Archive for January 2006
Broke Mac Mountain
Mighty McPilgrim: Broke Mac Mountain (Quicktime Required)
A hilarious spoof of Brokeback Mountain. Totally cracked me up.
RIP Coretta Scott King
I was shocked and saddened today when I was looking through the RSS feeds and found that Coretta Scott King had passed away. She spent her entire life working to make the world a better place. A place where every person is treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve.
Our world is a lesser place without her.
Mrs. King’s biography | The King Center.org
Coretta Scott King dies | CNN
Trauma pills, lonely stars, and some late news from C|Net
A team of Canadian researchers has discovered that people with PTSD have fewer, less vivid flashbacks if they’re taking a drug called propranolol.
Propranolol is a beta-blocker commonly used to treat high blood pressure and similar ailments. It apparently, in this case, prevents the release of a hormone in the brain. The lack of this hormone prevents the unsettling memories from retaining their strength and allows them to decay normally over time.
‘Trauma pill’ could help those with PTSD from PhysOrg.com
For years astronomers have believed that most of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy were twin stars, that is, two stars that orbit each other and form the basis of a solar system.
Common wisdom among astronomers holds that most star systems in the Milky Way are multiple, consisting of two or more stars in orbit around each other. Common wisdom is wrong. A new study by Charles Lada of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) demonstrates that most star systems are made up of single stars. Since planets probably are easier to form around single stars, planets also may be more common than previously suspected.
Most Milky Way Stars Are Single from PhysOrg.com
And lastly, Esoterica, a C|Net News.com blog described as “A News.com compendium of the obscure”, has finally caught on to a link that I received weeks ago, if not at the beginning of the month.
Of course, it’s late arrival didn’t stop me from drooling of the image it was about…
The Golden Girls vs. Dish Network
The New York Times is running a piece about the current battle raging between Echostar (owner of Dish Network) and the Lifetime television channels (which broadcasts (exclusively?) The Golden Girls on television).
Echostar makes one claim, Lifetime makes another. I don’t care really, the most interesting thing about all of this is that sign that the far-left woman is holding in the image.
Double entendre headlines
It just seems a bit dirty to me, that’s all:
CNN.com – ‘Crash’ tops ‘Brokeback’ for SAG honor – Jan 30, 2006
Sign me up!
CNN.com – GIs from celebrated unit in gay porn?
Oh yeah, shame on the military for even investigating. DADT is crap policy and always will be.
Sprint Nextel sues cell phone scammers
Sprint Nextel Corp. has gone to court in Florida to stop 1st Source Information Specialists Inc. from scamming phone companies and then selling that information. Sprint Nextel is seeking both a temporary and a permanent restraining order to keep the company from operating.
Cingular has also asked for and received a temporary restraining order, it says, against 1st Source and another company.
The FCC is investigating the practice of calling the support numbers for the service providers and pretending to be a customer to get access to another person’s phone records and alternate numbers.
Related Entries:
The End of Privacy
Light on commentary, heavy on links
What version of Windows are you running?
I hate hate HATE it when some moron asks what version of Windows that I’m running.
I just had a problem with my ISP. It stopped working. What do I do? Call them, of course.
First I got five minutes of recorded “your call is important to us blah blah blah”. Then I got some tech whose first bit of advice was to “Click Start…Wait, what version of Windows do you use?”
That pissed me off. I don’t use Windows. I’m not, in the words of a friend, “a mouth-breather.” I know the joys of Mac and I’m not going back.
I answered, “I’m not using a Windows machine.” “What are you running,” he asks. “OS X” I reply. Silence. Then he transferred me to someone else.
Someone else’s first bit of “support” was, “What version of Windows do you use?” That pissed me off. I’d already told them once, don’t they talk to each other?
After I again explained that I use a Mac, with not-so-subtle fire in my voice, he told me “We don’t offer support for Macs over the phone. In fact, none of us use one…” He sort of trailed off.
All of this because of an error on their network (that has happened in the past and will in the future) that spontaneously corrected itself half-way through our “discussion”.
I wouldn’t have gotten pissed at all if the first question out of their mouths would have been, “Do you use Windows?” That’s all I needed. Just assuming, though, that I was a Windows user like the others that they have to deal with, annoyed the hell out of me.
They didn’t bother to learn about me and my situation, just used the lowest common denominator and worked from there.
America and Iran, hand in hand
Reuters AlertNet brings this little nugget of stomach-turning news: The US has aligned itself with Iran in order to deny “consultative status” to NGOs who promote equal rights for the LGBT community.
Consultative status is the only official way in which an NGO can participate in the discussions that are held by UN member nations. There are 3,000 groups that have consultative status.
The US joined with such forward-thinking countries as Cameroon, China, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.
Oh yeah, there’s a prestigious group to join…
JeffSay... 
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