Last year, a publisher and my agent told me pirates were HOT and that I needed to write a funny book about them. They couldn’t WAIT to get a contract signed and publish it. So I wrote a bunch of stuff, and they loved it. And then the publisher decided not to publish it, and my agent said I should hold onto it because another publisher might want it, and well, it’s April of 2007, and it’s pretty obvious that the project is dead. Which is too bad, because I wrote a pile of stuff, and I also wasted the time of talented cartoonist Chris Muir, who did some illustrations on spec.
I’m busy this week, so I haven’t written my usual Thursday column, and I don’t want my readers to feel neglected. So I have decided to put the pirate stuff on my site. Today I’m publishing the first two chapters: the introduction and a survey of pirate fashion. I’ll put the rest up in the weeks to come. It’s not completely polished and perfected for publication, because the project collapsed, but if you like my work, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Links will appear below as I publish chapters, and maybe if you’re lucky, Chris will let me show you the illustrations.
Jack Joseph Valenti (September 5, 1921 – April 26, 2007) was an influential American lobbyist and a long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Valenti - Apr 28, 2007
Jack Valenti, the iconic 82-year-old who has headed the Motion Picture Association of America for the last 38 years, spoke at the MIT Communications Forum ... www-tech.mit.edu/V124/N20/ValentiIntervie.20f.html
On November 22, 1963, Jack Valenti, along with several other aides to Vice President Johnson, had a front-row seat to a turning point in history, ... www.betanews.com/article/Jack_Valenti_1921_2007/1177705500 - 20k -
Jack Valenti was CEO and president of the Motion Picture Association of America for 38 years. He stepped down in September 2004, but his legacy lives on. ... www.darknet.com/2005/06/interview_jack_.html - 68k
Jack Valenti, Dead at 85 -- article related to Politics, Movies, Businesses, and Your Rights Online. yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/27/0010202&from=rss - 228k - Apr 28, 2007 -
Scientists have expressed concern about the use of autonomous decision-making robots, particularly for military use.
As they become more common, these machines could also have negative impacts on areas such as surveillance and elderly care, the roboticists warn.
The researchers were speaking ahead of a public debate at the Dana Centre, part of London's Science Museum.
Discussions about the future use of robots in society had been largely ill-informed so far, they argued.
Autonomous robots are able to make decisions without human intervention. At a simple level, these can include robot vacuum cleaners that "decide" for themselves when to move from room to room or to head back to a base station to recharge. (more at link)
Morning Edition, April 19, 2007 · CD sales declined 20 percent in the first three months of this year. At the same time, more and more musicians are taking the do-it-yourself approach — some to prolific extremes.
Last Sunday, the singer-songwriter Paleo finished a marathon project. Every day for a year, he wrote, recorded and posted a song on his Web site. He hasn't been writing songs in his bedroom, either. During the last year, Paleo drove more than 50,000 miles and played more than 200 concerts. Along the way, he wrote the lyrics and played his guitar — in his van, backstage, whenever he could find a moment. (more at top link)
Cho Seung-Hui, (picture of killer) 23, identified as killer in Virginia Tech massacre
Cho Seung-Hui, 23, identified as killer in Virginia Tech massacre
written April 17, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Virginia (AP) _ A Virginia Tech senior from South Korea was behind the massacre of at least 30 people locked inside a campus building in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern United States history, the university said Tuesday.
The Virginia Tech Police Department identified him as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior in the English department.
The bloodbath ended with the gunman's suicide, bringing the death toll from two separate shootings _ first at a dorm, then in a classroom building _ to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy.
The Virginia State Police say ballistics tests show one of the guns found after a deadly shooting at Virginia Tech was used in both shootings, at the doom at the classroom building.
Virginia State Police say ballistics tests show one of the guns found after the deadly shooting was used in both shootings, at a dorm and at a classroom building.
--EOG
For more about this topic, please visit us at our forums below.
This is a running list of Virginia Tech students that were killed yesterday. Their names will contain a link to their myspace page (if their is one).
I am doing this in good taste. I hope it doesn’t offend anyone. The reason behind this is that it’s one thing to hear a list of names on TV, or read them online, but if you take a second to view a bit of the persons personal life it will give you a deeper understanding of that person.
It will help give you a greater understanding of how terrible a tragedy this is. It will help some to realized that the deceased are real people, not just names on a screen. Real people that had real lives, real hopes, and real dreams…. just like you and me.
After looking at the lives of these people, the tragedy hits even harder.
Do you know how we can tell the difference between people who were wearing their seatbelts and those who weren’t, at the scene of an automobile accident? The ones who were wearing their seatbelts are standing around saying “This really sucks,” and the ones who weren’t are kinda just lying there.
This is not to say that all unrestrained traffic accidents are fatals, or that seatbelted folks are invulnerable. But if you’re playing the odds….
Dr. Robert Ostrum said that Corzine’s surgery was successful but noted that the governor would need two more operations on his leg in the coming days.
Doctors also inserted a breathing tube that would remain “for days to weeks, until [Corzine] is able to breathe on his own again,” Ostrum said.
Corzine had a broken sternum, a broken collarbone, a slight fracture of his lower vertebrae, a broken left leg, six broken ribs on each side and a laceration on his head, said Dr. Steven Ross, head of trauma for the hospital.
The two other persons in the vehicle sustained minor injuries. Bet you’ll never guess which two were wearing their seatbelts." (more at top link)
rendering of an unusual solar flare observed on april 21, 2002
(from YouTube user liyongqiang)
"recently i was wholly captured by footage showing close ups of solar flares. i then set out to edit the material (only a few seconds) to this 3 minutes clip. it includes a TRACE (http://trace.lmsal.com/POD/TRACEpod.html) rendering of an unusual solar flare observed on april 21, 2002 (near 1'30"). all materials used here are in the public domain, as the data (see http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/) have been provided by projects labelling their imagery as freely distributable for noncommercial purposes. enjoy.?
camerahacking Forum Index. The time now is Sun Apr 15, 2007 11:00 am ...camerahacking.com Acceptable Use Policy, 2, 2, Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:30 am ... camerahacks.10.forumer.com/
camerahacking Forum Index ... Post new topic · camerahacking Forum Index » Camcorder Discussions, Goto page 1, 2, 3 ... 13, 14, 15 Next ... camerahacks.10.forumer.com/viewforum.php?f=13 - 84k - Apr 15, 2007 -
Find and Compare prices on camerahacking at Smarter.com. www.smarter.com · Camerahacking · Looking for camerahacking? Find exactly what you want today. ... www.flickr.com/photos/tags/camerahacking/
COM address, Popular Photography magazine printed the CAMERAHACKING.COM address. Although this blunder shredded my web site of some glory, I felt it was a ... www.camerahacker.com/.../Mix-up_between_CameraHacker.com_and_CameraHacking.com.html
CronusKey didn't just get taken off of the Camerahacking forums, but BillW also removed it from the SourceForge project page (but apparently not off the ... digg.com/gadgets/Pure_Digital_Tells_Camerahacking_to_Cease_and_Desist
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Electronics camerahacking : 15 April 2007, 10:41 pm : Best and the most latest NEWS around the world about Electronics camerahacking - Best around the world ... www.doctorsan.com/recommended/?rc=m&sh=li&ms=sp&ref=034d55&q=Electronics+camerahacking
Sarah (a teenage Jennifer Connelly) rehearses the role of a fairy-tale queen, performing for her stuffed animals. She is about to discover that the time has come to leave her childhood behind. In real life she has to baby-sit her brother and contend with parents who don't understand her at all. Her petulance leads her to call the goblins to take the baby away, but when they actually do, she realizes her responsibility to rescue him. Sarah negotiates the Labyrinth to reach the City of the Goblins and the castle of their king. The king is the only other human in the film and is played by a glam-rocking David Bowie, who performs five of his songs. The rest of the cast are puppets, a wonderful array of Jim Henson's imaginative masterpieces. Henson gives credit to children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, and the creatures in the movie will remind Sendak fans of his drawings. The castle of the king is a living M.C. Escher set that adults will enjoy. The film combines the highest standards of art, costume, and set decoration. Like executive producer George Lucas's other fantasies, Labyrinth mixes adventure with lessons about growing up. --Lloyd Chesley
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — Wanda Sykes says when she heard about the comments Don Imus made about the Rutgers women's basketball team, her jaw dropped in shock.
But knowing Sykes, she wasn't just leaving it there. She says the reason she reacted that way is that she “thought Imus died, like, nine years ago.” Sykes says Imus has “one of those faces that belongs in the obituaries.”
Sykes spoke out about the Imus comments during her appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." She says she's been contacted by just about every media outlet seeking her views on the situation.
She says that has caused her to wonder: "since when did I become the spokesperson for nappy-headed hos?"
"Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.
Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?
He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. “Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.” " (more at link)
An anonymous reader writes "In the overlooked case between Blizzard and MDY Industries, the creator of the WoWGlider bot, Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation. Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected. Furthermore, Blizzard's legal filings downplay the role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed."
"When the Department of Acceptable Media was shooting their ‘pitch’ presentation to VH1, they cast the chef from the local diner in this super helicopter show. The result was magical."
1935: The Works Progress Administration, established by presidential executive order to help put people back to work during the Depression, takes effect with passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act.
The WPA, the largest component of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program, provided federal assistance designed to employ mainly blue-collar workers –- road-building, reforestation and construction projects employed millions of people -– but white-collar workers and artists were also well-served.
In fact, the WPA infused art into American culture in a way not seen before or since. WPA artists decorated schools, libraries and other public buildings with hundreds of murals, while WPA musicians organized symphony orchestras, and WPA actors staged performances in communities that had never before seen live theater. The Federal Writers’ Project put wordsmiths to work preparing regional guides, indexing newspapers and undertaking historical research projects.
Roosevelt’s detractors, who spoke of “New Dealers” and “socialists” in the same breath, liked to characterize the WPA as a politically corrupt pork barrel where legions of layabouts leaned on their shovels while getting paid for it. But the project not only got about 8.5 million people off the dole, it yielded tangible results. During an eight-year run, WPA workers built or repaired 124,000 bridges, 650,000 miles of highway, 125,000 public buildings, 8,000 parks and 850 airfields.
Asteroid � Blog Archive � Easter turducken: "Making Easter turducken is, fortunately, much easier than a traditional turducken, as it abandons all that pesky protein while fully embracing the empty carbohydrates and fat. While technically Easter turducken is a dessert and traditional turducken a main course, they should never be consumed in the same meal. That would be heresy.
As with traditional turducken, Easter turducken starts from the inside out. The core is formed with miniature Cadbury cream eggs:" (more at link)
It's a great iTunes replacement (and it's free). iTunes is garbage. Maybe it's a lot better in the Mac environment, but for Windows it's just atrocious. ... ask.metafilter.com/20007/Alternatives-for-iTunes
It would then be a true replacement for iTunes and we would no longer have to be held captive by DRM restrictions and trying to reverse engineer any ... www.songbirdnest.com/node/
So what would they call the iTunes replacement? A very good question. I think this could become clear when they decide on the final name for the iTV ... www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/
found my itunes replacement. Just found a really cool GNOME application called Rhythmbox. Really cool little media player using the Gstreamer architecture. ... www.flamingspork.com/blog/2003/08/16/found-my-itunes-replacement/
So I have to find a replacement, and luckily I am not bound to any iTunes music store purchases much like many others are. I have been interviewing Songbird ... www.codeandcoffee.com/2007/03/16/testing-out-songbird-as-an-itunes-replacement/
Exposure to dirt may be a way to lift mood as well as boost the immune system, UK scientists say.
Lung cancer patients treated with "friendly" bacteria normally found in the soil have anecdotally reported improvements in their quality of life.
Mice exposed to the same bacteria made more of the brain's "happy" chemical serotonin, the Bristol University authors told the journal Neuroscience.
Common antidepressants work by boosting this brain chemical.
Dirty play
A lack of serotonin is linked with depression in people.
The scientists say more work is now needed to determine if the bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae has antidepressant properties through activation of serotonin neurons.
Lead researcher Dr Chris Lowry said: "These studies help us understand how the body communicates with the brain and why a healthy immune system is important for maintaining mental health.
"They also leave us wondering if we shouldn't all spend more time playing in the dirt."
The work could also help experts' understanding of why an imbalance in the immune system leaves some individuals vulnerable to mood disorders like depression, he added.
