Author: Payam

Chemist, philosopher, vagrant.
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Degrees of Depravity

BBC NEWS | UK | Mosley denies ‘Nazi-themed orgy’

Life imitating art. In this instance Max Mosley, head of Formula One Racing, got himself into some hot water for what he did with five prostitutes. His situation imitates a sick joke by the legendary blue comedian, Robert Schimmel. (His Wikipedia entry.) The joke goes something like this:

A guy was tried for animal necrophilia. What’s the guy’s excuse going to be in court? “Sorry your honor. I could have sworn the cat was alive when I started fucking it.”

Now, Mosley has to resort to a similarly pathetic excuse like “Aryan doesn’t mean Nazi“. Apparently, Mr. Mosley feels no need to apologize for sleeping with five prostitutes simultaneously, but that he may have partaken in an orgy that might be potentially misconstrued as racist or antisemitic is cause for apology and legal action. The depravity of sleeping with five prostitutes is apparently better than the depravity of pretending to be Aryan or Nazi in bed.

That’s ok, Max. We all know that the British are far better than the Nazis and the Aryans. Especially the rich Brits. Your orgies are far cleaner than the Nazi orgies that the Allies finally quashed in 1945.

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Love is not a Scriptable Application

Why is the stereotypical computer geek typically single? Because he can’t find a woman who is perfectly scriptable.

Not that the rest of us have not contemplated that prospect.

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pMac

pMac is an 867 MHz G4 12″ Apple Powerbook purchased in August of 2003. By that reckoning, it is nearly five years old as of this writing. It has traveled extensively. It has seen limited travel within California–only about as far away as Livermore from its current home in San Buenaventura–but it has been to quite a few places in Europe: Amsterdam, Brussels, Mons (Belgium), Berlin, Muenster, Mannheim, Bad Duerkheim, Paris and Munich. Some destinations probably elude recollection at the moment.

It bears the scars of its only fall quite well. The fall happened at the platform at the Rheine (Germany) train station while en route from Amsterdam to Muenster, Germany. pMac was in its trusty Timbuk2 laptop bag at the time, and the cushioning provided by the bag was sufficient to keep it alive.

At 3.5 years of age, the original Toshiba (40 gigabytes) hard drive failed, but it was promptly replaced by a similar Toshiba model with an 80 gigabyte capacity by the wonderful technicians at CNG in Westwood the same afternoon! This replacement drive used to be the former back up drive, which contained an exact copy of the main drive thanks to the wonderful free backup utility, Carbon Copy Cloner. (Thus, I only lost about two weeks of work as a result of the failure.)

Now it chugs along nicely, albeit slowly at times, but without  any problems at all. It runs Leopard at a reasonable speed. It is now awaiting  the arrival of a MacBook Pro so that  it can be demoted to home entertainment center. The transition may happen in 2008.

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Obama’s Vice Presidential Candidate

Let’s have some fun. I tend to be right on these matters, so I might as well publish these predictions and see how I fare against the “professionals”.

Barack Obama will choose either Bill Richardson or Wesley Clark as his running mate because both men are without peer in their respective fields. Richardson is peerless in issues of foreign affairs, and Clark is peerless in military affairs. Either man will round out the ticket nicely.

The most likely choice is Bill Richardson because he was the first to endorse Obama.

Sorry Hilary. You just blew it big time.

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Download Day: Launch Firefox into Record Books

I still use Safari and Omniweb as my primary browsers, but Firefox is far too cool a browser to be forgotten. After all, it is the most feature rich browser on the planet by virtue of its add-ons.

So, strike a blow against inferior browsers and help to set a new internet record for the most software downloads in one day. Download Firefox 3 on Download Day. The Guinness Book of World Records awaits.

Download Day - English

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Liberty Migrates to Europe

IP Addresses Are Personal Data, E.U. Regulator Says | washingtonpost.com

The diametrically opposed directions that the European Community and the United States are taking ought to be extremely disconcerting to those who reside in the United States. The United States, the country that invented the internet and the addressing protocol that identifies computers on the internet (known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP), is moving rapidly to relegate TCP/IP to a means of spying on its citizens. The awful–perhaps nonexistent–regulatory regime in the US allows providers of network services to monitor what users do, to track their habits, and to share that information with just about any entity that requires. That entity could be marketers or the watchful eyes of the government.

Meanwhile, the EU is conducting the most rational debate on the status of the IP address of computers users. As the computer becomes a significant means of communication–through applications like Skype, Gizmo, Yahoo! MSN AIM and other instant messaging clients–the IP address will become as unique and as important as a telephone number. Hence, it ought to receive as much protection as a telephone number. Global governing bodies are beginning to realize this, but the different ways in which the US and the EU governing bodies are approaching the IP address’s significance is alarming.

The American government is actively extending and abusing the regulatory vacuum surrounding the IP address to let American companies and government bodies to gather information on every citizen. In contrast, the EU is actively discussing a regulatory regime that recognizes the importance of the IP address. While the US government is diminishing privacy, the EU bodies are seeking to protect and to expand privacy. Hence, the liberties in which Americans take excessive pride are being, in effect, exported to the European Union, where people can surf comfortably now and perhaps with even greater privacy in the future.

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The Oracle Speaks

Bloomberg.com: Warren Buffett Sees More Opportunities in Europe

Perhaps only Warren Buffett can declare the American economy dead, stick a fork in it and pronounce it dead. All the Americans who still consider Europe “socialistic” ought to heed the great oracle’s declaration that Europe is his prime target for business acquisitions.

Note that he is looking for business acquisitions in Europe, not the acquisition of communes or other socialistic constructs and some such.

And, yes, the oracle of Omaha does declare that Europe has a terrific economy, one considerably better than the American one.

Perhaps the United States ought to consider becoming “socialistic” like Europe. It seems to be good for business. 

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War Politicization Begins

Pentagon announces Iraq, Afghanistan troop deployments | Yahoo! News

The animosity between George W Bush and John McCain is insufficient to moderate the latter’s desire for power.  Consequently, the former is conveniently building up troops in Iraq in order to aid McCain’s already lackluster campaign. The strategy is quite clear, and it will most likely become apparent when the troops who are slated to be relieved will be retained. It is an escalation of the military conflict that  will create a circus of fear and greed come September, and there is little doubt that McCain will gladly oblige W by continuing the fear mongering that has thus far guaranteed reelection for every Republican who is utterly bereft of creativity, desire for serving the nation and scruples.

Never before could it be said that the success of one man will guarantee failure for everyone else.

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Brokeback Mountain What?

nicworks :: downloads ::  brokeback mountain icons setBrokeback Mountain Icon Set

Customized, clean, artistic and professionally rendered icons are one of the many nice things that the Macintosh developer community offers the Macintosh user community. An icon set based on Brokeback Mountain, however, is a mystifying contribution from this incredibly generous developer community. The offering of the icon set begs a lot of questions.

Is the gay Macintosh user base so large that catering  to it is useful? Or is the heterosexual base small enough that it can be ignored? Does the gay user base want gay icons? Does my writing on the subject qualify me as a member of the gay user base, or merely as a curious metrosexual? Why would anyone be so obsessed with this movie so many years after the fact?

Will the fundamentalist Christian community condemn the users of this icon set?

Most fortunately, however, no one will ever bother answering these questions.

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Trouble in Paradise

L.A. airports director Lindsey oversaw Seattle airport when controversial contracts were awarded | Los Angeles Times

The only thing more puzzling about the rapid decline of Los Angeles as a functional, livable city is the bold transparency with which the destruction of the city is undertaken by its elected officials and the contractors who have successfully corrupted them. The above link cites but the most recent instance of the grotesque cronyism and lack of accountability that  has Typical traffic in Los Angelesmade Los Angeles the most unlivable and unmanageable city in the United States. Even though Los Angeles has the most unsafe airport in the country and the worst traffic in the country, no leader in this city can sustain moral fortitude long enough to address problems that imiserate millions of people daily.

One would surmise that  after hosting the most embarrassing public works project in human history (one in which the Federal Government calls the Los Angeles Government corrupt!), the processes of improving the city’s infrastructure would improve. As the above articles shows, quite the contrary is true. The city’s airports, roads and public transit system are destined to wither and perish under unrelenting corruption before the eyes of a citizenry apparently too sleepy to care for its own well being.

As nature has demonstrated time and again, evolution is more likely to eliminate the weak than to promote the strong. Evolutionary data from the primordial soup that is Los Angeles strongly suggest that  evolution on occasion favors the stupid and the weak over the judicious and prudent. Whatever organism emerges from the primordial soup, I am ecstatic that, for now, I have managed to extricate  myself from the unbearably ugly evolutionary process that is shaping the primordial soup.

You should be too, if you don’t live in Los Angeles.

Photo by VirtualErn.

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