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Uncategorized

Big Sister is Watching You

I suppose if I ever run across this book at a yard sale, I’d pick it up for laughs:

Big Sister is Watching You

For the benefit of the search engines, I’ll quote the text from the graphic above:

Big Sister is Watching You—Hillary Clinton and the White House Feminists Who Now Control America And Tell the President What to Do:

This stunning book by former University of Texas professor and bestselling author Texe Marrs—has ignited controversy across the U.S.A. This highly documented exposé of Hillary Rodham Clinton and her gal pals has been banned and censored everywhere. Anna Quindlan, the top feminist reporter for The New York Times was furious when she read this book—she promptly wrote a national column blasting the author and demanding that the feds severely punish him! Big Sister is Watching You proves Hillary is not only a lesbian and a communist, she is a New Age occultist deep into black witchcraft and communication with the dead. Her gal pals—Janet “Butch” Reno, former stripper poet Maya Angelou, and others—are also outed for the first time. Discover the dark powers Hillary Clinton has over her husband, Bill, and what America’s most powerful woman plans to do after she herself becomes President in the year 2005.

Speaking as a person who’s not all that impressed with Ms. Clinton (between the fakety-fake pandering to American conservatives and her chumminess with Rupert Murdoch), I have to say that author Texe Marrs isn’t just disturbed, but bus station disturbed.

Be sure to check the other books on Marrs’ site. They’re full of rantings about the dark secret of New Agers, the Illuminati, and — of course — “Mark of the Beast” chips. We’re talking weapons-grade crazy here. Suitable either as a gag gift for friends or a real gift for the tinfoil-hatted special person in your life.

(Thanks to landruc for the link!)

Categories
Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

DemoCamp 9 Tonight!

DemoCamp Toronto logo

Tonight marks the return of DemoCamp — Toronto’s monthly show-and-tell for the software and web development crowd — to its regular schedule. Tonight’s DemoCamp will start 6:30 at No Regrets restaurant and lounge, located at 42 Mowat Avenue, near King and Dufferin. Since No Regrets is a restaurant — and one that makes very good food, at that — you’ll be able to enjoy dinner while seeing what the local tech community is up to.

Tonight’s demos are:

  • DictaBrain – A “rapid voice-to-text-to-blog transcription system”, which will be demonstrated by former Tucowser James Woods. (No, not the actor.)
  • InfoQ.com – Floyd Marinescu, creator of TheServerSide.com, will demonstrate InfoQueue, “independent online community focused on change and innovation in enterprise software development”.
  • ConceptShare – A new way to share and manage visual design concepts
  • The eMail company – “Build online webforms, webpolls, surveys, refer a friend forms, subscriber profile centres on the fly…and sooooo much more”
  • Pursudo – This one’s a creation of the fine people at Unspace. The motto for this application is “Put yourself out there”.

The DemoCamp rules remain in effect: each presenter has 15 minutes total for demonstration and Q&A, and no slideware is allowed. We don’t want to see the marketing presentation, we want to see your application in action!

In addition to performing a demonstration and fielding questions from the audience, each demonstrator should be prepared to answer the following 4 questions at the start:

  • Who are you?
  • What are you demoing?
  • What do you hope to get from the community?
  • What will the community/audience get out of your demo?

The demonstrations will run until around 8:30 or shortly afterwards, after which there’ll be the tradiitonal post-DemoCamp general social free-for-all. See you there!

Categories
In the News

That’s One Strange Coup You’ve Got There, Thailand

Photo Op!

Here’s a photo that’s getting some attention right now:

Kids posing for a photo in front of a tank at the Thai coup

It’s from a blog called Mai Me Arai and written by two people named Ben and Oui.

In this entry, Ben writes that although the TV stations have been shut down, people still have internet access:

Oui told me earlier that a Thai site had a story saying that while the coup was occuring, internet usage in Thailand increased more than 400%. Let it never be said that Thai’s don’t know where to find information when they really want to. Cutting off one source of information (ie television) only moves people to find another.

Here’s Ben on the Thai and world response to the coup:

[From this entry] It’s been interesting to me to read the different reactions coming from other countries. Those who outright condemn the move obviously have no idea of what the situation in Thailand has been up until yesterdays coup and come off sounding panicked that their own military might get the same idea.

[From this entry] Am I the only one who doesn’t give a shit if the US withdraw aid from Thailand? So what? Are Thai’s meant to be quaking in their boots because big powerful America threatens to withdraw aid as a result of the coup that, according to a Dusit poll*, more than 80% of Thai’s support?

Explaining the Coup in the Nerdiest Way Possible

Over at the blog Interesting Things, Ko Saipetch explains the coup in the nerdiest way possible: he likens Thailand to a computer, the ousted government to operating system that installed malware, spyware and a rootkit on his computer and the Thai Council for Democratic Reform as a friendly computer tech who reformatted the hard drive.

Like Ben, he’s amused at the notion of the US condemning the coup.

Other Perspectives

There’a group blog called 19Sep (named for the date on which the coup took place), whose authors are attempting to chronicle the events.

Blogger “Cowboy Caleb” is an editor for Tomorrow.sg (“Singapore’s answer to Boing Boing“), and just happened to be in Bangkok when the coup took place.

Keep an eye on Global Voices’ “Thailand” category, which collects a number of blog entries from Thailand.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Have a Good Rosh Hashanah / Ramadan!

(By the way, this entry will be number 4983 for this blog. Another 17 and I’ll have posted an even five thousand since starting this thing back in November 2001.)

One more entry before I call it a day: today is both the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year (it’s 5767 in the Jewish calendar), and Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Everyone, and I mean everyone seems to be wishing the world a simultaneous happy Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan, and so do I. Have a good one!

My wife Wendy, the Ginger Ninja, is Jewish, so I made sure to bring home some apples, and I fixed her a New Year’s dinner with an appetizer of stuffed hot peppers and a main course of seared salmon in seafood spices and a couscous salad. I also brought home a movie she’s being dying to watch — Stick It — and the American Idol game for the PlayStation 2.

Categories
Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Funny Church Sign of the Day

Church sign: 'Our wireless provider is God.

(Photo courtesy of Leandro.)

Categories
Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

DemoCamp 9 This Monday!

Toronto DemoCamp logo.

Don’t forget: DemoCamp 9 takes place on Monday, September 25th, starting at 6:30 p.m. at No Regrets restaurant and lounge (42 Mowat Avenue, near King and Dufferin).

For those who don’t know what DemoCamp is: think of it as a Toronto-and-area “show and tell” session for people working in the technology industry. Once a month, the bright lights of Toronto’s software, web development and internet industries gather together in a rather informal setting and to see what their peers are working on. Each session has five presentations, each one showing off one of their current projects. Each presenter has 15 minutes in which to make a presentation and answer questions from the audience. There’s a catch: no PowerPoint (or any other slideware) is allowed. We don’t want to see slide shows, we want to see your project in action! Real live working demos! That’s what the “Demo” in “DemoCamp” is all about!

DemoCamp is an important part of the Toronto technology ecosystem, as it lets all sorts of people — programmers, business people, creatives, academics, interested laypeople and so on — meet, get to know each other, find out what’s going on in the local software and internet industries and exchange ideas. Come, and you’ll see just how active the local high-tech scene is and maybe even get some inspiration.

For more about the upcoming DemoCamp session, see the DemoCamp 9 page.

Categories
Geek

RSS, Explained Oprah-Style

RSS, explained Oprah-style.

If you’re a reader of blogs and keep seeing references to “RSS” but never quite get what it’s all about, you’re in luck. This explanation is probably the most layperson-friendly article describing what RSS is and what it’s for.

(I also covered this article in the Tucows Blog.)