existence trainer

The story here .

Thankfully someone debunked this hogwash: Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting. Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam. Or here's the Fox report: By far my favorite response to this story is the Daily Shows mockery:

In general it appears that many Republicans are on board with a minimum wage bill that includes certain tax incentives. Why, then, hasn't the bill yet been able to make its way through Congress? Here's the answer : Aides to some House leaders say they would be willing to allow some of the tax breaks. But others, including Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, are insisting that they will not concede any tax cuts. House Democrats say that by forcing a vote on a clean bill they would force Senate Republicans to put themselves on record as opposing a wage increase, which was a popular campaign issue in the midterm elections. “We are still operating on the assumption or hope that the Senate will pass a clean minimum wage bill,” said Stacey F. Bernards, a spokeswoman for Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic leader. “If it doesn’t happen, it’s because a minority of Republicans held it up. It’s the...

A very good primer .

Brilliant .

This looks really fun (and soooo dangerous).

"Bush Commits One Additional Troop To Afghanistan" [The Onion].

More Information can be found here .

Check out this article "What is a Neocon Anyway?" over at the blog The Gay Republican . The author gives a fairly clear and succinct characterization of neo-conservatism and paleo-conservatism from a neocon point of view. Of course, this means that the article is slanted towards favoring a neocon perspective, but I nonetheless recommend reading it just to see this view from an insider perspective. By seeing it in this way, you can get a sense of the motivations guiding this view and why it leads it proponents to favor the policy decisions they often do. Make sure you check out the FAQ on his sidebar - which, I think, is a fairly adequate reply to those who would claim that someone who is both gay and a republican must be self-hating (like this post here ). Also, check out this post for a brief review of The Gay Republican blog.

In my sidebar I wanted to link to Comedy Central's archive of The Daily Show videos and The Colbert Report videos. The problem is that once you start playing on of these videos your browser gets resized. So rather than turning of javascript, I wanted to be able to link to them by opening a pop-up window. Here's a link to the code I used: Pop-up Code Oh, and here is a link on how to display html code on your post.

Here are links of where you can go to see a vast archive of Comedy Central Videos without having to first watch a 30sec advertisement: The Daily Show South Park Comedy Central Presents Chappelle's Show The Colbert Report UPDATE : I've streamlined the process a little bit by including the links to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report in my sidebar. These links open up pop-up windows to these respective shows (so that your browser window doesn't get automatically resized).

Here . If I get a chance, I'll post some thought on the debate (but first, I got to spend the day with Aristotle).

Its been a very long time since I've worked on this program. I released a copy of it about 5 years ago on Freshmeat (this old version can be found here for now - though it will probably be gone soon), but I haven't had much time to work on it since then. You can find the newest version here , and I've created a simple (and presently incomplete) webpage for it here . So far, I've only released a Windows version, but I'll soon update the Linux version on Freshmeat. Basically, WordFlashReader is a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) program that makes reading things on-screen a lot easier on the eyes (at least once you get used to it). Feel free to distribute it, modify it, and so on (its GPL'd). Let me know what you think! Also, its still beta, so if you encounter any bugs - let me know, and maybe when I get a chance I'll be able to fix them. From the Release notes: This program is intended for anyone who has an electronic text or book they wish to read. ...

This video is either incredibly offensive or sublimely satirical. It also seems to me this is exactly what this guy was going for (being flame-bait is a sure-fire way to shameless self-promotion). I'm leaning towards viewing it as being unflinching satire. Consider some of the lyrics (the full lyrics can be found here ): "To enter heaven there's no back door..." "Righteous man, get on your knees..." "Jesus my savior is the only man for me..." "Fill me with your love..." Furthermore, this video is shot in very soft lighting, and this guy is wearing pink shirt, white pants, and has a brillian 'stache. Here is a great take I found : This video reminds me that South Park episode where Eric Cartman becomes famous for singing vaguely creepy Christian pop songs—with lyrics that echo “fill me with your love,” and, “Jesus is the only man for me,” and, “righteous man, get on your knees.” That South Park episode nailed the blatantly homoeroti...

In order to change the default startup directory for Command Prompt - do the following Start->Run->Regedit.exe Go here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Command Processor If Autorun is missing, create a new String Value here. Change the Autorun value data in the following way: CD /d C:\directory_to_folder So, for example, I set my startup directory to: CD /d C:\Documents and Settings\Jonathan\Desktop\dev restart the command prompt.

If you want to display a snippet of code within blogger, then this post is very useful. Basically, paste the following code near the blockquote code in the template. code { font-family: Courier; margin:.75em 0; border:1px solid #596; border-width:1px 1px; padding:5px 15px; display: block; background-color: #dedede; white-space: pre; } Now just place the code you want to display inside the following: <code></code>

Recently, I've gotten back into programming. Its been a couple of years and the last time I was into it I was working in a UNIX environment. Now I'm in a Window's XP environment. I've already felt a bit frustrated with Microsoft's standard command shell (cmd.exe). First, it lacks many of the commands I have come to know and love. Second, it's tab auto completion is lacking - when you hit tab, it cycles through all the filename matches rather than displaying a list of all of the matches. And third, I want my command shell to preserve my command history across sessions. I've been searching around, and I've yet to find a free command shell in windows that has all of these features. Here is what I found: cmd.exe: This is the standard command shell. Its not to difficult to get it to use windows ports of the UNIX commands I want with the help of unxutils. Here and here are useful instructions for setting this up. Winone : This is the closest thing I've ...

Regardless of what you think of Donald Trump, at least this is an interesting interview. Trump evaluates G.W. as a CEO.

I just spotted this here on slashdot. According to the article being referred to it sounds like Section 220 in S.1 would be a severe blow to free speech: "In what sounds like a comedy sketch from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but isn't, the U. S. Senate would impose criminal penalties, even jail time, on grassroots causes and citizens who criticize Congress. Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history, critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself. A quick internet search seems to indicate that this worry is not without merit. Although there seems to be som...

So funny, but lots of bad mental pictures. [Update: Its fixed for the time being.]

I could not imagine falling in a more painful way. And it was probably too quick that he didn't even realize what was going to happen until it was too late. I almost get queasy watching the slow motion.

I think one or both of these will happen sometimes in my lifetime (and maybe fairly soon). If I had to put money on it, I would say that a woman has a better chance than a black man at becoming president at this time (though Barack is the wild card here). In fact, there is some polling evidence that this country is becoming more and more open to either possibility.

His comments can be heard here: [ mp3 ]. No doubt, James Dobson's unwillingness to vote for McCain will have a negative impact on his candidacy - given Dobson's tremendous sway in the republican party. Here is an question I have: Why do many people dislike McCain so much?

For years, Pat Robertson has been in front of a camera claiming to have supernatural revelations that people are being healed of arthritis, kidney stones, or whatever. By these so-called "words of knowledge" God is supposedly revealing to Robertson particular supernatural interventions he is performing through-out the (televised) world. Of course, these "prophecies" are never disconfirmed, and so I guess his contributors rely on what they perceive to be the character of Pat Robertson in order to believe that what he is doing is genuine. I mean, how could someone be that disingenuous to put words in the mouth of God? Well, now we can really put him to the test. Recently he claimed that God told him that late in 2007 the U.S. would suffer "mass killing" resulting from a terrorist attack. Well, fortunately for us, Robertson's prophecies have fallen short before . Who actually buys into this stuff? By the way, Robertson should read Deuteronomy 18:19-22 ag...

Ufff! Its been a big pain in my ass. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) there have been enough people problems similar to mine that generally a google search would yield a solution. Here is a bit of what I went through. BY FAR, the most important thing you can do is save a copy of your old blogger template (that is, assuming you have modified it - if not, then chances are your upgrade will not be as painful as mine). You won't be able to use all of it, but you will be able to mine it for useful code here and there. The first thing I wanted to do was to add a third column where I could place advertisements. Although creating a third column was not too difficult (its very similar to how you would do it on the old blogger - instructions here ), populating it turned out to be a big pain. First, the GUI blogger builder obviously does not support the creation of new columns (no surprise there), so you need to edit the html. The problem is that the Beta Blogger either would not save my...

A fascinating article here . I'm a bit confused about how this is supposed to alleviate hunger, though. According to the article, one rabbit feeds about eight people. Ok, but couldn't a LOT more people be fed merely with the food given to that one rabbit through the course of its life? Compare the following two quotations in the above mentioned article: Each of his rabbits produces around seven kilograms of meat, says Szmolinsky, who was so keen to help alleviate hunger in the impoverished country... and The 12 bunnies he sent can produce 60 babies a year -- if the North Koreans find enough food to feed them properly. Another random thought: I wonder if and when they will be sold as pets.

This is a real video resume submitted to numerous investment firms. Absolutely priceless. The following is a great spoof of the above video:

Senator Obama, Time and again I have been impressed by your ability to bypass partisan bickering by first acknowledging the concerns on both sides of an issue, and then by offering a practical and clear vision of how you consider the issue in light of these concerns. And the fact that I keep finding your perspectives on issues of importance both thoughtful and wise gives me hope that great things are in store for you in the future. This brings me to my present concern. Just today I learned that a new source of stem cells has been discovered, and that these stem cells may hold the same promise as embryonic stem cells. I think this is fantastic news and should be applauded by all sides of the debate over stem cell research in this country. Many thoughtful individuals find the harnessing of embryonic stem cells morally suspect - even if it has the potential to yield tremendous scientific gains in the fields of health and medicine. I'm sympathetic with these worries - and this is partl...

Also check out this other picture here .

Instructions here .