August 2003 – Screenshot

UNH! UKH!

Also via PCJM, nothing brightens up a lunch-break like The UNH! Project, assuming you don’t choke yourself laughing. The project collects and comments on panels from comics featuring “gutteral moans”. It’s classic out-of-context humor, allowing observations like this from the first panel in the collection in which a henchwoman utters “UKH!” while being slapped with a book: “It’s completely gratuitous; her butt has accidentally wandered into the perfect position for it to be hit with a book.” Then there’s my personal favorite from the collection…

Who Buys This Stuff?

By AMH

This slightly old article from Wired News discusses the successes of spammers, explaining why it probably won’t go away anytime soon. I particularly loved the list of the types of people who ordered penis-enlargement pills off the internet: Among the people who responded in July to Amazing’s spam, which bore the subject line, “Make your penis HUGE,” was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The president of a California firm that sells … Continue reading Who Buys This Stuff?

Blackout Story

By AMH

I’m late on the bandwagon, but everybody else has been telling their blackout stories, and it’s cliche by now, but it really does reflect the type of town you are in. And in my case, it pointed out how much of a small, hippy town I’m really in. It’s a small town, so there wasn’t panic, because even at rush hour we’ve got no subways or skyscrapers, so there weren’t masses of trapped people. The university even had a heads-up that it was coming, as we got e-mail warning us to shut down our computers so as to avoid power-loss … Continue reading Blackout Story

NY State Fair

By AMH

I’ve meant to go to the New York State Fair for the past several years, and yet it always falls the last week of August and I’m either out of town or just busy, but Friday I decided that I didn’t have anything that couldn’t wait to be done Saturday and I took the day off to drive up to Syracuse and check it out. It had been a long time since I’d even been to a county fair, and I had a great time. The New York fair in particular has really beautiful grounds with nice old buildings for … Continue reading NY State Fair

Buff vs. Ripped

By AMH

There’s little as disheartening for one’s faith in government than spending a day working from home with C-SPAN 2 on the the background. After watching over four hours of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on Dietary Supplement Ephedra, I saw a vice president of a company be lambasted for not knowing what part of the cow their herbal supplement’s “bovine extract” came from, including a self-righteous speech from a congressperson about how disgraceful that people are producing and selling these things without even knowing what goes in them. And I heard another corporate representative say: “Scientists do not … Continue reading Buff vs. Ripped

NY is a state

By AMH

I was heartily amused by TeeVee’s commentary on the media coverage of “Blackout 2003”. Not that I got to actually see any of that coverage, what with being in the blackout zone and all. So I can’t comment on how accurate their statement is that coverage focused on New York City more than on the several other states (and provinces) which were effected. A huge city without power is bad, sure, but it sounds like their television and radio stations both had generators and knew how to turn them on. Round these upstate parts, we were in media blackout, making … Continue reading NY is a state

SpamOracle

By AMH

I’ve always suspected that the quantity of spam I receive was in part my fault – that if I had stayed off the internet, not ordered things off the web, and generally kept a lower profile, I wouldn’t be such a slave to the accuracy of my spam filter. After waking up this morning to 150 and growing spam messages, all of which were forwarded from my Cornell account — which I have never sent e-mail from or cited as my e-mail on any but official Cornell forms — I finally believe that there’s nothing you can do to avoid … Continue reading SpamOracle