the credit reporting racket

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 June 11 by Anton

Spy on Me, Please, by Michael Gilson De Lemos

Posted in tax+privacy | Leave a comment

judicial murder

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 June 11 by Anton

Bob Smith remembers Peter McWilliams

(link updated 2006 Aug 15)

Posted in drugwar | Leave a comment

a grand tradition

Posted on Monday, 2003 June 09 by Anton

Idea for Ron Paul: attach a rider to Patriot II, to change the flag, because it has become customary to do so when instituting a new tyranny.

Posted in heraldry, politics | Leave a comment

can immortals be said to have a life-cycle?

Posted on Saturday, 2003 June 07 by Anton

On reading The Silmarillion I was mildly bothered that, in a story mainly about Elves, Elvish children are never mentioned. (Half-Elf children appear in a couple of episodes, as baggage.) Children are relatively scarce among immortals (because they spend a smaller fraction of their time as children), but still, a number of prominent Elves were born during the period chronicled, and you’d think at least one of them might have done something memorable before coming of age.

This cartoon suggests an answer.

2006: That site’s archive has been reorganized and I can’t find the scene in question. It had several humans and a vampire chatting over coffee. Human: “You look about nineteen, but being a vampire you could be any age, right? So, are you centuries old?” Vampire: “I’m twelve.”

Posted in cartoons, prose | 1 Comment

what do they want?

Posted on Friday, 2003 June 06 by Anton

I’m working on my first nontrivial bit of text-parsing: a little program to extract search-strings from my HTTP logs. Unfortunately (but naturally) each search-engine has its own conventions and so I may never identify all the relevant fields!

I’m using Python, though I suppose I ought to do it in Perl for practice.

Posted in me!me!me!, neep-neep | 1 Comment

limits of metaphor

Posted on Friday, 2003 June 06 by Anton

Ever notice that blunt is not always a synonym for pointless ?

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a victim here, a victim there

Posted on Friday, 2003 June 06 by Anton

Collateral damage: “There Was a Report of Guns and Drugs”

In the case of Alberta Spruill, the cops were enforcing the law. An investigation into whether they followed correct procedures is warranted, but an examination into the laws they were enforcing is even more important. It’s time to reconsider both the war on drugs and the war on guns, for the sake of future innocent victims.

Posted in drugwar, security theater | Leave a comment