Sick Transit

Via Yglesias, a bit of holiday weekend fluff from WaPo:

Mmm… injured Canadian bacon.

From WaPo’s year-end compilation of weird news:

(Link to the compilation via the Secular Blasphemer)

Something to balance out the heavy-duty reading of the last post: What the Internet is really for (video, sound, not work-safe)

Via Sullivan, an unpleasant but very important column by Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky:

This should join the true classics of ‘net humor: World War II - The Chat Log!

If you’ve ever wondered what made Ancient Greeks laugh, Orac links to one of the world’s oldest joke books:

Obviously, Henny Youngman was known as Hierocles in a past life.

Orin Kerr writes, re the Patriot Act renewal:

And my hope is that the garden gnomes outside my new apartment will dig up highly valuable buried treasure and deposit it on my doorstep.

But you’ve got to respect Orin for keeping the dream alive.

Via Secular Blasphemy, the EU is considering sanctions on Iran in response to Ahmadinejad’s recent anti-Semitic remarks, in particular his denial of the Holocaust:

I think it’s a good thing that the EU condemned the remarks. Tolerance of anti-semitism in Europe has been sadly on the rise, but Holocaust denial seems to be where they draw the line, especially in countries that were under the Nazi regime. (Cf David Irving in Austria.)

Still, I hope that the talk of sanctions is just a way of making the scolding a little more emphatic. Actually imposing sanctions over speech–not conduct that causes harm to human rights or the international community, but just speech–is, as far as I am aware, unprecedented in international relations. It would also strongly and needlessly reinforce the image that many people in the Middle East already have, that the West is biased pro-Israel.

Via Pandagon, a tale of British prudery:

You can see this upsetting, pornographic painting below the jump.
(more…)

One school district has drawn an interesting line in regard to holiday music:

This is a pity, since “O Come, All Ye Faithful” is an immeasurably better song. My suggestion? Sing it in Latin. No one except for the honors club knows what “Adeste Fideles” means anyway, right?

A couple of C|Net stories today had a common theme.

First story:

Second story:

The common thread? Both guys did their deeds using their own IP address… and a dedicated work IP, no less.

So as a Public Service Announcement, I just wanted to remind all my readers: if you’re going to do something felonious, or something that could get you fired, please mask your address!

Kevin Drum wonders:

Known fiction, however, can still help us to accept something as real. Newspaper stories about new technology, for example, often contain references to similar concepts in popular sci-fi. The Army even traded on this familiarity by naming its new non-lethal laser weapon “phaser”.

Fiction may not make us inherently more ready to believe that something exists in fact, but it does at least introduce the concept, which is an important prerequisite to belief. That is especially the case with Narnia, where I think that Lewis’ main concept is not so much the “facts” of miracles or resurrections, but rather the idea of atonement through sacrifice, especially through sacrificial death of the innocent.

I don’t know if reading Narnia actually makes kids more likely to accept this concept. But for children raised without instruction in Christian theology (which probably includes most nominal Christians), it at least gives them exposure to the concept, which was probably Lewis’ goal.

Via Raymond Chen, the funniest blog post you will ever read about HDTV screen resolutions.

P.S. Read it even if you are not a techno-weenie. Trust me.

Well it looks like, due to a bad regex that slipped into Spam Karma’s blacklist, legitimate users have been unable to comment on the site, unless they had a cookie. (Thanks to Brian for letting me know about the problem.) Conversely, the spammers have somehow managed to continue (obviously, they either obtained or forged the cookie), and I have several thousand new pieces of spam just in the week since I last cleaned out the database.

So until I upgrade my versions of WP and Spam Karma, comments are closed. If you have a burning need to reply to a post, or just want to say hi, e-mail me at dan at danielglick dot com.

Via Tyler Cowen, an interesting side remark in a NYT article:

I feel like I should be more troubled by this than I am. After all, Western society has traditionally recognized a very deep personal interest in controlling the disposition of one’s body after one’s death. Here in the US, even if someone is a registered organ donor, their organs will not be used if their family objects.

And yet, all I can think about is the thousands of people who die from a lack of transplantable organs every year. And so at a gut level, the French approach seems right to me. But I’m open to being persuaded otherwise.