Warren Ellis pointed us at this post on another blog that begins:
so i was in the basement touching myself while dressed like a skeleton because it’s the only way i can get off anymore…
Because it’s beautiful, too, we’ll provide a copy of our favorite Edison Hate Future for your enjoyment; it’s linked back to the omnibus all-Edison post at Mr Ellis’ site, in case you want more:
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Apparently, there’s a t-shirt in the works.
BoingBoing informs us that smiling is no longer allowed on German passport photos.
Here. We’re not even mirroring it locally, so if it goes down or gets moved, you’re just out of luck. It involved a Corey, Japanese dancers, the Fat Boys, and Mr T, for crying out loud.
First, we were an Eagle Scout.
Second, this makes us downright ashamed of our answers to this pop quiz over at Accordian Guy’s place very much at all, and will strive to improve. Take a look; it’s worth your time. Something on the scale of Katrina could happen in literally any location. Safe from hurricanes? You’ve got something else to worry about, so don’t get smug. Just be prepared.
Now: we’re off to stock up on food, batteries, and finally get that fire ladder Mrs Heathen-To-Be keeps hassling us about.
From an IM just now with a Spacetaker co-conspirator:
This is a fucked up world we live in when you see p. diddy on the martha stewart show making chinese dumplings.
Indeed.
The Axis of Nielsen-Hayden points us to Ship of Fools’ The Laugh Judgement, an effort to find the ten funniest and ten most offensive religious jokes. We are amused. A sample or two:
One, from the Funny list:
A man ran through a crowded train looking very agitated, calling out, “Is there a Catholic priest on board?” When he got no reply, he ran back up the train shouting, “Is there an Anglican priest on board?” Still no reply. By now becoming more desparate, he ran down the train shouting, “Is there a Rabbi on board?” Eventually, a gentleman stood up and said, “Can I be of any assistance, my friend? I’m a Methodist minister.” The man looked at him and said, “No, you’re no bloody good. I need a corkscrew!”
Another:
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: “Stop. Don’t do it.” “Why shouldn’t I?” he asked. “Well, there’s so much to live for!” “Like what?” “Are you religious?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?” “Christian.” “Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?” “Protestant.” “Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?” “Baptist.” “Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?” “Baptist Church of God.” “Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?” “Reformed Baptist Church of God.” “Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?” He said: “Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915.” I said: “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off.
And finally, one from the Offensive list:
An Indian man dies and arrives at the Pearly Gates. “Yes, how can I help?” asks St Peter. “I’m here to meet Jesus,” says the Indian man. St Peter looks over his shoulder and shouts, “Jesus, your cab is here!”
Go read this; here’s a great excerpt:
…[I]ntelligent design has been vigorously supported by the Discovery Institute, a formerly moderate think tank that has now become the intellectual home of antievolutionism. In 2001, Discovery took out a newspaper ad signed by roughly 70 scientists, who declared that they were “skeptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life” — in other words, they rejected Darwinism. This list has become Exhibit A in the argument that genuine scientific controversy exists over evolution, and to the layperson it certainly looked impressive. Bush and Santorum are not likely, however, to mention the National Center for Science Education’s hilarious response. The NCSE began gathering names of scientists who agreed that evolution was “a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences” — but restricted membership to those whose names were Steve, Stephanie or some other variation of Stephen. As of Monday, “Project Steve” — named in honor of the late Stephen Jay Gould — had 600 signatories.
Presented for your comparision:
Of course, the triple-bladed Mach III was also famously pre-parodied by SNL in the 70s (“because you’ll believe anything”), so this is actually the second go-round for this particular batch of silliness.
(via MeFi)
Over at Engadget, they note that Dartmouth researches create world’s smallest controllable robot, which is cool and all, but doesn’t it sort of imply that there exist smaller robots that they cannot in fact control? Should we be concerned?
Josh Marshall has a couple winners today.
First, he illustrates why Brownie, incompetant though he was, may not have been the whole problem at DHS:
DHS Secretary Chertoff didn’t declare Katrina an ‘Incident of National Significance’ until late on Tuesday August 30th, almost two days after the hurricane hit. That’s the administrative trip wire that sets off the standing government plans for a coordinated national response to natural or man-made disasters. As Jonathan Landay, et al. explain, the now-reviled and discarded Michael Brown only had limited authority to act prior to Chertoff’s determination on the night of the 30th. Chertoff was the one in charge of the response before that. TPM
Chertoff, of course, still has a job.
Second, Mr Marshall calls our attention to a piece from our hometown paper with some very odd power-priority goings-on:
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast. That order – to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. – delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt. […] Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney’s office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately. […] [Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike] Callahan said energy officials told him gasoline and diesel fuel needed to flow through the pipeline to avert a national crisis from the inability to meet fuel needs in the Northeast. Callahan said the process of getting the pipelines flowing would be difficult and that there was a chance the voltage required to do so would knock out the system – including power to Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg. With Forrest General Hospital operating on generators, Wesley was the only hospital operating with full electric power in the Pine Belt in the days following Katrina. “Our concern was that if Wesley went down, it would be a national crisis for Mississippi,” Callahan said. “We knew it would take three to four days to get Forrest General Hospital’s power restored and we did not want to lose Wesley.” Hattiesburg American
Fuck the hospitals and the poor people! We needs us some fuel up north first!
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
JWZ points us to this discussion of monotremes. Monotremes are a sort of pre-mammal; they’re weirder even than marsupials. One species, for example, is poisonous. Both — there are only two — lay eggs, whereas live birth is the rule for true mammals. It gets freakier:
The platypus is one of two surviving types of creature called monotremes, which, in case you were unaware, are kind of marsupials plus, or maybe minus. They have fur, and some of them sometimes have pouches in which their young develop, but they also lay eggs and have bills, sort of like birds, and in the case of male platypuses poisonous ankles also. They also have teeth, but only when young. The platypus is the famous monotreme; less well known for some reason (though even weirder in my opinion) is the echidna, also known more descriptively as the spiny anteater. Together, they are the only surviving examples of the oldest mammals ever to exist. Echidnas and platypuses, as well as several extinct species of monotreme, shared the Earth with the dinosaurs. Monotremes are really weird. Everything about them seems to have been thought up past some kind of deadline. Take the method by which they reproduce: after mating, the female lays an egg (echidna) or two (platypus). Then she carries them around until they hatch. Monotremes are mammalian, even if what they have is a kind of free demo version of mammalianism without the really useful features like live birth, so they lactate. But they have no nipples. The milk just leaks right out of glands in their skin, and the baby monotreme laps it up with sweeps of its tiny bill. (A baby echidna is called a puggle. There is no official name for a baby platypus, though “platypup” has been suggested.) The platypus doesn’t even have a pouch, so after the eggs hatch — after the female has incubated them by pressing them to her belly with her tail — the babies must lap up these rivulets of milk while clinging to her fur for dear life. Not that having a pouch simplifies the process any. The echidna (which comes in three varieties, short-beaked, long-beaked, and cyclops long-beaked) doesn’t usually have a pouch but grows one as necessary. After mating there is a gestation period of about three weeks, and then the female lies down on her back, doubles over, and lays her egg right into her own temporary pouch. After a while the egg hatches in the pouch. And echidnas are covered with aggressive spines, which adds a new wrinkle, as the mother cannot carry her puggle once these start to develop. So she buries it. (Echidnas are good diggers; if you startle one it will sink as if by magic into the ground until only its spines are exposed. In this position it is all but unassailable.) Alternately, she hides it under a bush. Every five to ten days she unburies it and lets it nurse for a while before burying it again. Keep in mind that the puggle, like a joey, is still somewhat fetal while this is going on. It’s a half-fetus half-baby thing buried in the dirt. The echidna is therefore “born” three times — once as an egg, once when the egg hatches, and once when the puggle is evicted from the pouch and hidden by its mother. It’s a good thing placentalism came along, or we’d all have to go through something like this. Echidna mating is mysterious and primordial. It is also rarely observed, but the following seem to be the basics. It begins when the female goes into estrus. Males, usually three or four of them, but sometimes as many as eleven, start following her around in a long single-file line called an “echidna train” (or even “echidna love train”). It seems very civilized, though it can go on for as long as six weeks, during which time the otherwise solitary animals eat and sleep in each other’s company, and the males nip the female’s tail, which seems to be a kind of foreplay. Eventually the female echidna climbs partway up a tree, or buries part of herself in the dirt, leaving the males to walk around and around her until they have created a circular rut in the ground. (Sometimes there’s only one male, in which case, nothing daunted, he kind of walks back and forth by himself until he has created a little ditch.) Then they engage in a shoving contest. The males that get shoved out of the ditch acknowledge defeat and leave peacefully until only one, the best shover, is left. He gets to mate with the female — very carefully, because they are both covered with spines. (Understandably, echidnas do it face to face, so don’t listen to anyone who tells you that this is a uniquely human behavior.) The male’s four-headed penis, which he does not use to urinate, emerges only during the act of mating; the rest of the time he is indistinguishable from a female echidna, as his testicles are also inside his body. Basically what I’m trying to say is HOLY CRAP MONOTREMES ARE WEIRD WHY DO THEY EVEN EXIST. Also that I really admire them, these life-forms that seem to be built out of spare parts, that refuse to be daunted by the convoluted systems they must use to propagate themselves, that seem as if by rights they really ought to have died out millions of years ago but haven’t. Life just won’t give up! Life has webbed feet, a bill, a pouch that comes and goes, waterproof fur, spines, poisonous ankles — whatever it takes.
As the saying goes (and the first commenter to JWZ’s entry reminds us), “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose” (JBS Haldane). I mean, come ON: poisonous ankles and a four-headed penis?
It appears French Quarter icon Big Daddy’s will be among the first to re-open. If you don’t know which club we mean, this should clear it up for you:
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) — There’s no water for the “wash the girl of your choice” service and there aren’t any girls either, but Big Daddy’s strip club on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street is getting ready to bring back erotic spectacle to the devastated city. Friday night on Bourbon Street, usually a throbbing artery of the party-going French Quarter, was pretty grim this time around in what has become a foul-smelling ghost town partly covered with a swamp of filthy water. Police patrol cars and military Humvees made up most of the traffic on the street. But Big Daddy’s general manager, Saint Jones, and a band of helpers defied an evacuation order by arriving to clean up their premises in the historic French Quarter, which escaped largely unscathed from the floods. Jones told Reuters he would open for business as soon as he could get electricity, water and dancers. He already had electricity from a generator, which was moving a pair of robotic woman’s legs, in stockings and pink high heels, waving invitingly on the street by the sign for Big Daddy’s.
Go watch this.
So, Oracle will buy Seibel for an assload of money.
Big. Fat. Hairy. Deal. Honestly, to us it looks a lot like one party trying to ensure relevance in the face of rapidly encroaching open source options, and another party trying to cash in before they’re destroyed by someone more nimble.
My attorney stopped yelling about the goddamn mescaline long enough to point out this rosy bit of football fan brutality, presumably inspired by the fact that Vandy actually beat someone this weekend. Click the pic for a full-size version.
It’s been a few years, Ground Zero is still empty, 3,000 people are still dead, and Osama Bin Laden is still uncaptured. We did, on the other hand, start a whole DIFFERENT war someplace else in lieu of, you know, focussing on actually catching the bastard. We reckon ought to be more forgiving on this, as it’s not like Bush vowed to capture this murdering freak dead or alive, right?
The NYT had a piece yesterday about losing OBL in Tora Bora. Read it. (Local PDF.)
Blues legend Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown died yesterday in his hometown of Orange, Texas, where he’d gone to escape Katrina. He was 81.
Let’s hope this gets some traction; it’s simply unacceptable that American law enforcement behaved in this manner. This goes well beyond simply failing to render aid. (Local PDF copy here.)
The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. The witnesses said they had been told by the New Orleans police to cross that same bridge because buses were waiting for them there. Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.
We are, as of this moment, caught up on Thank-You notes.
Bush has suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that contractors for Federal projects pay their workers the “prevailing local wage” or better. This typically keeps the Halliburtons of the world from dragging in cheap labor from elsewhere rather than pay local labor their normal wages.
The NYT has already weighed in; we duplicate their editorial here because the Powers That Be at NYT are notoriously stupid in re: archive access:
A Shameful Proclamation Published: September 10, 2005 On Thursday, President Bush issued a proclamation suspending the law that requires employers to pay the locally prevailing wage to construction workers on federally financed projects. The suspension applies to parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. By any standard of human decency, condemning many already poor and now bereft people to subpar wages — thus perpetuating their poverty — is unacceptable. It is also bad for the economy. Without the law, called the Davis-Bacon Act, contractors will be able to pay less, but they’ll also get less, as lower wages invariably mean lower productivity. The ostensible rationale for suspending the law is to reduce taxpayers’ costs. Does Mr. Bush really believe it is the will of the American people to deny the prevailing wage to construction workers in New Orleans, Biloxi and other hard-hit areas? Besides, the proclamation doesn’t require contractors to pass on the savings they will get by cutting wages from current low levels. Around New Orleans, the prevailing hourly wage for a truck driver working on a levee is $9.04; for an electrician, it’s $14.30. Republicans have long been trying to repeal the prevailing wage law on the grounds that the regulations are expensive and bureaucratic; weakening it was even part of the Republican Party platform in 1996 and 2000. Now, in a time of searing need, the party wants to achieve by fiat what it couldn’t achieve through the normal democratic process. In a letter this week to Mr. Bush urging him to suspend the law, 35 Republican representatives noted approvingly that Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and the elder George Bush had all suspended the law during “emergencies.” For the record, Mr. Roosevelt suspended it for two weeks in 1934, to make time to clear up contradictions between it and another law. Mr. Nixon suspended it for six weeks in 1971 as part of his misbegotten attempt to control spiraling inflation. And Mr. Bush did so after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, two weeks before he was defeated by Bill Clinton, who quickly reinstated it after assuming the presidency. If Mr. Bush does not rescind his proclamation voluntarily, Congress should pass a law forcing him to do so.
No, seriously, that’s how it is in New Orleans: Red Cross is banned, but private mercenaries are patrolling.
The Cheney-Curser has been unmasked! He’s a Gulfport ER doctor with no love for this administration (clearly). After his comment the other day, some MPs came to visit, and probably would have hauled him off had the media not been on hand:
As he stood about 10 feet away from Cheney and his friend and some camera operators from CNN and other media filmed the scene, Marble suddenly yelled, “Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go fuck yourself, you asshole!” Hey, at least Marble was polite. After all, he referred to Cheney as “Mr. Cheney.” “I had no intention of harming anyone but merely wanted to echo Mr. Cheney’s infamous words back at him,” Marble wrote. “At that moment, I noticed the Secret Service guys with a panic-stricken look on their faces, like they were about to tackle me, so I calmly walked away back to my former house.” His friend videotaped a little bit longer and then came back to Marble’s house. As they were salvaging a few things from Marble’s home, two military police waving M-16s showed up and said they were looking for someone who fit Marble’s description who had cursed at Cheney. “I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so they put me in handcuffs and ‘detained’ me for about 20 minutes or so,” Marble wrote. “My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go.”
Via BoingBoing, we learn that CNN has blocked attempts by FEMA to restrict coverage of New Orleans.
This large gallery of New Orleans shots from before, during, and after Katrina and the subsequent flooding is worth your time.
Check out KnowThyNeighbor.org. The plan: anyone who formally signs the petition to add anti-gay-marriage language to the Massachusetts constitution will have their name and address listed on this site. (Via MeFi.)
ABC is reporting that Michael “Fired Horse Whisperer” Brown has been officially relieved of Katrina-related duties at FEMA, which makes us wonder what he’s going to do besides resign:
Sept. 9, 2005 — Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, under criticism due to his management of Hurricane Katrina as well as reported discrepancies on his resume, has been ousted from disaster relief efforts. And sources have told ABC News that Brown is also expected to be out as head of the agency very soon. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that Brown will return to Washington, D.C., and Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard will be elevated to take over Katrina recovery.
Many were not allowed to leave and, in fact, were herded back into the squalor and danger of the city when they tried to walk to Gretna. There’s a first-hand account here; excerpt:
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move. We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.
See other coverage, via the first linke, at SF Chron, UPI/Moonie/Right-Wing Times (!), and St Louis Post-Dispatch.
We are, after all, from Veterinarian stock.
Enjoy these pix of sheltered wild animals in California. Mostly, they’re big cats. Don’t miss the fact that the first two are “kitten” and “adult” shots of the same tiger. He goes from “large housecat” to “600 pounds.”
Lost in the shuffle of post-Katrina coverage is this: the Richmond Federal Appeals Court has ruled against Jose Padilla, overturning a lower Federal court’s ruling that he must either be charged or released. Padilla is therefore being held indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” despite being an American citizen arrested on American soil. As such, he may be detained indefinitely without access to counsel or the right to review whatever evidence incriminates him.
In other words, the Appeals Court feels that he — or any citizen — can be held forever just on the government’s say-so. This is NOT a power we want our government to have. Let’s hope the Supremes feel differently, as it’s a sure bet this will end up on their docket next.
Hunter Thompson’s final note was made public today:
Football Season Is Over No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.
“You know, this many people haven’t slept in the Astrodome since the Oilers’ last season.”
An anonymous bystander gave Cheney a piece of his mind during a CNN photo op — echoing his comment to Sen Leahy.
Presented without additional comment:
Norwegian professor Espen Andersen has a fine post up about the hoax of Intelligent Design that includes links to The Textbook League’s site. As Dr Andersen puts it, they “[leave] no stone unturned in exposing vague, fake, and feel-good pieces in text books.”
Do NOT miss Richard Feynman’s discussion of his experience judging textbooks in California. The whole process is a joke, so we have every confidence that ID will be taught in darn near every science class before too long, further eroding whatever educational advantage Americans still retain.
The Interdictor is a former Special Forces guy who works for DirectNIC in New Orleans; since before the hurricane, he’s been blogging his status pretty frequently. From his perch, he’s seen looting, fires, and finally the arrival of real aid. Thanks to a big-ass diesel generator, his servers are still up, and they’re still on the net. It’s an interesting read (start at the beginning for a better narrative).
Add to the narrative the pictures they’re getting — like the excellent one at right, taken by DirectNIC’s CEO Sigmund Solares — and you get a pretty fine man-on-the-ground view of Katrina in NOLA. Click the picture for a full-size version.
N.B. the new tagline under the page title, which will be updated every night with a running total of posts.
From their flood coverage:
Another Saints Season Ruined Before It Begins NEW ORLEANS — Front-office executives of the New Orleans Saints football team provided a much-needed dose of normalcy Monday when they announced that, for the 23rd year running, the Saints season had been ruined before it began. “I’d say this is even worse than when Mike Ditka traded away all our draft picks to get Ricky Williams,” said Saints vice president of pro-personnel operations Bill Kuharich. “But there’s one thing we Saints can always rely on: our chances for a winning season being shitcanned before we play a single down. We’re proud to have carried on with this tradition despite everything.” The National Football League has declined the Saints’ “mercy rule” request to be allowed to forfeit all their home games, saying the team must set an example for its home city by being blown out in every contest.
From our hometown paper:
JANICE — Food was running low in this Perry County community, so the Rev. Dean Cook turned to a reliable source for help – his fellow board members with Coonhunters for Christ.
From the Onion:
Genie Grants Scalia Strict Constructionist Interpretation Of Wish WASHINGTON, DC — A genie freed from a battered oil lamp by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted the conservative jurist a strict constructionist interpretation of his wish for “a hundred billion bucks” Monday. “Sim sim salabim! Your wish is my command!” the genie proclaimed amid flashes of light and purple smoke, immediately filling the Supreme Court building with a massive herd of wild male antelopes. When Justice Scalia complained that the “bucks” had razed the U.S. Supreme Court building, trampling and killing several of his clerks and bringing traffic in the nation’s capital to a standstill for hours, the genie said, “Your honor, your wish is a sacred and unalterable document whose interpretation is not subject to the whims of society and changing social context.”
FEMA flies refugees to right city, wrong state.
From TPM:
On the Al Franken show this afternoon I mentioned this article from today’s Salt Lake Tribune which tells the story of about a thousand firefighters from around the country who volunteered to serve in the Katrina devastation areas. But when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to various disaster zones in the region, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atltanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. This of course while life and death situations were still the order of the day along a whole stretch of the Gulf Coast. It’s an article you’ve really got a to read to appreciate the full measure of folly and surreality. But the graf at the end of the piece really puts everything in perspective, and gives some sense what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks about a crisis. The paper reports that one team finally was sent to the region …As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.You can’t make this stuff up.
In this NYT story (local PDF link) on the online gaming market, they discuss in some detail how subscriber growth has exploded in the last couple years — not so long ago, for example, half a million Everquest users was a huge number, but now World of Warcraft boasts better than twice that (come say hi; Heathen play on Silver Hand).
At the end of the article, though, after all the commentary about how the market has trended upward for years, and about how online gaming has gotten better and more accessible to the casual player, they quote a clueless analyst:
“I don’t think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month,” said Michael Pachter, a research analyst for Wedbush Morgan, a securities firm. “World of Warcraft is such an exception. I frankly think it’s the buzz factor, and eventually it will come back to the mean, maybe a million subscribers.” “It may continue to grow in China,” Mr. Pachter added, “but not in Europe or the U.S. We don’t need the imaginary outlet to feel a sense of accomplishment here. It just doesn’t work in the U.S. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
No, Mr Pachter, there’s no reason anyone will ever want to hear actors talk. And we’re sure you can forsee a time when every town might have a telephone, too.
I just got a renewal notice for Nogators.com from Register.com, Verisign’s domain registrar.
“Hrm,” I thought, “I was sure I transferred that to GoDaddy last year!” So I checked. And I did. Register.com has no hold on that domain, as they are no longer the registrar for it, and haven’t been since October of 2004. It would therefore be useless for me to renew the domain with Register.com — except, of course, to Register, who would get my payment in exchange for nothing. Furthermore, it’s trivial to discover who the registrar is for any given domain — it has to be for the Internet to function correctly. Ergo, there are two possible conclusions we may draw from this:
Either way: Charming.
