IEDs blow

Yahoo! News - Tanks take a beating in Iraq:

"In the all-out battles of the 1991 Gulf War, only 18 Abrams tanks were lost and no soldiers in them killed. But since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with tanks in daily combat against the unexpectedly fierce insurgency, the Army says 80 of the 69-ton behemoths have been damaged so badly they had to be shipped back to the United States. "

Now that's marketing.

Telegraph | News | So what rhymes with a Big Mac?

Let Snopes check it out first, but that's pretty cool in a sell your soul to the devil sort of way.

Googology

Google Search: I am Wil Wheaton's fanboy

I call him Wheaton to keep it impersonal. I obsess over changes in his RSS feed. Firefox l/r scroll bars don't work right. Wheaton's making it. I'm not. What would Wheaton do? I'm not sure, but I bet there'd be an afterparty.

Go home.

Yahoo! News - Schiavo Receives Last Rites, Communion

Home isn't where the heart is, it's where the soul is.

Command line humor

dirty fez:

"login as: dirtyfez
dirtyfez@idontwanttotalktoyou.org's password: fuckyouverymuch
Last login: Tue Mar 15 18:44:02 2005 from thebar.crowneplaza.com
[dirtyfez@liverdamage dirtyfez]$ mkdir stomach
[dirtyfez@liverdamage dirtyfez]$ useradd bartender
[dirtyfez@liverdamage dirtyfez]$ chown bartender stomach"

Dirty Fez bashes out some of the best command line ish I've seen in a while. The classic is rm -rf /bin/laden (Remove recursively with force, sheesh if I to explain it it's... nevermind.)

Re: last night's Elite Eight games

FARK.com: (1418887) NCAA tournament discussion thread:

robsul82 said:
"The last time I saw two collapses like that, it was 9/11!"

Hardcore man. Hardcore.

USA USA USA!

I'm not much of a jingoist, but I loves me some Team USA soccer. Hell I love international soccer in general. I obsess of the US national team, and I follow the English Premier League (go Crystal Palace... ok at least don't get relegated). Strangely I don't really follow the MLS all that much. Why watch the minor leagues? No offense to those guys. I'm glad they get paid a decent wage to play soccer, but I'm gonna spend my time following the big dogs. I should follow the MLS more. They have definetly helped Team USA, and I'd hate to see them go under; hence, I should support the MLS this year and go to a Fire game (preferably against DC United so I can see all the ado is about).

Anyway I'm watching the US vs. Mexico. The US is down 2-1 with 67:30 gone, and after that last play it should be 3-1. Go USA.

From Mark Cuban

Let the truth be told…MGM vs Grokster

First, let me define myself as a content owner.

I am not a technology owner. Although I have been involved in the technology business for more than 20 years, the software that I have written is long outdated. The infrastructure and integration processes I have designed and developed may still be in use, but I dont control them.

For the longest time, including when we started Broadcast.com, I saw the content business as a lose lose proposition. Then content went digital.

Thats when my eyes opened up to the ownership of content. When content had to be distributed in analog or a physical format for delivery, all distribution could be controlled by just a few gatekeeper companies. Music Labels and Movie Studios owned distribution. In both industries anyone outside the major companies were called independent , and for a good reason. They were on their own, on the outside looking in.

When content went digital, the floodgates opened...

When Mark Cuban talks you should probably listen. He's rich and he's "crazy". Thank you Mark Cuban. You got the goods and you're doing good with them. Thanks.

Listen up everyone, download and run Grokster (yeah I know POS, but this is important). Share the CC license of your choice and share home movies, voice recordings, digipics, anything you own. Better idea, put the CC license name in the file name. Come up with a shorthand. For instance I authorize this paragraph with Attribution 2.0 CC license. It's now shared via Grokster as bs.CC-Att.txt

Bush Breaks Silence on School Shooting

US News Article | Reuters.com

Nine dead and a teenage suicide and I call four days later? Well I'm on vacation see, and I can't be bothered. Tsunami? I'll talk about that sometime next week. A political football in the form of a vegetable? I'll take that one right a way.

I continue to be stunned at the incredible quality of our leadership.

Craig's List posting

via Wonkette:

"If, due to the absurd political state of affairs in this country, my persistent vegetative state and impending unplugging can be parlayed into some sort of political leverage, I wholly endorse using my predicament in whatever way possible for the purposes of passing legislation favorable to my general political and ethical outlook."

Now that's a living will.

Gawker Stalker: Drew Barrymore

Gawker Stalker:

"saw drew barrymore in the early afternoon of 3/21. as we passed the corner of 1st ave/st marks, I noticed yet another EV girl wearing jeans tucked into mid calf height, light tan suede boots with straps. I thought ?when is that look going to be over?!? then I looked at her face and realized she was drew barrymore. she has beautiful skin and wore a black jacket with a magenta scarf. at least it wasn?t the ubiquitous tiny fur jacket or army jacket with fur trim. didn?t notice the person she was with as our car drove by too quickly."

I admit it. I love Gawker Stalker.

Why wifi will win

Well WiMax really, but it's just trumped up WiFi. Check this out. Apple/Motorola are in a pissing match with cell carriers over the iPod phone. For about the price of an iPod, you get a phone with an iPod mini in it. ($350 for a 4GB was the rumor). Great product a no brainer, but... you guessed it, cell carriers don't want you to be able to load your music onto the phone. They want to sell you the music. I would've thought that cell phone providers would understand how fragile their market is. As quickly as they usurped the market from the old players, you'd think they'd understand how quickly they could lose it. One bad decision like this, and poof there goes the market. Apple and Motorola will find a carrier, why not Vonnage, and that should scare the pants off Verizon et al.

WHAAAA!?

Go here (PDF) Scroll down to page 8. Does the Texas Republican Party call the United States a Christian nation?

Wow.

Yahoo! News - Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Bone

Jurassic Park here we come baby.

Lambert at corrente (a liberal blog)

corrente / Leah, Lambert, Tresy, the farmer, Tom, Xan, and RDF:

"I'm coming round to the view that Reid did the right thing by giving the Republicans exactly what they wanted on the Schiavo case. Now we're seeing, up close and personal, what these people are like, and the lengths they will go to, to keep and maintain power. Reid allowed this object lesson to take place, and it seems to be working out for the best."

Good point.

Reason magazine -- July 1975

Reason magazine -- July 1975:

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

--Ronald Reagan

Reagan is rolling in his grave these days.

MSNBC - A conservative crackup?

Glenn Reynolds writes:

"In their book, The Right Nation:  Conservative Power in America, authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge predict steady growth for the conservative movement in America, unless something goes wrong to derail its trajectory.  But things can always go wrong.  How could the Republican coalition fail?  By being 'too Southern, too greedy, and too contradictory.'

Right now it's aiming at two out of three."

Buckley on Schiavo

WFB on Terri Schiavo on National Review Online

But that question was not directly accosted by the judge, who said only that Terri's rights had not been abrogated. It was unseemly for critics to compare her end with that of victims of the Nazi regime. There was never a more industrious inquiry, than in the Schiavo case, into the matter of rights formal and inchoate. It is simply wrong, whatever is felt about the eventual abandonment of her by her husband, to use the killing language. She was kept alive for fifteen years, underwent a hundred medical ministrations, all of them in service of an abstraction, which was that she wanted to stay alive. There are laws against force-feeding, and no one will know whether, if she had had the means to convey her will in the matter, she too would have said, Enough.

Sully gets it right.

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish:

"THE HYSTERIA MOUNTS: I'm beginning to wonder if the Republican party will soon oppose the whole concept of an independent judiciary. Just read William Bennett's screed in National Review. It contains the sentence: 'It is a mistake to believe that the courts have the ultimate say as to what a constitution means.' Bennett and his co-author argue that Jeb Bush should send in state troops to reinsert the feeding tube and break the law if necessary. Screw the science. Screw the court system. Screw the law. I disagree with Jonah that this is a minor spat with no long-term consequences. We are looking directly at the real face of contemporary Republicanism. Sane, moderate, thoughtful people are watching this circus and will not soon forget it. "

Did I mention that I still love Andrew Sullivan. I'm gonna sample the (non-wingnut) true conservative anti-federalist portion of the blogsphere for some choice quotes.

Culture of Life == Universal Healthcare

Till Death—or Tom DeLay—Do Us Part - The "sanctity of marriage" is suddenly negotiable. By Dahlia Lithwick:

"Of all the ironies at the heart of the Terri Schiavo case—alleged federalists who scoff at federalism; the fact that Schiavo, who's in a persistent vegetative state, has lived off the winnings in the same kind of medical malpractice suit that Republicans in Congress seek to limit—the most astonishing is this: Congressional Republicans who have staked their careers and the last election on the 'sanctity of marriage' have turned this case into a mockery of that very institution."