Posted by haltse on March 31, 2007 – 8:26 pm
BBC Radio 4 -Mark Thomas
You can directly listen here.
Just like the USA decided that we could in all good faith have “free speech zones” The UK decided to regulate protests near Parliament square in London. Standing for one minute, one person with any written or graphic material without prior permission is illegal. (I don’t want to spoil one item they considered to be a banner) As he says… “one could have a lot of fun with that”
I wish he’d protest US radio sucking so badly
Posted by haltse on March 31, 2007 – 11:57 am
Kindergarten Girl Handcuffed, Arrested At Fla. School – News
The kindergartner was booked in the Highland County jail and was charged with a felony and two misdemeanors.
Six year olds can be charged with felonies , interesting. It used to be that pigs went oink.. now it’s “you have the right” oh fuck that rights there has to be some questioning of a teacher that needs to have a man with a gun physically restrain a 6 year old way after the incident that allegedly occurred. e.g this wasn’t a berserker at risk to others or themselves this was adults , adults that we pay to run a school for behaviorally challenged kids , ( more detaill over here, acting in a manner that would seem to preclude their being around kids deciding that they wanted to show her whose the boss. If you can’t best a child and you’re career is helping, HA HA, kids you ought to consider a job, sadly the ideal job seems to require a time machine and a uniform change.
So initially why is the obedience to authority such a key point in the spate of kid arrests , handcuffing and tasing of pre teens? E.g most of these stem from you won’t do what we say therefore we will compel you , physically to obey, resist and we’ll throw in jail. What a great lesson.
SIX SIX SIX What’s next we start Kidmo and start potty crime trials?
Posted by haltse on March 31, 2007 – 11:40 am
Nikon | Universcale
Nikon’s total perspective flash,”Universescale” is missing the fairy cake but can take you all the way from femto meters to light years with interesting stops along the way. I still think HHGTTG put it best.
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really really big. You just wont believe how vastly, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you think it’s a long way down the street to the chemist but that’s just peanuts to space,”
Posted by haltse on March 30, 2007 – 5:32 pm
Fundamentalists have no sense of irony. e.g self righteous prick William Donohue from the Catholic League ( of extraordinarily bigoted statements, he’s as bad as me;) ) has decided to take the bold step of relating a chocolate jesus with Easter as being somehow coincidental….
BBC NEWS | Americas | Storm in US over chocolate Jesus
”
The fact that they chose Holy Week shows this is calculated, and the timing is deliberate,” Mr Donohue said.
Er yes, thanks for that insight and analysis it was kinda obvious , oh wait the exhibitor says coincidental.. Pull the other one , but what’s the BFD? Aren’t people consuming the flesh and blood of Jesus daily or is this just another bunch of wine rs taking a wafer thin stand. As to the title? Robert Rankin , who may not be nuts but his writing wouldn’t disabuse of the illusion wrote a book named “the hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse” which is as factually correct, more so, than the bible.
Posted by haltse on March 30, 2007 – 2:52 pm
Filed under Bad CS, rants
The saga continues. I’ve tried to call the department they call order support 1 866 789 8292 now for a few weeks. At first this was an issue as they were closed when I could call at night, didn’t keep weekend hours and the times I called in the AM the hold time was longer than I can dick off for at work. I finally got them.
One of the most useless people to date. They can’t find me by name , phone number ( i didn’t have the acct number handy) so no label for me , I still have a phone I refused nearly a month back and I bet they are going to bill me for it. Why are they trying so hard to lose a customer for life? Maybe in two years I’d reconsider their network but it’s to the point where they really are the corporate Arthur Dent to my Agrajag of customer care
Sprint | Contact Us ( if you dare)
Posted by haltse on March 29, 2007 – 2:31 pm
Ze Frank and THE Frank totally priceless. GALACTICAST presents The Ducky Horror Picture Show
Just one of the many well executed parodies from the duo that comprise Galacticast. This is yet another way not paying for cable has led to some fun new material which unfettered by focus group, fcc, and budget( you sometimes get way more creative without an fx budget ) is consistently funny to the point that SNL and Mad TV should teleport themselves into the nearest star out of embarrassment.
Posted by haltse on March 28, 2007 – 10:37 pm
Justifying Marital Violence: A German Judge Cites Koran in Divorce Case – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News
“The husband can beat his wife”
“The right to castigate means for me: the husband can beat his wife,” Becker-Rojczyk said, interpreting the judge’s verdict.
Germany, Islam together at last…
Res ipsa Loquitur
Posted by haltse on March 27, 2007 – 1:00 pm
BBC NEWS | Technology | Blog death threats spark debate
Thought I would start out on the BBC since there’s about as much chance of a balanced treatment of this story as the President converting to Islam and setting all the calendars back to 16C. There’s nothing a nascent media form likes to do more than sit around discussing itself. Here’s the latest in a Golgafrincham like B’arking up the wrong tree which involves an old fashioned Feud between Kathy Sierra ( in her own words) and one of the accused Chris Locke So pull up a rubber ducky…
Tempest in a teapot seems to be the case but once you have an “unsympathetic” figure , Locke, whose charm to me has always been his robust dialog and his oh my god refusal to capitulate to the outrage from many bloggers that have wholeheartedly taken the allegations, or at least the version they read to be truth.The bigger the name the shriller the outrage that something they care so deeply about could be tarnished by the web being used for something other than the forces of good, e.g. good being employed talking to my friends about how cool they are and how much money they will make by solving the users need to have real time positioning of Pizza delivery tied to the current price of cheddar futures in 3d with real time updates to your phone:D
What it seems like is that people have taken the bad behaviour , real or perceived as real ,and then used it gauge themselves a few points below it.In real terms causing the same kind of unfounded hostility that sparked this whole match. ( if I read one more idiot claim that violence towards women is especially heinous .. ignorant fucks violence against anyone not directly initiating force against you is wrong but it’s nice that they “care”. )
The part where it comes down to .. we need a code of ethics , there’s a right way to blog and ….aarg expect a slough of chicklets,badges and car ribbons to appear based on this incident as well as more gatekeeper’s to make sure we’re doing it right.
All things that I find myself taking the contrarian position on since ignoring the main parties involved the followers are about as intolerant , ain’t it always the way, as the issue they purportedly march against it looks like we already have a defacto code in place where anything other than complete obeisance to the mob is considered an admission of guilt. He’s a witch burn him, burn him.
Out of all the threads/blogs on this matter this one illustrates the arguments involved and some of the personalities I’ve obliquely referenced above and hey some defense for Rageboy just to keep you amused.
Posted by haltse on March 24, 2007 – 3:27 pm
Thursday night saw a heated debate between Erin and myself re the relative sickness level of Dobhran and what to do about it. We ended up in ER because me being right isn’t as important as Dobh .
Here’s the account as I sent it back to the Twitter service ( Just because I make fun of it doesn’t mean I’m not trying to find something. I’m sure this should be a feature, rather than a standalone service, oh wait It already was, this is just easier to set up for people that don’t want to run fake, or real chron jobs on their wordpress installs. You can see the whole thing over here.
Hal : Back home finally , he’s sleeping, I shall try to follow suit.
Hal : Dobhie has a form of pneumonia .viral or bacterial ? Not known but it is not good either ways
Hal : Dobhie has a form of pneumonia .viral or bacterial ? Not known but it is not good either ways
Hal : Passed 3 a.m eternal and still waiting. Kid is happier but we are not. Need zzzzzz
Hal : X-ray over now it is time for nebulizer how much fun are you having @ 0230 ?
?
Hal : At ER with the little one he is far from frilled
Hal : Dobh has what looks like RSV, he’s not a happy bunny.
The hospital called back the next day to say it really is RSV and not pneumonia and he’s really making an OK recovery with some spots of crankiness. I still think the ER system in Phoenix is fundamentally broken , even though this wasn’t a busy night took forever and a day. More soon.
Posted by haltse on March 20, 2007 – 11:06 pm
The next time anyone comes up with a statement re how connected they are to the land I hope someone does the honour of knocking them to the ground to get really well acquainted with it. This is the ultimate fuck you to the HOA;) forget brown grass, a car up on blocks, actually many cars up on blocks without a single title between them but what’s next? Anyway they are a sovereign people, seemingly more so than those that inherited the land , oops usurped would be a better term and although it’s not to my personal taste I’m commenting on this for the hilarity of their having a chat with the dead to make sure that it’s ok to drag this distended colon of an attraction over the canyon. When tied to the symbolic first crossing by a man that was one of the crowning achievements of western science Buzz Aldrin it just seems that at some stage rational people should point out the fact that it’s 2007..
Skywalk at Grand Canyon making its debut
Aldrin was not the first person to walk across the Skywalk. Tribe members held a private ceremony Monday to ask their ancestors for permission to use the land in this way. Tribe members and workers then trod onto the cantilevered bridge a day before the media descended on their community.
Posted by haltse on March 20, 2007 – 10:27 pm
St Patrick’s Day Secrets Revealed
Actually not too bad on the whole though way too kind to the Irish for my bigoted tastes in this piece. Besides if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap.
Posted by haltse on March 20, 2007 – 7:27 pm
Hammerhead shark – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nature porn you’ll never see
69 with the hammerheads
Posted by haltse on March 19, 2007 – 11:30 am
lornamatic » Blog Archive » Brave New Car Dealer: fingerprints required to buy a car?
Another fun piece of consumer resistance were the dealer required biometric info to proceed with the sale.
The paper says clearly that it’s a request, for your protection, and to prevent your identity theft.
When you politely decline, the dealership refuses to sell you the car.
This is precisely what happened to me today when I tried to purchase a new X3 at the South Bay BMW dealer in Torrance, California.
Thankfully they walked away from this piece of security theater, sadly the only people to have done so in the last few months, and provided an interesting post on how such insanity came to pass.
Fry’s foods in Phoenix tried this on with requiring a photocopy of a driving license to buy alcohol and with no one there able to explain what they do with the records and , hey look it’s USA Irony class, provide a treasure trove of info for the budding ID thief since no one on their staff isn’t well paid and not averse to a little id theft?
Posted by haltse on March 18, 2007 – 7:53 pm
Filed under Erin, reviews
R.T. O’Sullivan’s
Chicken Wings Plain, BBQ, Teriyaki, Mild, Medium, Hot, Death or HELL !(no returns on HELL) Served with celery and ranch dressing.
I think I get it, they are being ironic… Because if you get what you want it’s not hell!. Today we stopped in at , like most Irish theme bars in the USA, R.T. O’Sullivans in Glendale. The thought of an Irish bar without cider is as laughable as a French bar sans wine or a burger joint that doesn’t have a coke but would you like a nice green tea? No apple cider in stock , please perry, aka pear cider is fine but it’s not frickin’ cider and there seems to be some reality problems with bars here. NM , ok I do mind but I will let that lie for a future podcast. The wings, HELL , HELL-o I thought I was meant to be in mortal danger here. Seemingly a sauce mild enough to douche with is their idea of hell.. mine is paying $8 to be sorely disappointed, again. Gets better they totally forgot to bring out Erin’s main course .. she’s not happy since the Friday night another restaurant ,A bbq one in Scottsdale forgot her sandwich with her order of …a sandwich.. Today was ok I had enough cider to cushion the effects of a pissed Erin;)
Podcast related to the above
Posted by haltse on March 18, 2007 – 2:24 pm
Filed under Erin, F100, Family
Ford F-Series – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Recently we acquired a ford f100 , 1974 vintage, that has a lot of original parts on it. It’s now has several less;) Today’s joy, before the AZ sun came and declared a no fun zone for shade tree mechanics , was a new master brake cylinder and brake booster. All in in relatively painless , only two trips to the local napa, one for a cotter pin and one prior for the needle nose pliers which led us to the discovery we need another pin. It’s all back and does it work? No idea, it’s too hot to care and the system still needs bled.
I’m po.
In other news. Pool is up and running…