Sic Transit Gloria Iskander

Is waterboarding torture?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:50:53 GMT

I don't expect anyone who reads my drivel considers waterboarding to be anything but torture, but in case you had any doubt whatsoever, see what happened to Christopher Hitchens when he tried it. "Believe me, it's torture."

Just for the record

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:55:59 GMT

Anyone starting a newspaper article with the phrase "A crack team of cybernauts" is an epic dickhead.

8 years, today.

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:22:43 GMT

Today marks the eighth anniversary of my arrival as a legal alien non-resident into the USA. Eight years of taxation without representation. Eight years of stressful waiting for the slow cogs of the immigration machine to turn. It will most likely be another few months before my Green Card comes through (if it's not denied for some reason). After that, I become a resident alien with the right of re-entry and employment, and five years later I can become a citizen and human, and get a vote; approximately fourteen years after I arrived here.

I'm glad that today is also the day when the first black candidate for president sealed his primary contest.

QFT - Roe v. Wade didn't start abortions

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:01:34 GMT

One of the op ed. pieces in today's New York Times is from an obstetrician in his 80s, recalling how he had to repair the damage done to women pre-Roe. It's worth a read, if you need a reminder why Roe v. Wade is fucking important.

Oh, hey, New York Times. Here's a clue.

Fri, 23 May 2008 13:00:16 GMT

When you're talking about the name of a foreign political party, please spell it right, you fucking muppets.

While you get twisted knickers over GTA...

Thu, 01 May 2008 13:44:49 GMT

I don't care for GTA. Not my thing. But shit, if that video game offends you, please read this letter from a john, and readjust your fucking priorities. Or, yeah, go read this. Then complain.

Gay Rights

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:23:45 GMT

Via the_stalwart (who has a wicked cool post about Stalwarts and their Glaives today!), I'm sure this comes as no surprise to anyone who ever read my blog...

"Why is that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?"

- Ernest Gaines

We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on livejournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights." If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

A Shining New Day Dawns

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:33:17 GMT

I just founded the city of Saucebucket. Not quite the incorporation of Bumfuck, IA that I promised, but it's a start.

He's Right About Hackney

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:34:59 GMT

This gentleman offers an alternative, Indian, perspective of British life. Very funny.

Go on! You know you want to.

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:19:56 GMT

Join Change Congress.

Oh, Damn. More time lost.

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:23:25 GMT

But for far better reasons than effing Time Warner! I just discovered that Savage Love has a podcast (I know — where have I been, right?)

Oh, how I love Savage Love.

Also, Dan Savage's voice reminds me of Jason Morningstar's, so that adds a little frisson for me.

Time Warner Cable is a giant pile of ass.

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:18:20 GMT

Yet again, my Time Warner Cable bill has skyrocketed inexplicably. As if that was shit enough, at least it's soluble: there's DirectTV in my building, and the mention of that fact usually gets my bill cut in half for six months if I call to cancel. Which only goes to show how much they're fucking gouging all of us, anyway... but that's not what's annoying me this morning. No. What's got my goat today is the insult they add to that injury: their hapless use of technology in such a useless marketroid-zombie-driven fashion that it renders any convenience a mountainously aggravating procedure. Assholes.

Evidence? Surely:

Their emails are addressed to ALEXANDER NEWMAN. Because shouting at me tells me that they care.
The email tells me to visit their website (not linked because it's ass), and then explains that "Payment options, programming information, help, and more are just a click away." Because actually making that click instead of presenting me with an ugly-as-fuck marketing site would tell me that they respect my time.
The aforementioned ugly-as-fuck marketing landing page has on it, somewhere a "My Account" link that I'm required to click to find out how much my damn bill is. There's so much marketing shit on that page, it takes fucking minutes* to find the damn link. Because conforming to emergent design standards would make my visit quick and easy.
The most prominent link in the email takes me to sign up for shit that they'll email me. Because I need spam from my CATV provider.
The email doesn't tell me how much I owe them. Because being able to pay them from my bank's site having read their email would mean I miss out on their advertising.
Even when I log in to their shitty site, I can't see how much I owe without clicking away from their default page. Because having that information prominently, ubiquitously and conveniently displayed once I'm logged in would be too easy.

So, fuck Time Warner and their assmonkey marketroid fuckwads in the eyes with old browser error pages.

* There is an irony that this rant took longer to write than the time they wasted... but not much. You would, perhaps, be surprised at how fast I typed it.

Confessions

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:07:23 GMT

I love reading the Confessions of a College Call-girl, and her Christmas sign-off is a doozy.

Unseemly? Perhaps, but awesome. Charts!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:40:53 GMT

Every now and then, some of my colleagues do something super-cool. Like the spiffy, neat-o, new Charts API. It lets me do things like this:

NB The underlying data isn't accurate&hellip maybe I'll do a real version comparing sessions (or hours) played over my deliciously long, generous, Xmas holiday! Hmmm. Maybe I can pull the data out of my calendar with a GData query and generate it on the fly.

Awwww... the path of true love is metal and parallel?

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:01:29 GMT

Do you know her? Can you help?

Sometimes, people just suck.

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:13:33 GMT

(or... Racism in the Strangest Places)

So, I recently became gently addicted to Google Image Labeler, where you're teamed up at random with someone, and you both try to match words or phrases that describe an image. It's more fun than you would expect, because the other person is almost always, obviously, dumb. Or trashy. Or ignorant. Or they can't spell... but occasionally you're in sync with someone, and it goes swimmingly, and it's an almost eerie moment of synchrony. But anyway. Oh, and even better, it shows you what your partner's guesses were, for all the pictures you had in your two minutes, after the game. So you can also send the other person messages, like "are you seeing the same thing?" or "hello, anyone there?" or "you do understand that you need to type here, right?" Heh, heh, heh.

So I come across this picture:

...only it's miniaturized so you can't see the obvious Tide logo or stick, just the white guy in a dirty shirt. And I'm labelling away, (although it's already been heavily labelled before, so some words are off-limits, which engages the mental thesaurus,) and my "partner" is apparently labelling away, but no dice. We can't find a match. At the end of the game, I find out that almost all of his suggestions were variations on "Mexican".

Oy.

Screw you, New York Times!

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:44:37 GMT

The NYT online has an amazingly useless and annoying feature: when you double-click a word, it opens a new window with a definition, more ads and some other bullshit. WTF? Don't tell me what "dead" means you moronic, piece of shit Javascript. Fuck you! Let me click around my page how I like, without your asinine popups, ass-monkeys.

Fortunately, there is a Greasemonkey script to disable the NYT double-click definitions.

National Coming Out Day

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:50:03 GMT

I guess it's only appropriate that we're talking about our corporate equality effort on National Coming Out Day.

By the way, in case there's anyone in the world who doesn't know, I'm gay, and I want equal, not separate treatment under the law.

Burma

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:33:19 GMT

Feeling powerless in the face of the military brutality in Burma? Amongst the companies propping up the repressive junta are Chevron. Join the protest against them tomorrow.

Are you human?

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:53:41 GMT

Evil weapons corp Raytheon develops pain box, seeks creepy old biddy with gom jabbar.

Way to change your mind in public.

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:29:17 GMT

This video of Mayor Jerry Sanders is great. Moldbreaker!

Optimal career

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:20:21 GMT

Hunh. A little late to the party, I followed John Wick's career meme. My current job is top of the list; my old job… #32.

1. Technical Writer
2. Special Effects Technician
3. Actor
4. Criminologist
5. Makeup Artist
6. Addictions Counselor
7. Costume Designer
8. Comedian
9. Critic
10. Activist
…
30. Paleontologist
31. Multimedia Developer
32. Computer Programmer
33. Desktop Publisher
34. Pest Controller
35. Veterinarian
36. Industrial Designer
39. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
40. Mediator

Six Years

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 17:42:30 GMT

Six years ago, I made sure to write down my experiences. This year, the Authors@Google program invited David Friend, author of Watching The World Change to our New York office to talk about the book, and I had the pleasure of introducing him. You can see his talk (and my introduction) in the AtGoogleTalks channel on YouTube.

Treading a fine line.

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:39:03 GMT

I'm currently acutely aware of the fact that I'm not getting enough sleep, or, rather, that the sleep I do get is not good, healthy, deep sleep, but crappy apnea-broken sleep. In other words, I'm tired. Real tired. All the damn time. Except after a coffee. But I don't want my (damn high) blood pressure to spike too much — something about the idea of a stroke turns me off. So I'm treading a fine line between wanting to fall asleep and drinking a cup of coffee before starting something sufficiently engrossing that my attention (and wakefulness) is thereby sustained. Since I have performance reviews and interview feedback to write, that attention-sustenance is hard to come by. I keep slipping off the line into somnolence. Damn.

Hey, lady on the subway.

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:34:06 GMT

Get your stanky damn hair off my arm, please. Also, stop shoving your ass into me. I don't like it, and I will berate you loudly and publicly for your not washing enough. ::shudder::