. If there's someone we trust that can procure some psilocybin, or mescaline, or DXM, or MDMA, or what-have-you, and we sincerely want to explore ourselves and the malleable nature of our universe, we can. Just so long as we don't do it alone without experience (sorry, Derek), or irresponsibly, the opportunity for a significant, meaningful experience with long-lasting effects on our state of mind is within reach.

mild outrage

Chrissy has a coffee cup that can hold half a pot of coffee; it's like a soup bowl with a handle. While carefully navigating the large rim of said cup, and consuming delicious Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I perused today's Grand Forks Herald. Page 2A was a gigantic green advertisement, paid for by Americans for American Energy. Read it if you like, but you probably already get the gist of their argument. (Republicans for Republican Elections?)

I thought they made the sort of case that would create a lot of initial nods and murmurs of agreements at breakfast tables all over the region, and I simply could not let this giant fluff piece go by uncontested. Arming myself with some useful tidbits of fact (thanks Wikipedia), I composed the following letter to the editor:

ANWR Ad Running Empty on Facts

Page 2A of July 10th's Herald displays a full-page ad, paid for by Americans for American Energy, exhorting us to call our Senators and encourage them to support legislation to drill for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The ad makes an attractive case, speaking of "abundant supplies of American-made energy" that are "locked up on federal lands and in places like ANWR."

This ad speaks loudest when we consider what it does not say. According to estimates by the U.S. Department of the Interior, there are approximately 7.7 billion barrels of oil that drilling can recover. The United States presently uses 20 million barrels of oil every day. If ANWR's oil reserves were used to supply 10% of America's oil needs, we would exhaust the entire supply in less than 10 years. A small fraction of our energy needs that will be consumed in the time it takes for a high-school graduate to become a doctor hardly constitutes an "abundant supply."

In fact, it seems that Americans for American Energy are some of the only people left (besides Republicans in the House and Senate, and the president) who are interested in drilling in ANWR. Oil companies with operations in Alaska, such as BP, Chevron, Texaco, and ConocoPhillips, are all quite familiar with the geology of the region. All of them have stopped lobbying for the right to drill in the reserve.

Drilling in ANWR will not, as the ad suggests, "let America solve its own energy problems." In reality, it lets Republicans solve their own election problems. It will also leave the next generation of leaders no ANWR, no oil left in ANWR, and no real, long-lasting solution to America's addiction to fossil fuels.

-----

We'll see if they print it, and if it raises the hackles of any local wingnuts.