To be useful is to accept that you’ll be used.

Final report and tabulation of drinking data is up and available for your finals’ essays and resolution lists.

Absolutely no one who writes a blog, journal, whatever should post on Thursday. We hereby declare it the new weekend. Well… between 11am and 4pm. That’s long enough. We wouldn’t want to be away from the Internet for too long.

international threat level indicator

If you insist.

Merry Christmas, World!

• U.S.A — [severe] — Because it’s our last chance at remaining #1.
• North Korea — [high] — You thought they were pretending to be crazy.
• China — [elevated] — One billion empty stomachs plus nuclear weapons.
• France — [guarded] —Everyone outside of colonial Africa is safe.
• Iceland — [low] — Oh, thank God!

More keywords: terror alert. See also current terror alert level.

Display a randomly selected choice from the above on your site with this HTML–

…or does this picture from the WAR-L.I.N.E. site turn you on too?

And while we’re on the site, let’s get physical.

Okay, first. WAR, for War Against Rape, has no abbreviation points but L.I.N.E., for Let it Never End does? I wish I had the tax dollars to support a war against amatuer copy-editors and typesetters.

Second, “Let It Never End?” So, you hope it never ends...? Rape? Ah, but we do need our wars don’t we.

War-Line is serious about fighting organizations that lend to pornography, destroy lives and families in our communities around the country. As you well know, nude/bikini bars and adult book stores are two organizations that cause much of the pain and suffering in our society. In addition, they tend to lead to sexual assault due to the “frenzy from aroused men” that frequent these locations.

WAR-L.I.N.E.

Oh… I see. Rape is caused by pornography. In my life I’ve seen people destroyed by drugs, booze, love mismatches, family problems, lack of education, and domestic violence. “Night Trips” never killed anybody.

Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky started a chain of events which ended with SEATAC airport removing its Christmas decorations. He threatened to sue them to force them to put up menorahs. Interesting how some people resort to lawsuits every time they have a problem.

The rabbi’s lawyer [a rabbi, a lawyer, and a blogger walk into an airport] Harvard Harvey Grad said, “The last thing we need is anyone thinking that.” He inexplicably paused on this non sequitur to cough and then dropped this bomb–

“Jews want to end the celebration of Christmas on public property.” Harvey Grad

What?!? Jews want to end the celebration of Christmas on public property!? Why those penis-chopping fiends! Looks like the Jews are killing Jesus all over again. Actually, it’s about damn time someone showed some initiative, if you ask us.

A lighter note for the US airports which have not removed their Christmas trees and decorations: better be checking them day and night for IEDs and such. Seems like a great place to hide the stuff.

I told you we’d be back with utf-8. I didn’t tell you—but you should have guessed—my juvenile humor knows no borders.

^니_나 ^니_노!

One more for posterity before I forget.

Quanti anni hai, babmina? Dieci? Anch’io.

Now if the stupid Googlebot would just learn how to read application/xhtml+xml we’d really be in business.

Joseph Darby is the man who alerted military authorities—not the press—of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Being an American soldier, law enforcement officer, judge, businessman, whatever, only carries as much weight as the integrity you bring to it. If you come to it as a criminal, you are not an American solider, cop, congressman, whatever. You’re a waste of space and you should be in prison if you’re lucky and deserve another chance, at the bottom of a lake otherwise.

Joseph Darby is a stand-up man and American veteran. He saw crimes had been committed and he reported it through proper military channels. He did not just save some Iraqi prisoners humiliation, torture and possible death. He saved at least a couple soldiers in the next rotation of MPs through Abu Ghraib. He saved them from turning into monsters. He saved them from prison. He stopped something that needed stopping.

Just for the devil’s advocates out there—sure, I can get down with torture being appropriate. Talked about it before. The hiccup is that innocent people will get tortured. At least 10% of the poor bastards in Abu Ghraib didn’t even belong there. Just like the witchcraft trials in Europe in the middle-ages. You didn’t have to be a terrorist/insurgent to get thrown in the clink. You just had to have a neighbor who didn’t like you and told the nearest Marine you were a terrorist. Happened plenty. Part of how we got into this mess.

So there is no valid counter-argument. Darby did the right thing. Sad how gutless some other soldiers were in this. How few of them can step up and be heroes when it takes more than mowing down a line of badly-equipped teens and shop keepers. The very military field is predicated on bravery, not on petty sadism.

60 Minutes did a piece about Darby this weekend. They talked with Colin Engelbach who is the commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter in Darby’s hometown of Cumberland, MD. A beautiful place to which Darby can probably never return.

The threats and local opinion of Darby were related by Engelbach. When he was asked if agreed with it all, Engelbach said–

“I agree that his actions that he did were no good and borderline traitor, yes.” Colin Engelbach

Either we have rule of law or we’re savages and the biggest, meanest, trickiest savages will rule. Either we can be free and safe or we can’t. Colin Engelbach’s view amounts to, “Only my friends can be free and safe. The rest of you are on the menu.”

Mr Engelbach, you have shown where the border is. It would have been easier for you to stand up and defend what’s right than it was for Darby but you crossed over anyway. You are the first Sedition·com pick for Real American Traitor because, in this game, Monday morning traitors count double. The award has no moneys attached but you can rest assured that it will always be here for the world to reference.

Sundays are supposed to be cartoon days. You know me. I refuse to stand in the way of tradition.

We’ll see if those ever get off the ground. I have scripts for a dozen or more but the cartooning just doesn’t come as easily as making fun of Jesus. Maybe because it’s much, much, much, much, much—E.B. White is doing 5,000 RPMs right now but Bertrand Russell is cracking a smile already—harder.

I’m taking suggestions for the title too. “Dinostories” seems a bit obvious. Anyone who suggests something better (in the comments) will get a free Devil’s Dictionary X shirt in the mail for Hanukkah.

Jody sucks number one…

…Other real numbers report disappointment.

If we get to be #1 for underage porn, it seems only fair Jody gets a slice of the pron pi3.

MMM…

Three thousand days ago today Sedition·com first lit your eyes in a CRT wash of light. I wish the eight years would continue to lend cred but like the 17 year-old you lust after today, in ten years the age difference just won't be very exciting anymore.

The roots of this place are explored a bit in the brand spanking new about page. No point in resettling the hash.

And regardless of the unkind words you’ve heard of me in the media since my divorce from Britney Does-this-skirt-make-my-C-section-scar-look-fat Spears, I do in fact have many, many friends and the relaunch party for Sedition 2.0 was well attended.

Arctic ice field could melt by 2080: European research

An asteroid could hit the Earth by 2010, ending all human life: plain old historical fact.

By the way, for all the Biblical “scholars” out there—if every ice cube in the world tray melted, the oceans would rise about 200 feet, tops. It would be terribly unpleasant and most of the humans in the world live at that elevation—I’m just saying the blackbird and the dove won’t have far to fly.

Iraqi panel finds US underreported violence in Iraq

World panel finds underwear underutilized in the US.

10 is the new 15 as kids grow up faster

Stupid is the new smart as Americans are pummelled into Cretinville by FOXNews and DailyKos.

When I was 8 I knew kids who were getting high. When I was 13 I knew kids who were doing coke, sleeping around, and bringing guns to school. Here’s your newsflash: this was contemporary to the last news cycle to include a US President being shot and it was in a Blue state in a small town.

Judge: Paper Money Unfair to Blind

Sedition·com: Reality Unfair to Incompetent.

I do agree in this case. Different sized bills is a good idea and it’s weird how stupid we are about this kind of thing. But seriously. Is this where we’re going? That every single one of us needs to be held down to the level of the least able, the least intelligent, the quickest to cry?

The money I agree with, it only makes sense and it’s not prohibitively expensive, it could even save money, but wheelchair access to National Parks…? That’s not a joke. It’s been, or maybe still is, in the courts. The resources spent trying to keep up the stragglers would be better left in the hands of people who are trying to solve their own problems. The government doesn’t give us vaccines or new machines to make life better. Why the fuck do we let them manage the funds. [Note the rhetorical lack of interrogative.]

US actress Gwyneth Paltrow prefers British dinner talk

“I like living here because I don’t fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans.”

When my heroine Camille Paglia called Ms Paltrow “an insufferable lightweight” back in 2000 I actually flinched. So harsh. Upon some reflection I can only remark, “She got off easy.” Though being married to anyone in Coldplay is karmic retribution enough.

One more thing, deary. Brits are becoming more ass-ignorant every single day in no small part due to the industry in which you’ve made your career. Don’t believe me? In 2004 11% of them thought Hitler was a fictional character. Churchill made out better, coming in with only 9% holding him in disbelief [link]. George birds-of-a-feather Bush didn’t make anyone stupid, Gwyneth, but you sure did.

Al-Qaeda controls western Iraq: US intelligence report

So, take out your home score-cards everyone. Cross check the column 2002 with Iraq and Al-Qaeda. You should find bung. None. Nil. Zero. Not a sausage.

I sure hope someday we track down those responsible for making Iraq into a haven for terrorists. A nice show trial and a round of public executions would go down well, don’t you think?

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95) VoilaBot BETA 1.2 (http://www.voila.com/)

–asked for–

http://sedition.com/perl/$node.html/perl/$node.html

Wonder how many 404s their current bot’s build is racking up all over the world tonight.

Pearl Harbor day snuck, sneaked, snuck up on me. [Those sneaky Japanese!] Instead of talking about how evil the Japanese used to be before they started making transistor radios and tentacle-based romance novels let’s talk about a hypothetical attack on the US. We will always have to be vigilant. It’s self-evident.

What scares me most is a direct large-scale attack on the US. Can you imagine if terrorists burned down the White House? God, I can barely contain my anger just thinking about it. I’m sure they want to do it. What if they burned down every single government building in DC? The Library of Congress, the House and Senate, all of it.

America could collapse. Think about it. No government to save us and make sure the country runs all right on a daily basis. But if by some miracle we managed to withstand such an assault, it would be our obligation to seek justice.

We’d have to crush the perpetrators utterly. If they were sponsored by any foreign governments, we should definitely, definitely, definitely, invade and not rest until the leaders of those countries were executed and their governments replaced with democratically elected bodies.

Any real patriot realizes it wouldn’t matter how long it took. We would never be safe for a moment if we didn’t show terrorists everywhere that American justice is inexorable, guaranteed. No one attacks us and walks away from it. You don’t burn down the Capitol of the United States of America and think you’ll just turn around and be our friends a few years later. You must be brought to justice!

So I propose we do something about it. Because it’s not actually hypothetical, it happened.

British forces destroyed just about every government building in DC. It was not recently but it was well after the Revolutionary War. We can’t let the distance in time stand in the way of justice. Canada helped—and to this day could attack us at any moment along a huge unguarded border—so they need to be invaded too. Think of the great park we could turn the place into!

And Australia, we’ll be keeping an eye on you.

Politics aside, kottke.org is a near perfect blog. It's short, to the point, offers the interesting next the obscure-but-worth-hearing. It really is the textbook example of how to do it and that includes the clean layout and attention to detail and brevity.

Politics included, we start to have a problem but it’s the merest smidgen of your material, so we won’t elaborate, and it has nothing to do with why I can’t link to your site anymore. The real reason is drastically simpler and in all ways harder to excuse–

4 1/2 stars for “Mallrats”

I see Comcast’s listing browser—normally too generous, willing to give anything 2 stars—gives “Mallrats” 1 1/2. I was about to remark that it was the most generous half-star ever given to a movie but I noticed that “Wisdom” received the same mercy portion of stellar material.

Your search — “preventing underage pornography” — did not match any documents.

“We know it’s not how you spell the color in English, but it’s our way of being different.” GLAY

It’s not how you spell the sexual orientation either boys but I’ll stand up for your right to be different.

In spite of the fact that one Mr Pretty-Ok-Guy—née Taco John, née Matthew Baldwin—is quite clever, and in that way that some NYU-types use pejoratively but I consider complimentary, designed and ran the best game I ever played and had the pleasure of winning (on a team of three, the game was too big for one); he also sired the single best computing gag I’ve ever seen by writing a fake Unix shell at Amazon.com which intercepted regular commands and reported back, with misspellings and whatnot, that so-and-so tool was not found or such-and-such arguments were not allowed. If you’re not a *nix geek you don’t know just how fucking funny that was to watch. Where were we? Ah, yes.

Despite all that and other unenumerated personal charms, I removed a long standing link to Defective Yeti some many moons ago for this–

Read Moby Dick

As you can see, he totally deserved it.

[I almost wrote “totally fucking deserved it” because I feel the point should be emphatic but I'm trying to stop using the f-word in print so much (there are rumors that MySQL TEXT columns develop byte reading errors at a certain upper limit of profanity). So I didn’t write it.]

And not just for the horror of steering the curious and the intimidated into avoiding the book. Also because it’s iffy comedy. Way too much work to prop up a “____ dick liar” punchline.

I responded, entirely without humor, annotation, or any writerly adeptness, myself, here—That one wasn’t very funny.

I went back to Defective Yeti recently for the first time in, as I think I used a silly American Indian cliché to relate previously, more than a year. And I discovered two things.

First, he decided just a couple of weeks before my return, to take another stab at reading Moby Dick and journal about the experience. So, by that alone, all would be forgiven.

Second, the following; which I reprint in its entirety without even asking Matthew because it’s complementary so I expect he won't mind and even if he does mind, he knows I'm much bigger than he is and his WHOIS records don’t, as mine do, use a PO Box. [Also DMCA forms are a pain in the ass to fill out—believe me.]

Any man who can write that, deserves all the second chances Liz Taylor has to give.

It’s said that familiarity breeds contempt. Perhaps casual familiarity. Total famliarity, i.e. expertise, breeds complacency; the mother of all auto-pilot.

One of the Slashdot founders told me how he accidentally issued a drop database command against the master development database which automatically replicates to live. He realized immediately what he’d done and raced across the data center and pulled the connections on the server probably a few seconds before every piece of information inside Slashdot was sent off into the eternal bit-bucket.

Tonight I accidentally deleted about 3,000 6 megapixel photographs that took me the last 10 months or so to take. I realized immediately what I’d done and hit the cancel on the Trash but it was too late for me and my birds, and kids, and insects and… It was a combination of stress, not being able to see my screen well due to a fucked up video card (Thanks Apple, that’s three I owe you now), and complacency from shuffling hundreds of files around servers on a daily basis for 8 years.

The Red Herring recently interviewed Nolan Bushnell and reported the
Atari founder wasn’t keen on Sony or the PS3. Bushell talked about the PlayStation 3 strategy–

“I think Sony shot themselves in the foot… there is a high probability [they] will fail. The price point is probably unsustainable.”

To dismiss the Red Herring’s counter-point that both PlayStation and PlayStation 2 were surreally successful, being a luxury comodity with sales in excess of 100 million units each, Bushell replied–

“It wasn’t anything brilliant that they did. With the PS and PS2 it was timing.”

First! To the price point.

The fabulous Curmudgeon Gamer shows, with peppy USA Today-like colored bars, that the Sony PlayStation 3 is indeed the third most expensive home gaming platform of the 26 discussed. Pretty expensive.

What Mistah Bushnell fails to consider is that absolute dollars mean fuck all. For example, the PS3 costs 3 times more than a piano—if the piano is from the first Sears and Roebuck catalogs. A decent piano today starts at around $5,000 and moves into the realm of $50,000 quite quickly.

If you compare relative dollars—which is tricky because some stuff is just easier to do now than it used to be but there you go—the PS3 drops from 3rd in 26 to 10th. Quite close to the middle of the pack.

Second! Timing and brilliance.

There is another console that had perfect timing was quite successful, though not at the level of the PS by any means. The Atari 2600. Perfect timing. Total market share. Perhaps nothing brilliant. You’d think following that up the same way Sony did with the PS2 would be a lock. Nothing to it. Already in charge, just put out a new console and rule.

But the Atari 5200 was a commercial failure. I bought one with my first two paychecks, by the way, and loved it. I didn’t get to love it long because–

1. they stopped making games for it,
2. the controllers were pieces of crap that broke after pretty casual gaming by today’s measures.

That and because the price point was unsustainable. The Atari 2600 and 5200 were 3rd and 4th in relative cost compared to all the others. Adjusted for inflation they cost $659 and $683.

So I think Nolan Bushnell’s comments about Sony and the PS3 must be taken very seriously. He’s probably the foremost expert in the video game industry on failed, over-priced systems from companies who think that “not doing anything brilliant” is synonymous with running the game. Perhaps all the recent Xbox personnel evacuations have left a seat for him to get back into the mix where he belongs.

Today a boy went after my daughter’s attention when I told him politely and repeatedly, “No, thank you.” To which the 3 year-old said, “I’m not talking to you,” and proceeded to throw his gift of a sticker into the shopping cart with my girl.

This was the first time it happened. I'm not going to share any current pictures of her but I can tell you it will not be the last. Naturally curly white girls with blue eyes garner this even when homely let alone when Her.

The message–

I’m not above making a stranger’s 3 year-old cry. I’m not above jerking a 12 year-old’s shoulder out of the socket. I’m not above donating the next 20 years of my life to the State of Washington for the simple fact that you exist in the same world as my children.

Those who don’t plan, plan to don’t.

And we’re back. Check. Check.

Ha-ha, ha-ha! Mm-hmmm, mm-hmmm…

Which is to say, the public facing problem.

All the time I see little one-off things I’d like to stab quickly and be done with. Like Peggy Noonan some weeks ago writing how the final phone calls and messages left on answering machines from the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 demonstrated how crisis reveals the truest, and probably most endearing, qualities in one’s character.

No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor.

I like Peggy, sort of. She is a very good writer and I can’t withhold respect or admiration for someone just because they’re sometimes terribly fucking stupid.

Those people weren’t in crisis. Those people were completely aware, with the certainty of dawn, they were about to die. That’s not a crisis. A crisis is when you have a choice to make. Knowing you’re about to die is the great epiphany bringer. Going to slaughter is the quality editor she’s trying to pin down.

Enough about the rest of you, let’s talk about my problem; which is I can’t just stomp that stuff like I would prefer because the software that runs this site is getting creaky. It’s also missing things I’d like to have, like podcasting hooks and comments. Which is to say, I don’t really want comments on the site, see #5 here—the 12 biggest problems with your blog—but I am aware that it would raise traffic and that is something desirable after all. The site makes Yuban money today. I’d have it make Kopi Luwak money going forward.

Plus, I have been using Google Analytics and discovered the site has a much larger dedicated readership than I thought and a lot of you have valuable feedback for me. For example, a blogger who recently linked to Sedition made this comment with the link–

totally nuts!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!

I want more of those exclamation points. I want so many exclamation points that even Pat will be willing to come down off it. I want to churn out inside jokes like that with the rapidity of junior high gunmen. I want to be able to bash not one celebrity a week but three a day. I want to be able to finish a piece without a strong punchline and not have it keep me awake all night because I’ll have three more lined up the next day; unlike today.

Sedition·com will return when we’re utf8 and application/xhtml+xml compliant. This may or may not be any time soon.

XXX

OOO

Six Arab states join rush to go nuclear

Congratulations, George. The war on terror is making us all safer and safer. Way to go, fuckwad.

Overfishing may harm seafood population

Jesus Christ. I know Thomas Jefferson would disagree but I swear journalists are getting stupider every year.

The definition of “overfish” is not that you catch so many the restaurants can’t sell it all.

China “outstrips world” on executions –and– Microsoft Considers Pulling Out of China…

Microsoft cites repressive taxes on second children as reason for move. No, actually–

Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China.

Fuck you, Fred.

China executes thousands of people every year for crimes as heinous as writing articles, being Christian, or trying to get out of Tibet. I think it might be more important for the world to reconsider doing business with your blood-fed corporation.

And I believe that your rhetoric is evil bullshit. China’s human rights abuses don’t trouble you in the slightest. The only thing that does bother you is Beijing’s lack of willingness to crack down on the rampant software piracy there. Complaints about censorship and democide are merely a way to apply pressure to get what you want: more sales of Windows in Asia.

“Virtually no progress” in alleviating world hunger

From the AFP in Rome–

The world has made “virtually no progress” in eradicating hunger over the past decade despite greater wealth, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Because—as you WILL get tired of hearing me say—hunger is not caused by dearth. People do not starve to death because there is no food. People starve to death because there are guns between them and the production of food. Politics cause famine, not lack of food.

Hussein to die by hanging

Oh, thank goodness. We can finally put this Iraq mess behind us.

Now if we could only make some sort of powerful friend in Iraq who can unite the Iraqis we might have a chance of stabilizing the region.

Democrats sweep elections / Rumsfeld resigns as Bush chooses former CIA director to take post

“As the head of the Republican Party, I share a large part of the responsibility,” he said at a White House news conference. “It was a thumpin’.” George W Bush

As the head up the ass of the Republican party, you should know your job title is President of the United States and not Chairman of the Republican National Committee unless you intend to quit your job to replace Ken Mehlman as the actual head of the Republican party.

Come to think of it, that’s a fabulous idea. Maybe your daddy can get you one last job.