From TheOneRing.Net:'Rings' characters discuss Oscar snub


"Jan. 27, 2004 MINAS TIRITH (AP) The city of Minas Tirith has been abuzz today over the news that 'The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King,' while receiving 11 nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, did not receive any nominations for acting....Legolas Greenleaf, of the Mirkwood realm, commented somewhat cryptically on the Academy's choices, 'A red sun rises. Lame decisions have been made this night.' When asked to clarify his opinion, he told reporters that he had not the heart, for the grief was still too near, and retired for a walk in the forest."

MSNBC - Thar she blows! Dead whale explodes: "Residents of Tainan learned a lesson in whale biology after the decomposing remains of a 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours."

Salon.com News | New rules: Telemarketers must display IDs: "Federal Trade Commission regulations requiring telemarketing firms to identify themselves take effect Thursday. Such calls had shown up on Caller ID as 'out of area.' Now the name displayed by Caller ID must either be the company trying to make a sale or the firm making the call. The display must also include a phone number that consumers can call during regular business hours and ask that the company no longer call them."

Link thanks to Orkgrrrl

Pickled dragon mystery - www.smh.com.au: "The documents suggest that the Natural History Museum turned the dragon away, possibly because they suspected it was a trick, and sent it to be destroyed. But it appears a porter intercepted the jar and took it home."

Link thanks to Philos

FRONTLINE: presidential market: join the discussion | PBS: "Unfortunately with a more open market model like ours (which matches buyers with sellers directly, no specialists or market makers in between) prices are more prone to manipulation by speculators and people who just playing around...it is a game after all. That said most of our players seem to be interested in more stable stock prices and we feel that in the coming weeks things will stabilise when a Democratic nominee emerges."

PBS' FrontLine decided to create an online stock market of presidential hopefuls in order to foster thought, discussion, and interest in the political process. What they got was an exercise in gamesmanship and share dumping. Basically, each player starts with $2500 and buys and sells shares of the candidates. Whomever makes the most by election day wins a free trip to the inaugruation. The problem? In the last hour, I've watched Kucinich stock go from $1 to $2500 and back. Meanwhile, the top player in the game doubled his money from $300,000 to $600,000. Fluctuations are so fast that they can shift hundreds of dollards in the time it takes to make a buy or sell order. Amusingly, politics has been forgotten in the realization of some people that "hey, I can make a killing on the stock market!".

Rebellion brewing in Saudi city - JAN 26, 2004

deseretnews.com | Dossier program alarms Utahns

"It sounds like a sci-fi thriller: a super computer program that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child — everything from birth and marriage and divorce history to hunting licenses and car license plates. Even every address you have lived at down to the color of your hair. It sounds surreal, but former Gov. Mike Leavitt signed Utah's 2.4 million residents up for a pilot program — ironically called MATRIX — that does just that. And he never bothered to reveal details of the program to Utah citizens or to state lawmakers who, upon learning of the program on Capitol Hill this week, are now worried the state could be involved in a program that jeopardizes basic civil liberties."

Wired News: Risky E-Vote System to Expand: "Researchers warned last week that an Internet voting system designed for Americans overseas to use in the November presidential election should be scrapped -- because Internet insecurities could compromise the election. "

Jeff's Robots Index

Robots! Robots! Robots!

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | 'Rings' receives 11 Oscar nominations: "'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,' the final chapter in Peter Jackson's majestic fantasy trilogy, led the Academy Awards race Tuesday with 11 nominations, including best picture and director. "

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "We are on Mars, everybody"

Performance Mystery Solved!

815227 - Performance Degradation Occurs in the UnmapViewOfFile Function: "A program that uses large mapped file views to share information between two processes may experience a significant performance decrease. The performance degradation occurs in the UnmapViewOfFile function. "

which is Microsoft's way of saying...

"Intel and Microsoft spent quite a lot of time on implementing Hyper-Threading technology support in the Windows XP operating system. It has not eliminated possible bugs of the implementation, though. Last year there were a number of cases when the Hyper-Threading technology caused performance decrease rather than increase, and now Microsoft confirms there was in error in Hyper-Threading support by Windows XP SP1 Professional and Home Edition."

From Xbit Labs Hardware News

Note that you have to actually phone Microsoft support in order to get the hotfix.

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: "Shipping work overseas saves money that drops to the bottom line as profit. Stock prices are today keyed to earnings-per-share as is, to a certain extent, executive compensation. Now look at the average time that an institutional investor actually holds a given stock. This can be measured in months, sometimes in weeks, but hardly ever in years. So the investor timeline is short and the CEO timeline -- with average tenancies in those positions at less than five years -- is not much longer. So offshoring works great for these two groups. The stock goes up and along with it, the CEO's bonus and stock options. By the time the long-term effects of this policy are felt, both the investors and the CEO are long gone. And even if the CEO is still around, it is with a golden parachute negotiated long before that often pays him more to go away than he might have got to stay."

JPL News -- Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status: "Flight-team engineers for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission were encouraged this morning when Spirit sent a simple radio signal acknowledging that the rover had received a transmission from Earth. "

2 Jewish Leaders Upset After Viewing 'Passion': "Mr. Foxman said that in one scene in the version he watched, the Jewish high priest Caiaphas calls down a kind of curse on the Jewish people by declaring, of the Crucifixion: "His blood be on us, and on our children." In the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 27, Verse 25, the only place in the Bible in which that statement appears, it is said to come from a crowd of Jews shouting for Jesus's death. The message of that passage, that the Jewish people were guilty of deicide, was repudiated by the Second Vatican Council. Mr. Gibson practices a traditionalist form of Roman Catholicism that does not recognize the changes of Vatican II."

Link thanks to Orkgrrrl.

Vatican Journal: Mystery Drama, With the Pope Cast as a Movie Critic

LInk thanks to Orkgrrrl

The Morning News - The Non-Expert: IKEA: "IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you will experience a meticulously detailed alternate reality filled with garish colors, clear-lacquered birch veneer, and a host of NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs) with the glazed looks of the recently anesthetized."

Link thanks to Philos

Ring trilogy puts new face on cancer

I have this ritual I run through from time to time. Every now and then, my computers suddenly starts running more slowly. Web pages are slower, folders take forever to open, and games are slow. So first I run Adaware, to clear all the spyware and junk from my machine, but that doesn't work. Next I find out what processes are running, do some Googling, and find out what they all are. Nothing out of the ordinary is found. Then I do a full virus scan, finding no viruses on my machine. Next I delete any software I don't use. It's still slow. Then I look for recently installed features that might be impacting performance (such as the Sun Java Runtime). Seems like a good bet, but it doesn't change anything. Finally I close Internet Explorer and try again. So apparently, Internet Explorer has been slowing down my machine for about a week. That's about how long it's been since I patched my machine with the latest security update from Microsoft. So what, now it's so secure it's degrading performance?

MassINC -: "Painting America in just two colors makes US politics seem too black-and-white. In reality, the national electorate divides into 10 regions that cut across state borders. How they come together will determine the presidential election. "

All your mimes are belong to us

Don't be a potty-mouth, vote Democratic.

CBS REJECTS ANTI-BUSH SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL: "Viacom's CBS today rejected a request from liberal group MoveOn to air a 30-second anti-President Bush ad during the Super Bowl, saying the spot violated the network's policy against running issue advocacy advertising."

Salon.com News | Brazil detains U.S. jet crew over gesture: "Brazil imposed requirements that Americans be fingerprinted and photographed at entry points in response the similar rules in the United States for citizens of Brazil and other countries whose citizens need visas to enter. "

Meet the Donald:

"Like a recurring character straight out of a Jane Austen novel, Trump fully inhabits his role as the unpardonably vain, tacky aristocrat whose thin charms do little to sugarcoat his fixation on his status and power among the privileged. Boorish as he might seem, we embrace him for making us feel like humble, down-to-earth Anne Elliots and Elizabeth Bennets by comparison.


I am posting this article as part of my ongoing effort to demonstrate the relevance of literature to our daily lives. While many might argue successfully that Donald Trump has nothing to do with our daily lives, twenty years ago the gossip-consuming public was fascinated with the seedy details of Trump's flamboyance and greed.

Next up (maybe): an article titled, "Everything I ever needed to know about motherhood I learned from King Lear."

Dateline: Hollywood: " has tapped the sniveling, hissing, decrepit Gollum to play the role of 'Niles Crane,' replacing David Hyde Pierce on 'Frasier' in an effort to boost ratings on the aging sitcom. "

Link thanks to Orkgrrrl.

Yahoo! News - Is there a future for Lego in kids' high-tech game world?: "He said the company would now go back to its roots, focusing on building blocks and abandoning its forays into multimedia and film products."

LEGO Master Builder: "The search for the job of a lifetime is coming to a city near you. Have you played with LEGO bricks your whole life? Do you think in 3-D? Are you over 18? Imagine a job where you get paid to play with LEGO bricks. "

Also read a firsthand account of the interview process.

Link found at Slashdot

Henry VIII Alternate History
A typical dinner conversation at our house:

"How was your day, dear?"
"It was okay. The baby slept some. Say... besides the fact that Henry VIII was a lecherous lout, do you think Katherine of Aragon has any culpability in the break from Rome?"
"Well, if you put it that way, the Pope had something to do with it too. Technically, granting annullment would have been seedy, but wouldn't have been out of the question."
"Well, wouldn't it be interesting if there were an alternative history role-playing game [not that I'm into RPGs] in the courts of Henry VIII?"
"Sure, and Henry VIII could be a polygamist, and all 6 wives would be alive at the same time!"

It only gets sillier from there on out. However, if you are interested in alternate history, here is a speculative essay for you to read by the historian Alison Weir (see above link). Also, if you are looking for a short, good biography about Elizabeth I, take a look at Behind the Mask: The Life of Queen Elizabeth I, by Jane Resh Thomas.

Private Rocket Plane Breaks Sound Barrier (washingtonpost.com): "A privately funded rocket plane called SpaceShipOne yesterday broke the sound barrier over California's Mojave Desert, achieving what its developer called the first supersonic flight achieved by a nongovernmental effort. "

Link thanks to denormalize

Britney Spears and Edith Wharton: an essay on Victorian chastity and brand-name virginity

"What separates Lily Bart [of Wharton's House of Mirth] and Britney Spears, characters who rely on social artifice and public knowledge of their sexual innocence for market value, is largely that Lily did not have a good agent."

eBay item 2213978870 (Ends Jan-05-04 23:57:40 PST) - StarWars AT-ST walker 1:2 size replica: "All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST) 1:2 scale
over 4 meters tall REPLICA!!!
This is one of the kind, hand made half 1:2 scale replica. It took a master model maker 12 months to build !!!"

The Observer | International | End is nigh for the commune that kept hippie dream alive: "Ever since local hippies, performance artists and homeless people seized a complex of old military barracks and refused to co-operate with the state 32 years ago, conservative politicians have sought to close Christiania down."

BlogNomic

The game Nomic has been discussed here in the past. Well it seems that someone is doing a Nomic game in the form of a blog.

Yahoo! News - The Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever: "Do you hate Clippy - the obnoxious animated talking paper clip? His predecessor made his first appearance as a Bob agent."

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | R.I.P. Jennicam: "After seven years of non-stop broadcast, the webcams that relayed every intimate detail of Jennifer Ringley's life have been switched off."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Science