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November 2002 Entries
Chris sent me a link to a Wall Street Journal article titled If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay, Here's How to Set It Straight. The article is all about personalization gone wrong. Amazon does this too. I recently spent some time looking through cooking books on Amazon. After 30 minutes of that Amazon decided I was a great chef. As anyone who know me can attest, that's pretty far off the mark. For a long time all I saw was cooking supplies on Amazon. I kept looking for the "I am not a chef" button.
posted @ Tuesday, November 26, 2002 12:00 PM | Feedback (0)
It's another banner day for militant Islam. It seems they didn't like what someone wrote about their religion so they burned the newspaper's office down.
The violence began Wednesday, when the Kaduna office of ThisDay newspaper was torched after the paper published an article questioning Muslim objections to the pageant. The article, published Saturday, suggested the prophet Muhammad would have chosen a wife among the contestants.

Some Muslims are objecting to the Miss World beauty pageant in Nigeria. They are also objecting to freedom of speech. Oh those pesky rights we have in America. And this lead to a little Muslim/Christian confrontation. Which lead to over 100 deaths as I write this depending on which article you believe. And the Christians are no better in this story as they went about burning down mosques. I guess the moral of the story is to learn a little of the Quran before you visit Nigeria:

The rioting spread Friday 225 miles southwest to the capital, Abuja, where the beauty pageant is still planned to take place Dec. 7. Muslim protesters armed with sticks, machetes and daggers burned cars and attacked pedestrians outside the city's plush international hotels after gathering outside the central mosque following afternoon prayers.

Rioters pulled a local journalist off a motorcycle and told him he would be killed unless he could recite verses from Islam's holy book, the Quran. The crowd released him unharmed when they realized he was Muslim.

This is what America should be fighting against.

posted @ Friday, November 22, 2002 3:00 PM | Feedback (0)
Here's your entertainment for the day. Some kind of all cat band singing a song. Keep watching for the lead singer. One would assume that the cats are lip-syncing since ... well ... since the ugly truth is that cats can't talk. I think cats have lips.
posted @ Monday, November 18, 2002 5:21 PM | Feedback (0)
Check out the Religion Selector and see what your religion is ... in case you didn't already know.
posted @ Sunday, November 17, 2002 10:47 AM | Feedback (0)
Here are some thoughts that David Brin wrote following 9/11.
The toll on 9/11 would surely have been far worse -- perhaps as high as all American losses in Vietnam -- except for one thing... the magnificent work of engineers who made those towers so strong that they lasted a whole hour, long enough for many thousands of people to get away. Then they collapsed with perfect linear dignity, barely touching their neighbors, sparing Manhattan the feared Domino Effect. Geometrically and structurally amazing.

It's a testament of skill that should be honored. To our civilization, skill is easily as important as courage, though it's mentioned far less often.

A friend named David (coincidentally enough) sent this to me and commented, "It agrees with most all my thoughts on the matter but expresses them beautifully and takes them much further." I'd agree. If I was exceptionally smart and very literate this is what I would have written. :)
posted @ Wednesday, November 13, 2002 6:20 PM | Feedback (0)
Here's a neat little article from the WSJ on the economics of spam.
Ms. Betterly's messages joined the roughly two billion other unsolicited commercial e-mails that hit in-boxes around the world every day. The company she runs from her home, Data Resource Consulting Inc., sends out as many as 60 million such messages a month. That puts the 41-year-old single mother in the most hated breed on the Internet. She sends spam.
posted @ Wednesday, November 13, 2002 1:55 PM | Feedback (0)
DEAR ABBY: My daughter, "Rhonda," hosts several "soft porn" Web sites, and it upsets me greatly ...

I kid you not.

posted @ Friday, November 08, 2002 2:14 PM | Feedback (0)
Jackass: Sick. Gross. Disgusting. Worth every penny of the $9.00 I paid to see it. My face is still hurting from all the laughing I did. Damn funny movie. Not for the squeemish though. Mom, dad: stay away.
posted @ Tuesday, November 05, 2002 10:28 PM | Feedback (0)
Now here's a disturbing little article. And yes, it is short.
So police came across the sniper suspects at least 11 times during the long manhunt but let them go every time. The Washington, D.C., police chief acknowledged that race was a factor in this amazing failure. "Everybody was looking for a white car with white people," he told the Washington Post.

Apparently there were quiet a few clues that the sniper(s) weren't white males. Had this information been made public maybe a few lives could have been saved. So political correctness might have cost us a few lives. Go read the article. It's worth it.

posted @ Monday, November 04, 2002 2:47 PM | Feedback (0)
After an overwhelming victory in Turkey's elections, a party with Islamic roots pledged to maintain the nation's pro-Western stance - an attempt to ease fears the crucial U.S. ally and NATO member would undergo a radical shift toward Islam.

I was a little suprised to see this headline. I admit I don't follow Turkish politics. I didn't even know they were having an election. Over the last decade or so I haven't seen the word "Islam" and "elections" in the same sentence very often. After reading a few articles on these people I'm optimistic. They may be a moderate voice of Islam to counter some of the more militant groups. A democratic Islamic government. It should be interesting to watch.

posted @ Monday, November 04, 2002 11:45 AM | Feedback (0)
SUNLIGHT! I haven't seen the sun in 10 days. Yes, TEN. For those living in the Northwest that might not be a big deal. The last time I saw blue sky was on October 21st. Unfortunately that was also the day before my new yellow filter arrived for my camera. Yellow filters help you take better black & white photos under a blue sky. So I get my new yellow filter and I'm anxious to try it out and we get a dull grey rainy sky for 10 days. TEN. Bah!
posted @ Friday, November 01, 2002 1:18 PM | Feedback (0)