fafblog on flag-burning

"An American Flag? Hardly. It has only 49 stars!"

Giblets at Fafblog explains what is wrong with the proposed amendment to ban flag-burning: it doesn't go far enough.

"How would you like to walk down the street of some sunny future Main Street secure in the knowledge that the brutal local flag-burning rings have been brought to justice - only to find Saddam Hussein burning a pile of American flag post cards! 'Oh don't mind me, I'm not burning a flag,' the butcher of Baghdad will say. 'I'm just burning a picture of a flag.' Arrest him if you will, but he will only be released on a technicality... and will defiantly sweep out of the courthouse high-fiving his terrorist 'homies' and flipping you off while you stew in impotent rage!"

Link to post; see also Cracking the Flag-Burning Amendment (via Boing Boing).

rick mercer's got a blog

... and who knows how long it may last? But it's pretty funny so far. In his latest post, he tells the story of how Conservative MP Jason Kenney ridiculed Liberal MP Don Boudria for complaining that someone had registered the domain name donboudria.ca and was misusing it:

"While the speaker was admonishing Jason for such unparliamentarily language as 'ignorant' I started thinking 'What are the chances that Jason Kenney is so stunned that he would call another MP ignorant for not having registered his domain name when he hasn’t bothered to register his own?'

Not a chance, I figured. I am not that lucky.

Turns out the chances were pretty good. Before he sat his arse down in his seat I was the proud owner of www.jasonkenney.org."

Link to Rick Mercer's blog. As Said The Gramophone says, this is probably only of interest to Canadians. (Optimus Crime, I'm looking in your direction...)

an eligible bachelor if i've ever seen one

Jason Mulgrew was recently named one of People magazine's 50 hottest bachelors of 2005, and he's as confused as you are. He earned the title, it is to be assumed, solely from his funny blog:

"My confidence (read: drunkenness) allowed me to tap into my arsenal of lines. I spotted an Asian girl from across the floor who I thought was checking me out, so I decided to approach her. For some reason, I thought I would impress her with my knowledge of Asian culture and my gift of being able to differentiate between Asian ethnicities, so my killer line was, 'You're the most beautiful Japanese girl I've ever seen.' She replied, 'I'm Korean.' I stumbled for a second, regained my composure, and said, 'You're the most beautiful Korean girl I've ever seen.' She was silent for a second or two, looking at me in disbelief. To fill the silence, I offered, 'My aunt is Japanese.' She walked away."

A warning: most of his blog will offend you.

come sail away

Styx references aside, I've been a horrible, horrible blogger, and should be beaten about the head with a mallet. A frikkin-post-something mallet.

In my defence, most of my free time recently has been consumed by configuring and troubleshooting not one, but 2 new computers. Both of which are (or were) on the fritz. Though I have plenty to say about that, it has been deemed too geeky for human eyes and shan't be posted here. If you're interested, feel free to ask.

The reason for this post is the impending launch of Cosmos 1. It's a solar sail, being launched in 3 hours. That's right. Avast ye interplanetary mateys, there soon be pirates of high space. Or at least a privately funded spacecraft, launched from an old Russian ICBM, that plans to prove that solar sails work by steadily increasing its orbit energy over the next week. Who knows, if all goes well it might eventually break orbit and head out towards... well, there. Wherever "there" happens to be. The cool thing about this "there", though, is that it will be a constantly accelerating "there", as long as the sun keeps burning.

Check it out.

a contest

Come up with the best name for my new radio show (Wednesdays at 6:00 pm CT on CFRG 93.1 in Gravelbourg, SK). Leave your entries in the comments. The winner will receive an autographed photo of myself. Good luck!

boing boinger's becommonsed book

Cory Doctorow, one of the wacky intellectual property activists and internet afficionados over at the Boing Boing blog, has released his newest novel online under a Creative Commons license. That means:

"You can send it around, paste it into a chat, beam it to a friend's PDA, or print out a chapter to hand out in the university common room. Like Woody Guthrie said, 'Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.' "

You can download and/or order Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and any of Cory's other books at Craphound.com.

I would also like to announce the creation, by me, of a new word.

Becommons [v.]: (bee-COM-uns) The act of publishing a work under a Creative Commons license.
"I becommonsed the hell out of my black-and-white photography last night."

the downing street memo

In May of this year, the Times of London printed the minutes of a meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and some of his advisors. In the meeting, which took place on July 23, 2002, Blair was briefed on the United States' position on Iraq. Given that the Iraq war didn't start until the spring of 2003, some parts of the minutes were, well, interesting:

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. ...Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action... But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record."

"The Downing Street Memo", as it came to be called, seems to indicate that the Bush administration has lied repeatedly - for a good list of direct quotes which contradict the memo, see DowningStreetMemo.com.

So then how come you've [probably] never heard of it? The memo made a huge splash in Britain, where it almost cost Tony Blair the election. Yet the North American media has barely even touched it, for any number of reasons.

Well, the story's finally picking up steam (although still slowly), with more and more damning evidence of the Bush administration's countless deceptions coming to light. You can read the latest at AfterDowningStreet.org.

new arcade fire track (from six feet under)

This track was recorded for the last episode of Six Feet Under. It will also be released on a 7" with a cover of "Brazil" in July, according to Said The Gramophone.

Arcade Fire - Cold Wind (mp3, 3 MB) [alternate link]

It is awesome. Via STG.

colin powell on the daily show

The celebrity interview is usually the least watchable segment of the Daily Show, but last night Jon Stewart got to interview Colin Powell. They spoke for eleven minutes, mostly about the Iraq war.

Jon: Iraq seemed like such an odd left turn, and I wonder: within the administration, obviously you say there were dissenting voices - I'm assuming, perhaps yours, perhaps others...
Powell: The dissent was over the pace at which to approach the problem, and how to bring it to the international community. And what the president did was listen to all of us. And I made a case which was agreed upon by my other colleagues in the administration that you need to take it to the United Nations, and that's what the president did.

Torrent link (CommonBits has a bunch of new Daily Show torrents); or you can watch the full clip on the Comedy Central website here.

small flightless birthday

It's my birthday. The emperor penguin is about to eat the floating cake.

the case against coldplay

Man, this NYT writer really hates Coldplay. Maybe they teased him as a kid or something.

"[Lead singer Chris Martin] places his melodies near the top of his range to sound more fragile, so the tunes straddle the break between his radiant tenor voice and his falsetto. As he hops between them - in what may be Coldplay's most annoying tic - he makes a sound somewhere between a yodel and a hiccup. And the lyrics can make me wish I didn't understand English."

Link to full article; via Waxy.

real-life pacman

Researchers in Singapore have developed an Augmented Reality (AR) version of Pacman. Players run around outside with a headset and goggles and try to eat the little yellow dots before the ghost players catch them.

"In return, Pacman gets the ability to temporarily neutralise them and add to his virtual powers when he finds and picks up Bluetooth-embedded physical sugar jars scattered in the real world environment by a game coordinator."

The players are tracked by GPS, and their positions are constantly uploaded online, where players at home can send them helpful text messages. Link.

bernard landry resigns

Canadian politics has been damned exciting lately. Secret tapes! Backroom deals! Sexual scandal! And now Parti Québécois leader Bernard Landry has resigned, shocking the world into stunned silence.

Charismatic Bloc Québécois frontman Gilles Duceppe may be the one to beat in a leadership race for the provincial party, but whatever happens, the party has guaranteed another sovereignty referendum if they get elected. And with widespread anger directed at Jean Charest for his incompetence and the Liberals in general for the sponsorship scandal, I can't see how they could lose.

when a couple of guys, they were up to no good

Small Flightless Bird needs your help with a bit of an experiment. I know that you know the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song better than you know your sister's birthdate. I'm sure that you too have caused, in the past, an entire roomful of people to start singing it by describing where you were "born and raised". But it is my belief that this little rap ditty hides a profound and, perhaps, terrifying secret.

Here's the test: without clicking any links, without scrolling down, without googling nothin', start singing the theme song right ... now. Out loud, if possible.

...

So how did you start? I'll bet you started with "Iiiiiin West Philadelphia, born and raised / On a playground is where I spent most of my days..." And you could probably sing [rap] all the way through to the end.

What you didn't remember, and what only one or two people out of everyone I've asked have remembered, is that there is a verse before that one. I call it The Forgotten Rap, and I am convinced that someone out there (the Government? Big Tobacco? Hollywood?) wants an entire generation of TV viewers to forget whatever dangerous truths were contained within its lyrical beats. Highlight the area below to find the words to that verse.

Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there
I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air
[Source]

And spread the message. Leave a comment with your results, and ask a bunch of your friends to try it too. We need to figure out who's behind this, but first we need to know just how many of us they've gotten to.