Max: You No Longer Have Rights

Senate Passes Terror Detainee Bill, Endorses President Bush's Plan To Create Military Commissions, 65-34 - CBS News

Max: Police State

Torture. Secret prisons filled with people the government has "disappeared". No legal recourse. No redress of grievances for even the most heinous of government transgressions. The "anti-terrorism" legislation currently being considered by the Congress would give the President the power to do this to anyone, even US Citizens. Let me say that again. The Congress is considering a bill that would, despite claims to the contrary, allow the government to indefinitely detain anyone for any reason.

I guess the upside is they won't hate us for our freedom anymore.

Max: Mother Fucker!

ScienceDaily: Elevated Testosterone Kills Nerve Cells

A Yale School of Medicine study shows for the first time that a high level of testosterone, such as that caused by the use of steroids to increase muscle mass or for replacement therapy, can lead to a catastrophic loss of brain cells.

Max: What Was The Question?

Compare this rambling rant with Bill Clinton's "meltdown" on Fox "News".

Jericho: Lunar

Friday night I was exiting work. I was feeling good. I had my headphones on and I was walking to the parking lot to meet Steph.

As I approached the street, I noticed some moron had his far-too-large SUV in the middle of the crosswalk. Doofus was busy chatting away on his cell phone. Too bad he didn't spend as much effort on his driving. As I climbed around the behemoth, I muttered the word "Asshole."

Through my headphones, I couldn't hear idiot-boy's reply. However, his communication was loud and clear. I turned to see he was flipping me a rather blatant bird - still on his cell phone, mind you.

I don't know why I did it. Maybe it's the stress at work. Maybe it was the whole heart scare. Maybe it was the fact that I hate imbeciles with more money than driving skill. Whatever it was, I followed my first instinct in response to his birdy.

I dropped'em.

I chucked him a brown eye.

I totally dropped trow.

Right there, on Third and University, downtown Seattle. Right in front of my place of employment. I didn't care. I dropped'em, did a quick wiggle, and kept walking - never looked back. I don't know if he saw my ass or what his reaction was. I feel bad for the dozens of people who took splash damage from my attack, but it couldn't be helped - the guy deserved it! My fondest hope is that he got an awful eyeful.

You know how after a fight or any kind of confrontation, you always think of the perfect come back, far too late to actually use it. The French call it esprit d'escalier - "wit of the stairs". Well, I had that moment after this confrontation, only I couldn't come up with anything better I could have done! This was the perfect response to someone who wasn't worth my time to flip off.

Max: Wow

This is a animation of various processes going on inside of living cells.

Max: Clinton Bitch Slaps Fox "News"

See It Here

Max: Relativity Drive

Relativity Drive: The end of wings and wheels?

Roger Shawyer has developed an engine with no moving parts that he believes can replace rockets and make trains, planes and automobiles obsolete. 'The end of wings and wheels' is how he puts it. It's a bold claim. Read Shawyer’s theory paper here (pdf format).

Of course, any crackpot can rough out plans for a warp drive. What they never show you is evidence that it works. Shawyer is different. He has built a working prototype to test his ideas, and as a respected spacecraft engineer he has persuaded the British government to fund his work. Now organisations from other parts of the world, including the US air force and the Chinese government, are beating a path to his tiny company.

Jericho: Heart Patient

At approximately 4:00 AM, Tuesday, 9/19, I woke up to go to the bathroom. On the way back to bed I realized my heart was beating pretty hard and pretty fast. Not only was it beating hard and fast, it was also beating irregularly. It was doing a kind of boom-boom-boom-WHAM-boom-boom-WHAM-WHAM ... not fun. Normally, when my heart goes fast, all I need to do is sit, breathe and relax and the heart will slow on it's own. I had an incident like this about two weeks ago. Same deal, got up for the bathroom, felt heart doing flips in my chest, sat and breathed - I was asleep within 15 minutes of waking up. This time it didn't work that way.

As it turned out, Steph was awake. We could both feel my heart banging along. We waited and it didn't stop. This went on for about 25 minutes. By that point, I was wide awake, so was Steph. I had some tightness in my chest, not much but it was there. Could have been from the heart beating, could have been from the anxiety of worrying about my heart. Either way it was there. My heart had slowed, but it was still faster than normal and irregular.

I thought about going to the ER. I looked at my insurance card, seeing it was a $100 co-pay, and not sure if I actually had a problem, I reconsidered. There was a 24 hours nurse line on the back of the card, so I called them. They told me that their standard was to see your normal physician in the next few hours if something was not going on and to hit the ER if there was something still going on. Since my heart was returning to normal, I decided to just call my doctor's office and leave a message for an early morning appointment.

Steph and I tried to go back to sleep, the alarm went off much too soon. I went into work expecting a call in the early morning. No sooner had I sat at my desk, my cell rang. My doctor tells me to report to the ER, they could do many more tests than she could do in her office.

After tidying some loose ends, and preparing our co-workers for us being gone the whole day, Steph and I headed to the ER at Virgina Mason. I got to the ER, reported some heart palpitations and chest tightness. A nurse lead me back to one of the rooms, asking me on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad the chest pain was, I said one. He told me to lay down.

At this point, things went very quickly for a while. People showed up en masse, it was like a ninja assault! Before I knew what was going on, I was topless, I had an I.V. line in my arm, a heart monitor on my finger, a blood pressure cuff on my arm, I was wired up to an EKG and someone was handing me an aspirin and a cup of water. In the midst of all this chaos was a woman operating a laptop computer on a rolling stand, saying she had ordered this and charted that. At some point, as I'm laying there wondering if I was going to live through the day, she asked me if I was an organ donor? Since my middle finger was occupied with a heart monitor, I just answered "yes" and went on with the rest of my ordeal.

After a few minutes, they gave me something I might become familiar with in the next few years - Nitroglycerin. Unfortunately, and yes, you are reading this correctly, the tightness in my chest faded after taking this. Most likely, something wasn't getting enough oxygen. This put everyone on edge. Had I had a mild heart attack?

Blood was drawn, twice, chest x-rays were taken, twice. We waited for the results. A doctor came in, explaining what she thought was going on. Explaining that my blood pressure and heart rate looked fine. She explained that my weight and my family's strong history of weak hearts was problematic. She explained I would probably need a stress test and possibly a heart monitor for a few days. A lot would depend on the results of the xrays and blood tests. So, we waited for the results. And we waited. The bed was thin and my ass was getting sore, but they wouldn't let me get up until they had the test results. We waited.

Finally, the results came back - all negative. They don't know what caused it, but there was no detectable damage. Good news, if a mixed blessing. As quickly as it began, it was over. They disengaged me from the machines, I put on my shirt, and I was told to go get some lunch, then report to a different floor to be fitted for a "King of Hearts" heart monitor.


When I think of "heart monitor", I think of the bulky thing my grandmother wore when she had her quad-bypass. It was the size of an old cassette recorder and had a few hundred wires leading from it. The King of Hearts from Instromedix is about the size and weight, even the style, of an iPod. To continue on with the analogy, the leads from it resemble a pair of ear bud head phones. The only exceptions being that instead of one stereo mini jack on the plug, there looks to be two, and it doesn't go into my ear, it snaps on to electrodes I glue to my chest. The electrodes thing is fun. For the next two weeks I'll be gluing these things on my chest. To do this, I have to shave the area, clean it with alcohol, then rough it up with a bit of sand paper included on the throw-away part of the electrode that protects the adhesive. All told, I'm going to end up with pimples and red marks on my chest for weeks to come. The idea is that this monitor records and holds the last 45 seconds of my heart beating. If I have another flair up, I'm supposed to sit, relax, then press and hold the Record button. This will save the last 45 seconds and record the next 15 seconds. All told I can hold five incidents. When I have five on the device, I'm to call the central modem, identify myself, place the handset mic over the holes on the record button and press the send button. This will transmit the incidents to the hospital where they can be examined. Very 20th century!

After this, I was scheduled for a stress test for Thursday. I was told to call my doctor to arrange an appointment for the results, then go home, rest and behave like always. I did just that, went to work the next day, no incidents. On Thursday I went for my stress test. My mother and my grandmother have both had stress tests so I thought I was prepared. They link you up to an EKG, put you on a treadmill and make you get your heart up to speed. I was very wrong! That's old school. Or maybe they just decided I couldn't handle the treadmill, either way ...

They took me back to a little room, shaved me in spots for the EKG (my chest is a mess!) ran an I.V., took my blood pressure, etc. Then, a nice lady had me roll on my side, she began taking sonograms of my heart. It's a little trippy seeing your own heart beating on a screen. The big problem with this was that the only way she could get a good picture was to stab me in the left nipple with her probe. She apologized for the pain, but it was the only way to get a good picture. Somewhere along the line, I yelped a bit and a nurse commented that with all the strange breathing I had to do (deep breath, hold, breathe all the way out, hold, etc.) that you needed swimmer's lungs. I replied that I had the right lungs, but I sure could have used Schwarzenegger's nipples!

The doctor finally arrives, apparently this procedure has become quite popular and several of them were being performed that morning. They inject me with Dobutamine, this drug is used to get your heart rate up and simulate exercise. At first, I got tingly all over, then I got stabbed in the nipple again and all I could think about was that pain - she apologized again, saying "That is apparently where your heart lives." Honey, my heart doesn't live in my LEFT BOOB!

They upped the dosage, now I'm feeling hot all over. My heart rate is up around 130 (as I sit here in my chair, my King of Hearts tells me my heart rate is around 79.) More sonogram bad touching, or more precisely, echocardiograms. Then they hit me again, my heart rate shot up to about 140. At this point, my heart was beating about as fast as it had been during my episode - but very regularly, stone regular. All the while I'm doing the funky breathing and getting my nipple beat to a pulp.

They hit me again. I was really shocked. My heart was moving at this point, I couldn't imagine it going faster. They later told me that since I was so young, they wanted to make sure it could handle the higher stress. I was very worried about this, I mentioned this at the time. They injected me anyway. My heart went up over 150. I was breathing really hard and not sure I could keep going. The lady stabbed me hard and fast and got her pictures done. It was over fast, but not fast enough for my taste.

They injected me with a different drug, this one to bring me back down. I lay there for five or so minutes, letting the new drug do it's job, which it did just fine. When I did stand, I was very light headed. One of the drugs they used gave me the shakes, putting my shirt back on was a bit of a challenge. The doctor told me nothing glaring stood out, but I would get my results from my doctor later.

We grabbed lunch and headed home. By this time, our realtor was inspecting our house. We're considering moving, but that's a post all by itself. We had enough time to talk to him, then head back to Seattle for my results.

My doctor said everything came back normal. I'm pretty fit for a fat guy. They don't know what caused my episode, but I need to keep wearing the monitor to try to catch it. She told me I really need to take the weight off. I really need to go to the gym. I should get back on the hormone I was previously prescribed and I should stay on the aspirin regimen I had been given in the ER. She wants to see me again in two weeks, she wants to do a full physical and she wants to check my dieting progress.

In all, I knew some of this was coming. Between my weight and my family history, I am bound to have heart issues. My weight is back up to 472.5, nearly the 475 I had two years ago. With my weight, the stress at work over the last year and other stresses like our possible move, something had to break. Before I left my last job, I was getting very bad headaches. I got a new job with less stress and the headaches went away. Apparently, when under a lot of stress, my body manifests physical problems. I'd trade the heart palpatations for the headaches, but of course I thought I might have had a tumor at the time.

Either way, I need to force myself to stay on the diet, get my ass to the gym and maybe it is finally time to look for a different job. I'm not happy about any of that, but the alternative isn't much better.

Max: Weird Al on Youtube

Weird Al on Youtube.

Jericho: A Fantasy League of His Own

Fall is soon upon us. At this time of year, a young man's fancy turns to ... gaming!

Long time readers know I'm a sucker for games. I'm a role player, love me some video games and other games are always interesting. With all the pre-season football games on the tube and with Seattle doing so well last season, there's all kinds of football talk around me these days.

Now, I know very little about football. My wife could better relate one embarrassing story where I was approached by a personality from a local radio station. He had a mic in hand, was live on the air and they were broadcasting between halves or something. The young man asked me if I liked football. I knew even less about football then than now - so, not wanting to come off as a dork, which should have been my first clue, I yelled out, "Yeah! Go Seahawks!" The young man gave me a stupid look and left. Steph just shook her head. As some of you have already guessed, this was a Saturday. Steph pointed to the radio-station's truck. Painted on the side in large, purple letters were the words "Husky Radio". Apparently, if a radio guy approaches you on a Saturday, you are supposed to talk about college football, not pro ball. Faux pas moi!

I may not know football, but gaming I know! One thing that has intrigued me for a while has been the concept of Fantasy Sports, and since it is the season, Football specifically. I found this Fantasy Football site, they give cash prizes for this stuff and everything. Wild! But, I think you might have to know more about football than I do to get into it. I dunno - I can watch Fox Sports and ESPN like any other guy - can't I? Hmmmmm. Maybe I'm not butch enough to be this much of a geek. Maybe I'll get into Fantasy Hockey!

Since I know nothing about football, I'm not butch but I am a geek, I must find a compromise. There was a game out on the market a few years ago called Blood Bowl. I got to play a few times and I really liked it. It combined several geeky things, starting with such "Fantasy" elements as Orcs, Trolls and Goblins. It's a table top wargame, of sorts - very geeky. Throw in that the game uses little metal figures that need to be painted - tres geeky! The best is that it simulates a sport, something all geeks would rather do. We would rather roll dice and crunch numbers than actually go out with a leather ball and get dirty!

Sadly, the game is out of print. I can get a copy from the manufacturer - for $75! Ebay has various copies at various prices and states, from cheap and trashed to still shrink wrapped for more than $75! Finding others to play with is even harder than finding the out of print game. I nearly had Steph talked into it - sure I did! Too bad. I understand a new version will be hitting the market next year. We'll see ...

Max: Shiny

Howstuffworks "How the Hyanide Works"

Although they're all personal methods of transportation, a motorcycle, an ATV and a snowmobile have very distinct functions. If you want to head out on the highway, you'll probably hop on your motorcycle. Motorcycles aren't meant to go off-road, however, so if you want to navigate dirt trails, an ATV or a dirt bike is a good choice. And as its name implies, a snowmobile is perfectly suited to snowy, icy roads and trails. Many people own at least one of these vehicles, but most don't have one of each. Wouldn't it be great if one vehicle could handle all of these separate road conditions without even having to change tires? Enter the Hyanide, a concept vehicle designed to do just that.

Max: The War on Appendicitis

Wired News: One Million Ways to Die

Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist -- at least, statistically speaking.

In fact, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.

Max: BNL Rocks My World

Barenaked Ladies urging fans to participate in music, video-making

The Barenaked Ladies are urging their fans to get involved in their music, asking them to remix tunes, create T-shirts and participate in a music video.

The Toronto group just reverted to its independent roots, having reached the end of its contract with Warner Music. Members say they are ready to experiment with new ways of reaching out to their fans through cyberspace.

"The main thing is just shifting the focus to the fan and letting them decide how they want to consume the music," said songwriter and guitarist Ed Robertson.

Max: Shitfuckshitfuckshitfuck

Oral sex can cause cancer

We know that sugar rots teeth and too much sun will give you a burn, but now scientists are even saying that giving oral sex can give you cancer.

Max: The Shire of Bend, Oregon

The Shire of Bend, Oregon

The Tolkien geeks have built their own subdivision.

Am I a sad, little man because I am not sure that this is neat or pathetic? Maybe I need more irony in my diet.

Max: Girl on LSD

It may not open the doors of perception, but at least it's good for a laugh.

Jericho: Starve a Cold, Feed a Terrorist

I'm not feeling very well today. The weather changed rapidly and that usually sparks my sinuses. We've been back to serious dieting for a week and the lower half of my body is hating the change - or I have a stomach bug. I just want to go to bed - which is a typical reaction when I don't feel good.

With my mind on food and pain, I struck on an interesting idea.


A dog might bite the hand that feeds it, but not while it's actually eating.


Simple, but true, no? What does it mean? Oh, well, if you are sole support of even the most insane, pissed off creature, that creature will make exceptions to their anger to allow you to continue to support it.

Let's look at Al Quiduh, or however it's spelled this week. These people are pissed at us because we break their very fundalmentalistic ideas of right and wrong. We are free to express ourselves, they feel those expressions corrupt everything around us. We take their oil, in order to enrich our already decandent lives. We're a big, easy target. And, when challenged, we put up our dukes and fight. Especially when there is a Republican in the White Bunker.

You can't reason with them. We are infidels and unless we convert and radically change EVERYTHING about ourselves, we will never be good enough. No thanks. You can't kill them. Every one of them that gets killed is another martyr - this just inspires more of the young ones on to fight us. This will go on forever.

So, cut it off, not at the neck, but at the waist. We keep going after the top guys and new top guys step right up. It's the troopers that are the problem. The young ones, inspired by the sacrifice of those before them, ready to bring the word of Allah to the infidel, even if they have to blow up the infidel to get them to pay attention, they are the key.

If you were an angry young man, ready to fight, ready to die for the glory of Allah, ready to slay the infidel dragon, if all you had was poverty and hatred, driving a car bomb might not sound like a bad idea. But, what if you had something else to live for?

I'm not saying pull out the troops. It's too late, we screwed up. We need to leave the troops. But, as we arm them with guns and armor their Humvees, lets also arm them with a different, but very effective, weapon: food.

This was done early on in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I think it needs to be ramped up and repeated. We should pull back some of our troops, just to free up some cash - not to mention getting those boys and girls home. With that money, we can buy food. Lots of food. Food is cheap here in the land of plenty. And, I'm not talking rice and beans. I'm talking the good stuff.

They originally dropped stuff with long shelf lives, like peanut butter and pop-tarts. I think that was bloody brilliant! I don't know all the details of a fundamentalist muslim diet, but I bet pop-tarts fit. Who doesn't love peanut butter? It's peanuts, salt and sugar - awesome! Protein in a jar and tastes freekin' great! If you carpet bombed Baghdad with peanut butter and pop-tarts, no one would object. People would lay down their arms and surrender!

Why stop there? Pork is definitely out of the question, so no Spam. But, there are other products out there that are insanely great - and we can get them on the cheap. I have four words for you: Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I'm sorry, that stuff is king of canned stew! Ain't no one gonna say no to that. It can live on a shelf for a century it's so packed with salt. It's simply the best. If a group of soldiers drove up and said "I'll trade you this deuce and a half load of Dinty Moore for all the guns you can find" - that village would disarm in an hour. If they promised to come back the next week, you would find an even larger pile of guns waiting.

I'm thinking bags of Frosted Flakes, Doritos, Twinkies and then the classic Hershey bar. Pump enough of that into these counties and there will be no fighting. Would you aim a gun at somebody if he was your only hope for more Cheetos? I think not. All the while, instead of making bullets, we've put some American farmers back to work and gotten money out of the over-rich defense sector and back into the manufacturing sector.

There's one other way to put some farmers to work, but we might have to keep it secret. What's one of the largest cash crops in this country, is illegal to own or use here, but is very popular over there? Yup, hashish. Also known as hash, doobie, grass, weed and mary jane. Marijuana is smoked all over the middle east. It grows real well here in the US, extremely well. At one point I heard it was the third largest cash crop in the state of Missouri. Probably that way elsewhere, too.

So, get some farmers, hell, grab some inmates who are good at this. Find some land, and get to work. Tons of this stuff could be grown in a very short time. Then, put it in baggies and carpet bomb populated areas with that. Now, they have weed and pop-tarts for their munchies. Perfect.

What about our angry young man above? Well, first, he's put on weight. He's been so well fed for the last year he's not sure about anything anymore. It's hard to be mad at people who have been so generous. Our young friend also has gained a new hobby. He and his friends go grab the weed after it's been dropped, sit around the hookah discussing Allah's goodness and love and eat Pringles. Yes, there are some old men who keep screaming about America and how it's corrupting the youth, but who cares?

In the end, the young men, all the people, will grow to think of America as a rich, generous uncle. The extremists will find ways to kill themselves off or fade away - you don't see Bin Laden driving any car bombs, do you? And we continue sending them millions of dollars of food instead of billions of dollars of troops. Everyone wins.

Want to make it a cinch? After all of the above - drop a few million Xboxes ...

Max: QOTD

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
- Frank Tibolt

Max: al-Qaida On The Run

Iraq’s Anbar province a lost cause?

A top secret report by a Marine Corps intelligence officer says there's no chance the U.S. military can end insurgent violence in al-Anbar, and no viable government institutions or chance for political progress anytime soon.

Even more ominous, military officials say al-Qaida in Iraq has rushed to fill that political vacuum. Military officials tell NBC News al-Qaida's also recruiting increasing numbers of Iraqi Sunnis into the terrorist group.

Max: Triptastic

Daniel Pinchbeck and the New Psychedelic Elite

It's midnight on a Sunday night, and Daniel Pinchbeck, a pop psychedelic author, is smoking a cigarette on the couch of a dramatically sparse apartment in Manhattan's East Village. An Austin Powers-like character with buckteeth, tangled hair and a pinched, nasal delivery, Pinchbeck, 40, does not exude cool, but he is well-known in New York as a philosopher and proponent of drugs not available at your corner dealer, which has made him quite popular indeed. It's been a busy weekend: Saturday afternoon with Sting at the Edvard Munch show at the Museum of Modern Art, Saturday night at a downtown rock show with Moby, and this evening visiting a bunch of people on dimethyltryptamine, considered the most potent hallucinogen on the planet. DMT, a harrowing seven-minute trip that feels like seven centuries, is Direct Mystical Transmission, says Pinchbeck -- Drastic Magical Transport. It is 'the doorway you can step through to greet the beings who run the cosmic candy store,' he has written. Smoking a bowl of it, he adds, tastes like 'a shard of lawn furniture.'

Max: 80GB iPod

Still too small to hold all my music.

Max: Acid Dreams

I have been having strange dreams lately. My dreams have always been odd, but lately they have been disjointed - almost incoherent - to the point that I have trouble even describing them.

Every now and then a dream will settle on a story for a few minutes before veering back to freakout land. One such interlude last night involved me collecting underground movies stored on bizarre media, such as coins or little bits of rubber. One of the movies I had was a bio-pic of Bill Cosby. Cosby was in the movie, but he didn't play himself. Rather he played own of his own employees, while someone else played him.

I found this little novelty device somewhat interesting. Just before my dream started to break back down into nonsense, I was thinking that Jer and I needed to make a bio-pic about us and use a similar device in which I would play Jer and he would play me.

Of course, most people probably wouldn't notice.

Max: Max Want

Ultimate Secure Home located in Durango Colorado



Strategically located in the awesome San Juan mountains of Southwest Colorado, this patented steel-reinforced concrete earth home was built to withstand almost any natural or man-made disaster you can name. It is more secure, safe, and functional than any conventional house could ever be, yet still has a level of comfort that one might not expect to find in an underground home.

The house and its 4.3 acre parcel are currently offered at only $475,000 ($20,000 below appraised value). Or $495,000 for the house with a 4.38 acre boundary adjusted parcel. The adjoining vacant 3 acre parcel is also for sale.

Max: A Man With A Vision

Mile High Atlanta

Max: They Are Just Now Figuring This Out?

Iraq war justifications laid bare

The Senate Intelligence Committee has found no evidence of links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In other news, the Senate "Intelligence" Committee has determined that fire is hot and are now looking into why objects fall when dropped.

Max: And Pork! We Shouldn't Eat Pork!

The Enemy At Home by Dinesh D'Souza

D’Souza shows that liberals—people like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Bill Moyers, and Michael Moore—are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslim countries but also traditional and religious societies around the world. Their outspoken opposition to American foreign policy—including the way the Bush administration is conducting the war on terror—contributes to the growing hostility, encouraging people both at home and abroad to blame America for the problems of the world. He argues that it is not our exercise of freedom that enrages our enemies, but our abuse of that freedom—from the sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture.

9/11 had nothing to do with the fact that Shrub's transition team ignored the outgoing Clinton administrations warnings about bin Laden. It had nothing to do with Shrub's decision to ignore an intelligence report entitled "bin Laden Determined to Strike". If only our women wore bee-keeper suits and our homos stopped craving the butt-love, 9/11 wouldn't have hapened.

Yeesh.

Max: You Need To Know

Several recent studies have shown that excessive clothing removal can lead to nudity.

Max: Crikey!

Max: Don't Mess With The Tokyo Police

Max: Area 51B

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Is this Bush's secret bunker?

We are sitting, hazards blinking, in Brown's BMW on a rural road in Virginia's Facquier County, a horsey enclave an hour west of Washington DC. The object of our attention is Mount Weather, officially the Emergency Operations Centre of the Federal Emergency Management Authority (Fema); and, less officially, a massive underground complex originally built to house governmental officials in the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange. Today, as the Bush administration wages its war on terror, Mount Weather is believed to house a 'shadow government' made up of senior Washington officials on temporary assignment.

I want to be President just so I can tour places like this.

Max: A Historical DocuDrama

Max: ABC And Shrub, Sittin' In A Tree

Clinton officials protest ABC 9/11 film
A miniseries about the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks is "terribly wrong" and ABC should correct it or not air it, a group of former Clinton administration officials and Senate Democrats said in letters to the head of the network's parent company.

...

The letter writers pointed out examples of scenes they had been told were in the miniseries, but which they said never happened. Albright objected to a scene that she was told showed her insisting on warning the Pakistani government before an air strike on Afghanistan, and that she was the one who made the warning.

"The scene as explained to me is false and defamatory," she said.

Berger objected to a scene that he was told showed him refusing to authorize an attack on Osama bin Laden despite the request from CIA officials. "The fabrication of this scene (of such apparent magnitude) cannot be justified under any reasonable definition of dramatic license," he wrote.

Lindsey and Band objected to advertisements for the miniseries, which they said suggested that Clinton wasn't paying enough attention to the threat of terrorism.

"While ABC is promoting `The Path to 9/11' as a dramatization of historical fact, in truth it is a fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans," they said. "Given your stated obligation to `get it right,' we urge you to do so by not airing this drama until the egregious factual errors are corrected, an endeavor we could easily assist you with given the opportunity to view the film."

Jericho: Trek Inspiration

These are too much fun! There are more of them!

Jericho: But is it a Splog?

I'm a tech geek. For the last eight or so years, my job has fallen on the line between data and telecom, between phones and computers. My current job has, until recently (more on that later, maybe), primarily focused on a voicemail system, which is connected to a telephone switch, but is itself an off-the-shelf computer server. I'm firmly based in the convergence of telephones and computers.

This leads me to VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. This idea, transmitting phone calls over digital data lines, isn't exactly new, but it is becoming quite the rage. A real buzz word. You have probably been hearing more and more about it.

So, I came across something that perked up my ears. I'm always hunting around for VoIP information. I'm expected to put together a class at work to explain VoIP to the average technotard, so anything I can pull from the Internet to make that easier is helpful. I ran across a link that claimed to take me to a "VoIP Forum", instead, it took me to a site called "Vonage Forum".

By now, you have all heard of Vonage. It's advertised everywhere. Vonage is indeed VoIP for the home or SOHO user. I've even heard it is a good service for the value. But, Vonage isn't the end all, be all of VoIP and it isn't the only VoIP option out there.

This Vonage Forum touts itself as "An Independent Support Site" - they also go on to disclaim any association with Vonage. But, from there, it's the "V" word as far as the eye can see. Features, Calling Plans, Rates, specials - all for Vonage.

I had a look around and while there is a ton of info, it's not VoIP generic. If you are a Vonage user, this is probably a great place for you. If you want to learn more about Vonage before you buy, while I don't feel it's as "independent" as it claims, the Vonage Forum will probably give you a ton of insight. Some features require that you register with the forum, but this shouldn't be foreign to you if you have used any other forums before.

I found this site after I read an interesting article out at Wired. The article deals with something I have never heard of before; splogs. A "splog" is a Spam Blog, or a blog that uses search engines to lure readers to their site where they are bombarded with links and ads, all of which will make money for the splog creator. The idea is to get high enough in search engine results that people hit your page when looking for, well, just about anything. Say I googled up "Auto Parts" - I could trip over a link that looked promising, when in fact I would be lead to a splog with thousands of ads for cheap Viagra or who knows what else. Read the article, especially you bloggists out there! Know the enemy ... or become the enemy, there is money to be made!

Is the Vonage Forum a splog? Looking back on it now, no. But having just read that article and hitting that site directly after, it pinged my internal spamdar. This site offers a service, unlike the average splog. I couldn't even find it via Google unless I entered "Vonage Forum". It didn't have a lot of randomly generated crap. It is, however, very heavily slanted toward one product.

If I were to call a site a VoIP forum, I would want more generic VoIP info up front. A good comparison of several services would be useful. I'd like to see a more well rounded site, one that wouldn't need a disclaimer directly at the top of the page because of it's heavy slant.

Keep your eyes open out there!

Max: Modern Physics = Hallucinogens

Top 10: Weirdest cosmology theories - New Scientist Space

Max: The Supersonic Future

A computer that knows more about you than you do? Mood controls? Wow. The TSA would love to have access to that technology.

Max: The Biology of B-Movie Monsters

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, by Michael C. LaBarbera

"Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context--make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large--and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve. Absolute size cannot be treated in isolation; size per se affects almost every aspect of an organism's biology. Indeed, the effects of size on biology are sufficiently pervasive and the study of these effects sufficiently rich in biological insight that the field has earned a name of its own: 'scaling.'"

Max: Jim Baens Universe

Help Save Science Fiction at Jim Baen's Universe!

I usually don't make commercial endorsements, but Jim Baen's Universe is one of the better things to arrive on the web as of late. It is an online Sci Fi magazine, featuring stories by people such as Cory Doctorow, Brian Herbert an Gregory Benford among others. The best part is that it is available for download in several formats, not one of which is tied down by DRM. That means you can download it, move from device to device and enjoy it as you see fit. Give the link a click and give it a try.

Max: 20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death: "1 The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including 'to be in Abraham's bosom,' 'just add maggots,' and 'sleep with the Tribbles' (a Star Trek favorite).

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates."

Max: NASA's New Spaceships

NASA - Constellation Program: NASA's New Spaceships

"NASA has selected Lockheed Martin Corp. as the prime contractor to design, develop, and build Orion, America's spacecraft for a new generation of explorers.

The Orion crew capsule will carry astronauts back to the moon and later to Mars. The first flight with astronauts aboard is planned for no later than 2014. Orion's first flight to the moon is planned for no later than 2020. "