educating eric

It's my sad prediction that the Iraqi insurgents will win and the country of Iraq will descend into chaos and civil war. Why? Because they're extremely difficult to stop, and in the process of trying to stop them you crack down so hard on civilian populations that tragedies like this happen: U.S. troops kill pregnant woman in Iraq - Yahoo! News So, why does that guarantee an insurgent victory? Because the U.S. will need to pull out of Iraq. Why? Because of the perfectly natural reaction of the Iraqi citizens caught in this struggle, like this quote from the driver of the car who was rushing the pregnant woman to the hospital: "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives."

So, I'm a huge fan of Pandora.com, which is keeping me sane as I plug through some rote stuff here at work. And, as I'm listening to my Lasgo station, up comes the mix of a song that was originally by "Circ". Ever have one of those "I can't believe what I'm hearing?!?" moments? You can read the lyrics for yourself at CIRC LYRICS - Destroy She Said Lyrics , but here are the highlights from the song "Destroy She Said": Like towers falling down Like a bomb blast in your town Like a hostage tied in chains I could not forget your name Like a helicopter crash Like a ghetto that's been smashed Like bodies on a battlefield I can't live with how you feel Destroy, she said My love again The end will come quickly Don't try again To make amends You'll just end up sinking If you explode in aftermath Don't think you've been dreaming Ummm... that seems really inappropriate, doesn't it?

Among other things, war is bad -- for everyone involved. But I'll admit that I get a bit frustrated when people connect the dots from "we're in a bad war" to "therefore, our president is an evil liar". Here's an interesting article reminding us of some more facts surrounding our entrance into the Iraq war.

In a very similar vein as my presentation tomorrow is this one from the upcoming n m c : events: 2006 summer conference: preconference workshops : "Can You Wiki a Vlogcast? Web 2.0 and Rich Media" This session explores the intersection of Web 2.0 social computing with new developments in rich media, examining the resulting pedagogical uses Instructors discuss the different levels of interactivity afforded by syndication, aggregation, and mixing of sound and video files Emphasis is laid on two case studies: how can podcasts become more responsive to users, as their content is enhanced by emergent tools and practices? How can video be collaboratively edited? New forms of storytelling are also considered. By Bryan Alexander, NITLE Wish I could see that!

Do you really need Divine guidance to declare that the United States will experience storms? Pat Robertson says God told him storms, possibly tsunami, will hit U.S. in 2006

NOT WORK SAFE!!! But here's what you've all been waiting for! Not only was there an FHM spread, but there's a video of the making of the FHM spread! Kari Byron - WebTV - WebTV - FHM Magazine Online - FHMUS.com The Mentos thing is... interesting. I've seen the effect before, but somehow it's just a little bit different when Kari does it. UPDATE (June 2006): I've moved all my Kari Byron commentary over to a different site; you're welcome to browse around here... but for anything new, check out the Kari Byron category on att.ention.net .

I'm playing with Joomla, and just found official reference to something that I suspected for a long time. From the blog posting Permalinks on a Linux GoDaddy account - problem and solution - WordPress Support : "NOTE: Changes made to an existing htaccess file will be seen immediately. When a new htaccess file is created or an existing htaccess file is deleted, however, these changes will not be seen until the htaccess cache is cleared. This occurs every hour." The problem is, you need to change the .htaccess file to make links in Joomla "search-engine friendly" (that is, simplify them rather than having long URLs with lots of weird variables in them). And it looks like a couple different things need to be tweaked on GoDaddy (judging by all the different conversation about this on various forums). So I'll have to wait an hour between each change until I finally get it right. Once I do, I'll tell everyone how it turned out! :)

This work is absolutely incredible! Visit Ilana Yahav - Sand Fantasy - Video Clips and check out the "Just imagine..." clip in particular.

I've written about this before (I think), but here's another example of someone teasing a scammer. I hadn't seen this one before until it appeared in my junk folder, but someone else has described how Tony Fred is in Dire Straights!