Tales of Drudgery & Boredom.
Humor! Die mensen hebben zes maand lang deze pagina on-line gehad, met in de links de naam en het paswoord van de administrator van het bedrijf.
Onder meer beschikbaar op hun server: het volledige klantenbestand van Porsche en American Standard.
Tee hee.
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“Hopefully, Saddam Hussein will get the message that the world community, through the United Nations, has called on [him] to disarm. And as the president said, he will either disarm or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm him,” Fleischer said.
Ari Fleischer, bastaardzoon van een slang en een kwal, van beroep woordvoerder van George Bush, geciteerd in Nuclear chief: No ‘smoking gun’ in Iraq op CNN.
Typisch een geval van “heads I win, tails you lose”: Saddam Hoessein moet ontwapenen. En als hij dat niet doet, komen wij het doen voor hem. En als hij nu eens geen massavernietigingswapens (meer) heeft?
Trouwens: een artikel op CNN waar geen manifeste manipulatie van de waarheid in staat? Zou de journalist in kwestie al op de lijst van staatsgevaarlijke personen staan?
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Christ almighty, waarom doe ik mijzelf dat aan? Ik ben nu nog niet gaan slapen. Maar nu dus wel: ik ga niet naar de darts zitten kijken op bbc2, en op bbc1 is er een griezelfilm waar ik te bang voor ben–ik heb zo al genoeg hartpalpitaties om niet nog eens nachtmerries te krijgen van een stomme film ook.
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En Happiness is terug! Fantastisch! Paul Whitehouse en Johnny Vegas in één serie!
Shooting Stars was niet zo geforceerd als op kerstmis, ’t was niet slecht eigenlijk. En dan nu The Kumars at No. 42. Allez ju, eens kijken of het goed is. Ik vond het vorig jaar enorm vervelend dat Meera Syal, normaal gezien toch een goeie actrice, altijd zo overduidelijk op cue cards moest lezen. En dat de dingen zo ingestudeerd waren.
Enfin, Donny Osmond. En Westlife. ’t Zal mij benieuwen.
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Buzzcocks was niet slecht, en we gaan Vic en Bob nog eens een kans geven. Shooting Stars voor kerstmis was echt erbarmelijk en schaamtelijk slecht, we zullen wel zien.
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Eerste dag werk en het was alweer kwart voor acht. Bleh.
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Voilà, weer op post.
En van post gesproken: 1494 spammails binnengekregen sinds kerstdag. Zucht.
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Korte autobiografie van John Nash, de mens waarover de film A Beautiful Mind ging. Griezelig bij wijlen:
So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos. For example, a non-Zoroastrian could think of Zarathustra as simply a madman who led millions of naive followers to adopt a cult of ritual fire worship. But without his “madness” Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten.
Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at the age of 66, would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical. Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future. [Nobel e-Museum]
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Vreemde religies: Yazidi.
They have adopted Christian rituals like baptism and a smattering of practices from Islam ranging from circumcision to removal of their shoes inside their temples. The importance of fire as a divine manifestation comes from Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian faith that forms the core of Yazidi beliefs. Indeed their very name is likely taken from an old Persian word for angel.
The veneration of their saints’ tombs means few Yazidis have ever wandered far from their Iraqi roots, although there are branches in Turkey, Syria, Iran, the Caucasus and, because of modern migrations, Germany. Estimates on their numbers swing wildly, but are generally put around 300,000 in Iraq.
Yazidis venerate Sheik Adi bin Musafir, a 12th-century Lebanese-born Arab mystic whose tomb, in Lalish in northern Iraq, is their main place of pilgrimage. They say Sheik Adi revived a faith dating back to Adam.
The sect lacks any written text, which helps account for the tall tale aspect of explaining its tenets. Their religious hierarchy is topped by a prince. His title is hereditary, and he can marry only from an upper caste of some 300 families.
Allegations of satanic worship stem from the central figure among the seven angels they worship. Yazidis consider Ta’us, or the Peacock Angel, to be the devil, but worthy of veneration as one of God’s creatures who repented and should be appeased to avert his wrath. His tears on his repentance are said to have doused the flames of hell, putting it permanently out of business.
Yazidis pray three times a day, at dawn, midday and sunset, facing the direction of the sun each time. “The sun is very holy to us,” said Walid Abu Khudur, the stocky, bearded guardian of the temple built in honor of a holy man here. “It is like the eye of God, so we pray toward it.” [New York Times]
En ze hebben een bijzonder streng verbod op sla eten. Meer informatie hier.
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Ugh, K3 viel even door de zangmand op De Leukste Eeuw: backing vocals voor Sergio op Sister. Ahem. Jawel.
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Neil Gaiman in conversatie met zijn dochter. Ik zie het met Zelie ook nog gebeuren:
Great conversations of our time, with Maddy age 8. Today — Swearing, in Songs.
She was wandering around singing the Future Bible Heroes “Vampire” song this evening. Then she stopped, mid-line and said, “You know, there’s swearing in that song. Is it okay for me to sing it?”
I blinked. “There’s swearing in it?”
“Yes. It goes… (whispers) ‘swear’, (sings) I am what I am what I am, and I am impossibly glam…”
“Er. ‘Swear’?”
“Yes….(half-whispers, confidentially) ‘Damn’.”
“Oh. Damn. Right. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“And it also has (half whispers) bitch in it too. (Raps)I am the bitch-goddess from beyond your grave.”
“Again, I wouldn’t worry about it, and I don’t think bitch in that context is swearing anyway. I mean the word means female dog.”
“Like the shitzu in ‘Fido your leash is too long’ which kind of sounds like ‘shit’?”
“Er. Right. Sort of like that. Anyway, it’s nice to hear you singing, and I’m absolutely not worried about the swearing in Stephin Merritt songs.”
“Oh good. Then I’m not either. (sings, lustily) How fucking romantic, all the stars are out…”
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Humor! Penn, de grote helft van Penn & Teller, werd gefouilleerd tijdens een routine-luchthaven-controle. Hij was er niet mee akkoord, en riep er de politie bij.
En waar dat nog grappig is, is dit hier echt wel scary stuff: een soort vergelijking tussen nazi-Duitsland en de VS na de Homeland Security Act.
Under the U.S. Homeland Security Act (our rights again given away freely by a bipartisan Congress), 22 U.S. agencies are combined in order to achieve “total information awareness” on every American citizen. The government will soon be amassing a file on every American that includes every magazine subscription, credit card purchase, Web site visit, medical record, library record, bank deposit or withdrawals, every airline purchase, as well as judicial, divorce records, and so on. This will be recorded in a central data base, not by a publicly accountable authority, but by the Pentagon, which already operates in total secrecy from the American public.
The Justice Department announced a plan to use its newfound power to designate U.S. citizens as “enemy combatants” to place such people in concentration camps. Declaring them “enemy combatants” would strip them of their constitutional rights, their access to the courts and allow the government to indefinitely hold them without trial.
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Nog eens een paar “tiens, ja, eigenlijk”-momenten gehad, onder meer:
The Magic Passport Theory.
We can now add Mohamed Atta’s reality-defying passport to the Arlen Specter Gallery of Improbable Projectiles. This incriminating item was thrown intact from a cataclysmic fireball and miraculously plucked from 1.6 million tons of debris in a matter of hours. The corporate media rarely mention the unlikelihood of this. Many in the alternative press, though, are unafraid to draw an obvious, albeit taboo, inference: that the Atta passport is planted evidence. According to Washington, DC, peace activist John Judge, other potential plants include the Arabic-language flight manuals left in one of the hijackers’ cars (with note: The discussion of the flight manuals begins at around 13:30). These manuals could serve no useful purpose at such a late stage unless the hijackers planned to finish learning how to fly during a half-hour ride to the airport. But as deliberately placed articles, they are as if a signed diary called “My Plan to Kill the President” had been unearthed in Lee Harvey Oswald’s flat. Also high on the possible planted evidence list is a spiritual manifesto for the Al Qaeda kamikaze pilots, which, to journalist Robert Fisk, sounds an awful lot like it was written by a God-fearing Christian.
Dit en meer op Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002.
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Ahem, die $999 is wel een beetje misleidend: ? 1.595,99 voor ongeveer het basismodel in België:
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Bah. Pakweg 3000 ? voor een PowerBook G4. iBooks zijn er vanaf pakweg 1000 ?, of beter, $999. Zou Apple prijzen voor België hebben?
Als ik er één zou kopen, zou het er in ieder geval één zijn met een 12.1″-scherm. Da’s ook 1024×768, en zoveel properder om mee te werken.
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