nba to players: 'don't be black'

The NBA (or "National Thug Association", to quote Rush Limbaugh) has instituted a new off-court dress policy, which outlaws "headphones, chains, shorts, sleeveless shirts, indoor sunglasses, T-shirts and jerseys and headwear such as baseball caps", according to this BBC article. Some players are arguing that the code specifically targets hip-hop attire.

Said Allen Iverson:

"Guys wearing those clothes don't want to be wearing those clothes. You've got all these guys with different personalities. Everybody has their own style, and it's just unfair when you take that away from people. They're targeting guys who dress like me, guys who dress hip-hop. Put a murderer in a suit and he's still a murderer. It sends a bad message to kids."

Link to full article. I wonder what happens when you put Allen Iverson in a suit?

oh my

Hanging Mistaken for Halloween Decoration (Associated Press)

look up. look waaaaaaay up

I like Mars. I like it a lot. One day, I'd like to live there. And this week, I'm the closest I'm going to get for a long, long time (give or take a few thousand kilometers). Mars' orbit has taken it unusually close to Earth - not as close as 2 summers ago, which was a several-hundred year record, but close enough to make for prime viewing. There's even a beautifully timed dust storm to feast your eyes on, if you happen to own a telescope. Myself, I'm just going to be peering at the little disc using my 10x binoculars. It might not show me details, but it makes me feel all warm and longing inside.

indictments ahoy

It looks like Mister I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been indicted, possibly for having the same name as a Muppet. He has also resigned. Karl Rove is still under suspicion. For coverage, try Reuters or AP; for thoughtful commentary, try Fafblog. On Friday nights all you get from me is short, terse sentences. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, geez, pay attention already.)

site redesign and reader survey

Oh hey, Small Flightless Bird looks different. Maybe it was hackers.

In honour of SFB's one-year anniversary, which was about a month and a half ago, we would like to know what you think about the site. Everyone who leaves us a comment answering any or all of the following questions will receive a free, personalized e-card from one of SFB's contributors, and a hearty yet virtual slap on the back.

• Do you like this website?
• Are there too many political posts?
• Are there not enough political posts?
• Do you like how the website looks?
• Does Chris use too many commas?
• What kinds of posts on SFB do you like best?
• How often do you read it?

Note: Our inspiring new header image was photographed by livejournal user atook, who is very generous. It is about energy, just like SFB. See the full image here.

plame cia leak scandal in a nutshell

SFB has posted once or twice about the CIA leak scandal, but we have yet to try to describe what, exactly, the whole thing is about. Well, if you're curious, this AP article describes all the salient points, and has some good context as well. Plus it's short.

If you're not yet curious, try this for an intro paragraph:

"WASHINGTON - It began with a clumsy forgery, led the president to backtrack on his own State of the Union address, already has sent one person to jail and has ruined another's career as a covert operative."

Covert Operatives! Lies! Jail! Addresses! Forgeries! This scandal has it all, man. Read the full article here.

how to see the world from your desktop

Taint.org has this awesome selection of nearly-live planetary desktop images. They show the entire earth, the current positions of all the clouds, and which parts of the world are in darkness (with lit-up areas around cities). The image to the right is an example.

This is pretty cool. What's even cooler is that you can easily set up your computer to automatically download the latest image and set it to be your desktop background. Click here to read the rest of this post, where I explain how to do this (for WinXP users).

1. Download and install the Microsoft .NET Framework (it's a kinda big install, but you'll need it eventually anyway).

2. Download WpWebChanger.exe from this page, which was written by Michael Zehrer. He also provides the C# source code, in case you know what to do with it. Note where you saved the file to, but don't open it.

3. Open up the Control Panel, through the Start Menu. Open Scheduled Tasks, and double-click the "Add Scheduled Task" icon. This will open up a wizard.

4. Click "Next", then Browse to the place where you saved WpWebChanger.exe (from step 2). Choose to perform this task daily, every day. Don't worry about the start time - we'll fix that later. Your user name should pop up automatically; enter the password you use to log onto Windows (if you don't use a password, just leave it blank).

5. Once you click "Finish", a new scheduled task will appear in the folder (probably called "Wpwebchanger.exe"). Right-click it and choose Properties. In the "Run:" box, copy-and-paste in the url of the satellite image corresponding to your screen resolution (from this page), after the program path. The box should now say something like this:

C:\WpWebChanger.exe  http://taint.org/xplanet/day_clouds_1024x768.png

6. Make sure the "Run only if logged on" box is checked, as well as the "Enabled" box. Under the Schedule tab, choose a start time (e.g. midnight). Click "Advanced". Choose how often you want to update the image (the website only updates the images every hour). If you wanna get fancy, you can now click the "New" button and schedule the task to also run every time you start your computer. Under the Settings tab, you can decide if you only want the task to run after the computer has been idle for a few minutes and other such options.

7. Press Ok. Right-click the task icon and choose Run. If your desktop has not changed after a few minutes and you don't use a password to log on to Windows, make sure the "Run only if logged on" box is checked (see step 6).

the colbert report

If you have ever seen our Links page, you'll know that Comedy Central puts each episode of the Daily Show online here, in streamable segments, the day after it airs. There are ads to watch, but if you're using Firefox with the Adblock extension, this is not a problem.

Anyway, ex-Daily Show correspondent Stephen Colbert now has his own show, The Colbert Report, and you can watch the new episodes here. It is a funny show.

Note: CommonBits is also hosting torrents of each complete episode from the first week of the show: link. (via bb)

chad vangaalen

I'd seen Chad VanGaalen play at the Calgary Folk Festival this summer and meant to post about it. Hell, maybe I did. Either way, Stereogum offers up a bunch of Chad VanGaalen mp3s for you to listen to, and I suggest you do.

I might agree with guest-blogger-Jim's assessment of the man's coming popularity - he was easily the most memorable act in Calgary. From his New Music Canada page:

"For 10 years Chad has been producing work in his bedroom, playing all the instruments, and has amassed hundreds of songs."

See also his Flemish Eye records page (where you can buy his album), his New Music Canada page (where you can stream some tracks), his Sup Pop page, and his MySpace page (which has a bit of a music video).

saddam trial lawyer found murdered

One of the defense lawyers in Saddam Hussein's trial was abducted and murdered. He was the lawyer of one of the seven co-defendants.

the calm before the storm ... of indictments

The inquiry into the Valerie Plame leak (see this previous post for background) is almost over, which can only mean one thing: it's indictment time, baby.

Who's it gonna be? The Financial Times thinks that Karl Rove is the frontrunner, and apparently he's ready for it: if indicted, Rove plans to square his shoulders, lift his chin, and resign immediately. But everyone from Scooter Libby (the actual name of Dick Cheney's chief of staff) to Dubya himself is eligible for "the big I" (where 'I' stands for 'Indictment).

From FT.com:

"Last week, there were signs that the White House's usual clinical competence at staging events was coming unstuck. ... In an awkward moment on Friday, Scott McClellan, White House spokesman, was asked whether the administration was distracted by the CIA investigation. He attempted a joke, pretending to ignore the question. No one laughed."

Read the full, rather boring and uninformative article here.

saxomophone

The Simpsons is no longer funny, but it's things like this that remind you that it used to be: a list of made-up words from the show, complete with definitions and context. The highlights include boo-urns, cromulent, and skittlebrau.

this made me very, very angry

The New York Times has an article that touches on two of the topics covered recently on SFB: the dispute between Denmark and Canada over Arctic land, and global warming resulting in melting of the polar icecaps. The tone of the article, however, is ridiculous. Not only does it play up the "virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars" that a watery Arctic represents, it completely omits any mention of what this phenomenon actually means. The most revealing passage is this:

"Indeed, not everyone agrees that warming of the Arctic merits concern. No one knows what share of the recent thawing can be attributed to natural cycles and how much to heat-trapping pollution linked to recent global warming, and some scientists and government officials, particularly in Russia, are dismissive of assertions that a permanent change is at hand."

Ah, so an overwhelming majority of scientists who say that the world is warming due to human contributions and that we're in some serious trouble don't matter? So long as you can find a few quack scientists and partisan hacks who'll toe the line, you've got a story?

I'm sorry, but this sort of reporting strikes me as highly irresponsible and just plain unethical. The average Joe reads this article, and all he gets out of it is "Wow, the Arctic is huge business! Hundreds of billions of dollars and more time at the beach? Man, global warming rules!" Current estimates of damage from hurricane Katrina sit at $125 billion. Multiply that by the number of coastal cities worldwide, and you've got a rough idea of the real economic effect of global warming and rising sea levels.

one-fifth of human genes have been patented

National Geographic points out the startling results of a recent study: twenty percent of the 24,000 human genes have been patented. What's more, 63% of these patents are owned by private firms (28% belong to universities).

"While this does not quite boil down to [the patent holders] owning our genes ... these rights exclude us from using our genes for those purposes that are covered in the patent," says Fiona Murray, the study's co-author.

So you won't have to pay royalties when passing your genetic code onto your progeny - just don't try to do something silly like research your DNA in order to develop life-saving medicines. I doubt that kind of behaviour would fall under "fair use".

north korea at it again

I stumbled upon this bizarre article from the BBC today, with the headline US says N Korea forged dollars. The gist is that in the late eighties, the government of North Korea produced a bunch of counterfeit $100 US bills, which were "transported worldwide by North Korean individuals acting as ostensible government officials".

I mean, when will that crazy country ever learn? Now they're counterfeiting money from other countries! ...Or they were, maybe, in the eighties. I'd accuse Kim Jong Il of being behind all this, if he had come to power before 1994. (A pretty convenient alibi, if you ask me.)

up the down quark

It looks like some crazy artist got together with some crazy particle physicist and decided to generate some pretty nifty images of sub-atomic particles. Of course, they're not actually photographs. Photographs are images made up of captured photons - and one of the particles depicted is the photon. In fact, these particles are much too small and wave-like for the terms "shape" or "appearance" to have any meaning. So really, they're just arbitrary representations, but there's some logic behind them and a whole rationale of why the specific geometric features were chosen. Pretty nifty.

blackberries? not in the states.

I've griped about software patents before, but this one takes the cake. Most people are familiar with Research in Motion (RIM)'s blackberries - little PDA things with wireless email, so you're always connected to your inbox. They're quite handy, and my roomate Guy can't live without his anymore.

But it now looks like RIM is barred from delivering their service in the US due to patent litigation.
The most revealing line in the article?

"NTP, whose only assets are wireless e-mail related patents, had been granted an injunction."

This company provides no products, no services, and no benefit to society. In fact, it's a paper-only company with only a handful of shareholders - so small it's been described as a "file drawer in a lawyer's office". But it has the legal ability to drive a company like RIM out of business. Go figure.

so i'm directing a play...

One of the reasons my posts have been about as frequent as governments taking responsibility for their mistakes is that I'm supposed to be studying. The other, and far more time-consuming, reason is that I'm directing a play this term. It's called Beyond Therapy and it's by Christopher Durang. My thanks to David and Ed, who both recommended this wonderful playwright to me.

The shows are November 16th, 18th and 19th, and if you have any way of getting to Waterloo, Ontario and you love me even a little bit, you'll be there. Even though the cast and crew are all engineers, they're a pretty talented bunch and the show is going to be amazing. Like, laughing so hard you'll fall out of your chair amazing. I swear.

tom delay indicted again

Last week, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) was indicted for some kinda illegal-campaign-donations thing. Frankly, I've been too busy to make sense of it. According to the Washington Post, the charge was:

"...criminally conspiring with two political associates to inject illegal corporate contributions into 2002 state elections that helped the Republican Party reorder the congressional map in Texas and cement its control of the House in Washington."

People who don't like the Republican Party were pretty happy about this indictment, until they realized that it was in some ways a minor offense, and might not amount to much.

But hey whoa now, a totally different jury has now indicted this guy on two more counts, and these ones are serious. From the Washington Post again:

"One count of the new indictment accuses DeLay of conspiracy to commit money laundering. ...The other new count alleges that DeLay and the two associates 'did knowingly, conduct, supervise, and facilitate' the transfer of $190,000 to Washington and back to Texas in violation of the state's money-laundering statutes."

The speed of this new indictment suggests the prosecutor has a pretty solid case. Either way, it puts a kink in DeLay's effort to reclaim his position as majority leader, which he relinquished after the first charges were laid.

either interpretation is valid

Have you seen Broken Flowers? I'm not necessarily recommending it, but if you have you will find this McSweeney's piece hilarious. It's called Jim Jarmusch's Notes For A Ghostbusters Sequel. Excerpt:

"Bill Murray finds himself 'slimed' (offscreen) by the lovable little slime monster from the original film. An emotion flickers over Bill Murray's face. Resignation? Ennui? Ironic detachment? Gentle bemusement? Despair? It is impossible to say. Bill Murray gazes at nothing. His eyebrow starts to move, but then it doesn't. Overhead shot of a bowl of rice. Xylophone/Hammond organ music. Slow fade to black."

Read the whole thing here.

jor-el would be so proud

Nicolas Cage's son, Kal-El Coppola Cage, was born today in New York City.

Via Boing Boing.