Thanks to Mike for this great link. Re-create every candid conversation you've ever imagined with this GW Bush e-toy.

Well I've read all of Melissa's ridiculous conspiracy theories about whether or not Paul Wellstone was murdered, and I have to say that this is the kind of thinking that gives the Left a bad name.

The thinking behind these theories is so obvious and lazy and biased, it fails to consider the most likely perpetrator. If Wellstone was murdered -- something I sincerely doubt -- it seems obvious that the Democrats, and not the Republicans would have the most to gain.

Does nobody remember Mel Carnahan in 2000? His death sealed the deal for a Republican defeat in the Missouri Senate race.

With the Gulf War II coming up, does anybody really believe the Democrats wanted someone as principled and extreme as Wellstone in their party? Honestly. He was the one dissenting vote on the Iraq resolution. Who did that hurt? The Democrats, not the Republicans.

Who profits? It's the first place you look when a murder is committed.

Oh, and by the way, does anyone remember who the ghost of Carnahan happened to defeat back in 2000?

John Ashcroft.

It's official. GW Bush fixed the elections

This has to be the quote of the week:

"When problems arise in the administration of elections, we have a responsibility to fix them."

--G.W. Bush

I guess the last few weeks before a triathlon are the hardest. My big event is on Saturday, but the trials really began on Friday October 18th. That's when I awoke with a very gentle and relaxing feeling of my bladder being loosened. Everything was peaceful and calm and as it should be.

And then a start. I was peeing myself.

Or, more precisely, I was doubled over on the bathroom floor peeing on my face in twisted corruption of the child yoga pose. Then it came back to me: the food poisoning, the stomach cramps, the sudden clamminess. I had passed out on the toilet.

A few days later, I woke up in the middle of the night with a tightness in my chest that hurt when I breathed. I mentioned this to Anna, who talked to her friends at the hospital about it, who told her all sorts of bad things.

Concerns were raised.

"Your heart thickens when you engage in heavy exercise."

Then I read this story about people who were dropping dead on treadmills. Healthy people, 34, 35, 36 years old. Dropping dead from too much exercise. Workouts that lead to strokes and heart stoppages. Carnage in the gymnasiums.

"He should see a doctor."

"You should see a doctor."

I should see a doctor, I decided. But of course that took some time. Days went by, as I asked myself again and again, "am I about to drop? Should I just rush into the ER? Is this just nothing, or do I really feel something. Is that tightness from my four burrito lunch, or is it something else?"

On Thursday the 24th I saw a doctor at St Luke's. A nice guy. Busy. Listened to me for about ten seconds and told me I was fine. On Friday, I had stimulated my Vegas nerve (of course!) and that had lowered my heart rate. My resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute. It probably dropped to about 30 and then, plop, down I went. Happens al l the time with food poisoning. Not to worry.

I was so happy to hear this, I went home and ran four miles.

That's when I noticed that my hip was hurting. And like a very sensitive pestle grinding a very painful mortar, it has only become worse and worse. Today I am limping around the house, barely able to walk. It feels like I dropped from a hundred feet and landed on my left leg, where the entire impact was absorbed by one spot: my painful, aching hip.

I have five days 'till the triathlon. I'm not going to run again before then. This is going to hurt, but I will do it. And after I finish the triathlon, I'll retire to the splendid luxury of the tent that we'll be camping in because, two months ago -- after debate and disagreement -- I insisted that we camp during the event rather than stay in a nice warm hotel with a bed and bathtub.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

As I've said before, I think the music industry is trying to destroy one of its best promotional vehicles by clamping down so hard on file sharing. Wharton Marketing Professor Peter Fader agrees. He says that getting rid of file sharing would be like the movie industry dropping trailers.

Fader has a prescription for how to solve the "problem" of downloading: Make albums more than just collections of songs, and make record companies providers of an integrated entertainment experience. He holds up as an example the new Bon Jovi album, "Bounce." Legal purchasers get access to an online club offering bonus tracks, a fan club and special advance concert ticket sales. A few other bands, such as Gorillaz, have also tried this route. "Tie together the different revenue streams--concert tours, merchandising, any way to extract value from the artist," he says.

My first ever (paid) book review. Yes it's about Linux.

More shameless self-promotion.

This story is about how some congressmen are going after the GPL, the software license that Linux is released under.

Some people think that Microsoft sees the GPL people as vulnerable and that they would like to drive a wedge into the open source community by calling into question the GPL (Microsoft executives have also called it un-American and overly restrictive. Ironic considering they've been found guilty of violating US antitrust law and that their own licenses are *far* more restrictive than the GPL -- when was the last time you saw someone legally selling a copy of a Windows 2000 CD over the Internet for $5?

The sad part is that I agree that the GPL authors (called the Free Software Foundation) are vulnerable -- mostly because they're principled people. They say that the issue is really freedom -- the freedom to read and copy software. Of course there is another freedom -- the freedom to hide your source code -- that they'd like to take away in pursuit of this first freedom. But I think with the way things are going, the issue of freedom will start to hit home with Americans in the next few years. Like, for example, when it suddenly becomes illegal and impossible to tape TV shows at home.

On the other hand, Tim O'Reilly, a book publisher who knows a hell of a lot about this, told me the Free Software people have brought them on themselves. "People who promote the GPL say our goal is to destroy the business of these people," he said. "The rhetoric of many visible free software advocates would sure as hell get my back up if I were a vendor."

Anna was listening to Thomas Dolby (who lives in the Bay Area now; I once ran into him at a Java One convention) on the radio this morning talking about how he offered to record and play a modified version of "She Blinded Me With Science" in order to get free World Series tickets. He said "they saw through my transparent ruse right away," so no tix for TD.

But he's still recording the song.

It's poetry in motion
The elements in harmony
We're going to go the distance
We're going to win the World Series
We're blinded by the Giants

Keep it in the strike zone
So he can smack it in the bay
Because if you try to walk Bonds
Benito's going to make you pay

Cover-up of the Week

Why is nobody exploring the possibility that Nick Nolte may be have been date raped?

So John Galvin just blogged about what a prick that friend of mine, Vance is.

The really ironic thing, is that I was comparing Vance to him.

Well, I guess we can see faults in others, but never in ourselves.

A short item I wrote on the latest and greatest Man versus Machine chess match.

New feature on Filbert.net Inspired by Rebecca Grove, Calgary Alberta, Hockey.... and Nick. Please send in any streaking stories/resources you find. This is going to be *the* place to go on the Internet for streaking events and news (unless someone else is already doing it; a distinct possibility that I'm too lazy to investigate right now).

I can't believe that Galvin has still not updated his stupid Supereponymous thingie.

When I lived in Vancouver, I was buddies with this guy, let's call him Vance. Well Vance had learned a lot about real estate development from his father and he fancied himself a crackerjack businessman. In reality he was a slacker, just like me. Only he was married to a woman with a good job who put up with his big business dilettantism. He'd lord about in his office all day making business calls that never amounted to anything, and would invariably split for his afternoon golf game around one o'clock.

I always got a kick out of old Vance, with his no nonsense work ethic and his no work life practice. He somehow seemed to get the best of both worlds.

My favorite thing about him, however, was the way he would schmooze people in bars. He had this contractor fetish that tied in to his delusional identity as a real estate developer. Any time we'd be out (after golf, of course) drinking in a bar, he'd invariably strike up a conversation with whomever was around. If he met a contractor, look out! The next thing you know they'd be swapping cards and Vance would be promising big, big contract work to the poor sucker. If Vance was having a good night, the out-of-work contractor might even buy us all drinks. The most important thing, however, was to get the business card. Vance would go after them like a virgin freshman on a panty raid. At the end of the night, he'd sit in his car staring at them in the weak overhead light, touching them, pondering what might have been, thinking... I have no idea what, really. And then he'd rip them up and we'd head home.

Anyhow John Galvin is beginning to remind me of this guy.

Today must be national "Be Nasty to Kids Day." I got this email from Anna, who got it from her friend Steve Doman, who apparently got it from someone else. Who knows where it originated, but there's some ToysRus disclaimer at the bottom...

It's funny, in that picking-on-the-weak kind of way.

This is hilarious. You've probably seen those "I switched from Windows to the Macintosh" ads by now. Where some *really* nerdy people talk sincerely about how great the Mac is compared to windows. They all end with "My name is Peter Doubt, and I'm a freelance writer." Or something like that. Anyhow, Microsoft recently tried their own version of this, only it backfired badly.

Red-faced executives at Microsoft Corp. on Monday pulled a breezy advertisement purportedly by a free-lance writer who switched to using Windows software from the rival Macintosh (news - web sites), amid questions about whether the woman actually exists.

An employee at a public relations company hired by Microsoft, Valerie G. Mallinson of Shoreline, Wash., later acknowledged she was Microsoft's mysterious convert. The Associated Press tracked Mallinson by examining personal data hidden within documents that Microsoft had published with its controversial ad.

I still don't believe it, though. It think the whole thing was a work of fiction, and she just took the fall to avoid saying, "We made the whole thing up."'

Lying, truth, what does it matter? It's perception that counts.

My latest story on the newly redesigned Wired.com. It's about these new computer chips that are expected to be in the next generation of Macintoshes. Personally, I think it'll be most interesting to see how heavily IBM promotes them as a Linux platform. Who knows, maybe this will be the next great alternative to Intel?

Hmm. Maybe I'd better lay off that Starcraft.

Quoting witnesses, police detective Oh Myong-sik in Kwangju said the man had been virtually glued to the computer since late last Friday and had no decent sleep and meals.

The man collapsed in front of the counter early yesterday but soon regained consciousness. He then went to the toilet where he later was found dead, the police officer said.

Well, hey, it turns out we're slackers again!

No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this. Everything the dot-com boom delivered has been taken away--and then some

Today's Chronicle has a story about how one third of Americans are obese and how only one fifth of Americans aknowledge they're obese. So, I calculated my body mass index: 206 lbs 5'11" and with a BMI of 29, I'm right on the borderline of obese (30 is technically obese).

So what does obese mean? I think of it as 'grossly overweight -- to the point where it's a hazard to your health.' But if I'm obese, it *can't* mean being in ill health or poor shape. I ran three miles this morning, and I'm going to swim a mile this afternoon. I biked 13 miles yesterday and went to a yoga class. I haven't been sick in almost a year, and I feel great.

The Chronicle story says that Americans are "deep in denial" when it comes to how fat they are, and that this is a bad thing. But maybe the medical establishment is deep in denial. Maybe an aribrary correlation of weight and height is not a useful measurement. Maybe humans are more complex than weight divided by height squared multiplied by 703 (how you determine your BMI).

Or maybe being obese just isn't so bad after all.

What's wrong with Monarchy #1

I believe the Sharks threw this game for the British Monarchy. At very least, they sanitized it:

"I am sure that fans of the Vancouver Canucks noted the good effect that your presence had on behavior during the hockey game last night," Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked at a luncheon for the Queen in Vancouver on Monday.

The Canucks beat the Sharks 3 to 2 in the final exhibition game before the NHL's regular season begins. The Queen watched the game's first period, and observers noted both teams avoided any hint of dirty play while under the Royal gaze.

My Critical Mass and Shaping San Francisco buddy, Chris Carlsson was telling me about how he sees the introduction of parrots and seals to North Beach as shining examples of how we can live more harmoniously with nature. I'm not sure what he has to say about the raccoons I've been seeing in the neighborhood, but I think he'd approve of the movement to keep crickets chirping in the Paris metro

The Ligue de Protection des Grillons du Métro Parisien wants an end to transit strikes (no trains = cooler Metro = bad for crickets) and an easing up on smoking restrictions in the stations because, while humans may see fags as evil cancer sticks, to crickets they're a tasty lunch. Thanks to Trish for the link.

I completed my first brick yesterday. Brick is triathlete jargon for two triathlon events, back-to-back. I biked to Marin and back (10-12 miles, I reckon) and then went for a three mile run. The bike ride was supremely fun. On Karaab's high-speed racing bike, I felt like the god of Lance Armstrong, whizzing up hills with no hesitation, rolling over the fabulous Golden Gate bridge, burning past the tourists on their day-rentals like a pro.

When I pulled into our garage to switch into running shoes, I felt as though I could have biked another 12 miles, no problem. But things changed as soon as I started running. You use different leg muscles when you run, and parts of my legs felt like new recruits, called suddenly and unexpectedly into battle. Soldiers who were near enough to the action to feel as though they were in the war, but now shockingly conscious of their greenness and self-delusion.

Then the shoulder cramp set in. I have no idea why. And then a slight stomach cramp from the gatorade I had swigged in the garage; and then the feeling that I could stumble and drop at any second, and the vague sensation that I was running on a different planet. Did I mention that I was running at noon and that it was 85 degrees? For awhile, I asked myself how I could possibly finish this run, and then my brain got quiet, and suddenly it was over. I remember pain, passing some people, looking for shade, and wondering whether I'd stop before finishing the course, but really it seems like a blur to me.

What a feeling of happiness and accomplishment, though, when I was done. My legs were tired, but not wiped out, and I felt peaceful and happy for the rest of the day. And kind of energized too, in that, "there's much to do, and all of it seems good and exciting" kind of way. I can't wait to do the triathlon.

Nick Adams: Ixnay on the G.O.ay

Well, as I suspected, I was just projecting with that last post. Nick's reaction to the car?

doesn't it kinda scream "steal me" or "shoot at me"
or something?

To which I said:"It screams, "Let me pimp you out, baby."
You would be a god in this car."

His response:
It screams alright. It screams:
pull me over, I have a gun under the seat
I might have drugs in here
I am a gangster, or wanna be and up to no good
I am just a dumb white boy, desperately wanting to be cool

Tell Nick to buy this car. He needs it now, more than ever.

1984 Cutlass Supreme

• 2 pump hydraulics (8 battery power)
  
• Pimp Daddy metallic gold paintjob
  
• Green domino-pattern interior (including floors!)
  
• Velvet EVERYWHERE!
  
• Recently passed smog check
  
• 4 woofer, 2 amp stereo
  
• license plate: OG GOLD
  
• Reclining bucket seats
  
• Runs great
  

Telephone: 415 244-4030

This is kind of insane. There's a blog being done by someone in Afghanistan who works for an Army consulting group that's released a computer game -- America's Army -- designed to get people interested in signing up for the Army. The blog is vetted by Army PR, but it purports to be a daily blog of army life in the War on Terrorism. Wired explains all.

No we will not all be having more fun in 2202

Sometimes a story just sounds so good that we don't want to know whether or not it's true.

I see that today Anna has a link to a hoax story that the clueless media picked up without bothering to check facts. According to the Washington Post:
The health group traced the story to an account last Thursday on a German wire service, which in turn was based on a 2-year-old article in the German women's magazine Allegra, which cited a WHO anthropologist. Harding could find no record of such a man working for the WHO.

And here's a note from Redwood City Library Board member (congratulations!) Billy James, on a recent posting:

Reminds me of the gag, How did the Raylettes get their name? Because if you wanted to be a Raylette, you had to "let Ray".

This one from Anna. The Queen of Canada (yes that's also her title) will be the first sitting monarch to attend a hockey game. Who wants to bet they'll intentionally not fight, just to save the politically un-appetizing images of the Queen sitting front and center during a bloody, gloves-on-the-ice, shirt-stretching old-time hockey brawl?

When it comes to intellectual property, be careful who you credit. They just might take you seriously:

Batt needed a way to set off the CD's twelve proper tracks from four remixes. He introduced a one-minute silence as a divider, titled it "A One Minute Silence," in homage to one of the most famous modernist works of the twentieth century—John Cage's "4' 33"," an entirely silent piece, composed in 1952—and credited the track to "Batt/Cage." "But not John Cage," he said the other day. "This was someone named Clint Cage that I registered as a pseudonym... My secretary brought in a letter from the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society, or the M.C.P.S., whose job it is to collect and forward royalties. It informed me that my silence was a copyright infringement on Cage's silence.... the final amount could be tens of thousands of pounds, or more. It turns out it was worth fighting for."

Yes Jeff Koons is a Fraud

Swapping email with Karaab today, she was telling me that people have been telling her that because her next show will have some pretty heavy political content (it's a critique of the un-constitutional detention of War on Terror prisoners), she run's the risk of not being taken seriously as an artist.

God forbid serious art should be about anything meaningful.

My latest on Wired News: What do you do after you've made your millions selling free software? Gas up a dunebuggy and go night-riding! Too bad they cut the part about my buddy in the U2 cover band.

But then again not all of Ts'o's former coworkers are embracing the buttoned-down life. Trae McCombes, who sold his Themes.org Website to VA and, until just a few months ago, was a community evangelist for the company, is making a go as the lead singer of a U2 cover band. McCombes, tongue in cheek, says he's "on the verge of being a rich and famous rock star," but he makes sure to add that if anyone's on the lookout for a Linux evangelist, he's available.

From the Why Hollywood & Politics Don't Mix File:

Did Shakespeare write this?

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood just as it narrows the mind.

"And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar"

Barbara Streisand thought so, but I'm pretty sure he wrote in iambic pentameter and not in leaden dreck.

The Filbert Index

Number of people killed in US inter-city bus attacks since Sept. 11, 2001: 9
Number of people injured: 94
Amount of C4 explosives found in a bus station in Philadelphia last October: 1/3 pound
Number of people killed or injured in US airline attacks: 7
Amount congress authorized for airport security in this year's anti-terrorism bill: $3.85 billion
Amount authorized for bus security: $15 million

New on Craque POT: The BananaShield (first in a series: AppleShield, PlumShield, BerryShield, the orchard's the limit!).