Hamas vs Fatah.

I've heard lots of Palestinians bemoan their existence throughout the decades. I'm sure the Israelis haven't been saints the entire time the Palestinians have sent waves of suicide bombers and formed an entire generation brainwashed on anything except raw hatred.

But one thing I always knew, when millions of oil money was being funneled to them, that the leaders were just pocketing the cash and fucking the common Palestinian, just like any good African dictator does. And when Yassar Arafat finally bit it, what a surprise, he had a couple hundred million stashed away. Add that to the pointless millions of dollars flushed down the toilet in military weapons and operations, and it's pretty clear the Arafat and the Palestinians at this point have themselves to blame for living in a crappy hunk of desert.

So it's appropriate that their f'ed-up society is now having democratic elections between Fatah, the corrupt thieves that just steal all the money, and Hamas, a bunch of thugs that undermine any attempts at security, society, or structure.

This "country" basically has one chance: let women run it. Muslims. Let women run them. Hah, oh yeah, that's right, they beleive in the most backward, warlike, mysogynistic, ignorant religion ever invented. Backward - just do a tour of muslim countries, warlike - man these guys love a war, either between themselves (Sunni and Shiite) or anything under the sun (Jews, us, Christians, evil toads) mysogynistic - see veils, summary executions of women, suppression of education, and ignorant - well, call me radical, but backward+warlike+mysogynistic == ignorant. Hey, thank's for the zero guys, but that was two millenia ago. What else have you invented while being at the crossroads of three continents? Not much else.

The Palestinians should be thanking their god every day they don't live in the darker ages of history, when any of the shit they pulled would have resulted in the Mongolians putting their entire population to the sword, just like they did to Baghdad.

Random thoughts from the day's tech surfing.

Someone suggested Sun should rename solaris since that name implies closed source, not the current open source status. The blog then suggested Sun Linux. Terrible.

Seems pretty clear it should be called Sunix or Sunux. Same number of letters and name structure as Linux, which would imply a similarity of offering/targetting, but has Sun in the name. As if it would ever happen.

SInce it was the new year, and people are all gaga about tech predictions, I still hold the prediction of computing without monitors. Basically, you wear sunglasses that has a laser projector that beams images directly onto your eyeball. Gyroscopes and other alignment sensors can intelligently detect if you're actually looking at the monitor. Don't know how text input/keyboard would be replaced though, but those displays aren't limited by any preset pixel resolutions. It's a deep as they want it to be, with multiple displays, and maybe 3D.

For input, I've heard of a palm -sized device that you can "chord" in input as fast or faster than a keyboard. Basically, a character is a combination of buttons pressed at once. The eye's focus can be the mouse pointer.

I have heard of sensors that can actually move a mouse by reading cortical activity, but that would be difficult to implement.

Making a fully mobile computer is the next great leap in computing, integrated with a cell phone and wireless internet connections. The data immersion abilities are immense. Of course, it is the first step toward cybernizing humanity, but that is inevitable.

Dick Cheney may be the biggest liar in the history of American politics.

Every single time this guy opens his mouth with his solemn uber-serious tone, the media treats him like he's wise grandpa straightening us all up.

Every single time this guy opens his mouth, a bald-faced lie pours out: Iraq WMD, Iraq Intelligence, BinLaden-Hussien Connections, Energy Meetings, Halliburton, Progress/Regress in post-invasion Iraq, the state of the economy.

He even lies about lying:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_10/004860.php

Now he's completely bullshitting about FISA violations/Domestic Spying.

This is a guy with four heart attacks, and knows he'll be dead of heart failure in under ten years. He's raping the country behind the scenes for his own gain. He works in a completely different building that the White House so there won't be any tapes or records of what he did. That's probably why Bush stays in Crawford too. Kind of like the US insisting they import all the building materials when they built their embassy in the USSR, so the Russkies couldn't plant bugs in the walls.

So basically, the republican leadership is assfucking America right and left, and then goes out on the campaign trail so their deluded radical Christian followers to suck off their shit-covered dicks. While some may consider that an obscene, pointlessly vitriolic portrait, I'd consider it far less obscene that what's really going on.

Colorado skiing distracted me. I went to Vail, Keystone, and Breckenridge.

Of the three, Breckenridge was the best deal (ate at the outside grill). Simple access from free parking, Good runs, solid all around.

Vail was a disaster in the morning due to strangely perfectly gray clouds, which created strange white-out zero-visibility conditions. In the afternoon, the sun came out, but too late, where the legendary aspect of the legendary back bowls became apparent. Go to Vail when it's sunny. If it's windy and overcast, do China bowl and Blue Sky Basin. Vail's parking is $16, make sure you drive to the bottom level of the parking garage, so you don't have to do any stair climbing in ski boots. Vail did really distinguish itself with the best touches all around, you really have to go skiing in Vail if you go to Denver-area resorts.

Keystone was the worst of the three, even besides the fact it was the coldest and windiest that day. They have some good glades, and I got substantially better skiing moguls on this, my third consecutive day skiing. The walk to the mountain is long, consider bringing some cheap shoes and a bag so you can walk to the base of the mountain (it's at least a quarter mile of walking), and put the shoes in a bag under one of the benches. The runs were short-ish on the backside. Food was as expensive as Vail, without the service. Not that it's awful, but I think I'll try A-Basin next year, despite it's bad rep for being cold and windy.

Maybe I'll go to Aspen for a weekend trip with a group too.

Anyway, the Colts just played the Steelers, I only watched the first half, but Tarik Glenn (Colts' LT) singlehandedly ruined the offense in the first half. False starts, blown blocks, just terrible, looked like a Vegas fix. Especially that blatant false start on the goal line. Terrible. The defense gave up two touchdowns to the Steelers and looked lackluster too. At least it wasn't the Patriots, and Manning really did well when his offensive line decided to block, so the Sports Guy can't do his annoying anti-Manning screed without looking like an idiot.

I like the Steelers, so it is win-win, and the Steelers-Broncos will be a great game. I'll probably be rooting for the Steelers, since Cowher has had so much disappointment in the playoffs, the Bus hung on for this season in a reduced role to go to the Super Bowl, and I really like Antwaan Randle-El, Troy Polamaou.

Much like the NFC championship of the 80s and 90s, the AFC championship is for the NFL championship. None of the NFC teams stand a chance, they're all worse than the Eagles from last year, whereas the AFC teams are all equal or better than the Patriots from the year before: equivalent defense, better running games, equivalent passing offenses and quarterbacks. The Bears or Panthers will win the NFC berth, which shows how horrible they are.

BTW, to complete the weekly rant about how shitty the news is, the #1 problem with TV news has to be the emotionalization of the news, rather than any sort of logical dissection and analysis or insight. Instead, everything is raw emotional or instinctual relation, from 9/11 to Iraq to hurricanes.

Texas 41, USC 38.

So I actually forgot the game was on. Tune in it's 38-26. VY runs it in two plays later, Tejas stuffs it, VY does his thing.

Matt Leinert: "I still think we're the better team but they made more plays in the end." Pouts off. STFU.

In reflection, I had to choose between LA or Texas. Christ. Then again, Texas is in Austin, the San Fran of the midwest.

Sports debate update, and it just further validates the theory that Texas is better than USC:

- #13 Alabama barely beat #18 Texas Tech (Texas beat TT 52-17 in the regular season)
- Ohio State (whom Texas dominated in the regular season) dominated Notre Dame (which USC had to get lucky to beat).

Seriously, Texas destroyed good teams in the regular season. Destroyed them. Every time USC faced a minorly spunky opponent (Notre Dame, *Fresno State*), they escaped with wins.

At least there is some sign of Texas punditry support on ESPN now, as I think even their crack analysis staff has caught on to the fact that Texas had better offensive and defensive scoring stats against better teams than USC did.

And now Texas is pissed. PISSED. The media is sucking USC's privates right and left. I just hope Texas doesn't get irrationally mad and keeps its head.

The latest trapped miners story has turned into a true reflection of how crappy our current media are... it's really bad.

Okay, so there's twelve miners trapped/buried in an explosion. True to form, the media drops any and everything...Abramoff, the President declaring himself absolute dictator, etc...

So of course, the media is desperate for a scoop - to be the first that can report what happened to these brave miners. And they are brave, it really is a testament to how bad television media is that their very presence and recycled speeches does the exact opposite of their intentions...true irony in action folks...steals any real drama and realism, any true tragedy, and just makes it a Desperate Housewives sidestory. So an initial unconfirmed report from the rescue squad says 12 alive, 1 dead.

Of course the media leaks it as soon as possible. But it isn't true, it's the opposite: 12 dead, 1 alive.

Well, the media instantaneously jumps on the people in charge, even though they kept their mouths shut and were trying to confirm. Out comes Rita Cosby, a classic blame bitch of the news (more on this in a moment), emphasizing and "empathizing" how irate those family members must be. Cue the press conference, and a host of reporters looking for someone to blame. Over and over. Who's to blame? How about the fucking television media? Christ. Of course gossip will spill out with the initial, incorrect report. Oops.

Now, the a definition of a "blame bitch": I've been noticing these crop up, as a fine new darwinian evolutionary path as the news devolves into meaninglessness. We all are sick of Natalee Holloway, of that Scott guy that killed his pregnant wife, of Michael Jackson, of OJ, and the like. But much like spam and junk mail, there is some hidden, massive majority of stupidity that consumes this shit. And now we have an official ambassador for these people: The blame bitches. MSNBC has Rita Cosby and (hilariously) Joe Scarborough. CNN has Nancy Grace. Who knows who Fox News has (Rita Cosby was initially from there). These people (especially Nancy Grace) attack officials in an over-the-top fashion, chase these stories whose only "news" appeal is pure melodrama (besides the two seconds of actual news in them, such as: woman who happened to be hot got drunk and killed). They huff and sigh and pretend offense and outrage at every single twist and turn to the meaningless story. The sell out any objectivity, restraint, and real intelligence and parade on insecurity, paranoid inner anger, and a host of other counterproductive dark human emotions and instincts.

The fact that Joe Scarborough has descended into this mode in pure desperation for ratings brings me no small satisfaction. Scarborough used to be a right-wing apologist who at least used to occaisionally display some spine when dressing down congress for out-of-control spending, but now he chases Natalee Holloway and the cruise ship murders (I think there's multiple ones now), with the best of the rest of the blame bitches. Calling a republican arrogant self-styled rock star dude a blame bitch. Priceless.

Since I usually miss Hardball which is scheduled for the rest of the senior citizen news watching public, it used to be rebroadcast around 7 or 8. Not now, there's a steady stream of blame bitches clogging the airways. Christ, even VH-1 Z-list celebrity commentary on the top 100 hairstyles of the 80s is better than that.

At least Dan Abrams was good at doing this. But he can't compete with the blame bitches and their army of stupidity.

Really cool article, probably the coolest I've read in the last 12 months:

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_index.html

I particularly like:
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#miller
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_10.html#bodanis
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_12.html#ewald
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_8.html#strogatz

Geez, you have to have the Einstein Professorship at Priceton to figure this out?
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_7.html#steinhardt
I knew that already.

Technological advancement and the fact it can begin to hack/muck with the very notion of humanity is the most dangerous of these ideas. Ghost In The Shell, the japanese anime series, explores this beautifully, and almost tangibly. The notion we will have varying degrees of direct cybernetic human-computer interfacing, added to the fact our mastery of biology and genetics that will allow the engineering of humanity is truly the most dangerous of ideas in the coming century.