Inveterate pains in people's asses will enjoy the Couch Potato Tormentor, but I don't care much about it. More interesting is the recent unemployment figures out of Deutschland: they're at a record high since the Big War, which means it's time for them to rev their industry a bit [cue Galactic Imperium music]. Is it a sign of some pending acute disease if one smells glazed doughnuts with nary a glazed doughnut to be found? Yet more interesting is deliberations by the legislature of Texas to reduce the penalty for marijuana convictions to a fine: in the midst of a budget crisis (they have the greatest volume of prisoners in the country), they realized it would be cheaper not to imprison people for smoking weed. The alternative would be to build more prisons. Hmm... tough choices there....

I find it hard to believe too, but Sam Raimi has announced he'll be making Evil Dead 4. (Probably after Spiderman 3 though.) And there's also a remake of the original Evil Dead in production. I guess the success of the Dawn of the Dead remake is responsible for this (and the fact that Day of the Dead probably isn't worth revisiting). Anyway, it's happy times for flesh-eating zombies.

Recently somebody asked me, "Mr. President, why is it we hate Libya again? I can't remember." Well, the answer to that question lies back in the early days of the American Republic, with something known as the Barbary Wars. In 1801, shortly after the inauguration of Mr. Thomas Jefferson into the office of President of these United States, the Barbary slave trade was still in roaring fine form. For centuries, the North African Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli (now known as Libya) had preyed upon the ships of the Mediterranean, committed piracy upon them, and taken their crews and passengers for slaves. So bold were the Barbary Raiders that they had once snatched up the entire Irish town of Baltimore, and kept over a million European and American slaves. By the 1780s the British navy, still smarting from the spanking given them by American and French forces during the war, had withdrawn their protection of American ships. This left American shipping vulnerable to the Barbary pirates, and numerous ships and slaves were taken.

President Thomas Jefferson, not a man to sit idly while such crimes were committed upon his people and commerce, and faced with an ultimatum from the ruler of Tripoli for large tariffs or else war, dispatched America's new third Mediterranean squadron to the Barbary Coast. The frigates had been built in the 1790s, and were the first of a great line now known and feared the world over, including the USS Constitution -- Old Ironsides -- as the flagship the fleet, and the venerable USS Constellation. In 1798 Congress had also approved funding for a new service of naval shock troops known as the Marine Corps (elaborated upon from the existing Continental Marines who fought in the Revolution); this would mark the first time United States troops were sent overseas (although the Continental Marines had already fought a limited engagement in the Bahamas). Over the course of four years the new American Navy and Marine Corps bombarded the harbors and coastal towns of Barbary, boarded the pasha's fleet, killed numerous Turks, freed numerous slaves, and committed numerous daring deeds in the service of liberty and commerce, until the pirate nations sued for peace, and agreed to renounce piracy, kidnapping, and blackmail.

So that's why we hate Libya. And also for several acts of terrorism in the 20th century.

For a more complete account of this engrossing tale, see Christopher Hitchens' article To The Shores of Tripoli.

It seems like every month Quentin Tarantino is plotting some new and surprising project. This time, according to Reuters, he's considering writing and directing a new installment of Friday the 13th! Which sounds really nutty at first, but somehow I think it could be really... really nutty.

This morning I awoke with a heavier-than-normal head. When my hands sought to investigate they discovered a hard shell enclosing the area above my upper neck; it made a hollow rapping sound when I rapped on it. But I could see through it! Near the couch I saw something like a modified motorcycle helmet with a vacuum hose protruding from its back running to a humming black box the size of a refrigerator (it was a modified refrigerator) plugged into the wall outlet. On the black box was a bumper sticker that read "Magic Bus". I felt the back of my strangely helmeted head. I found a hose there! Humming with power! I pulled the helmet off and threw it to the floor. The helmet and black box by the couch disappeared! They were next to me now!

"Let's store the device over there by the couch," said Dr. Jones, who had once again broken into my apartment in the night in order to conduct bizarre and embarrassing experiments upon me in my sleep. He dragged the black box and the hosed helmet over next to the couch where I had seen it earlier.

It took me several practiced seconds to retrieve Mr. Mossberg from its nest above the north-east bookcase and point it in Dr. Jones' direction (the only way to influence the mad doctor to the point of answering pointed questions) and asked what manner of device this was. He told me it was a 24 Hour Future Helmet. While wearing it one could see exactly what one will see at that time the next day. One could wear it all day and watch a first-person account of all that would transpire the next day. Or just for a moment, just to get a glimpse....

Oh the dread ramifications! Oh the ironic and unfortunate endings that sprang to mind: would I soon become addicted to watching 24 hours in the future? Would I now live my life staring at the view from the couch, plugged into the Future Helmet? Would I become so addicted to trying to leverage the helmet for making money that I stopped living for the present entirely and spent all my time looking at tomorrow's sports scores and stock prices? Would I one day see nothing through the Future Helmet but the black of death? Would a modified 240 Year Helmet allow me to see God?

Dr. Jones is now off trying to develop a 240 Year Helmet (he liked that idea of trying to see God), and the helmet sits there beckoning me. If only it supported sound I could watch Deadwood a day sooner....

I've lately been using a word processing application called AbiWord. MS Word has become far too clunky and bloated, and EmEditor, while great for certain tasks, lacks a few features I like (live spell checking for instance). So after looking at TextPad (again), UltraEdit (again), EditPad, etc, I found AbiWord. It's GNU opensource, and so far stable, relatively quick to start up, supports the necessary file formats (doc, rtf, txt, html) multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, even BeOS), and plugins. Its dictionary is somewhat incomplete, but that can be remedied. And it has live spell checking.

If you for some reason require the Apple G4 (Panther) OS on your PC, the Cherry OS emulator has actually finally been released. Which is interesting to me only because it has been deemed vaporware for so long.

Right, hold everything then! As a television critic of great repute, a foremost expert on Science Fiction, and an all-around snazzy dresser, I have been granted the opportunity to view the first episode of the new Dr. Who series. Hold on, I'll let you know when I've finished watching it. (I'm so excited....)

I've just returned from viewing the first episode of the new Dr. Who series, and am prepared to present my findings. It sucks. The new Doctor is dull, looks and behaves like a guy you might see waiting in line for the bus; he's got a leather jacket, a-and a tee-shirt. They've infused the show with slapstick comedy, stripped it of any SF content, plagued it with corny incidental music. The writing is stunningly bland. I felt like I was watching "Eastenders" or some shit. Except that the actors don't even appear to take the show seriously. It's like a Saturday Morning children's show. The new Tardis set is pretty cool -- although like most of this show a bit discordant -- and other than that there's literally nothing good about it.... Thank God for Battlestar Galactica.

So I guess Condoleezza's new job is to travel around offering F-16s for favors. Hey, if I promise not to build a pipeline to Iran can I have one too?

And -- simultaneously! -- we learn of the still-pervasive practice of slavery in Africa. But what's surprising is a parenthetical note that "the practice was outlawed with Niger's independence from France in 1960, but carried no penalty." Thank God they rid themselves of those French slavers! Hey maybe they'll stop if we give them an F-16....

But -- no kidding -- those French could have really used an F-16 a few decades ago. It looks like Hitler's bright boys might have tested an atomic weapon in early March of 1945. Wow, what if the Soviets had been a few months slower, if the Nazis had pushed through at the Ardennes or later held the Rhine, what if they had had just a bit more time...? Yet more evidence that Clausewitz was right: victory -- perhaps even salvation -- is in the Pursuit.

Check out these 13 things that do not make sense from New Scientist. They include: The placebo effect, the horizon problem, ultra-energetic cosmic rays, Belfast homeopathy results, Dark matter, Viking's methane, Tetraneutrons, the Pioneer anomaly, dark eneergy, the Kuiper cliff, the WOW signal, not-so-constant constants, and cold fusion. None of those things make sense. Also Dennis Kucinich.

It's the dawn of a new era in Internet Banking! These crazy guys want to link people who want to borrow money (and have a decent credit rating) with people who want to lend money (and have money to lend). The risk is mitigated by using groups for the borrowing and lending -- you borrow from a group of fifty lenders, or lend to a group of fifty borrowers. Take that, Bank America!

But wait, why is it that a Congressional Committee can just summon private citizens into their lair and drill them with questions about what various legal and controlled substances they've put into their bodies in the last decade or two? Because the Imperial Senate (in this case its lesser body -- the one that's closer to the people) insists that -- in the words of Henry Waxman and Tom Davis -- "the Committee on Government Reform may at any time conduct investigations of any matter." See here.

But wait, Internet blogging has gone too far when it starts to threaten the political status quo. Clearly something must be done! But don't worry: the Imperium is on the problem. Also see here. And here. And about 12,000 little blogs all over the place.

But wait, why do powerful people want to keep guns out of the hands of powerless people? Look here! Because this guy argues it's racism.

Well, these crazy guys may have an answer. They have a plan to attack incoming asteroids with mass driver swarms: the small automated spacecraft would fly to an approaching impactor, attach to it, heat up, and spew ejecta into space -- thereby altering the asteroid's course. All they need do is aim the swarm at Washington DC.

It's been a quiet week in the Coventry Arms Apartment Complex, my home and prison these past several years. Lately some of the clever apes from the East Side of the Complex have been observed scurrying across the Access Road in order to make furtive use of the dumpster on our side. Use of the West Side Dumpster requires scanning for chance observers, feigned nonchalance, and careful navigation of the mine field -- which three feats at once is a complicated task even for clever East Side apes. And it incidentally constitutes a breach of waste disposal protocol.

Beefy Lou is so fascinated by this behavior he's set up several cameras trained on the dumpster and its various approaches, and filtered the feeds through image recognition software instructed to alert him whenever someone makes use of that dumpster. Meanwhile, I've been recovering their secret trash in an effort to discover what they don't their nearest neighbors to see.

Itemized, thus far in our study, I have recovered the following: one copy of Barely Legal 17, one Invisible Empire Knights of KKK membership card (name and rank obscured), thirteen issues of Penthouse Magazine dated Nov 1987 through Dec 1988, one computer hard disk with trace evidence of several thousand image files, one high school report card (failing grades for Biology and Algebra), one blood-stained pillow scarred by four holes and accompanying powder burns, one heavily annotated compendium of The Federalist Papers, a half-eaten pair of edible underpants, a box of musty love letters, two Jenna Jameson replica vaginas, one dead chicken, one improperly defused canister of ferroaluminum thermite (I've dowsed it with boric acid, so don't worry), one Anton LaVey poster, one Kama Sutra calendar, a newspaper cut-out ransom note for $10,000, three potential murder weapons (a handgun, a hammer, and a sharpened spoon), one fondue pot.

Poor clever apes! To find their youthful indiscretions had overnight become mature perversions -- after years of manufacturing themselves into what they want to pretend to be, now so eager to curse the things that brought them their fate. They must rid themselves of themselves lest they be deemed weird and are cast out of the Republic! I find I am less shocked than saddened, less saddened than amused.

After three days of Beefy Lou's surveillance regime we were alerted to a dumpster access detection by an East Side resident known colloquially as Gom Jabbar. (She had earned that nom de guerre by visiting zoos and pet stores in order to determine which of the animals were human.) Beefy Lou's camera feed showed Gom Jabbar mounting the dumpster, disappearing within it, and not returning. Most of an hour passed with Beefy Lou staring restlessly at his monitor waiting for Gom Jabbar to re-emerge from the dumpster, but there was no sign of her.

Armed with a handful of litter selected randomly from the floor of Beefy Lou's apartment, I approached the dumpster with feigned nonchalance, scanned the area for chance observers, and hoisted myself to the top of it, scanned its interior carefully, pushed some trash bags and appliance boxes around, threw my own faux garbage into it. There was no Gom Jabbar inside! Either Beefy Lou's cameras had fabricated her entrance, or she had somehow merged with the trash inside the dumpster. Could it be that Gom Jabbar threw herself away? I wonder what she was so ashamed of...?