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11.30.02 Please enjoy this swanky demo-scene music, created on the good old Amiga. One note: the page suggests using the Oldsk00l plugin to listen to .mod music in WinAMP, but the link is out of date. You can obtain Oldsk00l here. For your education, here's a list of all the stuff the National Security Agency knows about UFOs, and here's a list of all the stuff it doesn't. "What would Jesus drive?" is surely not the most pressing question on the agenda, is it? 11.26.02 I think we all owe Apple Computer our sincere thanks for an ad campaign that's so easily parodied. A while back on this blog I heaped casual mockery on anti-war types. I stand by that mockery; pacifism these days is vacuous at best and downright suicidal at worst. But eventually I do come down to earth and have to admit there's plenty of stupidity on both sides of this issue. In particular, I'm not going to stand up and ignorantly claim that some person in some other country is going to be happy that my nation went to war against his. If it were my friends' lives endangered? My cities bombed (even with precision munitions that hardly ever go astray and pulverize an elementary school)? Yeah, I'd be so grateful for that. There have been times in the past when I was completely horrified at the direction America seemed to be moving in, but that never meant for a second I didn't love my country and want us to work out our problems for ourselves. Assuming other people don't care that much about their own countries, their own friends and home towns, is, well... There are a lot of different words that can describe it, and let's just leave it at that. It's an ugly world out there these days. War happens. My own attitudes have hardened a lot since last September, probably more than I ever would have imagined was possible. But preening, moralistic self-justification on top of a war is -- still -- too much for me to swallow. 11.24.02 I tell you, the more I see how screwed up the world situation is lately, the more attractive the idea of switching looks. 11.22.02 Today's good things created by our lovely civilization: space elevators and ballistic missile defense. 11.21.02 A while back I alluded to the oldest known plaque inscribed with the name of the city of London. Here's a picture of that very plaque. Now if I can just get serious for a moment, I'm here to tell you that it's not all beer and skittles being Jewish. Sure, the global Zionist conspiracy sends me a residual check for $12.57 every month and any time I want to I can emigrate to the least popular nation in the world, but on the other hand those pogroms are a drag and people are always telling me I look like Jerry Seinfeld. Still, we do get the funny stories, and that's not bad. 11.19.02 "Muphry's Law dictates that (a) if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written; (b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book; (c) the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; (d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent." Ah yes. Robots. 11.16.02 At last we know the real cause of all those mysterious leaks that keep delaying Space Shuttle launches. (Found at space.balettie.com.) Several years ago, the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson collaborated on a thriller called The Cobweb (published under the pseudonym of Stephen Bury.) Set back in 1990 at the time of what may or may not come to be known as the First Gulf War, the premise of the book was that Iraqi agents were infiltrating a small Midwestern university and developing bioweapons there. It was a decent book as these things go, but the reason I bring it up is that like all ludicrous scenarios these days it turns out to have had a basis in fact. Why do we even have fiction any more? There doesn't seem to be any point. 11.15.02 While nobody was paying attention, a few greased palms over at the International Hydrographic Association recently sealed the deal for the creation of a fifth ocean. Without a referendum or even a show of hands! And they complain about Chicago politics, I tell you... Submitted for your approval: Extreeeeeeeeeme Blogging!

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