Tasteless, but still kinda cool. Always wanted to fuck while in church, myself. Must be all those missed opportunities with the pastor back when I was an altar boy.

On a similar note: Scientists discover that being drunk makes other people look better. Scientists are always the last ones to know, I guess.

Euroweenies threaten Nigerians face "isolation" if they stone a woman to death for having non-islamic sex. That about sums EU foriegn policy up: diplomacy about irrelevancies (sure it is barbaric, but let's face it; pretty much irrelevant) through "peer pressure." I'll take my big stick, thank you very nice.

An interesting article on the Semiotic implications of certain kinds of terrorism.

Stupid, but predictable.

Apparently, Americanos are now being blamed for the weather in the EU.

It's tough being a rich princess.
"there is to be no testing oneself against the best, with the possibility, even the likelihood, of failure: instead, one is perpetually to immerse oneself in the tepid bath of self-esteem, mutual congratulation, and benevolence toward all."

Old Rocks Stars never die, they just Do weird things.... Oh well, it could be worse; he could be on a comeback tour.

Here is a good article about the split between the EU and the US. Probably the best thing written since the Kagan Essay.
Most important realization:

"To
put it rather schematically and over-simply, Americans tend not to
see any source of democratic legitimacy higher than the constitutional
democratic nation-state. To the extent that any international organisation
has legitimacy, it is because duly constituted democratic majorities
have handed that legitimacy up to them in a negotiated, contractual
process. Such legitimacy can be withdrawn at any time by the contracting
parties; international law and organisation has no existence independent
of this type of voluntary agreement between sovereign nation-states.
Europeans,
by contrast, tend to believe that democratic legitimacy flows from
the will of an international community much larger than any individual
nation-state. This international community is not embodied concretely
in a single, global democratic constitutional order. Yet it hands
down legitimacy to existing international institutions, which are
seen as partially embodying it. Thus, peacekeeping forces in the former
Yugoslavia are not merely ad hoc intergovernmental arrangements, but
rather moral expressions of the will and norms of the larger international
community."

This is something that has confused me a bit for a while now. I've been reading the guardian for their take on things for a while now. Trying to look at the German News as well, in the various places it can be found. Both groups seem obsessed with the unpopularity of W and his policies in their nations. As if W were running for office in their nations. The point bein, to their minds, Bush is somehow underneath their European Project, rather than the POTUS. Slick Willlie was apparently good at applying the vaseline to the Eurocrats, and so he was seen as "one of them." Bush doesn't bother. And, perhaps he shouldn't. The very idea of a poll testing the popularity of an allied or neutral national leader, like, say, Schroeder or Putin, is ludicrous. Nobody in America gives a damn who they are; most don't know who they are: for they are foriegners. Were I a sniffley internationalist type who prides himself on his NYT or UKG subscription, I would probably take a moment to decry the ignorance of the average norto americano. I'm not that foolish. Americans have the right idea. The leaders of other nations, so long as they do not specifically attempt to impost their wills on our citizens, or pose a specific threat, are irrelevant to the Average American. This isn't mere jingoism; it is true. Nobody here cares who the Germans have in office, because he's in charge of a country which has no real effect on us. Their armies are negligible, and we still pay for a sizeable portion of their defense -and, in fact, we still occupy their nation (personally, I am looking forward to Lederhosen in the Reichstag). We care about the Rooskies because they matter. They are our old nemesis, they are still mightily dangerous, and they are our potential boon allies in our latest foriegn policy projects. We care a lot about Saddam Hussain, for obvious reasons. Fundamentally, Europeans shouldn't much care about who is in office here either. The fact that they do is a symptom not only of their powerlessness, but also of their busibodiness.

Life imitates the Onion, again.

Does anyone remember George Michael from the 1980s? I had always figured he was off somewhere with Boy George until he got caught manning a "glory hole" in a Beverly Hills toilet stall. Water finds its own level, I suppose. His attempt at being a "shock rocker" seems to have met with unqualified failure. I wonder what demographic he was trying to appeal to? Stupid cocksuckers who hate americanos and limeys? Perhaps he overestimated his demographic. I figure, between his relatives and employees of the UK Guardian, he's pretty much saturated his potential fanbase.

This may be the beginnings of a Manhatten project of the War on Terrorism. Factoring is incredibly important in breaking cryptographic codes used by terrorists (and, admittedly, regular people) to hide their emails from snooping NSA types. Testing primality is an important part of the problem. here you can obtain the paper yourself. I suppose it is more akin to the work of Turing and other Allied codebreakers in WW-2, but "Manhatten project" is something more people have heard of. It is a considerable and helpful intellectual achievement in any case.

Analogy to operator overloading in OO programming languages:
" it's sort of like using ambiguous punning to describe a
recipe for rasberry flan. Sure, if you're clever you can do it
properly; but it's not the ideal mode of expression."

An email exchange with a friend today:

Out West, the famously left-of-center voters in Seattle, Washington, and
Berkeley, California, will consider citizen initiatives this November aimed
at improving society by targeting ... coffee drinkers. Seattle voters will
consider a 10-cent tax on espresso drinks. The money will go toward child
care programs. In Berkeley, a ballot proposal calls for a ban on the sale of
any coffee that is not organic, shade grown or purchased at a minimum market
price.

It's probably going to pass and have absolutely no effect on anything.

Berkeley excells in such imbecelic political gestures. Berkeley, for
example, is a prominently labeled a "nuclear free zone" despite the presence
of U.C. Berkeley (you know, where they invented nuclear weapons among other
things) and Lawrence-Berkeley National Labs (you know, where they discovered
the antiproton, and where I torment innocent atoms with ... well ...
radioactive shit). I quite enjoy their regular issuings of foriegn policy
statements to places like, the EU, the Whitehouse and the Japanese peace
party (who feel an affection for the pinkoes whose town helped nuke them in
the '40s thus turning them into a nation of pacifists). My former town of
Amherst used to do the same thing; I think I live in these places to raise
my bloodpressure to normal levels from its usually sleepy level. Amusingly,
my classical mechanics professor in Amherst was filmed last September 10th
(and rebroadcast on the 11th) at a town meeting decrying the americano flag
as a symbol of evil that shouldn't be flown over the oh-so moral and just
Amherst city hall. She couldn't understand why so many people were so pissed
off at her.

Occasionally the Berkeley maroons enact something which has an actual effect
on things. Some nincompoop with a calculator realized that he got better gas
mileage when he was on the highway, or didn't stop for stopsigns. So this
ninny and a couple hundred of his 'enviromentalist' (emphasis on the
"mentalist" part) regularly petition the city council to remove stoplights
and stopsigns, using impressive sounding arguments about the amounts of
saved greenhouse gasses. As such, my formerly pleasant residential street
has turned into a drag strip where people try to get their Volvos and BMW's up to, oh,
say 80 or so. I think my next door neighbor has offset any greenhouse savings
the lack of stoplight may have engendered. He bought himself a 440 max wedge
drag racer with 4.88 gears and dual-quad carbs that does an 11 second
quarter mile. I think his Ducatti gets like 5mpg as well. I won't even get
into what I drive.

Another one which makes me cackle: since the people here are pinko nimrods,
they regularly stroll out in front of hurtling automobiles and trucks. It's
typical of that lot, thinking the self-righteous laws of man are soemhow more
powerful than the laws of nature (which they probably figure are social
constructs). Anyway, with the lack of stopsigns and red lights, such people
tend to get spectacularly darwinned (particularly on a corner near my house
and the drag strip). I mean, these people make vast bloody *SPLATS* in front
of this French restaurant at the corner. I have literally slipped and slided on
human gore on this corner on more than one occasion. It's pretty ooky, I
have to say. You'd think they'd do a better job of cleaning it up, but
perhaps they are going for that third world ambiance. Anyway, you'd think
the city council would do something sensible, like install extra traffic
control lights and signs, or put up signs warning the space cadets to look
all ways before crossing the street. Nope. Instead, they put up baskets of
little orange flaggies to wave indignantly at the hurtling Peterbuilts who
can't see them in their crusty brown natural fabrics.

I went to the following seminar today, given by Ken Moody.

There is a black market in illicit nuclear materials. By destructive and
non-destructive analysis of small samples of plutonium and uranium, it is
possible to develop a set of signatures that can identify the methods used
in the preparation of the sample and the location where the sample was
fabricated. The isotopic content of the material defines the type of
reactor or enrichment process used in its preparation; the ingrowth of
daughter and granddaughter activities define when the material was last
purified; the presence of contaminant species is indicative of the chemical
techniques used in purification or reprocessing. Once the source of a
particular sample is known, it may be possible to determine where legitimate
control of the material was lost, and the flow of materials can be stopped.
Some real-world nuclear forensics cases will be discussed.

"So what?" you might say. "So you're a friggin science nerd, and you get paid to go to such things," you might point out.
Well, the interesting thing was a sample of a small amount of weapons grade uranium interdicted a couple of years ago (as in, around 2-3 years ago). Via various clues in the chemical and isotopic composition of the sample and its projected date of manufacture (which indicated it was home-purified stuff from a research reactor), there is almost certainly a 20-30kg chunk of this stuff floating around the black market somewhere. Yes, that is enough. Pleasant dreams.
Ready to unleash the dogs of war yet? Or will this have to go off in Manhatten first?