posts brought to you by the category
“politics”
Das eez kaput! Sometime around 2002 I spaced the entire
database table that mapped individual entries to
categories. Such is life. What follows is a random sampling of
entries that were associated with the category. Over time, the
entries will be updated and then it will be even more
confusing. Wander around, though, it's still a fun way to
find stuff.
It's a world gone mad when:
It's touching us.
In case you needed reminding that life existed before
weblogs.
Irwin Cotler as Minister of Justice; that's one I didn't
see coming.
La Poutine is dead! Long live le Steamé!
Me : Some days it's hard to feel good about the NDP.
Who was the political wunderkind that scheduled Bono to speak in
front of Paul Martin's coronation?
The Connection : Dean.com
Excerpted : And then a rock came flying through the window.
August 26, 2003
Montreal
I got in the car and started driving at 06H30 this morning.
<snip />
I told her I would get up early and fetch her around 07H30 which,
notwithstanding the traffic on the way back in to town, would give me a
couple hours to work before I took her to the airport.
You can see where this all going, can't you?
Everyone said that it only takes about 45 minutes to get to Lachute from
Montreal. And it does. And it did. On the way back. After I threw the
directions that she'd been given in the back seat and simply trusted the
map.
The lesson here is clearly : always check directions against a map. Had
I done that earlier I might have noticed that there are two route 148s
in Quebec (separated by many kilometers), that route 139 doesn't exist,
that the turn off to route 158 isn't actually marked and that route 158
is in fact a very short country road with the second route 148 at one
end and a major provincial highway that leads straight into downtown
Montreal at the other.
I pulled up the driveway at 09H00.
But we made it back eventually. I had baked cookies for her to take up
for the rest of the week and there were still some left which helped
ease the aggravation on the way back.
And then, on my way back from the airport, a rock came flying through
the driver's side window while I was driving 110km on the 20 Eastbound,
ricocheting off my head.
I can't find the rock (which I can only guess came off the big truck
with the tarp that I was passing) and all I have to show for the adventure
is a bump on my head. Otherwise I appear to be fine.
A bit dazed, maybe, but it's hard to know how dazed I already was when I
was struck. I'm just glad I didn't have to figure out how to cross three
lanes of traffic with a face full of blood.
Jon Udell : The Document is the Database
It's handy that the "database" is a self-contained package that can be updated using any text editor, emailed, read directly from a file system, or served by any web server. But it's awkward to share the work of updating with other people or to isolate and edit parts of the file as it grows. When we convert to a database-backed web application in order to solve these problems, we trade away the convenience of the file-oriented approach. Can we have our cake and eat it too?
The Ascii Art Dictionary
Me : http://aaronland.info/html/ed/example.txt
Norman Walsh : Threading Essays
Overheard, game seven :
-
I might be able to root for the Ducks if they actually came out and played
the V-formation.
-
It was worth hearing the New Jersey fans boo Giguere to also hear them boo
the Weasel.
-
Ah, come on! L'hockey c'est pas une game de famille!
William Safire on the intersection between weblogs and the TIA
Rather, I have in mind the brief notation of the day's highlight, the amusing encounter or useful insight that will someday evoke a memory of yourself when young. Such a journal entry perhaps an e-mail to your encoded personal file can now be supplemented by scanned-in articles, poems or pictures to create a "commonplace book." You will then have a private memory-jogger and resource for reminiscence at family gatherings.
Me : Image::Shoehorn.pm 1.42
Not to piss too hard on the revisionist parade surrounding GreyMatter today,
James Spahr : "I made a Movable Type BBEdit glossary"
Me : Eatdrinkfeelgood Markup Language 1.1b2
Jarkko Hietaniemi : The Zen of Comprehensive Archive Networks
Me : Net::Google.pm 0.52
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : concomitant
Concomitant \Con*com"i*tant\, n.
One who, or that which, accompanies, or is collaterally
connected with another; a companion; an associate; an
accompaniment.
Reproach is a concomitant to greatness. --Addison.
The other concomitant of ingratitude is
hardheartedness. --South.
web1913
concomitant
adj : following as a consequence; "an excessive growth of
bureaucracy, with related problems"; "snags incidental
to the changeover in management" [syn: {accompanying},
{attendant}, {incidental}, {incidental to(p)}]
n : an event or situation that happens at the same time as or in
connection with another [syn: {accompaniment}, {co-occurrence}]
wn
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : gizzlefumper
A person who tells long, pointless stories that are half off the subject.
ex. Megan is a gizzlefumper. Does anybody have any duct tape?
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : glucker
The flap of skin that hangs down at the back of your throat. Another name for uvula.
ex. Man, my glucker sure got a workout when I gargled this morning.
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : exacerbate
Exacerbate \Ex*ac"er*bate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Exacerrated};
p. pr. & vb. n. {Exacerrating}.] [L. exacerbatus, p. p. of
exacerbare; ex out (intens.) + acerbare. See {Acerbate}.]
To render more violent or bitter; to irriate; to exasperate;
to imbitter, as passions or disease. --Broughman.
web1913
exacerbate
v 1: make worse; "This drug aggravates the pain" [syn: {worsen},
{aggravate}, {exasperate}] [ant: {better}]
2: exasperate or irritate [syn: {exasperate}, {aggravate}]
wn
"People literally will not cross the street to get coffee."
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : indolent
Indolent \In"do*lent\, a. [Pref. in- not + L. dolens, -entis, p.
pr. of dolere to feel pain: cf. F. indolent. See {Dolorous}.]
1. Free from toil, pain, or trouble. [Obs.]
2. Indulging in ease; avoiding labor and exertion; habitually
idle; lazy; inactive; as, an indolent man.
To waste long nights in indolent repose. --Pope.
3. (Med.) Causing little or no pain or annoyance; as, an
indolent tumor.
Syn: Idle; lazy; slothful; sluggish; listless; inactive;
inert. See {Idle}.
web1913
indolent
adj 1: disinclined to work or exertion; "faineant kings under whose
rule the country languished"; "an indolent hanger-on";
"too lazy to wash the dishes"; "shiftless idle youth";
"slothful employees"; "the unemployed are not
necessarily work-shy" [syn: {faineant}, {lazy}, {otiose},
{slothful}, {work-shy}]
2: (pathology) of tumors e.g.; slow to heal or develop and
usually painless; "an indolent ulcer"; "leprosy is an
indolent infectious disease"
wn
Ed Hawco : Manifest Destiny in a cup
From the "Thinking out loud department" : Subscriptions and APIs
Jon Udell : The Protean Power of Textual Transformation
John, you could make an equally plausible argument
Nicholas Riley : WebDAV tool for Frontier/Radio
"allows Frontier's Website Framework and Manila static rendering output, and Radio UserLand upstreaming via WebDAV. It provides limited support for WebDAV as specified by RFC 2518. The PUT, DELETE and MKCOL methods, and basic HTTP authentication only are supported. (That means: use it on a secure network or wrap it securely)."
Edward Bilodeau : The PaperPDA
"As you can see, the form factor of the PaperPDA has several advantages to it. It is highly flexible. You can bend it, fold it, crumple it up, and it still works. It weighs almost nothing. And it fits perfectly in a pocket. If you encounter a smaller pocket, you can just fold it over again. Power consumption is zero."
chromatic : "Maybe it was the Perl XML fans talking about SAX being important for more than XML,
but I realized that if I could write a backend module to turn bytecode into XML, the tree matching and conversions would be solved. The only tricky part that's left is generating XSLT or XPathScript or whatever syntax to refactor an error pattern. ... So now I have B::ToXML that can XMLize a code reference, and it works pretty well."
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : extant
Extant \Ex"tant\, a. [L. extans, -antis, or exstans, -antis, p.
pr. of extare, exstare, to stand out or forth; ex out + stare
to stand: cf. F. extant. See {Stand}.]
1. Standing out or above any surface; protruded.
That part of the teeth which is extant above the
gums. --Ray.
A body partly immersed in a fluid and partly extant.
--Bentley.
2. Still existing; not destroyed or lost; outstanding.
Writings that were extant at that time. --Sir M.
Hale.
The extant portraits of this great man. --I. Taylor.
3. Publicly known; conspicuous. [Obs.] --B. Jonson.
web1913
extant
adj : still in existence; not extinct or destroyed or lost;
"extant manuscripts"; "specimens of graphic art found
among extant barbaric folk"- Edward Clodd [ant: {extinct}]
wn
Dave Winer : "Now it's interesting to note that, as far as I know,
no one has ever said "You get what you pay for" about XML-RPC."
WebFX : IE Emu for Mozilla
"When it comes to DHTML Mozilla might be less powerful than IE4 but when it comes to JavaScript it just kicks ass. The first time a saw a setter being used with a prototype of the built-in HTMLElement constructor I was just blown away. One of my first thought at that time was that this was exactly what I needed to start emulating the IE DHTML Object Model for Mozilla." via
glish
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is languid
| source : web1913 |
Languid \Lan"guid\, a. [L. languidus, fr. languere to be faint
or languid: cf. F. languide. See {Languish}.]
1. Drooping or flagging from exhaustion; indisposed to
exertion; without animation; weak; weary; heavy; dull. ``
Languid, powerless limbs. '' --Armstrong.
Fire their languid souls with Cato's virtue.
--Addison.
2. Slow in progress; tardy. `` No motion so swift or
languid.'' --Bentley.
3. Promoting or indicating weakness or heaviness; as, a
languid day.
Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon. --Keats.
Their idleness, aimless and languid airs. --W.
Black.
Syn: Feeble; weak; faint; sickly; pining; exhausted; weary;
listless; heavy; dull; heartless. -- {Lan"guid*ly}, adv.
-- {Lan"guid*ness}, n.
| source : wn |
languid
adj : lacking spirit or liveliness; "a lackadaisical attempt"; "a
languid mood"; "a languid wave of the hand"; "a hot
languorous afternoon" [syn: {dreamy}, {lackadaisical},
{languorous}]
Me : Apache::XML::TreeView.pm
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is hector
| source : web1913 |
Hector \Hec"tor\, n. [From the Trojan warrior Hector, the son of
Priam.]
A bully; a blustering, turbulent, insolent, fellow; one who
vexes or provokes.
| source : web1913 |
Hector \Hec"tor\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Hectored}; p. pr. & vb.
n. {Hectoring}.]
To treat with insolence; to threaten; to bully; hence, to
torment by words; to tease; to taunt; to worry or irritate by
bullying. --Dryden.
| source : web1913 |
Hector \Hec"tor\, v. i.
To play the bully; to bluster; to be turbulent or insolent.
--Swift.
| source : wn |
Hector
n : (Greek mythology) a mythical Trojan who has killed by
Achilles during the Trojan War [syn: {Hector}]
v : be bossy towards; "Her big brother always bullied her when
she was young" [syn: {strong-arm}, {bully}, {browbeat}, {bullyrag},
{ballyrag}, {boss around}, {push around}]
| source : gazetteer |
Hector, AR (town, FIPS 31150)
Location: 35.46570 N, 92.97525 W
Population (1990): 478 (192 housing units)
Area: 5.9 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Zip code(s): 72843
Hector, MN (city, FIPS 28124)
Location: 44.74143 N, 94.71269 W
Population (1990): 1145 (528 housing units)
Area: 4.0 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Zip code(s): 55342
Hector, NY
Zip code(s): 14841
| source : vera |
HECTOR
HEterogeneous Computer TOgetheR (IBM, Uni Karlsruhe, Germany)
Dubya : "You know, if you find a person that you've never seen before
getting in a crop-duster that doesn't belong to you, report it. ... I mean, people need to be logical."
Nicholas Lemann : "Every time there was an applause line,
the Supreme Court Justices would conduct an instant, mute conference, through glances: Should they stand and clap? Justice Sandra Day O'Connor seemed to be the signal-caller here, and the criterion seemed to be whether Bush had said something indicating a policy choice that might one day come before the Court or made a point of general agreement. At "We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capacities," the Court sat; at "The hour is coming when America will act," it stood. Every time the Justices got, or gave themselves, the green light to stand and clap, Justice Clarence Thomas clapped more heartily than the others."
Dave Winer : "It would not surprise me if we dropped the first nukes
since WWII on Iraq this week. ... it will send a message to our so-called allies that the "with us or against us" position has teeth."
We spoke of the intersection
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is permeate
| source : web1913 |
Permeate \Per"me*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Permeated}; p. pr. &
vb. n. {Permeating}.] [L. permeatus, p. p. of permeare to
permeate; per + meare to go, pass.]
1. To pass through the pores or interstices of; to penetrate
and pass through without causing rupture or displacement;
-- applied especially to fluids which pass through
substances of loose texture; as, water permeates sand.
--Woodward.
2. To enter and spread through; to pervade.
God was conceived to be diffused throughout the
whole world, to permeate and pervade all things.
--Cudworth.
| source : wn |
permeate
v 1: spread or diffuse through; "An atmosphere of distrust has
permeated this administration" [syn: {pervade}, {diffuse},
{imbue}]
2: pass through; "Water permeated sand easily" [syn: {percolate},
{sink in}, {filter}]
3: penetrate mutually or be interlocked; "The territories of
two married people interpenetrate a lot" [syn: {interpenetrate}]
Reuven M. Lerner : CodeRed.pm
"This Perl module should be invoked whenever the CodeRed or CodeRed2 worm attacks. We don't have to worry about such attacks on Linux (sic) boxes, but we can be good Internet citizens, warning the webmasters on infected machines of the problem and how to solve it."
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is solecism
| source : web1913 |
Solecism \Sol"e*cism\, n.[F. sol['e]cisme, L. soloecismus, Gr.
soloikismo`s, fr. soloiki`zein to speak or write incorrectly,
fr. so`loikos speaking incorrectly, from the corruption of
the Attic dialect among the Athenian colonists of So`loi in
Cilicia.]
1. An impropriety or incongruity of language in the
combination of words or parts of a sentence; esp.,
deviation from the idiom of a language or from the rules
of syntax.
A barbarism may be in one word; a solecism must be
of more. --Johnson.
2. Any inconsistency, unfitness, absurdity, or impropriety,
as in deeds or manners.
C[ae]sar, by dismissing his guards and retaining his
power, committed a dangerous solecism in politics.
--C.
Middleton.
The idea of having committed the slightest solecism
in politeness was agony to him. --Sir W.
Scott.
Syn: Barbarism; impropriety; absurdity.
| source : wn |
solecism
n : a socially awkward or tactless act [syn: {faux pas}, {gaffe},
{slip}, {gaucherie}]
freebsdzine : Virtual Servers Behind Cable/DSL
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is spry
| source : web1913 |
Spry \Spry\, a. [Compar. {Sprier} or {Spryer}; superl. {Spriest}
or {Spryest}.] [Cf. dial. Sw. sprygg lively, skittish, and E.
sprag.]
Having great power of leaping or running; nimble; active.
[U.S. & Local Eng.]
She is as spry as a cricket. --S. Judd
(Margaret).
If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry. --Emerson.
| source : wn |
spry
adj : moving quickly and lightly; "sleek and agile as a gymnast";
"as nimble as a deer"; "nimble fingers"; "quick of
foot"; "the old dog was so spry it was halfway up the
stairs before we could stop it" [syn: {agile}, {nimble},
{quick}]
| source : gazetteer |
Spry, PA (CDP, FIPS 73528)
Location: 39.91250 N, 76.68753 W
Population (1990): 4271 (1905 housing units)
Area: 6.7 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Zero Devil Development : phpDOM
"is a class library for creating, extending and manipulating XML documents. It is based on the DOM/XML library of PHP 4.x. ... phpDOM includes two packages: phpDOM for pure XML, and phpDOM.XHTML for well-formed XHTML documents. These two packages can be used as examples of how to extend the base classes."
Perlmonks : Perl Soap
"Imagine a web site that keeps its viewers ensconced with same style of drivel that funds your daytime television time:
Oh bob. I m sorry. I just cant go through with this fake marriage to your recently discovered twin brothers half sister. Maybe its the fact Im carrying the police chefs baby. Maybe its because Im in love with a part time game show host who enjoys painting and rather nasty bouts of homicide.
Now Im just talking about the usual array of Chomsky based sentence generators. Lets finally put some of those funky technologies like neural networks, b-spline trees and the word antepenultimate to use and produce a fully functional, living, breathing soup bowl of pixilated drama.
Who could miss the heart warming production of a brand new bouncy Soap::Person->Baby. Be there when it says its first pre-generated Goos and Gaas from the Soap::Speak archives to its proud Soap::Person->Parent." see also :
dict antepenult
For those who don't already know today is the anniversary of the shootings at l'École polytechnique in Montreal.
Eleven years ago Marc Lepine, deliberately targeting women, shot his way in to a engineering class at the University of Montreal. He ordered all the men out of the room and then opened fire on the remaining students. Fourteen women were killed, and thirteen others wounded, before Lepine killed himself.
Genevieve Bergeron, Helene Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Maria Klucznick Widajewicz, Maryse Laganiere, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michele Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte.
Douglas Coupland : "These glass towers
strike many visitors as a key element of the city's character. A friend from the States told his mother that Vancouver was a city of glass buildings and no curtains, and everybody gets to watch each other. A voyeur's paradise, so to speak. To Vancouverites, these towers signify a few things: the power of global history to affect our lives, and the average citizen's alienation from the civic political process -- they're large glass totems that say "F-you" to us. At the same time, these towers symbolize a New World breeziness and a gentle desire for social transparency -- a rejection of class structures and hierarchy. Regardless of any of that, it takes only a few weeks to build a see-through. Citizens go away on holiday and return to a completely different place. If only the people who build see-throughs could be in charge of the city's roadworks."
Alec Hanley Bemis :
"Whenever I begin to get wrapped up in records these days, however, I'm reminded that records are just objects. My nostalgia for these commodities is awkward and unwelcome in this, an era of frictionlessness, weightlessness, wirelessness and Web technology, and of frictionless, weightless talk about Web technology. Records are merely an amalgam of printed paper and flat plastic: garbage. They have become less real than digits floating through the ether."
Daniel Richler : Stolen Tunes
"There are many indications that a similar change is in the works for all forms of replicable art: novels, pictures, movies, and any futuristic form of creative expression you can think of - weather arranging, say, or teledildonics. It won't be the end of the world, and it won't happen overnight, but it does appear to signal the end of the intellectual copyright system upon which so many people's livelihoods depend today. ... Under people like Edgar Bronfman, Jr., movie and
record companies are morphing into armies of lawyers, even threatening to sue their artists' fans. Geddy Lee of Rush knows musicians who've actually proposed encrypting their CDs with hostile viruses. Now there's a scenario I'd like to share with William Gibson: in the twenty-first century the relationship between musician and fan will be one of war." Interestingly, this article will only be archived for three months. I'll leave it to the audience to decide if this merely demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the Net on the part of the publisher, a piss-poor attempt at copyright protection or both.
Gary Dahl
"The heather-encrusted headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints."
Jamie Jaworski : Modern Menus
"I've received many email messages from readers asking me to cover JavaScript menus. ...with the release of Navigator 6.0 PR1, I decided that it would be worthwhile to develop a menu component that would work for three incompatible DHTML-capable browsers: Navigator 6.0, Navigator 4.0, and Internet Explorer 4.0 and 5.0."
Buster H.
"With dot-coms, I used to lose sleep worrying about bad earnings reports. Dot-orgs may earn nothing, but when you've lost as much money as I have, nothing starts to look like something."
The Babel Log
Sarah has a life outside school
Sheriff Mark Dion
"For me this was an ethical, a moral decision. I voted out of conscience. When you look at law enforcement, that's about making sure rules are obeyed. But justice is about finding the exceptions to those rules. I think this is a case where the citizens of Maine recognize that there should be an exception. And I support that."
Web Reference Tutorial : CSS Floats
"If parade floats stay afloat by virtue of being filled with hydrogen, it's a wonder people at Microsoft and Netscape aren't tied to the ground on account of the vacuum that exists in their heads at the point where most people have that part of the brain that is used to implement CSS in browsers..." Ah, the voice of reason.
Stuart Minor Benjamin : Stepping into the Same River Twice, Rapidly Changing Facts and the Appellate Process
"What if, for example, factual findings regarding the Internet on which the Supreme Court relied in Reno v. ACLU are now outdated, such that the Communications
Decency Act (CDA)--not a similar statute, but the CDA itself--merits new consideration as a possibly constitutional statute? Even more provocatively, what if
some of those findings were outdated by the time the Supreme Court decided the case, and the changes in the months after the district court issued its findings weakened the case for unconstitutionality? This Article will discuss the issues raised by both possibilities, focusing on changes during the appellate process."
David Ronfeldt : Social Science at 190MPH on NASCAR's Biggest Superspeedways
"In aerodynamically intense stock-car races like the Daytona 500, the drivers form into multi-car draft lines to gain extra speed. A driver who does not enter a draft line (slipstream) will lose.
Once in a line, a driver must attract a drafting partner in order to break out and try to get further ahead. Thus the effort to win leads to ever-shifting patterns of cooperation and competition
among rivals. This provides a curious laboratory for several social science theories: (1) complexity theory, since the racers self-organize into structures that oscillate between order and chaos; (2) social network analysis, since draft lines are line networks whose organization depends on a driver's social capital as well as his human capital; and (3) game theory, since racers face a "prisoner's dilemma" in seeking drafting partners who will not defect and leave them stranded. Perhaps draft lines and related "bump and run" tactics amount to a little-recognized dynamic of everyday life, including in structures evolving on the Internet."
Julia Hill gives new meaning
Sponsor Mode?
Possibly the dumbest attempt at taking on Microsoft I've seen in a while. Qualcomm should just open source Eudora and stick to cell phones.
Luscious Jackson, live in Toronto
Libération : Dessine-moi un cyberespace...
The Global Culture and Arts Communities Symposium
Charles Naylor has a vision
"that would see Northeastern American states like Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont split from the United States and form a confederacy with the Atlantic provinces in Canada." There are actually quite a few people in Quebec --or atleast Montreal-- who think Vermont should secede from the U.S. and form a new country with an independent Quebec. I've always been fond of the idea, but I've also wondered whether contemporary North America has managed to avoid many of the conflicts Europe has lived through over the centuries, by virtue of having so few countries. Look at a map of the world, [we] are something of an anomaly.
Tech Law Journal : Keyword Deception Is Common In Political Web Sites
The winner is none other than
Mr. Potatoe Head himself whose meta tags include every possible variation on the names of rival Presidential candidates and...and...Murphy Brown.
I had no idea
NPR on email
eating it, drinking it, hoarding it.
