Notta Blog
Site Meter Stu Savory's Peace, Rants and Humour Weblog .


Sunday, March 30, 2003

Neat Stuff

Cats : NOT to be tried at home, kiddies! How to make your own Bonsai Kitten. Very tight black humour, indeed! The RSPCA took it for real and objected most strongly!

Bulldogs : The time is drawing near when dogs can have their own weblogs. Actually I thought they had something similar already, like the Lola Osbourne daily soap cum calender, on MTV.

Garbage : Mickeysoft finally admits that NT4.0 is irreparably defective, having a security hole in it, too flawed to fix. So what's new?

Politics : I see no difference between war and terrorism. Terrorism is war by poor people. War is terrorism by rich people. Of course these things can be done cheaper too. Here is how to build your own intercontinental cruise missile for under 10,000 dollars. Needless to say, this research was done by a US team with military funding.



Saturday, March 29, 2003

Black Hawk down :)

Politics : Hear about the forced resignation of Richard 'Prince of darkness' Perle, whose 'business interests conflict with his country's interest'? Finally! great, huh?
Mind you, that won't stop other US congress-/business men whining about a loss of (prospective) business. Watching the TV last night I realised again how difficult it is to distinguish facts from misleading propaganda. So it was very rewarding to find that there is a geek who tracks down War criminals despite danger to himself. Well done, Patrick Ball! I wonder if these US Air Force Rapists count as criminals too?

Cars : I just have one anti-war sticker on my car (see top right of my weblog), but you should see Randy's Car which is more-or-less just held together by diverse stickers!



Friday, March 28, 2003

Moron's Pam

Spam : Despite today's title, this is not about Kid Rock's pneumatic silicate playmate. It's a postscriptum to Thursday's Luncheon Meat rant (= more on Spam, OK ;) . I just read that the UK is clamp down on spam with new antispam law. So if you can find 'em, you can sue 'em. Theoretically anyway. Probably just makes lawyers richer :(
It appears that Spam is not only a cyberworld phenomenon, but it happens with snailmail in the real world too. Especially in places in the far east. But I don't understand how this antispam measure there is supposed to work ;)



Thursday, March 27, 2003

Luncheon Meat

Spam : If there is one thing I hate, it is this incessant Spam I get regularly!
Here is my rant list of my top 10 irritating Spams
  1. Free passwords to adult sites (zex, pawn, Halley Suitt's Blog ;) etc).
  2. Low price drugs (especially THAT blue pill)
  3. Refinance your mortgage
  4. Nigerian confidential money transfer
  5. Anything hiding a 190 Dialer (those are the expensive calls here in Germany)
  6. Best online casino (You Betcha they want your credit card number!)
  7. Free credit card application, followed by my next favourite:
  8. Get out of credit card debt
  9. Meet singles in your area (sent to Germany, but in English!)
  10. Become a Born-Again Christian (maybe they should read this!)
  11. And recently, "this one goes to 11" : Copy DVDs in one click.
But it seems there is a ray of hope on the horizon :)
Not by merely limiting the number of mails you can have each day (the wholly simplistic Mickeysoft/Hotmail approach). No! No! No! There is a new approach which uses a Bayesian statistical filter which you train yourself, to filter out what you regard as Spam. Go to the Popfile website and download their (still free) Bayesian filter SW.

Maths : People really do screw up when using maths ;)
Here is a Glossary of Mathematical Mistakes which I find both amusing & educational.



Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Moore's Lore

Oscars : Famous author and director Michael Moore received an Oscar for Best Documentary for "Bowling for Columbine" ; go see this thinking man's movie if you have not already! Moore said provocatively in his acceptance speech: "We live in a time with fictitious election results that elect fictitious presidents. We live in a time when we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons . . . we are against this war Mr. Bush. Shame on you! Shame on you!''

Well and fearlessly said Michael !



Monday, March 24, 2003

Wright On !

Flying : 100 years ago yesterday -- on 23rd March 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright of Ohio applied for US patent (US821393, later GB6732/1904) -- but the "Flyer" did not fly until 17. December 1903 in Kittyhawk. Orville Wright was airborne for 12 seconds and 53 Meters. Were they really the first though? Four months earlier, on 18th August 1903, Karl Jatho (a town civil servant from Hannover) flew his flying-wing (design based on the Zanonia seed) in the Vahrenwalder Heath in Germany. (That's old Europe technology, Mr. Rumsfeld, in case you read this ;) New Zealand Farmer Richard Pearse probably flew his own construction in March 1902 and Gustave Whitehead of Connecticut even in August 1901 allegedly flew a half a mile. Whitehead was a German who anglisized his name from Gustav Weißkopf. Until 1895 he had lived in Leutershausen (Germany, too) where there is a Gustav-Weißkopf-Museum with a replica of his aircraft.

Stupidity : Here is a hilarious extract from The Corona Times, datelined 13/2/2003.

"I saw Tom Ridge on television," Steven Bosell told reporters outside his home in Corona, California, "telling us that all citizens should go out and stock up on duct tape and plastic, in case of terrorist attack. I’m a patriot, so I went straight down to the local Costco and bought $100 worth of duct tape and some plastic sheeting, to protect my house from radiation. As soon as I got home, I taped up the doors and windows, but then I did some thinking. I realised that if survivors like myself are going to reproduce and repopulate the earth after a biological attack, then we have to protect our private parts as well. So I used my last roll of duct tape to wrap up my privates, leaving just a little hole at the end for toilet functions.
A few days later, the Department of Homeland Security told us that the alert was over, and that we could remove the duct tape. But when I tried to peel the tape off my privates, skin and body hair began peeling off too. I injured myself badly, and there was blood everywhere. The pain was so bad that I called an ambulance, and was taken to hospital, where the tape was eventually removed, though not without further serious injuries to my privates.
When I explained what I’d done, the doctors and nurses laughed at me, and went out of their way to make me feel like a fool. But the people I really blame are the government, because Mr Ridge made me do this. And President Bush is equally liable for injury to my reproductive future, because he hired Mr Ridge to run the Department of Homeland Security, which gave the nation bad advice. That’s why I have filed a lawsuit against Mr Ridge, the Department, and the President, claiming compensation for emotional distress, personal injury, and zexual dysfunction."
The Bush Administration has so far refused to comment.

Alpha-Males : Halley Suitt has a regular funny blog about alpha-males, so I sent her this photo of the perfect male, horny but sensitive ;)



Sunday, March 23, 2003

Peace Blogs

Peace : Had enough of War-blogs? Then follow my pointer to a list of Peace Blogs.
I particularly liked Alister's perspective from Scotland, together with Bent Back Tulips and PrimeCog's Anti-Bush Rant. Still relevant of course are Michael Conley's articles, one (from February 2003) entitled Destroying NATO: George Dubja shows the way! and the other (from November 2001) entitled The Nature of American Society.
As their newest contribution to peace, the US shoots down British aircraft too: "obviously by mistake" says the responsible general (IQ unknown).

News headlines : If you also can't stand the permanent barrage of war headlines, I have a light hearted collection of Horribly Punny Headlines for you ;)

Other Screw Ups : Amazon got their prices wrong, got swamped by demand, and had to take their UK servers offline. Now they are renegading on confirmed orders :(
Sue 'em! They should be forced to deliver at the prices they confirmed. And charge them with misleading advertising too!

Censorship : Sadly, Kevin Sites is being censored by US invaders. And you can't trust the spin from CNN.



Friday, March 21, 2003

War in Iraq

War : CNN (yes, the same ignorami I ranted about yesterday) report that US forces are having trouble with sand getting in their weapons. I can only assume that the Pentagon didn't realise that the desert has been dry for quite a long time - certainly longer than a certain George Dubya Bush ;)

On a more serious note, I would like to point you to Kevin Sites who blogs from northern Iraq. Please note that another Blog written from inside Baghdad under the pseudonym of Salem Pax (that's arabic and latin for "peace", by the way) appears to no longer be accessible. Thanks, CIA, or whoever :(
However, here is a mirror site of his Blog (as written to his friend "Dear Raed"). We're pretty sure that this guy is for real and is blogging really from Baghdad. How?
Well for those of you who don't already know how to do it, Secret-Agent's Mom tells us how to locate an IP address.

Since 9/11 when many news-services' websites just collapsed, the news agencies have beefed up their servers, and even though response times have tripled their servers are holding up well, considering. In fact the only numbskulls who didn't beef up their servers although they knew for months that war was coming, were GOV and MIL sites ;) In fact the US Army MIL site collapsed totally through overload yesterday!



Thursday, March 20, 2003

In Autorotation

War :The war begins as choppers' vorpal blades turn snicker-snack towards Bagdad.

Flying : Here's an amusing account of Engine-Out Autorotation descent practice in a helicopter by student pilot Dennis Michelini. Having been a flying instructor for over 20 years, I get blase'. So it's good to read the student's point of view :)

Politics : C.G.Jung has a term called Synchronicity, or (un)likely coincidences. I just noticed that Dubya has a press officer called Ari Fleischer. That's a good old New York jewish name which translates from Yiddish into English as Butcher. How appropriate in a time of war! Fleischer is a spin-doctor accomplished at keeping the words turning while avoiding a worst-case crash (e.g. Enron Oil-scandal). Kinda like Autorotation too:(
A surprisingly high number (like 80%?) of Dubya's cabinet were previously oil company executives, the rest military persons. I wonder if this has something to do with their decision to go to war in Iraq?

Space : Still in rotation after 45 years is the Vanguard satellite. The problem with defunct space junk is that it doesn't come down just because it's finished its useful life. Same is true of old Hippies of course ;)

Humour : I'll point you to a week's blog by Dahlia Lithwick with a funny list of things which extremely pregnant ladies (for it is she!) do at 3 a.m. when they can't sleep :)
Slate (auto-)rotate their journalist-bloggers each week apparently.

Stupidity : Last week I wrote to CNN as follows:-
Hi CNN Webmaster, below the leftside menu on your webpage here, there is a clickbox leading to the international edition (see attached bmp file). This image alternates with an animated gif showing a turning world globe. But you have the world (auto-)rotating the wrong way! FYI the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, therefore your gif should have the globe turning from left to right and not from right to left as you have. If we cannot trust you to get even this right, how do you expect us to trust the rest of your news? :(
And what did CNN do about this? Nothing! They don't care! They let their viewers remain ignorant! What a load of Losers they are at CNN :(



Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Political Humour

Humour : In these difficult, warring times we can get help from political satire, like taking a look at Dr.Hans Blix's IE Search Results. Or even watch a TV show wherein a well-known but stupid failed baseball-team administrator takes place in a Millionaire-Quiz.
Other total losers (like Martin!) let us participate in their losing by blogging their regular No Bush activities and succeed in making them sound funny, even! Of course pro-Bush hackers manage to take a snide potshot at the French too, with this Google lookup for "french military victories".



Tuesday, March 18, 2003

In Dire Straits

Music : Mark Knopfler has been knocked off his motorcycle in London by some woman driver who usurped his right-of-way :( Lots of broken bones, but he should be able to play guitar again :)

Bugs : A new killer bug, a form of pneumonia called SARS is sweeping the globe. There is a W.H.O alert already. Three confirmed cases in Frankfurt/Main now. It wouldn't surprise me if the strain originated in a laboratory, like the anthrax strain that was used in USA last year.

War : Dubya's US military has decided to use Uranium munitions again, despite knowing of the long term cancer it causes :(



Monday, March 17, 2003

Gather no Moss

Music : The Rolling Stones will be doing a concert in Beijing, China. The chinese censors have forbidden four of the songs as being too explicit, Allan Karl reports. Fittingly, the spokesman for tour promoters Beijing Time New Century Entertainment Co. is called Long Wang ;)
I trust you've all been singing "The wearing of the green" today, St.Patrick's day, begorrah :)



Sunday, March 16, 2003

Kzinti Strategy - Scream and Leap !

Motorcycles : My friend Norbert Fischer has bought himself a brand new triple, the Triumph Thunderbird. Painted a beautiful
orange and black,
the bike looks ideal as a Kzin camouflage transporter. Scream and Leap, Norbert! Next week Helmi should get hers too, in traditional Triumph green and cream. So that's 5 bikes they have now !
I read yesterday that Dave Whiner took 5 whole days to drive coast to coast across the USA and did it in a comfortable car with music and audio-books and a heater. So I pointed him to people who do it in under 50 hours on a motorycle, come wind, come rain, come weather, the Iron Butt Association.

Reading : Choosing Names by Larry Niven et al., Baen Books, 1998.
ISBN 0-671-87888-3. Volume VIII of the Man-Kzin Wars series contains 5 great short stories. Scream and Leap, Larry !

Politics : Tony Blair changed direction a little this week. But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: "If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction!" . If it turns out that the war against Iraq is illegal then he will be just as much a war criminal as Bush the Lesser. At the Nuremburg trials there was the death penalty for starting a war of aggression. Of course, nowadays only uncivilized countries still have the death penalty. Scream and Leap, Dubya! But remember - as Heraclitus wrote some 2000 years ago - "The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same". One can gain immensly in stature just by turning around.
On this note I would like to point you to an excellent article by Paul Coelho, who is one of Brazil's leading columnists, thanking Dubya for his efforts & explaining their effects.



Friday, March 14, 2003

Alaskans get blown away

Travel: My adventurous wife Cornelia called from Alaska's Iditarod Dogsled Race (which is mushed over 1000 miles, from Anchorage to Nome), this morning with the news. For the very first time, the Iditarod has been won by a foreigner, the Norwegian, Sorlie, who was just a rookie last year. So now they must be really celebrating back home in Norway.
Cornelia reports too of her flight back from Nome to Anchorage which had to divert, due to a terribly strong storm, which even blew out the windows from the Anchorage airport control tower and closed the airport!

Cars : Here spring is starting, so I just bought some good used Alu wheels from Rainer, nice looking, spidery, Borbet in 7,5 * 17H2 with 225/45 ZR17 Eagle F1 tyres for Frodo.



Thursday, March 13, 2003

Unilateral decisions

Politics : Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers and pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in every country.

Come on Americans, don't believe your own government's propaganda, or you'll end up like the guy I quoted in the paragraph above. For scurrilous anti-war humour visit this website.

Transport : British Airways (BA) now refuses to transport their own national symbol, the British Bulldog. This is not any law, it is a unilateral, non-appealable(sp?), arbitrary decision taken by some burocrap at BA. No warning of course, when you book the flight!

Science : Here is a great website. Remember years ago there was a great scientific film made called 'Powers of Ten'? Well now its available as a Java Animation online.



Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Lightweights

Politics : Just the other day Dan Rather interviewed Saddam. Of course all the questions had to be pre-submitted and there were no aggressive follow-ups (BTW: shouldn't that be 'follows-up'?) by Dan Rather. So (for comparison) I just watched the press conference by Bush the Lesser on TV. Seemed like it was a robot on drugs talking! Like a scripted talk, but unsyncronised. Obviously the puppet-handlers had told the (ex?)-drunk to stick to the script and not volunteer anything. And what a pathetic bunch of reporters, who didn't even check to see if he'd answered the question posed, let alone make any aggressive follow-ups. For more details, go read the eloquent write-up dated March 11 by Life Outtacontext.

Dieting : I read that Liz Lawley (March 10) is trying to lose weight and is going public with her progress reports as a form of self pressure. I too once tried the same idea, logged in German though; it works in the short term as long as you blog it, Liz. But a couple of years later the bounce-back happens anyway, probably from the in(cr)edible recipes supplied by the Cooking Losers ;)
Off Topic, I recommend you read about One Pot Meal's wrong number yesterday. Hilarious.



Tuesday, March 11, 2003

From the (US) History books

Politics : For those of you who do not remember August 1964, I quote:

BEGIN QUOTE: In an attempt to possibly lure the North Vietnamese into an engagement, both the USS Maddox and the USS C. Turner Joy were in the gulf (of Tonkin) on August 4. The captain of the Maddox had read his ship’s instruments as saying that the ship was under attack or had been attacked and began an immediate retaliatory strike into the night. The two ships began firing into the night rapidly with American warplanes supporting the showcasing of the American firepower. However, the odd thing was that the captain had concluded hours later that there might not have been an actual attack. James B. Stockdale, who was a pilot of a Crusader jet, undertook a reconnaissance flight over the waters that evening and when asked if he witnessed any North Vietnamese attack vessels, Stockdale replied: "Not a one. No boats, no wakes, no ricochets [sic] off boats, no boat impacts, no torpedo wakes-nothing but black sea and American firepower."

The entire event was purposely misconstrued when presented to Congress and the public by the U.S. President and his administration. END QUOTE.

This is an earlier example of how the US administration makes up propaganda stories as an excuse to start a war :(
Mister Bush, we do not all have memories as bad as you!



Sunday, March 9, 2003

Daddy said. . .

Politics : Bush the Elder wrote in 1998 (in his book 'A world transformed'), and I quote,
"We should not march into Baghdad. . . . To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero . . . assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."
But does Bush the lesser take his own father's advice? No, he continues his bullying and goes on lying, lying, and lying to the american people & everyone else :(
Maybe Hans Blix should stop looking in Iraq and instead look in the white house, he'd be sure to find lotsa empty war-heads there!



Saturday, March 8, 2003

Saturday's feedback

A Blog (a pun on Web-log = We blog) is like a diary, (un)just things that happen to me and random thoughts for the day, so here goes for today:

Politics : Further to my rant of March first: Thanks go to Lester, who has produced a great collection of war-resistance posters in PDF format for you to download & print out & display everywhere. I particularly like the way he even quotes Hermann Goering (in translation of course), whose statement is just as applicable now as it was then.
And again, further to my other rant of March first: the pope finally has sacked a US bishop for ignoring his paedophile priests' activities.

Motorcycling : Shades of the Megacycle! At the Genf car show, Franco Barro has shown a two-wheeler with the whole drive unit hidden in the rear wheel. Did no-one ever explain to him the problems of unsprung weight? Just as impractical as the Dodge showbike!

Art : Test your knowledge of Art (Nr. 1): who painted this?



Friday, March 7, 2003

F1 Kickoff

Formula 1: Got up really early this morning to watch the very first Quali runs of the 2003 Formula 1 season. The BBC even produced a minute-by-minute blog of the session ; just hope they don't change the format or URL now I've linked to it. Holy Mackerel! (that's the one on Christ-besotted bumper stickers ;) but that new guy Da Matta in the Toyota was fast. If he hadn't run wide on the last corner, he would have been in the top three, ahead of Schumi even! For newcomers to F1, here is a guide to the flag signals used in racing.

Dawn: Just now the sun is coming up here, the whole sky is lit up a beautiful pearly pink. I've set up the background colour of the blog now to give you some idea of the colour, but a PC monitor's display cannot render the true colours I'm seeing outside the window.
Great view, but now its off downstairs for a healthy breakfast.

Web Hosting: Yesterday - via a typo in Google - I found a US web-hosting company called Amigo Web Hosting. So presumably, if you use their webservice you have an Ami go Home page ;) Not sure whether the US State Dept. will like the name of that business idea!



Thursday, March 6, 2003

Adrenalin days////daze ;)

Cars: Would you believe 0-60mph in just over 3 seconds, 1/4 mile in about 10? Then going back for clean underwear ;) ? Then you might want to testdrive the Westfield Megabusa. This is a Lotus Super 7 type Brit Kitcar with a 185 bhp Suzuki Hayabusa (over 300 kph) motorcycle engine that revs to 11000. Weight just 450 kg. No doors, no windscreen, no heater. And so low and narrow that the top third of your body is outside the bodywork :(
So wear your motorcycle leathers and a helmet (it puts out 106 Phon too!). Yeee Haaah!
This is for serious adrenalin junkies (like you, Alex ;) ! Now go read the road test.

Timber!: Driving home through the woods early this afternoon - number one in a long queue of cars behind a slow driving-school car ( so I keep well back!) - when I notice a logging crew working at the roadside up ahead. They are just felling a tree. I see it start to fall the wrong way - right across the road ahead! I slam on the anchors, as does the wide-awake driving instructor. Back about five cars behind me I hear that somebody was impatiently close and not so wide awake. Tough one for him and the guy ahead of him. Since everyone else managed to stop unscathed it will be the dozy guy's problem and not the loggers, I guess. Took them only about four minutes to cut up the tree and roll it clear of the road though. Mind you, I was still shaking when I got home!

Reading : Crashlander by Larry Niven, Del Ray Books, 1994. ISBN 0-345-38168-8. All the Beowulf Schaeffer stories from Niven's Known Space SF series in one 280 page paperback.

Crypto : Well done Peter Aylwert. Yours was the first correct solution to the cryptogram puzzle I set on March 2nd. You may change your name to James Bond now ;)



Monday, March 3, 2003

Goodbye

Death: Goodbye Roger Needham, good to have known you. And goodbye too Pioneer 10, thirty years of service with a design life of under three was good going.



Sunday, March 2, 2003

The Seven Deadly Virtues

Humour: Heard enough of the One True Church (it doesn't matter WHICH one!) extolling on the seven deadly sins? I recommend you read Uncle Al explaining that chastity, frugality, sobriety, charity, faith, humility, and tranquility are the Seven Deadly Virtues. Hilarious! Now go read Alistair Crowley ;) OBN: OBN? Whats that? It's this week's website awarded the Order of the Brown Nose ;)

Music: BTW, Christine has a website with Midi versions of classical English tunes.

Reading: Downsize This! by Michael Moore, Harper Perennial, 1996. ISBN 0-06-097733-7. By the way, here is his summary of 50 years of US foreign policy :(

Crypto : OK folks, just for fun, here is an easy cryptogram. First 3 to send correct decodes get blogged, OK?



Saturday, March 1, 2003

Warblogging

Politics: Practice makes perfect: we remember Enewatok, today in 1954. And although many in USA, fevered with patriotism, follow the war-plans of Bush the lesser, our experience shows that you should not blindly follow your leader. So I am glad to see that protest is also forming in the US. While protesting, maybe they could stop the US catholic bishops turning a blind eye on paedophile priests.

Reading: Opus Diaboli, by K.Deschner, Rowohlt Press, 2001.





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