educating eric

Mark Lyon ? Best Buy Sucks / I guess I'm not the only person who has problems with Best Buy! Now that I've seen the reference to the barcode "failing to print properly" in Hotmail, I wonder if the certificates I finally got will actually work?

Close Human Relative Nearly Extinct : "'Bonobos are fascinating creatures and little understood. They have the only great ape society led by females, with a sophisticated social structure that encourages cooperation and peace and settles disputes through sex.'" This is sad. Sounds like my kind of species.

QVC.com Shopping presents the Commodore 64 30-in-1 Classic Plug & Play Video Game . Everything old is new again, right? Man, this is cheaper than my first 3K memory expander for my VIC-20. (Yes, 3K. That's not a typo.)

The prodigal filter has come home! I just found my long-missing infrared pass filter, which I used to use for digital infrared photography. (I'd show off some of the photos, but VillagePhoto.com saw fit to delete my account entirely, so I've lost those photos and have to dig them off an archived CD somewhere. And winter is a horrible time for taking infrared photos... plus my camcorder is being repaired at Best Buy and is two weeks past its estimated return date with no return in sight because they say they sent it to Sony and don't know its status. But I'm not bitter...) So, how'd I find it? While rummaging around for my Fred Phelps footage that I thought was in the closet (no pun intended!) so I could update my seeker.TV site. Amazing how things fit together, isn't it?

FAMVIR Shockwave Ad / In the "You've got to be kidding!" category... is this ad. The link will pop it up for you full-screen; it appeared in a window alongside a Yahoo news story (about the Asian earthquake, no less). Seemed innocent enough... until I actually read the captions that were popping up. I can't guarantee how long the link will work, but until they get rid of it, it's an interesting commentary on advertising today!

GEOVISTA Neighborhood Tours FAQ'S / I thought Microsoft's Terraserver was one of those "breakthrough products"... and I think this is the next one. This is really, really amaing. Here's an example .

CNN.com - Conservative students, liberal profs - Dec 28, 2004 / I've long pondered the arguments that "the one thing we shouldn't tolerate is intolerance" or "the only people we should exclude are those who discriminate" or such. My conservative bretheren would argue those are hypocritical, but I'm not sure -- I think that you can value tolerance and not tolerate those who are intolerant, and in doing so uphold rather than negate your value. But, anyway, this is an interesting article about "liberals" crying "FOUL!" when "conservatives" invoke the concept of "academic freedom" to protect their speech at colleges and universities. Hmmm...

New Candela Photos! By popular demand, here are the latest and greatest photos of Candela. I haven't even taken the time to write any descriptions or cutlines... but at least they're there now!

AxisofLogic/ Religion/World View : "To see what this side is thinking, I recently spent a day watching Christian broadcasting. What struck me most was the emphasis the preachers and talk show hosts placed on the need to get religion into government. They were positively obsessed with it." This is what Wayne Pederson warned about years ago... and his caution to broadcasters got Jim Dobson so fired up that he forced Pederson to resign as NRB president. (Dobson was then censured by the NRB's ethics committee and, rather than humbly apologizing for his misconduct, he chose to resign from the NRB board. I'm not sure that's what Jesus intended as recorded in Matthew 18...)

Yahoo! News - Honeypot Project Finds Unpatched Linux PCs Stay Secure Online For Months : "More important, however, is that hackers are now using tactics to target users, not the systems they work on. The best example is the flood of phishing attacks cranked out by criminals this year that need nothing more than an enticing e-mail message, an easily-duped consumer, and a bogus Web site to haul in dollars and steal identities." Setting up my Dad's new computer a year ago (before SP2 came out) I know from personal experience how quickly a Windows box can get hacked -- and, since you need to put it online to pull down updates from windowsupdate.microsoft.com, you're in a Catch-22. Interesting to see that, like Macs, Linux isn't ( yet ) a popular platform to hack.

Spiricom Years ago I read a book called The Ghost of 29 Megacycles . And after hearing Art Bell make a reference to EVP last night (and his Halloween show, which I missed) I thought I'd check up on it. It's very strange to hear audio clips of exchanges I read about nearly 20 years ago!

I wonder how long it's going to be before I have to deal with "comment SPAM" in my 'blog? Wired 12.03: The Complete Guide to Googlemania! : "Comment spam proliferated throughout the blog sites with amazing speed. One blogger had 120 posts spammed over four days. Thoughtful discussion spaces were besieged by meaningless posts, sometimes in broken English, sometimes with bizarre keywords inserted into otherwise prosaic comments in a sort of spammer Tourette's: 'I greatly appreciate atkins diet the comments here.'"

A blog posting that's covering my two favorite topics: I am Tantalus : "Sunday, December 05, 2004 usual mid-20's food for thought In a recent discussion of religion, I said that if I had to call myself anything, I'd be a maytheist. There may be a god, and there may not. When the end comes, I don't think I'll be surprised either way. I once read a bumper sticker, though, that said 'All acts of love and kindness are my religion.' I really like that. Mythbusters is on. If there is any compelling evidence of the existence of God, it is his/her/its master creation: Kari Byron."

I wondered why the case of Lisa Montgomery (and the cold-blooded slaughter of Bobbie Jo Stinnett) sounded so familiar... and then I remembered a case published on a page about Illinois Commutations : "Fedell Caffey & Jacqueline Williams "Caffey and Williams decided they wanted a baby. So they stabbed to death a pregnant woman, Debra Evans, in her Addison apartment and cut her nearly full-term fetus from her body, according to prosecutors. To eliminate witnesses, they also murdered Evans' 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, and 8-year-old son, Joshua. Another child, Jordan, was spared in the 1995 murder--children under the age of 2 aren't likely to be good witnesses. And the newborn boy also survived. Fortunately, Jordan's grandfather, Sam Evans, says Jordan has no recollection today of the horrors he witnessed. "

Yahoo! News - Conductor Kills Self Inside L.A. Cathedral This is so, so sad. Get it in your head now that suicide never solves anything and really messes up the people you leave behind. That way, if your brain chemistry ever gets unbalanced and you become suicidal, you might remember enough about its horrible effects that you get yourself some help.

Okay, I've seen my share of SPAM, but this is amaing. Maybe the grammar is intentional, to get people like me to open it. The only thing I can think of is that they're using a thesarus to generate new permutations of e-mails in the hopes that more will get through: Spoiled and dissolvable lozenges for genuine guys These tablets are simply similar normal tablets but they are especially explicated to be pliable and soluble under the clapper. The lozenges is sorbed at the oral fissure and gets in the bloodstream direct instead of moving through the tummytum. This effects in a quicker much more vigorous result which run up to 21 hours!

St. Paul Pioneer Press | 12/13/2004 | Nurse defends flu shots Sorry, but I still think this falls into the "dumb" category. But maybe that's just because I know how easy it is for organizations like these to give you plenty of "approvals" to your face and then disavow any knowledge of your actions when they're questioned. Always get everything in writing, right?

Yahoo! News - Doctor: Yushchenko Poisoned With Dioxin This is amazing. Even though people get high-strung in this country over elections, at least we aren't running around poisoning people!

St. Paul Pioneer Press | 12/07/2004 | Nurse claims shots genuine : "Torgerson believed she had sufficient permission to give the shots because students at the information desk of Christensen Center told her she could." What a mess. And, I'm sorry, but this nurse made some really dumb decisions. We're not talking about selling watches that are hanging inside your coat; when you jab people with needles, inject stuff, and then act suspicious, it's going to be a big deal. Right or wrong, it's going to be a big deal!

The Rude Pundit Most of you reading this will find this link horribly offensive (if for nothing else than the language), but it's important reading -- documenting how one or another person's "witness" can have a profound effect on people's lives. And how today's "conventional wisdom" thinks of the "Biblical 'Christ' and his words of, you know, love, peace, and fellowship".

So, some Cathoic priests abuse children, some Protestant ministers have affairs, some televangelists swindle their viewers, and some shaman Hmong shoot people while hunting. Which proves, for sure, that humanity is flawed... The New York Times > National > Hmong Hunter Charged With 6 Murders Is Said to Be a Shaman : "The man charged with murdering six other hunters and wounding two in Wisconsin last week is a Hmong shaman who has called on the spirit world in trances that last up to three hours, his family and friends say. The accused, Chai Soua Vang of St. Paul, seeks 'the other world' when he tries to cure sick people or invoke divine protection for those who request it, said his friend and former hunting companion Ber Xiong. 'He is a special person,' Mr. Xiong said. 'Chai speaks to the other side. He asks the spirits there to release people who are suffering on earth.'"

Lycos launches anti-spam zombie army - ZDNet UK News : "'It's irresponsible of Lycos to put its name to it because it lends legitimacy to [DDoS] attacks,' said Linford. 'You can't break into a thief's house just because he breaks into yours. We don't support this or recommend this practice. Directing traffic is part of the degradation of the Internet we are trying to stop.'" Can you have an idea that's both "good" and "incredibly stupid" at the same time?