London Police Disrupt Terrorist Plot to Blow Up Aircraft in Mid-Flight

August 10th, 2006 by Administrator

Link.

Those damn Catholics. It’s the Gunpowder Plot all over again…

Posted in Euroweenies, War | No Comments »

Interesting Eddie Adams Quote

August 9th, 2006 by Administrator

The more I read Wikipedia, the more I like it.
Here’s a quote taken from its entry on Eddie Adams, famous for the photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong prisoner Nguyen Van Lem:

, “Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.

What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?’”

Photographs are only half-truths. Wow.
Someone needs to grab every photo editor and cram that statement down their throats.

Posted in Politics, Traitors, War | No Comments »

More Reuters Photos

August 8th, 2006 by Administrator

Here are two photos doctored by Reuters:

As presented:

Original photo:

doctored photo:

detail of original photo:

Posted in Politics, War, Photoshop Phun | 2 Comments »

Las Vegas: Rejected Slogans

August 7th, 2006 by Administrator

I don’t gamble. I don’t drink alcohol. I’m faithful to my wife. If I stay up too late, Adult Swim has something to do with it. My idea of a vacation is to stay home for half of it to work on the house, then go to a place of natural beauty for the rest of it. So the “What Happens in Vegas… Stays in Vegas.” ad campaign isn’t targeted to me. However, I thought the ads were cute at first.

After awhile though they start seem sleazy, don’t they? Today I saw an ad at a bus stop that read “We did it until we dropped. (Shopping can be your alibi).”

I suppose “I did it until I caught the clap” while truthful just doesn’t resonate as well. Neither does “I got so drunk I puked on the carpet after I lost my 401K at Blackjack and passed out.” - Accurate but just doesn’t have that naughty vibe to it…

or
Las Vegas: About as attractive as a coke whore in a dimly lit bar after 15 shots of Jaegermeister. - Too accurate. Way too accurate.
ditto this one:
Las Vegas: All 12 Step Programs Begin Here; Come and Learn Why That’s similar to this one:
“My name is ______ and I’m a ________.” Come to Las Vegas and Fill in the ‘Blanks’.

Las Vegas: The World’s Largest BF Skinner Experiment - appeals to the logical minded. It would probably work on most college campuses - at least, those that actually teach something.

Las Vegas: What God Practiced on Saddam & Gomorrah For - nice Biblical ring. Might work with the Jewish crowd.

Posted in America | 2 Comments »

The Next Extreme Sport: Shopping

August 7th, 2006 by Administrator

Like many men I hate shopping. That high-pitched whine you hear outside your window on Saturday afternoon might just be us passing by as I’m dragged whining to the mall by the Wife.

But strangely enough I enjoy shopping online. In fact I enjoy buying anything online including the same stuff I buy at department stores and shopping malls. The difference between the two experiences is that one is a chore, the other is a sport.

And like snowboarding, skateboarding and parachuting it’s an extreme sport called “Extreme Online Shopping” by those who partake in it. While not as physically demanding as most sports, it does take practice, concentration and skill developed over a long period of time.

The goal of extreme online shopping is to buy what you need while paying as little as possible using the resources available on the Internet. You start by visiting a website such as Fatwallet.com.

Fatwallet.com is an information clearinghouse for extreme shoppers. Here you will find the latest deals on everything from detergent to digital cameras and the strategies involved in getting the best deal. These strategies include using “pricematching” (where stores promise to match the price of an item sold at a competitor), rebates, coupon codes, and other tactics to score the best deal possible. With the proper strategy, people have been known to nab items FAR – “Free After Rebate” – or even better, make money on the purchase of the item. Of course YMMV – “Your Mileage May Vary” – meaning that some store managers or phone customer service reps may not agree to the strategy and thereby kill your deal.

Take for example the recent sale on a Samsung laser printer. An office supply store listed the printer at $129.99 with an $80 rebate, bringing the price down to $49.99 plus tax. While $50 for a laser printer may strike many as a pretty hot deal, most extreme shoppers viewed it as lukewarm at best.

Some shoppers noticed that a competitor had the same model printer on sale at $79 without a rebate. They took the store ad to the office supply store and demanded the store match the competitor’s price. While many store managers refused to pricematch the item (the YMMV part of the deal), others did – matching the difference by the stated policy of 110%. After the pricematch and rebate, the extreme shoppers got a laser printer for the price of sales tax with $8 left over. That made it a pretty toasty deal.

As you would expect, extreme shopping is bad for business. In a 2004 Wall Street Journal article Brad Anderson, chief executive officer of Best Buy Co, labeled such extreme shoppers as “devils” and developed strategies to discourage such shoppers from shopping at BestBuy. Other stores have tightened up their pricematching policies, for example including rebates in their calculations or refusing to pricematch stores that they do not consider direct competitors.

In the example of the laser printer, the office supply store’s corporate office began to reject the rebates of those who successfully pricematched at the stores. While some had received confirmation that their rebates were accepted, it was unclear whether everyone who jumped on the deal would receive the rebate. To make matters more confusing, an advanced copy of a BestBuy’s 7/31/06 – 8/5/06 ad circulated showing that the price of the printer would be $59. Since this was after the rebate had expired but within the 14 day low price guarantee of the office supply chain, extreme shoppers then figured out a new approach. The potential payoff? A free laser printer plus $27 before tax. But as a poster on the site pointed out, this was a “big YMMV” and it wasn’t clear how successful this plan would ultimately be.

For many that mileage has already run out. Some extreme shoppers have stopped publicizing their finds or strategies to prevent others from abusing them. Divisions have appeared between those who enjoy the hunt for a good bargain, and small merchants who use this knowledge to buy as much of an item as they can in order to sell it for a profit, usually on eBay. As one FatWallet poster, “rctay”, complained “(Fatwallet) is a victim of its success. Unless you happen on a deal in the first few minutes it will probably be dead…There are so many resellers grabbing large volumes also. The sellers are adapting to bargain sites also…”

In the end the merchants must in order to survive, and extreme shopping will go the way of hunting bison and shooting passenger pigeons from trains. But in the meantime a bit of extreme shopping may be just what your pocketbook – and your mind - needs to beat the summer heat.

Posted in Columns | 1 Comment »

Self-Hating Jew Quarterly

August 4th, 2006 by Administrator

Posted in Photoshop Phun | No Comments »

David Broder: Leave Iraq…

August 3rd, 2006 by Administrator

David Broder makes an interesting argument: Leave Iraq just like we left Saigon in 1975 and things will work out okay.

It is hard to remember now, but at the time, we were told that if Ho Chi Minh prevailed, communism would roll south through Malaysia and spread to the Philippines and threaten Australia — to say nothing of American influence in the Pacific. We took those warnings seriously, and so it was a bitter moment when the Viet Cong occupied the old American Embassy in Saigon.

And today the embassy is again open — in Hanoi — and the United States is trading freely with a united Vietnam.

Right… We’ll ignore the tens of thousands who were killed in South Vietnam after the fall - or the 3 million killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after the US fled southeast Asia.

Hey, it’s okay. Things worked out…

The humanitarian impulse of liberals like Broder is scary.

Posted in Traitors, War | 5 Comments »

A Fair Trade

August 3rd, 2006 by Administrator

I love the art of the deal, and so it was easy for me to imagine the following:

Rove: Howard, it is I, Lord Rove calling from the depths.
Dean: Karl, I Lord of Screams hear you. State your business.
Rove: (sound of escaping steam) I have reached what I believe to be a fair… trade of sorts… Hagel for Lieberman.
Dean: To what scheme might I apply this so-called logic of yours, Karl?
Rove: Hagel is one of yours, and Joe’s one of ours. And if Joe loses the primary, you know he’s going to win the general. So… You run Lamont against my boy Joe, you get Charles du Hagel - the French asshole.
Dean: Hmmm… A bargain methinks…
Rove: It is truly fair… It shall preserve the balance of forces which helps to maintain the balance in our 527’s.
Dean: Agreed. Make it so.

Posted in General, Bush, Democrats | 2 Comments »

Hezballah Atrocities

August 2nd, 2006 by Administrator

“If you hide behind your baby to shoot at my baby, you are responsible for getting children killed. You and you alone.” - Naomi Ragen, Haaretz

Qana bombing body count falls sharply

The Red Cross announced yesterday that 28 bodies, including those of 19 children, had been found at the site. Additional bodies are expected to be found over the coming days.

Yep. It takes time for Hezballah to dig up bodies from cemeteries to trot out as freshly killed by the IDF.

Posted in Politics, War | 1 Comment »

Coming of Age

August 1st, 2006 by Administrator

When a child reaches a certain age, I believe that it is a father’s duty to embarrass him. Case in point, a visit to the shopping mall last night. While waiting for the Wife, the Kid & I stood milling about outside of the store “Hot Topic.” To kill some time, I thought I’d wander in and check out the T-shirts. The display of shirts ran from floor to ceiling, and I surveyed the bands.

Dead Milkmen. My first job in technology I worked with the lead singer of that band. I also saw them play with Mojo Nixon at my university.
Dead Kennedy’s. I saw the lead singer, Jello Biafra, perform solo at my uni.
The Ramones. I saw this band play one long, frenetic set with DeeDee Ramone shouting “1-2-3-4″ between songs at “Mississippi Nights” in St. Louis.
The Misfits. I dated a girl who was once big into this band.
The Clash. I listened to “London Calling” on a boombox in my garage/darkroom while teaching myself how to develop and print black & white photographs.
Red Hot Chili Peppers. My memories of seeing this band are clouded from drinking tequila with a friend before the show. Too bad given that it was early in their career.
The Vandals. I saw them at an under-21 club with 45 Grave. The lead singer of the Vandals came on stage with a rigged up phonograph that he had strapped to himself and used to scratch along to the music. The lead signer of 45 Grave seemed strung out on heroin and could barely stand up.

The Kid stood outside of the store ignoring me. When I came out to see if he would come in and look around, he shook his head quickly. No cajoling would get him to come into the store with me, not even a Green Day shirt.

So I left the store and waited outside for the Wife to return. When she did, I told her what happened.

“I’d be embarrassed to go into that store with you too,” she said, agreeing with the Kid. “You’re too old and besides, you don’t want to give money to those anti-American weasels now do you?”

She was right, of course. The Wife always is. Still, it didn’t seem right to me. I wasn’t going to wear those t-shirts, just look at them the same way one would look at photographs. But it was time to move on, and besides, I wanted to get the hell out of that mall at the first chance.

Posted in America | No Comments »

Muslim Attacks Jews in Seattle

July 31st, 2006 by Administrator

The FBI plans to prosecute the attack as a hate crime.

I’m not big on the idea of hate crimes. To me it doesn’t matter what’s in the heart or mind of the perp; what’s important is his action. If he kills, then he is a murderer. If he rapes, he is a rapist. If he does both, then he’s a psychopath.

But hate crime? It seems Orwellian to me.

Posted in America, Politics | No Comments »

Jihadi Today

July 30th, 2006 by Administrator

Posted in Photoshop Phun | No Comments »

Blogger Magazine

July 29th, 2006 by Administrator

Posted in Photoshop Phun | No Comments »

Michael Berg’s Love Of His Son’s Executioner

July 27th, 2006 by Administrator

The hunting down and killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a world away has brought the spotlight onto Delaware through the comments of Green Party candidate Michael Berg. Berg, whose son Nicholas is believed to have been beheaded by Zarqawi himself, has been quoted by publications around the world as saying President Bush “is more of a terrorist than Zarqawi.” “Zarqawi felt my son’s breath on his hand as held the knife against his throat. Zarqawi had to look in his eyes when he did it,” Berg is quoted as saying in an AP wire story. “George Bush sits there glassy-eyed in his office with pieces of paper and condemns people to death. That to me is a real terrorist.”

In Berg’s world, there is no difference between Zarqawi and Bush. However his characterization shows an ignorance of both men, and is unfair to the President regardless of your support or opposition to the war in Iraq.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi spent his entire life murdering people in cold blood, and as the head of al Qaeda in Iraq sought through the murder of civilians to sow fear and terror in order to achieve power. The goal of al-Qaeda in Iraq was to ignite a civil war in which one religious group would systematically wipe out another.

His group is implicated in the Feb 22 attack on a Shiite shrine that nearly tipped Iraq into chaos. On November 9, 2005 he claimed responsibility for a triple homicide bombing in Amman Jordan that killed 60 Sunnis. On May 7, 2005 two cars filled with explosives ploughed into a US military convoy killing 20 Iraqis. On February 28, 2005 a bomber under his command killed 125 Iraqis – mostly Shiites in the city of Hillah. 205 Muslims dead. How many Americans did he kill during that same time period? Just two - in the attack on the convoy.

Americans, blinded by the drumbeat of the characterization of the Iraqi conflict as Vietnam by many on the political Left, have failed to see the reality that the conflict is not Iraqi against American: it is Sunni against Shi’a, Shi’a on Shi’a, tribe against tribe – and Extremist vs Secular – all occurring with Americans in the middle trying to keep the sides from killing each other. To that end, the conflict is more like the efforts during the 1990s to stop the genocide in the Balkans than it is Vietnam. Zarqawi was never a great military leader or strategist like Ho Chi Minh. In one of his last videos he is shown needing help handling a machine gun. Instead, he is more like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy – a psycho killer elevated by the politics of the region to the level of “holy warrior.”

Zarqawi called for jihad not only against Americans and Jews, but against Shiite Muslims the world over. His last statement, which some military analysts on the website StrategyPage predicted would lead to his “martyrdom” by elements within al-Qaeda, was a rambling screed calling for the destruction of Shiites in Iran and in Lebanon. No one in the region is sad to see him go – including al-Qaeda which is celebrating his death on jihadi websites on the Internet.

Only Michael Berg is saddened. His moral equivalence between a psychokiller and a president, a man who has used every power he had to kill indiscriminately and another who has the power to destroy the world but not used it – is an insult to those of all religious faiths who strive to improve the world. His belief shows a nihilistic disregard for the difference between saints and sinners, between Mother Theresas and Hitlers, throughout history and our needs to champion the former while protecting ourselves from the latter.

Posted in Traitors, War, Columns | 3 Comments »

On the Road to Hell in Nigeria

July 26th, 2006 by Administrator

As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In Nigeria, a nation where paved roads are hard to find, the saying still holds. The current “good intention” is an initiative to give 1 million Nigerian school children “$100″ laptops (they actually cost $140). These laptops run a flavor of Linux on AMD processors.

This is the source, a Nigerian newspaper story from July 19. This story was, in turn, picked up by VNUNet in this link here, which was referenced by DailyTech. Note that the original Nigerian story states the following:

Expectedly, the One Laptop Per Child drew a lot of excitement from the media, to which Nduwke responded that the Federal Government has paid a million dollars for the first batch of the products which will come free of charge to the Nigerian child while also expressing the concern that the systems shouldn’t end up in wrong places.

This became the source for the following text in VNUNet:

Nigeria has officially ordered and paid for one million of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) devices, according to the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper.

The DailyTech reports the VNUNet mistake of “a million laptops” instead of a “million dollars.” Big discrepancy there.

I have a few questions:
First, what is the source of the “million dollars” the Federal Goverment of Nigeria is using to buy the laptops? This sounds suspiciously like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation giving the money to the government for this particular program (and no, I don’t think the fact that the software isn’t MS Windows has anything to do with the decision). I do not believe that the government is using its own funds to buy these laptops, and would like to learn the source of these funds.

Second, How many of those laptops do you believe will make it into the hands of schoolchildren?

According to Transparency International, Nigeria ranks #152 out of a 158 countries in the 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index. The government of Nigeria is a kleptocracy that steals from the people it governs - from the Presidency all the way down to the local gendarmes.

Do you really believe that a product representing roughly a third of the average Nigerian’s share of GDP will make it to those it is intended to go to?

Laptops will not raise Nigeria out of poverty even if we could guarantee they would go to the children. Nigeria needs a government that will not view its role as an institution for legalized thievery.

Posted in Politics, Economics | 1 Comment »