The answer is SEVEN:

  • One to deny that a lightbulb needs to be replaced.

  • One to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who asks questions about the lightbulb.

  • One to blame the previous administration for the need of a new lightbulb.

  • One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of lightbulbs.

  • One to get together with Vice President Cheney and award a one million dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton Industries for supplying a lightbulb.

  • One to arrange a photo-op session showing Dubya changing the lightbulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag.

  • And finally one to explain to Dubya the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.


Source: monochrom bagasch

[ published on Mon 31.05.2004 22:43 | filed in interests/humour | ]

Apparently something died somewhere in the kitchen walls or the space behind the oven; whatever it is, it smells. Badly. And with the Aussie tradition of tiling shoddily (only the visible surfaces, abutting to the kitchen cabinets), I can't remove the plinth even if I wanted to find out more about the stink. FSCK. Guess I'll be moving the kitchen renovation plans forward a little bit :-(

[ published on Sun 30.05.2004 21:35 | filed in brainfarts | ]

now with (still) zero net access at home, i'm again caught in one of my addictions: reading. currently i'm mostly reading some e-pulp, baen e-books on the palm.

reading stuff on the palm, with my trusty folding keyboard attached, all that on a comic book on my lap and me lounging in a comfy chair, and life's good - or fair at least.

[ published on Sun 30.05.2004 21:26 | filed in interests | ]

...not that i'd need any, but independent scientific support is nice to have.

"The researchers, at the New York Hospital Medical Centre of Queens led by Dr Steven Nurkin, looked at ties worn by doctors, their assistants and medical students at a teaching hospital in New York and compared them with ties worn by the hospital security staff. Almost half the ties (47.6%) worn by clinicians were found to harbour potential disease-causing bacteria. "Studies such as this remind us about what we may bring to our patients' bedside," Dr Nurkin said. "By increasing our awareness and making simple behavioural changes we may be able to provide a better quality of healthcare." The researcher said their study questioned whether wearing a tie was in the best interests of patients.

Link to the story

[ published on Sun 30.05.2004 21:11 | filed in brainfarts | ]
I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads. The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes. In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again........ a few centuries from now.

Elena's story

Update (Thu 27.05.2004 11:13):
Seems her story is a little bit, ahem...embellished. Anyway.
Link to boingboing posting

[ published on Tue 27.04.2004 22:12 | filed in brainfarts | ]

Now who is surprised by the indications that the beheading of that american was staged and likely not committed by the all-encompassing "terrorists" but by fatso murkins? Inquiring minds want to know...

Link to the story

[ published on Tue 18.05.2004 22:43 | filed in brainfarts | ]

Recently read K.W. Jeter's "Noir" - apart from his views about IP and copyright a very interesting book.

Baen makes a lot of their SF books available as ebooks for free, and they occasionally do anthology/theme CDs. Thanks, Baen! (I'm not buying their webscription stuff, because the free material is good enough for my palm pilot and otherwise I mostly prefer dead-tree books, so I'm still a supporting customer.)

This guy here offers most Baen CDs via Bittorrent, and the stuff works great :-)

[ published on Fri 14.05.2004 16:16 | filed in brainfarts | ]

no net: the dial up @ work has finally been scrapped; i can only hope that the guys at telstra/dart get my adsl connection setup RSN....

been sick all day long, slept until 15:30, fewerish and gifted with a great headache.

[ published on Fri 14.05.2004 01:50 | filed in still-not-king | ]
"And now the weather: Gold Coast 23° with a low of 6°."

Winter's here, indeed. And together with the Gold Coasters' preference for glorified shacks^W^Wbungalows the next some weeks are going to be chilly. I've pulled the space heater from the cupboard this evening.

[ published on Wed 12.05.2004 23:55 | filed in interests/au | ]

But since 1.5. I've got no net (almost; dialup works intermittent and unreliably) because I'm switching adsl providers. Grrrrrrrr, doesn't exactly make me want to update things. Anyway.

The weekend before this (ie. 1.-3.5.) we spent at Killarney, cutting a new launch site into the forest. Saturday and sunday was chainsaw-time, with the wind being strong and westerly anyway. lesson learned: work up, not down the slope. Crawling across fallen trees to get to the ones that are still to cut was Not Fun. Next time we know.

Monday was a public holiday (worker's day or somesuch) and we flew from the new launch. It was quite cold, so I landed a bit earlier than necessary; only Ivan got "away" - he landed just beyond town.

The hardware gremlins are still around: two pairs of shoes are about dead, and I hate buying clothes. The stupid cows at Killarney licked all my car (bonnet, windows, everything - now it's really dirty) and they also broke the antenna. So I wedged the broken antenna rod back in for the drive home, but then a flock of birds hit the car @90km/h: the flock scores 1, antenna 0, but they've got one player out dead. Since then I've replaced the antenna with a mangled indoor tv rod, works. Ah yes, and I've cleaned some windows; not the whole car as it's not worth my time.

That was the weekend, the week was soso with some work getting done but me getting more and more cold and sickish. Yes, winter is here: nights go down to +16°. Saturday I bought a couple of SF books, a toaster and triggered the cold, finally. Sunday and monday I spent in bed, feverish and feeling lousy.

[ published on Tue 11.05.2004 01:57 | filed in still-not-king | ]

Somewhere in the privacy news, a couple of days ago:

The American Civil Liberties Union disclosed yesterday that it filed a lawsuit three weeks ago challenging the FBI's methods of obtaining many business records, but the group was barred from revealing even the existence of the case until now. The lawsuit was filed April 6 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, but the case was kept under seal to avoid violating secrecy rules contained in the USA Patriot Act, the ACLU said. The group was allowed to release a redacted version of the lawsuit after weeks of negotiations with the government. "It is remarkable that a gag provision in the Patriot Act kept the public in the dark about the mere fact that a constitutional challenge had been filed in court," Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director, said in a statement. "President Bush can talk about extending the life of the Patriot Act, but the ACLU is still gagged from discussing details of our challenge to it."

Disgusting.
Link to the news article

[ published on Sat 08.05.2004 13:47 | filed in interests/anti | ]

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