You're Amelia!
You're late!
Amelia Pond! You're the little girl!
I'm Amelia, and you're late.
Tuesday, May 08
France - Not Quite Dead?
Well, M. Sarkozy certainly seems to be
annoying all the right people. And 53% of the vote on an 85% turnout is, while not a great result, at least somewhat encouraging. It's France, after all. Baby steps. They're still learning how to run a country without
demolishing it every twenty or thirty years.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:34 PM
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1
once again pixy, I'm sorry.
Major lag at aces. Not lagging out, but this might be a presaged situation where you can monitor exactly what happens.
Posted by: Wickedpinto at Friday, May 11 2007 06:48 AM (QTv8u)
2
could it be that so many comentators (which I learned is the proper term) link video and that your overlay query's those video's, and that ace's front page is so large?
No offense to the VRWC hadeen like vince and stuff, but their comments are generaly text built and unfortunately excecively racist, though I think the sites are awesome.
Back on point. Is it that Aces place tends to attract too many links/embeds?
I remember when I would querry my character for every piece of code I wrote, I ended up freezing my area's when I was a mud "wiz" (once again I know it's nowhere near what you do, and as in nowhere I mean as in the place that you call nowhere, has a guy who can tell you "OH! wickedpinto? he's in the middle of nowhere" sort of nowhere, I'm just trying to create a personal reference) and eventually it just plain got too big.
Just wondering.
Posted by: Wickedpinto at Friday, May 11 2007 07:02 AM (QTv8u)
3
could it be that so many comentators (which I learned is the proper
term) link video and that your overlay query's those video's, and that
ace's front page is so large?
No, that shouldn't matter at all.
Anyway, I checked in at Ace's and everything seems to be fine.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 11 2007 11:48 AM (PiXy!)
4
I think I know what the problem was this time: One of the other
mu.nu servers was overloaded and very slow. Ace's comments page includes a list of mu.nu blogs - and that list comes from the server that was running slow.
I fixed the other server before taking a look at Ace's site, so I didn't see that happening, but that's probably what it was.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 11 2007 12:18 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Wickedpinto at Saturday, May 12 2007 07:24 AM (QTv8u)
6
Aces has been freezing for the last 20 minutes.
I don't know if it's me or you. just saying.
Posted by: Wickedpinto at Saturday, May 12 2007 03:24 PM (QTv8u)
7
I think it might be you this time. All six comment processes are running okay, and both the main page and the comments came right up for me.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, May 12 2007 04:13 PM (PiXy!)
8
sorry to harrass you like that pixy. Thanks for being interactive.
Posted by: Wickedpinto at Sunday, May 13 2007 01:44 AM (QTv8u)
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Monday, April 30
Drop The Bomb!
Australia's Federal Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, is
against nuclear power but for expanded uranium mining. Leaving aside his hypocrisy on the subject of global warming - attacking the government's plans as inadequate while supporting the continued use of coal for base power generation - it's clear that his claim that he just wants to sell the uranium to other nations is disingenuous.
He really wants to build
bombs.
That's the first policy that has endeared him to me in any way. Now if only he had the courage to admit it openly!
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Tuesday, February 20
Second Opinion
The Age, 19th February 2007, morning edition:
WORLD opinion emphatically rejects the idea that Islam and the West are heading for an inevitable clash of civilisations, according to an ambitious poll of public attitudes across 27 countries, commissioned by The Age and the BBC World Service.
The Age, 19th February 2007, afternoon edition:
India train blasts an 'act of terror'Twin blasts aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan that killed at least 64 people were probably "an act of terror", a spokesman for India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says.
Southern Thailand bomb attacks kill threeAt least 28 bombs exploded in apparently coordinated attacks in parts of southern Thailand plagued by a Muslim insurgency, killing at least three people and wounding more than 50, the military said.
Baghdad bombings leave 60 deadA double car bombing ripped through a crowded Baghdad market today, killing at least 60 people and wounding scores more in a first vicious blow to the city's new US-led security operation.
Russian McDonald's rocked by blastAn explosion caused by a suspected bomb in a McDonald's restaurant in Russia's second city of St Petersburg on Sunday injured at least five people, officials said.*
Seems that some people can't be bothered to read the paper.
* The Russian attack has not been tied to Muslim extremists, but from the same article:Anti-Moscow rebels linked to Russia's Chechnya region have mounted a spate of bomb attacks on civilians in Russia but there have been no major attack outside the turbulent North Caucasus region for more than two years.
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1
Technically I suppose it's true. We are not "heading for" a clash. IT has already begun.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin at Tuesday, February 20 2007 09:42 AM (Z3kjO)
2
Methinks the clash started hundreds of years ago. As the "motto" on Gates of Vienna says, "We are in a new phase of a very old war."
Good catch Pixy
Posted by: GM Roper at Tuesday, February 20 2007 08:18 PM (S60yG)
3
They've never gotten over loosing the Crusades and the Battle of Granada.
I guess the World didn't get the Qaeda memo outlining their goal of taking over the world or it's alternative: anhilation.
Posted by: michele at Tuesday, February 20 2007 10:22 PM (Lrt1F)
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Tuesday, January 16
Be Careful What You Wish For
John Derbyshire:
Now, weave in our recent thread about consumer eugenics and designer babies. If consumer eugenics becomes cheap and ubiquitous, as I suspect it will, won't religious people want their offsprings' genes tweaked to make them religious, too? With the result, if those differential birthrates hold up, that the world will become more religious generation by generation?
I can think of few more things more damaging to religion that the discovery that it is even partly genetic in origin and readily manipulable. If your belief system can be set by simple genetic tweaking, as Derbyshire would have it, then it seems to be of no more significance than blue eyes or brown.
I'm not greatly concerned by this, but I think that those in favour of religion should be.
(via Insty)
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Monday, January 01
Happy New Year!
It's 2007.
Well, nearly 2007.
2006.9998.
I'm sitting here watching AMV's and documenting Minx template tags. There's millions of the buggers.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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1
Any AMVs you want to tell us about, Pixy? There haven't been all that many recently that have made me sit up and take notice.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, January 01 2007 10:20 AM (YWRlP)
2
Oh yeah... HAPPY NEW YEAR! for you!
Still have... um... 15-1/2 hours left here.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, January 01 2007 10:21 AM (YWRlP)
3
Just old favourites. Nothing I haven't mentioned before.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, January 01 2007 10:31 AM (A9tur)
4
I don't understand the point of the garbage-characters spammer. He not only creates posts full of crap, but the URLs he plugs are also randomly generated and don't connect to anything. Why bother? About the only thing it could be is harassment. You desecrate a shrine lately, or something?
(Maybe it's a script kiddy who botched his setup.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, January 01 2007 08:02 PM (+rSRq)
5
I don't know either. I've seen some which are clearly markers of some sort, but these just look random.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, January 01 2007 08:31 PM (A9tur)
6
It's possible this is done to attempt to confuse the spam filters? Like trying to poison a Bayesian spam filter?
Posted by: Nick at Monday, January 01 2007 11:49 PM (92ejL)
7
Just wishing you New Years greetings Pixy.
Posted by: Andrew at Tuesday, January 02 2007 06:42 PM (t8tOu)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 02 2007 10:05 PM (FRalS)
9
Nick - well, maybe. I don't have a Bayesian spam filter (mine is based on a mixture of fixed rules, statistical rules, and honeypot data) so I don't think they'll have much luck there.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 02 2007 10:06 PM (FRalS)
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Sunday, December 31
So Let All Tyrants Perish!
From
The Age:
Saddam Hussein is dead, hanged at dawn in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.
And there was much rejoicing.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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And boy, the disgruntlement on the left. The "party line" response to this news seems to be, "And what difference does it make?"
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, December 31 2006 01:46 AM (+rSRq)
2
Makes a hell of a difference for Saddam, I'd say.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 31 2006 03:12 AM (A9tur)
3
There's a weird symbiosis developing between Sunni Arabists and the Western Left. Look for a sympathetic play to be written shortly.
Posted by: TallDave at Sunday, December 31 2006 06:22 PM (odS+4)
4
Blair's Law:
The ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 31 2006 07:43 PM (A9tur)
5
Wasn't done fast enough, wasn't slow enough, and they're letting him be buried where his family wants.
I'm glad it's gone, but could they have sent it to hell in a more screwed up way?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sunday, December 31 2006 09:52 PM (6YRS5)
6
I guess I'm easy pleased. When it comes to murderous dictators, dead is good, and I don't care too much how it comes about.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 31 2006 11:00 PM (A9tur)
7
This is MUCH better than eating brave Sir Robin's minstrels.
Yaaaay
Posted by: Tommy at Tuesday, January 02 2007 04:06 AM (7Dntd)
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Thursday, December 14
The Law Of Unintended Consequences
See it in action:In an extraordinary end to vote counting from the November 25 state election, the Victorian Electoral Commission yesterday awarded two seats to the DLP, which will share the balance of power with the left-wing Greens and the conservative Nationals.
The DLP — which has not won a seat in Victoria's Parliament since 1955 — received only about 2 per cent of the statewide primary vote. Yesterday's shock outcome was the result of favourable preference flows from almost every other party, including Labor and the Liberals.
In the 2004 Australian federal election, control of the Senate depended on the distribution of preferences from the Queensland Fishing Party, a turn of events that I think summed up Australian politics perfectly.
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Tuesday, October 03
Compare And Contrast
The First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29, Paragraph 3:
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Discuss.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Nothing really to discuss. If those losers at the UN seriously try to push this crap in the US, we will hang the ones too stupid to flee from lamp posts, as well as any local politicians that make the grave error of supporting them, and shove that building of theirs into Turtle Bay.
The UN generally has exactly one response to violent oppostion ... they run away or hide.
Posted by: Kristopher at Tuesday, October 03 2006 10:30 AM (O5Ju8)
2
The UN's mission has become the preservation and advancement of the UN. It is, in fact, the only thing they have done successfully.
I say kick them out of the country and don't give them another dime of US taxpayer money.
As for Turtle Bay - declare it a Superfund sight. Ideas can be toxic too.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin at Tuesday, October 03 2006 08:47 PM (DdRjH)
3
There's still a UN?
Has anyone looked into why?
Posted by: TallDave at Thursday, October 05 2006 11:35 PM (H8Wgl)
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Saturday, September 23
Save New Scientist!
Back in the 80s, through to the mid-90s, I bought New Scientist every single week, and read it from cover to cover.
And then... Well, let's just say that I didn't leave New Scientist, New Scientist left me.
The economic illiteracy of the editors I could cope with, more or less; it's a popular science magazine, not an economics journal.
But the growing scientific illiteracy was harder to stomach. The increasing tendency to "study the controversy" and publish articles that were complete and obvious nonsense eventually drove me away.
Now it looks like I'm not alone.
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Scientific American did the same to me. I used to subscribe, and then for a while I picked up an occasional issue on the news stand. Now I don't even visit their web site for free articles. The editorial board got taken over by lefties and they began to push global warming and vast-rates-of-extinction and a lot of other idiotic anti-progress and anti-globalization issues that weren't really what Scientific American was supposed to be about -- and weren't really even very scientific.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, September 23 2006 09:18 PM (+rSRq)
2
A bit of a digression, but:
The interesting thing about the controversy over rates of extinction is that even Bjorn Lomborg, the so-called "Skeptical Environmentalist" who likes to argue that everything is fine, estimates that over the next 50 years about 0.7 percent of
all species will go extinct. This may not sound like much until you
realize how short 50 years is on a geological time scale, and how many species there are.
To put things in perspective, note that given Lomborg's
estimate that there are between 10 and 80 million species total,
a loss of .7 percent of all species would mean
between 70,000 and 560,000 extinctions in the
next 50 years. This amounts to 1,200 and 10,000 per year,
or between 4 and 30 a day. By comparison, the flaming leftie E. O. Wilson, who Lomborg loves to mock, estimates between 14 and 70 a day!
So, what's amazing is how little disagreement there actually is on this issue. Among people who've taken the trouble to study it, the two ends of the debate agree up to an order of magnitude, which is pretty darn good for such a tricky issue. They mainly just describe the problem in different ways: 14-70 extinctions per day sounds big, while .7 percent per 50 years sounds small.
Perhaps more to the point, Lomborg
says the current extinction rate is about 1500 times the natural
background rate.
References can be found on my
mass extinction webpage.
Posted by: John Baez at Sunday, September 24 2006 01:12 AM (t/5Dd)
3
I agree with you there, though that wasn't the sort of controversy that put me off New Scientist - that's a real scientific difference of opinion (whether Lomborg is right or wrong, he's not a crackpot).
What drove me nuts was seeing New Scientist giving equal time to people like
Rupert Sheldrake, who most definitely
is a crackpot.
(Oh, and though I'm no expert in the field, it seems clear to me that we are indeed in the middle of a human-induced mass-extinction event, regardless of the exact nature and degree of global warming.)
(Oh and also - HTML works, but you either need to use the buttons or click on the <> button to bring up an HTML editor instead of the WYSIWYG one.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, September 24 2006 04:13 AM (Zr5NU)
4
P.S. Whoa! You're
that John Baez! Hi there!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, September 24 2006 04:15 AM (Zr5NU)
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Friday, September 22
Here's To The United Nations!
Celebrating 61 years of preventing war between Germany and France.
(Actually, the party isn't until October 24th, but I'll forget the point by then.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Isn't preventing France from getting invaded like telling a masochist you refuse to hurt him?
How can the UN be so mean?
Posted by: Kristopher at Friday, September 22 2006 10:24 AM (O5Ju8)
2
How can the UN be so mean?Don't be so down on the UN! It's what they were set up to do, and they have done it. Perfect record.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, September 22 2006 10:33 AM (0Lkqa)
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