The Grumpy Owl

These are my undigested internests for February 19th through March 8th:

• Mercenaries Circling Haiti | CommonDreams.org – On March 9 and 10, there will be a Haiti conference in Miami for private military and security companies to showcase their services to governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the earthquake devastated country.
• Make it Faust | Avenue – As a poet, radio show host, novelist and activist, Malcolm Azania has made this city his studio, and become a well-known icon. But what drives the so-called sinister minister Faust?
• BBC News – Nicolas Sarkozy admits Rwanda genocide ‘mistakes’ – I don’t think these were mistakes- Murder and lies is more like it. “Rwanda accuses France of training and arming the Hutu extremists who killed some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus – a charge denied by Paris.”
• Cheney: “I Was A Big Supporter Of Waterboarding” – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – Cheney confesses on television to a war crime. Who cares?

These are my undigested internests for February 17th through February 19th:

• Left Behind – The sad truth is everything we are seeing we have already seen. Despite presidents who come and go, permanent war is a hallowed American institution. Start if you will with the War of 1812, the invasion of Mexico, and the carnage of a Civil War. Move to the mass murder of Native Americans and theft of their property, the killing, torture, and prison camps in the Philippines, then the blood-drenched 20th century. The 21st likewise dawns red. It never changes. Doves protest, hawks rule, ordinary people pay the penalty. All wars are “just.”
• Stereotyping People by Their Favorite Author (by Lauren Leto) – I like stereotypes and I like authors so . . .
• Print Roger Ebert: The Essential Man – It has been nearly four years since Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw and his ability to speak. Now television’s most famous movie critic is rarely seen and never heard, but his words have never stopped.
• Dirk Hayhurst Article About His Shoulder Injury -

These are my undigested internets for February 17th from 12:30 to 18:45:

• Brainwashed by a parasite « Neurophilosophy – The spores of the fungus attach themselves to the external surface of the ant, where they germinate. They then enter the ant’s body through the tracheae (the tubes through which insects breathe), via holes in the exoskeleton called spiracles. Fine fungal filaments called mycelia then start to grow inside the ant’s body cavity, absorbing the host’s soft tissues but avoiding its vital organs.
• Parasite Makes Ants Resemble Berries – Fruit pickers beware. That red berry might actually be an infested ant’s rear end.
• Philip K Dick’s FBI file and the bizarre story of a neo-Nazi plot to start a Third World War | Technoccult – “Undoubtedly, one of the prime reasons why Dick attracted attention from the FBI was a series of bizarre letters he penned to the Bureau in the early 1970s, in which he described his personal knowledge of an alleged underground Nazi cabal that was attempting to covertly manipulate science fiction writers to further advance its hidden cause.”
• Evo Morales launches ‘Coca Colla’ – Telegraph – Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president and known for chewing coca leaves at UN meetings, has launched a drink featuring the leaf called “Coca Colla”.

These are my undigested internets for February 9th through February 17th:

• spring-training-the-40s-and-50s?xid=liferss from life.com – StumbleUpon – Spring has almost sprung.
• Please Rob Me – Uses twitter to list all the empty homes in your area.
• The House of David – “The House of David was a Michigan-based religious commune that was founded in 1903. Members of the House of David had to obstain from eating meat, sexual intercourse and shaving/haircuts. Ten years after its inception, the commune formed a barnstorming baseball team originally known as “The Israelite House of David.””
• Fuck you, Google « Fugitivus – I second that. They blew any goodwill I had towards them too.
• Johnny Ryan’s BLECKY YUCKERELLA – 02/04/10 – I just don’t know.

These are my undigested internests for February 4th through February 8th:

• The Canadian Press: AP source says US investigating whether officials of Blackwater sought to bribe Iraqis – WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether security contractor Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi officials to allow the company to keep working there after a fatal shooting involving Blackwater guards, according to a person close to the investigation.
• Use of Twitter, Facebook rising among gang members – Boston.com – Tech-savvy gangsters have long been at home in chatrooms and on Web sites like MySpace, but they appear to be gravitating toward Twitter and Facebook, where they can make threats, boast about crimes, share intelligence on rivals and network with people across the country.
• Хуясе КОТИК (PHOTO) – 15 Февраля 2007 – Здесь всё что Вам нужно! – You just need to look at this.
• Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks – Google and the NSA, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G . . .
• Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – The president can now order the assassination of Americans without trials or any of that nonsense. Change?” Here we are, almost four years later with a new party in power, and the President’s top intelligence official announces — without any real controversy — that the President claims the power to assassinate American citizens with no charges, no trials, no judicial oversight of any kind.”

These are my undigested internests for February 1st through February 3rd:

• Giving the ‘unconscious’ a voice – health – 03 February 2010 – New Scientist – Some opinions might need to be rethought: “For the first time, researchers have struck up a conversation with a man diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. All they had to do was monitor how his brain responded to specific questions. This means that it may now be possible to give some individuals in the same state a degree of autonomy.”
• BAD Press: The Best Of « Invisible Molotov – A really good intro to anarchism – what it is, what it isn’t and so forth.
• Top U.S. officer wants gays to serve openly – The Globe and Mail – Why so eager to fight for a country that doesn’t even want you to fight for it?
• ITV – John Pilger – The kidnapping of Haiti – In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the “swift and crude” appropriation of earthquake-ravaged Haiti by the militarised Obama administration. With George W. Bush attending to the “relief effort” and Bill Clinton the UN’s man, The Comedians, Graham Greene’s dark novel about exploted Haiti comes to mind.
• Give your relationship a boost with the ‘we’ word – Short Sharp Science – New Scientist – “If you want your marriage – or other long-term relationship – to last, try to make heavy use of the first-person plural pronoun.”

These are my undigested internests for January 28th through February 1st:

• The iPad’s Closed System: Sometimes I Hate Being Right | Popular Science – “Remember that groundbreaking Apple Super Bowl ad from 1984? The one where the woman throws a hammer at Big Brother, signifying a new era of freedom that would be ushered in with Macintosh? My, how times have changed. Here we are more than 25 years later and the despotic, all-knowing face up there on that giant screen now belongs to Steve Jobs—and Big Brother Steve is holding an iPad.”
• Study finds reduced brain gray matter concentration in patients with severe obstructive sleep apnea – A study in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP found gray matter concentration deficits in multiple brain areas of people with severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The study suggests that the memory impairment, cardiovascular disturbances, executive dysfunctions, and dysregulation of autonomic and respiratory control frequently observed in OSA patients may be related to morphological changes in brain structure.
• Slashdot Hardware Story | Evolving Robots Learn To Prey On Each Other – “Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report in PLoS ONE how their robots were able to rapidly evolve complex behaviors such as collision-free movement, homing, predator versus prey strategies, cooperation, and even altruism. A hundred generations of selection controlled by a simple neural network were sufficient to allow robots to evolve these behaviors. Their robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behavior, but as they evolved, the robots were able to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate. The authors point out that this confirms a proposal by Alan Turing who suggested in the 1950s that building machines capable of adaptation and learning would be too difficult for a human designer and could instead be done using an evolutionary process. The robots aren’t yet ready to compete in Robot Wars, but they’re still pretty impressive.”
• Homeopathy: Overdosing on nothing – opinion – 29 January 2010 – New Scientist – AT 10.23 am on 30 January, more than 300 activists in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US will take part in a mass homeopathic “overdose”. Sceptics will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic pills to demonstrate to the public that homeopathic remedies, the product of a scientifically unfounded 18th-century ritual, are simply sugar pills.
• BUNNY ROGER | ENGLISH STYLE ICON YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF « The Selvedge Yard – He invented the tight-cut Capri trousers while on holiday on the island in 1949, and by the 1950s he was sponsoring a neo-Edwardian silhouette – four-button jackets with generous shoulders and mean waists, lapelled waistcoats, high-cut trousers – for plain, checked and striped suits. Accessories, whether a high-crowned bowler or ruby cuff-links, were indispensable.
• Web-Surfing Chimp Target of Porno Spam | GlossyNews.com – “I have to check Charlie’s laptop several times a day to make sure he isn’t exposed to any media, especially explicit photos, that would confuse him and compromise the progress he is making,” said Lively. “Already we are seeing him using new, inappropriate signs, like balling up his hands into fists, holding them at his sides, and thrusting his pelvis in a ‘to and fro’ in a highly suggestive manner.”

These are my undigested internests for January 24th through January 28th:

• Haiti quake raises fears of child-eating spirits - – PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – “The earthquake that shattered Haiti has unleashed fears that child-eating spirits, mythological figures entrenched in Haitian culture, are prowling homeless camps in search of young prey.” You know, I think Madonna might be one of these loups-garous.
• 30 Awesome Orange Websites For Your Inspiration | Web Design Tutorials and Inspiration | Learn Photoshop Online | Creative Inspiration | Web Resources – I was kinda worried about the amount of orange on this site. Liked how it looked but wasn’t sure how hard it is on the eyes. But I only had one complaint –from a friend who is always complaining anyway and that’s not an invitation for you to start-. Looking at these other orange sites, I find I don’t mind the colour at all..
• Ubuntu to use Yahoo as default search engine – TechSpot News – This is probably interesting to about 10 people but I’m one of them. Big announcement on the day of the iPad Launch.
• Blue Jays GM Confirms There Never Really Was A ‘Roy Halladay’ | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – TORONTO—Responding to criticism that the team should have done more to deal star pitcher Roy Halladay by the trade deadline, Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi revealed at a press conference Monday that there was no such person as the alleged six-time All-Star.
• Carlton Fisk blasts Mark McGwire – chicagotribune.com – “But when you have some of these obscene numbers being put up by people who shouldn’t even be there. … I mean, you know what’s going on. … The people it should have been most obvious to are the people who covered it up by not addressing it . . . You don’t blame people for not ratting them out; you blame the people who abused the pharmaceutical world. It’s not like you are taking a couple of aspirin and you don’t know what’s going on. (Non-prescription steroid use has been) a federal offense for a long time, regardless of whether baseball was recognizing it and putting rules into place. The people who did it … they were breaking the law to start with. It doesn’t have to be a baseball law. They knew what they were doing and the reason they were doing it. Now they are sorry because they are getting called out.” What else is new, Carlton?

These are my undigested internests for January 23rd through January 24th:

• Vancouver police seize ecstasy pills stamped with Olympic rings | Vancouver, Canada | Straight.com – Calling this one censorship might be a bit of a stretch.
• CP24- Haitian orphans arrive in Canada into open arms of new parents – CTV News, Shows and Sports — Canadian Television – It sounds like dog adoption: "From the workers who carried the little wide-eyed bundles on a bus from the Canadian Embassy to the airport, to the Air Canada volunteers who gently stroked their bellies to help them sleep on the plane, the children were the recipients of a tremendous outpouring of care — before they even reached their anxious parents." I mean, shit, did anyone remember to scratch behind their ears? Were their tails wagging?
• Censorship Gallery « 2010 Legal Observer Program – "Despite claims that they won’t be censoring political expression during the Olympics, the City of Vancouver has already started doing just that. We’re going to keep an up-to-date gallery of the things that VANOC, the IOC, and the City of Vancouver order removed in the leadup to the Games."
• Sleepy transit worker a hero | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun – "The TTC collector caught sleeping inside a Scarborough station is a veteran employee who once saved the life of a rider." You know, I couldn't give a fuck about this guy having a nap. And I'd bet you could get more embarrassing pictures of the TTC ridership than of it's workers – but it still pisses me off that the union's first move was to blame the riders for not waking him up.
• Doing stuff « Jankypanky – Shalome's take on MONSTER JAM. I forgot that I said "Toronto is where cars and dreams come to die." If I had of remembered, I'd have used that joke instead of the one about Rogers Centre being as hard on cars as it was on Troy Glaus's knees. Because, what reader of mine even knows who the fuck Troy Glaus is?
• The Breaking Time: Werner Herzog reads Curious George – Awesome.
• TTC catnaps ignite rider fury amid higher transit fares – thestar.com – This story about the TTC reads like the Onion: "Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union also issued a short news release Friday, admonishing transit users for not waking up the McCowan collector."

These are my undigested internests for January 21st through January 23rd:

• Military Discovers They’ve Been Using Guns Marked With Bible Codes, AKA ‘Jesus Guns’ – Geekologie – I once heard a funny saying about the army: They can't turn around without stepping on their own dicks.
• Twitter user ‘Shit My Dad Says’ gets CBS deal — The Live Feed | THR – If you write, start cleaning your gun. You might need it. To shoot yourself.
• Table of Contents « The Homebrew Industrial Revolution – I've been look forward to this: "Kevin Carson’s third book manuscript is available in unfinished form — The Homebrew Industrial Revolution A Low Overhead Manifesto."
• Privacy is Over Here Comes Sociality – An interesting piece about privacy in the digital age that doesn't fall back on cliche. As for me, I doubt that privacy ever even really existed. Neighbours have always been nosy and people have always been in each other's business. Now strangers are. Big deal.
• Society versus the State – It's hard to make it clearer than this: "Anarchists believe that groups of people can rightfully exercise only those powers that are delegated to them by individuals; and individuals cannot delegate to any group, including the community, powers and rights which they do not themselves possess as individuals."
• Out Of Left Field: Bill Hicks speaking truth from beyond the grave … – Classic Bill Hicks on a baseball blog. I'm in some sort of heaven.

These are my undigested internests for January 4th through January 18th:

• Red Alert Update: Taliban Assault on Kabul | STRATFOR – A little after noon local time, militants began to lay siege on two major shopping centers, including a mall called the Grand Afghan Shopping Center near the Justice Ministry. Eyewitnesses reported militants carrying rocket-propelled grenades had entered the second and third floors of the mall. A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) reportedly detonated outside one of the shopping centers killing several security forces.
• The outfielder problem: The psychology behind catching fly balls : Cognitive Daily – "Baseball players, unlike most football players, must solve one of the most complicated perceptual puzzles in sports: how to predict the path of a moving target obeying the laws of physics, and move to intercept it."
• Vatican calls ‘Avatar’ bland – Telegraph – I don't care what the Vatican thinks about Avatar –haven't seen it — but I was surprised to learn that they're huge Simpsons fans.
• Why is ‘Neanderthal’ still a byword for dumb brute? – Short Sharp Science – New Scientist – Neanderthals wore makeup. Some still do.
• GREAT AMERICAN HOME IMPROVEMENT THE OLD SCHOOL BASEMENT BAR « The Selvedge Yard – Father had one of these when I was growing up. I remember it and the parties that took place there fondly.

These are my undigested internests for January 3rd through January 4th:

• Vigilante Groups in Brazil Trump Drug Gangs and Become Rio’s New Authority – The emergence of a police force.
• Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push – NYTimes.com – Looks like Uganda is a sort of pilot project for Xian fundamentalists. First on the agenda: Kill all the Queers. Second: No fucking allowed for anyone else.
• Show Them to Me – After years of country and western jingoism, we finally get a country and western approach to world peace.
• Worn Fashion Journal » Blog Archive » Let’s Get Gray – Old people are too often neglected by fashion. Perhaps that’s why the stylish amongst them have developed their own looks and look great.
• Will Robots Assemble the Utopian Sea Cities of Our Future? | Designs & Ideas on Dornob – Imagine a post-apocalyptic world populated with prefabricated buildings, manufactured on land from “memory metal” that can pop into shape when carried out to deep-ocean building sites. Frankly, it is not that far-fetched in this day and age – except that the architect behind these dreams is now 92 years old and counting.
• 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past | Project Censored – How typical is this: “On January 21, 2009, Obama signed an executive order that issued more stringent ethics rules, prohibiting lobbyists from serving in agencies they have lobbied in the previous two years. Just two days later, on January 23, the White House announced that its tough new ethics rules wouldn’t apply to the nominee for Deputy Defense Secretary, William Lynn.” They’re not really “rules” if they don’t apply.
• The Blah Blah Blah Blogging Rules. F It. – I like anything that doesn’t like the blogging rules. If I wanted to follow a lot of rules about writing punchy headlines and quick easily scanned posts, I’d be getting laid off from a newspaper.

These are my undigested internests for January 2nd through January 3rd:

• Suzuki on a First-Name Basis With Records – NYTimes.com – A funny article about a funny player. Includes a great quote: “Chicks who dig home runs aren’t the ones who appeal to me,” he said. “I think there’s sexiness in infield hits because they require technique. I’d rather impress the chicks with my technique than with my brute strength. Then, every now and then, just to show I can do that, too, I might flirt a little by hitting one out.”
• Basics – Another Challenge for Ethical Eating – Plants Want to Live, Too – NYTimes.com – Plants are awesome. Think about this the next time you eat one, you mammal-centrist bastard.
• Facebook Adds to Loneliness; Does Not Decrease It – Loneliness does not really exist. If you’re constantly surrounded by people, you may feel odd when there’s no one around. If you’re used to no one being around, then you feel odd when surrounded by people. I suspect these youngsters just think they’re lonely because they’re never alone.
• Nissan’s robot cars mimic fish to avoid crashing | Crave – CNET – Drink like a fish then drive like one.
• LIFE: Cuban Baseball – Hosted by Google – Now this guy is having fun. Nice suit too.

Owl Pellets: My Undigested Internets.

• How George W. Bush Redefined American Freedom by James Bovard – Whatever else has happened, we survived eight years of Bush. (Well, most of us did.) The trick now is surviving his legacy. And whatever other damage those behind him can inflict.
• Why are men with glasses so incredibly attractive? – The Grumpy Owl – I turn up in the strangest places. Have no idea what this is about but it made me smile. Notice that it's not just "hot" but "so incredibly hot." I guess that means looking at me can actually cause a pain in the crotch.
• Darpa’s Cyborg Insect Spies, Now Nuclear-Powered | Popular Science – Those cyborg insects are now nuclear powered.
• Officers used Taser prematurely at Vancouver airport – thestar.com – It took two years to figure this out? One viewing of the tape would be enough for any rational person. And I object to the "prematurely" part. Implies that they would have had to use to the taser eventually. Also bullshit: "The members demonstrated no meaningful attempt to de-escalate the situation, nor did they approach the situation with a measured, coordinated and appropriate response," Their response WAS coordinated. It was also murderous.
• British bird-feeders may be splitting species – 03 December 2009 – New Scientist – "The friendly bird-feeder could be an evolutionary force to be reckoned with. British people who feed birds are contributing to the evolution of a whole new species of blackcap, new research suggests."
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Owl Pellets: My Undigested Internets.

• t r u t h o u t | Is Your Seafood Harvested by Slaves? – But more important than tiger shrimp is Tiger Woods. What's up with that anyway? Did he cut his face or something?
• No, Really, Government IS Glamorous! – Who cares about what these people eat for Thanksgiving dinner anyway?
• "Catullus 16", written in the 1st century BC is one of the most obscene poems you’ll ever read [History] | I Heart Chaos – Is there anything we do that the Romans didn't do better? The opening line is "I will bugger you and face-fuck you," and then it gets obscene.
• William James essay – Some observations of the effects of nitrous-oxide-gas-intoxication which I was prompted to make by reading the pamphlet called The anaesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy (Blood, 1874), have made me understand better than ever before both the strength and the weakness of Hegel's philosophy. I strongly urge others to repeat the experiment, which with pure gas is short an harmless enough.
• What’s wrong with sitting down in the shower? | Life and style | The Guardian – When the mainstream media dies, where will we get these stories?
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