Give peace a chance or we'll assault your girl friend and hurt you and your kid

For really unhinged behavior no one beats the leftoids. You may be one of Saddam's "human shields" but that doesn't keep you from a little battery on a guy whose girl friend you assaulted. Then if you're feeling really frisky. you can send death threats to writers for The New Republic for noticing that every wingnut's pal, Markos Moulitsas, is a cheap whore. Of course, if you really want to prove your mettle, you can threaten a conservative blogger's toddler. Hmm, maybe there's an exemption from civilized behavior for psychology professors at the University of Arizona that no one told me about! Right now, Jeff Goldstein's blog is being subjected to a Denial of Service attack by supporters of the professor who apparently think threats of sexual abuse and worse to a two year old are somehow OK. Can you say "pondscum," kids? I knew you could.

Second hoot!

(Via Brothers Judd) Democrat Senator Joe Biden comes off the bench to provide a clutch homerun:

In thanking a young Indian-American man for the support of his Indian-American group, Sen. Biden touts how Indians are the fastest growing immigrant group in Delaware and says, "You CANNOT go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts without an Indian accent."

There's video. His hair's cool too.

Today's hoot!

Strategy Page:

For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It's no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem. If the North Koreans appear to make no sense, that's because they don't. Put simply, when their unworkable economic policies don't work, the North Koreans just conjure up new, and equally unworkable, plans. The Chinese have tried to talk the North Koreans out of these pointless fantasies, and for their trouble they have their trains stolen.

The NorKs may want the trains because theirs are falling apart, but I have another theory:

Because executives can't write

You're fired, and now give back that iPod:

National Semiconductor was so happy with the results in its 2005 fiscal year that the company decided to hand out 8,500 video iPods to its employees.

But when the company laid off 35 employees last week, they were told to return the music players.

They weren't gifts, it turns out.

OK, I'll bite - what exactly were they?

While designed for personal entertainment, the popular Apple MP3 player will be used as a new training and communications tool at National, providing a convenient real-time method for employees to download National podcasts and other employee communications," the press release stated.

I'm a little puzzled how downloading a podcast counts as "real-time," but the fascinating part is the way the execs thought it would be easier to blather on than to just send an email. I'd sure be exciting about bopping down the street with my white earphones listening to some company snooze. Of course, another question raises its ugly head:

Few people at the time took the corporate lingo very seriously, and some actually sold their iPod or gave (it) away. But it turns out that National Semi wasn't kidding. They really invested $300 in devices that allow their employees to listen to company podcasts. After all, you can't do that on the computer that's already sitting on you desk.

Snerk! No word on what they're planning to do with the used iPods. Maybe new employees can use them if they give directions for disinfecting the earphones.

Thanks for the fireworks, dipstick

CNN:

North Korea test-launched a Taepodong-2 missile early Wednesday along with several short-range rockets, but the long-range missile apparently failed, U.S. officials said.

They'll get it right eventually, though, so I guess the thanks should really go to Jimmy Carter who never met a dictator he didn't like. Even short, squirrely ones.

The ecoweenies missed one

Liftoff: Discovery soars on July 4th:

Fla. - NASA gave the shuttle Discovery a majestic Fourth of July send-off and said early signs showed the spacecraft to be in good shape, despite once again being struck by the flying foam that has plagued the program.
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Shuttle managers said early video images of liftoff showing small pieces of foam breaking away — and one even striking the spacecraft — were not troubling.
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Discovery thundered away from its seaside pad at 2:38 p.m EDT.

About three minutes later, as many as five pieces of debris were seen flying off the tank, and another piece of foam popped off a bit later, Mission Control told the crew. The latter piece seemed to strike the belly of Discovery, but NASA assured the seven astronauts it was no concern because of the timing.

Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said Discovery was so high when the pieces came off that there wasn't enough air to accelerate the foam into the shuttle and cause damage.
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It was unclear for a while Monday whether Discovery would fly at all.

A slice of foam, not much bigger than a crust of bread, fell off an expansion joint on the external fuel tank as the spacecraft sat on the launch pad. Shuttle managers concluded Monday night after intensive engineering analysis that the remaining foam on that part of the tank was solid.

Engineers said the piece — 3 inches long and just one-tenth of an ounce — was too small to pose a threat even if it had come off during launch and smacked the shuttle. Inspectors devised a long pole with a camera to inspect the joint and found no evidence of further damage. NASA also made sure there was no excessive ice buildup at that spot Tuesday.
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NASA's chief engineer and top-ranking safety official objected two weeks ago to the 12-day mission without eliminating lingering dangers from foam loss, considered probable and potentially catastrophic.
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In its flight last July, Discovery experienced dangerous foam loss, though the chunk was smaller than one that slammed into Columbia's left wing, and it missed Discovery altogether.

Just like a year ago, more than 100 cameras and radar were trained on Discovery at liftoff to spot any foam shedding. The intensive picture-taking continued with on-board cameras and the astronauts snapping zoom-in shots upon reaching orbit.

NASA figures it will be nearly a week before it can decisively say whether any debris hit Discovery during launch.

Last July, cameras caught a 1-pound chunk two minutes after liftoff, despite extensive repairs that came after the Columbia disaster killed seven astronauts in 2003. The big piece of foam came off an area untouched in the wake of the tragedy. Smaller pieces popped off other parts of the 154-foot tank.

Over the past year, NASA has removed foam from the location of last year's largest foam loss, saying it represented the biggest aerodynamic change to the shuttle in 25 years of flight. Engineers deemed the foam there unnecessary.

Conveniently unmentioned is the fact that the foam didn't use to be a problem until the ecoweenies made NASA switch to an "environmentally friendly" substitute for the stuff that worked. No word on "astronaut friendly."

Bureaucrats gone wild!

UK Telegraph:

Staff at a government agency office have been reported leaping naked from filing cabinets and carrying out stomach-churning pranks.

Civil servants are said to have had sex in the lavatories, taken drugs, used foul language, brawled in the reception area and held break-dancing contests in working hours.

Some of the goings-on at the Rural Payments Agency, a branch of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in Lancaster House, Newcastle upon Tyne, are believed to have been captured on CCTV.

Sorry, but I'm not going to buy the video. And apparently they were really a fun bunch:

"There is an horrific new craze of vomiting into official cups and leaving the cups to fester in cupboards until discovered through the horrendous smell. There is a list of shocking and awful acts in work time including sex in the toilets, drug-taking and swearing is rife."

The Rural Payments Agency is responsible for allocating funds in rural areas, conducting inspections and livestock tracing.

Hmm, I don't think anyone else is going to buy the video either, although they might attract a few fans if they got the livestock in on the action.

Oh well, if their video careers don't pan out, I'm sure there is a place for them at the United Nations. They'd fit right in, with or without the livestock.

Celebrating the Fourth of July

And confusion to our enemies, both foreign and domestic.

Here's a science project!

Academic breaks the Great Firewall of China:

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found a way to launch denial of service attacks against China, using the country's own firewall

Computer experts from the University of Cambridge claim not only to have breached the Great Firewall of China, but have found a way to use the firewall to launch denial of service attacks against specific IP addresses in the country.

The firewall, which uses routers supplied by Cisco, works in part by inspecting Web traffic for certain keywords that the Chinese Government wish to censor, including political ideologies and groups it finds unacceptable.

The Cambridge research group tested the firewall by firing data packets containing the word "Falun" at it, a reference to the banned Falun Gong religious group. The researchers found that it was possible to circumvent the Chinese intrusion detection systems (IDS) by ignoring the forged transmission control protocol (TCP) resets injected by the Chinese routers, which would normally force the endpoints to abandon the connection.

"The machines in China allow data packets in and out, but send a burst of resets to shut connections if they spot particular keywords," explained Richard Clayton of the University of Cambridge computer laboratory. "If you drop all the reset packets at both ends of the connection, which is relatively trivial to do, the Web page is transferred just fine."

Bwahahaha! And since the busy little bees are sending out bogus resets, they're vulnerable to some er, redirection:

By forging the source address of a packet containing a "sensitive" keyword, people could trigger the firewall to block access between source and destination addresses for up to an hour at a time.

Ruh oh! It's not exactly the neutron bomb, but amusing nonetheless.