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A bit from
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/361288_abelincoln01.html
“President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said ‘mission accomplished’ for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
Perhaps I may be of some assistance.
(Original photo: Associated Press.)
The Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival 2008 took place regionally over a period of weeks. These are photographs from the Grand Parade in downtown San Francisco on April 20, 2008.
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The Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival 2008 took place regionally over a period of weeks. These are photographs from April 19th, 2008, in San Francisco’s Japantown.
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Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival 2008, San Francisco, Japantown: pictures
(NOTE: there have been rumors that this note did not go up onto the site until April 8, 2008. Such rumors are, of course, the work of Eastas Eurasian saboteurs.)
In honor of Hate Week—during which, as Orwell notes, new slogans were introduced—I would like to offer the following. It may not be destined to become a classic, but it does honor the work the current administration has done to make sure only the correct information is released:
Redaction is Transparency.
It’s Patrick Nielsen-Hayden ’s fault I saw this: CD Cover Meme
I like my coffee the way I like my feminists: steaming and in my face.
(I hearby put the above sentence under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. If anyone ends up doing anything fun with it, please send me a link…)
ADDENDUM: Visualization:
Feminist Coffee (from Tory Hoke’s blog The Tory Party .)
Essay question: two phrasings. How do the meanings differ?
(The third annual San Francisco Noe Valley Harvest Festival took place on October 13, 2007.)
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(This flash mob convened on October 11, 2007.)
Link to the stephan-zielinski.com page containing “San Francisco Zombie Flash Mob October 2007” pictures:
San Francisco Zombie Flash Mob October 2007 pictures
(The San Francisco Folsom Street Fair 2007 was on September 30, 2007.)
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(The San Francisco Lovefest Parade was on September 29th, 2007.)
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Note: the higher resolution versions are 1200 pixels high—making them far, far better suited for screensaver or wallpaper use, or to see the fine detail of the streamers.
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Final addition was done June 29, 2007.
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Final addition was done June 1, 2007.
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Zombies attack San Francisco: preliminary images
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Final addition was done June 4, 2007.
Laughing Squid’s coverage of the event itself:
Massive Zombie Outbreak in San Francisco & Memphis
I have faith in the American people. When presented with a situation that is clearly and obviously precedented, we will learn from history—spending years less time dithering before doing what needs to be done.
“Years” is a vague term, of course. Its minimum is “two.” Given that the current administration appears incapable of perceiving reality, let alone reacting appropriately to it, we’d better stick with the minimum.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was August 7, 1964. The Fall of Saigon was April 30, 1975. Ten years, eight months, and 23 days. The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq was October 11, 2002. If we assume that we can learn from history as described above, we add eight years, eight months, and 23 days. This yields my prediction for the Fall of Baghdad: July 4, 2011.
That works out nicely. It’s a Monday—perfect for the Monday morning quarterbacking claims that we could have “won” if only we’d followed whatever idiot scheme the speaker favored. Better still, the war apologists will be able to stay in their back yards setting off firecrackers to drown out the media coverage of our final squalid retreat.
Truth table
————
A B | A BUT B
0 0 | 0
0 1 | 0
1 0 | 1 *
1 1 | 1
(*) Forces B to be equal to 1 by driving the input voltage to HIGH. If the circuitry upstream isn’t capable of reacting appropriately, the behavior of the BUT gate (and thus the design overall) is undefined.
(Using the fourth NAND gate ensures the output is a clean high or low, even on a blurry input voltage from A. For some reason, circuits using a large number of BUT gates tend to be inordinately prone to such troubles.)
The BUT gate is frequently used in the implementation of back-propagation neural networks and in the specialized hardware used to develop analyses supporting the USA’s presence in Iraq.
Addendum: Phil Gustafson noted that this design latches on any B high event. This is true, but historically, this hasn’t always been of great importance. For instance, during the Cold War, BUT gates often shared A and B lines with one or more electromechanical NYET gates.
(A) This article includes this screen capture:
You make the call: woman being stung by a bee while her friends make out beside her? Orgasm? Or rape?
(B) Go to http://www.msdewey.com/ and enter the search term “latex”. Bonus points if you can explain to me why the avatar’s waiting-for-something-to-do animations are of a woman performing exaggerated come-hither gestures, and her reaction to the subject’s evident rejection. (I’m afraid to enter “santorum”.)
I’m certain I’m not the first to think of this—so let’s just call this a restatement of conventional wisdom…
I think I’ve figured out the United States’ religious right. They started to read the Bible, but only got as far as Leviticus before they got bored. They skimmed the rest—managing to pick up that Jesus taught, died, and rose again—but totally missed all the wisdom of His ministry. Then, figuring that the last chapter would be a summation of the whole work, they paid real close attention to Revelation.
This would certainly explain why they seem fixated on a few specific Old Testament tales and verses, they have no clue what Christian virtue actually is, and they spend all their time looking forward to the Apocalypse. Their bluster is that of poor students who, not having learned the whole of their lessons, bluff that the bits they did learn are the only important ones—and perhaps the teacher will fail to notice the underlying ignorance.
MOE: Shaddap! Bring me that sort algorithm deck.
LARRY: Okay, okay. Whoop! [Trips over FORTRAN IV manual. Cards go flying.]
MOE: You nincompoop!
CURLY: It’s okay, Moe. I punched line numbers onto that one! So all we need is to go get the sorting deck, and use it to sort the algorithm deck!
MOE: Yeah, that cou—wait a minute…
GREPPO MARX: [Honk, honk.]
LARRY: What’s he even doing here?
CURLY: Backwards compatibility.
MOE: I’ll backwards compatible you! [Bonks Curly with slide rule.]
CURLY: Oh, yeah? [Eyepokes Moe with flowchart template.]
LARRY: [Gets tie wrapped around printer platen.]
International Chemist’s Union Considering Renaming Alcohols to “Al-Kuhuls”
Name Change Said To Be “Done Deal”
By STANLEY BASILISK Associated Press Writer
2006-09-15
SANTA PERRO (AP) – At the opening of their yearly meeting today, the International Chemist’s Union announced that if proposal HXC-7808 passes, the class of chemical compounds known as “alcohols” will be renamed to “al-kuhuls”. Prof. Prakahaji Jone-Krungthep, General Secretary of the ICU, expects little opposition, describing it as “Nearly a done deal.”
Senior research fellow Dr. Janucz Kofenanousky began today’s keynote address by saying, “It’s time we recognize the international character of science. `Alcohol’ is a misspelling of the original Arabic `al-kuhul’, and the time to bring the word into line with historical reality is now.”
The assembled chemists applauded enthusiastically, and several spontaneously cried out “Allahu Akbar.” “Allahu Akbar” is Arabic for “God is great.”
Chemists call the alcohol in beer, whiskey, and other familiar beverages “ethanol.” Other alcohols include methanol, used in racing cars, and isopropyl, used to clean electronics. Under the new rules, all would retain their familiar names, but the class of substances would be renamed “al-kuhuls.”
When asked for comment, Dr. Layla Bint-Mohammad of the Indonesian Institute of Reduced Carbon Organic Chemistry said, “HXC-7808 is long overdue. Moslems were the first to distill al-kuhul. . . I am heartened to see Western science finally acknowledging Arabic’s superiority in solvent taxonomy.”
Other attendees are less supportive of the plan. “Science is no more today than politically correct posturing,” said Dr. Winstonway Lyme of Oxford-on-Donau. “On Wednesday, the astronomers made fools of us all with their ham-handed satire of Operation Iraqi Freedom. A dwarf planet named `Eris’, so close to the anniversary of 9/11? And now coming up, my Guinness full of `al-kuhul?’ This is madness, unmitigated cogs frogging.”
A source close to the Bush administration stated, “Science must remain the servant of political reality, not its master. It may be too late to find a more appropriate name for UB313. But we intend to vigorously oppose any change to technical language that is clearly motivated by a small minority seeking to introduce unpatriotic terms where they have no place.”
While the ICU’s naming rules do not have the force of international law, shippers would be required to relabel containers currently bearing the word “alcohol”, at an estimated cost of $35 million over the next seven years.
HXC-7088 also renames the distillation glassware alembic to “al-ambiq”. A similar proposal under consideration by the International Mathematician’s Union would rename algebra to “al-jabr”.
The final vote is scheduled for Monday, September 25th. Written comments from the general public may be addressed to ICU, Attn: Jone-Krungthep. Santa Perro, CA 92189-2973.
The only way out of the muddled debate as to whether Pluto is a planet or not is to go back to the source of all truth. Consider: when he walked the earth, would Jesus have considered Pluto a planet?
At the time, the key distinction was between “fixed stars” and “wandering stars.” (The very word “planet” comes from planan, Greek for “wander.”) Pluto is not a wandering star—it’s not visible at all under ordinary circumstances. Nor are Ceres, Xena, or all the rest of the miscellaneous rocks and ammonia-soda flavored snowballs floating around out there. Ergo, they’re not planets. Nor is Earth a planet. By definition, where Earth is, the sky isn’t—and a thing that’s not in the sky can’t be a wandering star.
Now, if a light in the sky moves fast enough, it’s a shooting star. This means that we’ll have to reclassify the ISS as a shooting star, of course—that’s how a man of Jesus’ time would have classed it upon seeing it pass overhead. For that matter, a jet visible high above at night would also be a shooting star—unless it turned off its running lights. The Goodyear Blimp is a comet.
This does bring up the question as to just what Pluto and the like are, however. But given that they only become visible when someone tries to study the celestial sphere yet totally misses the point of gazing heavenward, I believe we should err on the side of caution and classify them as demons. (This certainly works well in the case of Pluto—a pagan “god” that rules the underworld. If that’s not Satan hiding in plain view, I don’t know what is.)
Going back to the definitions Our Savior and/or the medieval Church would have used would be inconvenient for professional astonomers, perhaps—but science must ever bow to traditional spiritual values and what the masses believe about the nature of the universe.
