The Protocols of the Yuppies of Zion

June 11, 2004

CELLS OF ANGER

The Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star is reporting that there's fighting going on between rival Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, and it's getting nasty and brutal.

(It's not what you think--it's actually a sign of progress. Read the article.)

[via Acharit HaYamim]

HISTORIES, REAL AND ALTERNATE

I just stumbled across Robbie Taylor's blog Today In Alternate History (its motto: "Important Events In History That Never Occurred Today"). I'm having a fun time reading his scenarios and predictions. He takes known historical events from each day in history and blogs the possible results that could have happened if something just slightly different had occurred: what if the British-German Christmas truce of WWI had held, what if Jimmy Carter's alternative energy initiatives hadn't been scrapped, etc. Some of his alternate histories are wacky, and some even refer to fictional events based in comic-book timelines, but they're all fun to read. My personal favorite, from June 5th: "in 1931, the Greater Zionist Resistance captures Moscow. At this point, they control an area from Moscow in the east to the Danube in the west, and their secret Nazi backers begin wondering how they can be stopped." Hee.

Speaking of history, and of unlikely Zionist victories (but in this case, one that really did happen), today is the 37th anniversary of the end of the 1967 Six-Day War. Amazing that such a momentous war didn't even take a whole week. On one side, you had Israel, badly outgunned and outmanned. On the other side, you had, oh, the entire Arab world united in the destruction of Israel and its inhabitants, with an alliance of Jordan, Egypt, and Syria attacking from all three sides of the country, backed by troops and equipment sent in from Kuwait, Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. And yet those wily Israelis won, and won big--one of the biggest underdog victories in modern military history. Here's a little history lesson about the war from the History Channel, with important passages highlighted by yours truly:

"Increased tensions and skirmishes along Israel's northern border with Syria were the immediate cause of the third Arab-Israeli war. In 1967, Syria intensified its bombardment of Israeli settlements across the border, and Israel struck back by shooting down six Syrian MiG fighters. After Syria alleged in May 1967 that Israel was massing troops along the border, Egypt mobilized its forces and demanded the withdrawal of the U.N. Emergency Force from the Israel-Egypt cease-fire lines of the 1956 conflict. The U.N. peacekeepers left on May 19, and three days later Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping...

With every sign of a pan-Arab attack in the works, Israel's government on June 4 authorized its armed forces to launch a surprise preemptive strike. On June 5, the Six-Day War began with an Israeli assault against Arab air power. In a brilliant attack, the Israeli air force caught the formidable Egyptian air force on the ground and largely destroyed the Arabs' most powerful weapon. The Israeli air force then turned against the lesser air forces of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, and by the end of the day had decisively won air superiority...

MY FAVORITE BEEFY WISCONSONIAN CONTINUES TO SHINE

Despite my Hollywood-New-York-Times-Met-Rooting upbringing, I can never bring myself to fully dismiss the great American Middle. After all, Dave Letterman is from Indiana.

And from Wisconsin comes another gem of a man.

This guy loves The Return of the King, hates American Beauty ("A crappy piece of propaganda. It’s Three’s Company all dressed up with ponderous pretension. I can’t tell you how much I loathe that film.") , believes in the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our society, and has made me laugh more times than I could possibly count.

For those of you who are familiar with MST3K's Michael J. Nelson, you will greatly enjoy this interview. If you're not familiar with him, you should be. (*cough* Pejman *cough*)

Sorry I haven't been writing much. I've been very busy not working. I apologize.

June 08, 2004

FORWARD MARCH

We've been linked by The Forward.

If only my great-grandparents were alive today to see this (and knew what a blog was), they'd totally plotz.

June 04, 2004

THE BIG BLUE BLOG

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, links to this new blog from Lotus, which is a part of IBM, as evidence that even some big companies are cautiously getting into the blogging racket.

What Glenn doesn't know is that IBM already had a toe dipped into the blogging pool, over two years ago, in May of 2002. A nice guy named David Berger, who works with internal communications at IBM, was a fan of my blog (at its old location) and when he realized that I was an IBM employee (er, contractor), he contacted me at work. Despite working out of separate locations, the two of us met several times to talk about blogging as a tool to help foster internal IBM communication amongst the many varied parts of the company. And the two of us set up, using Blogger, a test blog.

Ladies and gents, check out what might-have-been. Left moldering for two years now, it's The Big Blue Blog. ("Big Blue" is IBM's nickname.)

This was something of a secret what we were doing, since it wasn't approved yet. But I posted this entry to my own blog in April of 2002 hinting at what we were attempting to do with blogging as a corporate tool, rather than just leaving it as a venue for vanity diaries and political sites:

...Maybe blogging could be used as intra-office communication on specific projects, a central page for people to easily contribute updates without having to waste time and inbox space by writing so many damn e-mails. An executive who needs to talk to his sales force for motivational purposes could have a blog to jot down short ideas and daily experiences in dealing with his customers, instead of relying on overly polished PR flacks to send out "inspirational" or "educational" crap-fests for his minions to ignore at will. Techie engineer types could communicate amongst a large group to toss around ideas and designs for new products or methods of doing business in private multi-person blogs. They wouldn't then need to have to write up (and have rejected) project proposals, but could instead have everything under constant peer review and open to many suggestions, thereby using the power of many eyeballs to make all bugs shallow, as open source proponents like to say..."

Alas, the IBM suits didn't quite "get" the whole blogging thing, and the project didn't go anywhere. I spent the rest of my days at ibm.com doing other web geek stuff, never ending up as the Big Blue Blogger. But now Lotus finally is getting on the bandwagon. Maybe there's hope for the old company yet.

Mr. Palmisano, if you want to make me an offer to re-start the project, my old co-workers have my phone number.

THAT DEAR OLD DIRTY TOWN

Sometimes I read something that makes me really miss living in New York.

It was inevitable, really. I'm a New Yorker, doing--surprisingly--pretty well out here in La-La-Land, but I remain a New Yorker at heart. It's just that the heart in question belongs to a wonderful, handsome, funny, talented Hollywood man, so here I am living in crazy California, though my driver's license still says otherwise.

Things here are, I hasten to add, good. It's just that they're also different. I found a job out here that I like, which also pays about twice as much as my old one--but it has longer hours and a 30-45 minute commute to Burbank through LA traffic, rather than a nice 12-block walk down Lexington Avenue. I've learned the LA roads and freeways fairly well and have a ride of my own, my sister-in-law's SUV, which was sitting unused while she's newly-moved to New York--but gas costs $2.50 a gallon and the SUV slurps it like an overworked web geek with a Starbucks located in the downstairs of her office building. (That geek would be me, with a new two-cup-a-day habit, brought on by job stress.)

THE CONTAMINATED ZONE

To be filed under "things you don't want to think about but unfortunately should":

"Only a matter of time before terrorists use "dirty bomb"

PARIS (AFP) - Gloomy experts believe it is only a question of time before terrorists use a "dirty bomb," a device that would spew radioactive debris over a city, making parts of it uninhabitable for years, it was reported.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) records point to "a dramatic rise" in the smuggling of radiological substances, the raw material for this bomb, the British science weekly New Scientist says in next Saturday's issue.

"In 1996, there were just eight of these incidents, but last year there were 51," the report says.

"Most cases are believed to have occurred in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. Smugglers target the radioactive materials used in factories, hospitals and research laboratories, which are not guarded as securely as those used by the nuclear industry."

A "dirty bomb" is not a nuclear bomb. It would use conventional explosive to disgorge radioactive material over a wide area, unleashing panic and making the area unusable.

Since 1993, there have been 300 confirmed cases of illicit trafficking in radiological materials, 215 of them in the past five years.

But, according to the IAEA documents, the true figure may be far higher. There have been 344 further suspected cases of trafficking over the past 11 years that have not been confirmed by any of the 75 states that monitor this activity.

The agency adds that there are still 1,000 radioactive sources that are unaccounted for in Iraq (news - web sites). And of 25 sources stolen from the Krakatau steel company in Indonesia in October 2000, only three have been recovered.

A terrorist attack of this kind is "a nightmare waiting to happen," Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant and former British nuclear military scientist, was quoted by New Scientist as saying.

"I'm amazed that it hasn't happened already."

And last year, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the British counter-intelligence agency MI5, said a crude radiological attack against a major western city was "only a matter of time," the report said."

Have a nice day, y'all.

June 02, 2004

VERILY, THOU DIDST GET SERVED... THUSLY

I’ve come to the conclusion that one could compile quite the coffee table book of quotations in which one historical figure insults, demeans, belittles, and otherwise lashes out at another.

Churchill, for example, described Mohandas K. Gandhi quite unfavorably, noting that…

It is . . . nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King . . .

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, known mostly for his work in composing the opening music from the original Mario Brothers game, commented on the passing of Voltaire by declaring that…

"The ungodly arch-villain, Voltaire, has died like a dog,"

And General George McClellan, himself known as “The Virginia Creeper”, is quoted as describing President Abraham Lincoln as “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.”

I shall henceforth consider this an open thread, in which those of you who are similarly enchanted by cat fights historical may contribute additional gems at your leisure.

And keep this in mind: If none of you contribute, it will go a long way towards proving me the best-read and geekiest of you all.

May 28, 2004

SUCH A (NOT-SO-)NICE (NOT-SO-)JEWISH BOY

Proving the old adage that sometimes the biggest anti-semite is just a self-hating Jew, one of the FBI's new "BOLO" (Be On the Look Out) terrorism suspects is an Islamic convert named Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, a.k.a. Abu Suhayb, a.k.a. Yihya Majadin Adams, a.k.a. Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a.k.a. Adam Pearlman. Yep, you read that right.

Curiousity piqued, I poked around on the Net for more clues about this bad boy and put together the following fun information from various sources: Adam Pearlman/Gadahn is actually the half-Jewish half-Catholic son of rural California goat-farming hippies who home-schooled him and his siblings and encouraged him to study various religions:

"His aunt says "he was raised to be religious, to believe in a god, and was given the opportunity to read the Koran and read the bible and read, you know, the Torah's part of the bible, I mean the old testament, the new testament and the Koran. And he made his own choice"."

Flashbacks and parallels to Marin County, California experimenting-with-religion fighting-for-the-Taliban hippie-brat John Walker Lindh, anyone?

Well, if you think that's funny, you should read Adam's own essay on becoming a Muslim. It was apparently written in late 1995, posted to a Usenet newsgroup in 1997, and is now featured on various websites all over the Net, including on the USC Muslim Students Association website. You think they'll take down his essay now that he made the FBI's Most Wanted list? Somehow, I don't think it would be considered very good prosteltyzing material anymore. (Or maybe it would, I dunno.)

Some high points of Adam's spiritual awakening, in his own words:

"In the meantime, I had become obsessed with demonic Heavy Metal music, something the rest of my family (as I now realize, rightfully so) was not happy with. My entire life was focused on expanding my music collection. I eschewed personal cleanliness and let my room reach an unbelievable state of disarray. My relationship with my parents became strained, although only intermittently so. I am sorry even as I write this...

...The turning point, perhaps, was when I moved in with my grandparents here in Santa Ana, the county seat of Orange, California. My grandmother, a computer whiz, is hooked up to America Online and I have been scooting the information superhighway since January. But when I moved in, with the intent of finding a job (easier said than done), I begin to visit the religion folders on AOL and the Usenet newsgroups, where I found discussions on Islam to be the most intriguing..."

GREASE MONKEY SHINES

Blogging will be light until today's computer overhaul has been completed. I and my trusty pal Vik will be wiping the system clean, swapping out the GeForce FX 5200 for an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, patching in a new ~120 GB Hard Drive and moving the current 40 Gig drive into the slave postion, and then, of course, playing Vice City on as high a resolution as we can manage. (Brown Thunder forever!)

I shall see you all soon.

May 26, 2004

FOR KEVIN

(This was originally a comment in response to this comment by Kevin on this post by yours truly. It got too long for the comments section so I'm creating a new post for it. You should probably go read that stuff first for context.)

worst president ever. how can this be disputed?

Um, by simply saying that while I won't be voting for him this November, I totally disagree with you. (Gee, that was hard.) Even a cursory glance at American history will find far worse figures of villainy and/or ineptitude: Nixon, Jackson, Pierce, Carter, and a bunch of others. I would hope you'd have less historically inapt memes to kick around than those you just ripped off John Kerry's blog. Or quoting Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.

under bush's watch, more americans have died due to terrorism on american soil then under all previous 42 presidents combined.

You realize you just said that 9/11 is Bush's fault and responsibility, not the terrorists who perpetrated it? Would you take me seriously if I said that FDR was the worst president ever because more Americans died due to Japanese militarism on his watch than under all the presidents who preceded him combined? Or would you perhaps conclude that the Japanese were fundamentally to blame for Pearl Harbor, for the deaths and the destruction, even if the US gov't did have shaky intelligence warnings that an attack was imminent?

I refuse to take seriously people who blame Bush for being too negligent pre-9/11 and then in the very same breath blame him for being too militaristic after it--especially people happily residing in Europe, a continent whose record is historically far worse in both negligence and militarism.

as far as how europe fights terror, it does quite well.

Kevin, you're making it harder and harder for me to take anything you say seriously. You really think Europe fights terrorism quite well, despite Scott's astute previous examples to the contrary, which you dodged. You think they're doing okay, despite the insane demographic bomb taking place. I've read estimates that in 25 years' time--one generation!--the Netherlands will be half Muslim, the vast majority of them unassimilated, large numbers of them are on the (very generous) dole. I really wouldn't care about what religion/ethnicity they are, except that culturally, they're completely contrary to everything a progressive, liberal, tolerant country like the Netherlands has stood for; to go from legalized prostitution and gay marriages to honor killings and female genital mutilation is not a step in the right direction. You really think France doesn't have a huge growing problem with its crime-ridden banlieus, that Spain didn't just have terrorists set their government's foreign policy less than three months ago, that Britain didn't just have a narrow escape when several suicide bombers were supposed to strike at the Manchester United-Liverpool soccer match, also less than three months ago. Finsbury Park is no longer thought of as merely a suburb, nor is Luton.

There have been travel advisories out for two years now, warning Jews of all nationalities not to travel to France, Belgium, and Greece, because of the likelihood of being attacked, especially if we wear recognizable religious clothing. Synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish religious centers are burning and being blown up all across Western Europe. Huge numbers of French Jews have been fleeing France over the past four years, many preferring to live in terrorism-plagued Israel not for religious reasons, but because they perceive it as being safer than France! But Europe has no problem, no siree, nothing to see here folks. They "deal" with the threat of terrorism just fine--by pretending it doesn't exist, or if it does, that it's the fault of Bush and America.

May 25, 2004

SO LONG, DOC

Babylon 5 actor Richard Biggs has died of what appears to be either an aneurysm or a stroke.

I only mention this because a friend and I encountered him while watching a street performer in Amsterdam. My friend, who was already watching the show at the time, (this was 1996,) approached him, and he graciously sat us down at an outdoor cafe to discuss our lives over wine and hot chocolate. He handled a dispute with a server rather gracefully, and performed the mandatory celebrity gesture of picking up the admittedly meager tab.

He seemed like a really nice guy, and I never got to repay him for the cocoa.

MULTI-LINGUAL WEBSITE SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS?

I wanted to repost here a question I asked of AskMetafilter last night:

I'm looking for advice on creating and maintaining a large multi-lingual website--or rather, a large English-only site that's going multi-lingual soon, once we start capturing our users' language preferences via a self-registration form and putting that into a cookie. Or is it better to detect the browser's settings? Or something else? Any book suggestions? First-person accounts? Suggestions of great websites that implement multi-lingual capability in novel or especially nice ways?

FYI, we use a proprietary CMS to output a giant XML tree, which we manipulate via XSLT stylesheets, then pull them into a JSP and/or build the whole thing with various modules in Vignette. (Don't ask.) But my point is that getting the data into XML form at the outset is not a problem, if that helps answer the question any. Also, our user base are all registered users; you have to login to use the site. Which is why I'm thinking profile-based/cookie-based language choices, rather than browser-based.

Surely someone out there must have built similar websites in the past and can offer their advice? I mean, the point of the Internet is to reach the whole world, right? Globalization and all? So I'm really surprised how little information, much less consensus, there is out there on best practices of doing this sort of development. Would-be writers, take note: there's a book or two for web developers waiting to be written on this subject.

(And while doing some related web searches at work today, I came across the Library of Congress' list of official two-letter and three-letter language codes. It seems that there is actually a language called Mongo. And its language code is LOL. I am not making this up.)

May 24, 2004

GRAFITTI ON OUR BLOG

We've been in Las Vegas for the past few days, visiting family who are in town for the big annual commercial real estate convention there, and so weren't able to defend the blog from having grafitti such as this scrawled in our comments section:

"FUCK FUCK JEWS FUCK ISRAEL FUCK USA AND FUCK ZIONIST PIGS FUCK SHARON AND THIS MOTHERFUCKING PORK OF BUCH & Cie ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD! Fuck zionism , I wish I could kill and exterminate all the zionists in usa and burn their hatefull organsations.! zionists are massacring childs in palestine, and It won't continue, because plaestine will be free, . I supoort HAMAS hezballah and jihad islamic, ALL AGAINST ISRAEL AND ISRAEL FRIENDS! FREE IRAQ FREE PALESTINE FUCK ISRAEL & USA"

This comment was left (twice!) on this post from May, 2002, which was noting the murders of 15 Israelis at a reception by a Palestinian bomber. It is not being deleted. In keeping with my old blog's comments policy of never removing a comment or banning a poster, I would rather that people see what kind of hatred is out there, even if it fouls up our site and is grossly repugnant to human decency, than to pretend it doesn't exist. If this policy changes in the future, Scott and I will post a notice to that effect.

I haven't been able to get a handle on the commenter's IP address--which is 81.192.31.33--because my traceroute keeps timing out, but the e-mail address--palestineforever8ed8@yahoo.fr--is French. Show of hands of anyone surprised by that?

It seems that the mere existence of this blog, and its authors, has offended some jihad-loving America-hating Jew-hating "Cie" [sic--I think he meant CIA] hating French scum.

Good.

UPDATE: And speaking of a different sort of grafitti, GeoBytes--the company we used to use for figuring out our readers' city and state and displaying it over on the right side of this screen--was redirecting some readers to their page and disabling the back button to our blog. Bye-bye GeoBytes.

May 20, 2004

MAY, WHEN FLOWERS BLOOM, YARDWORK STARTS...

... and bad TV shows peek out from under the soil and spread their leaves in the sun.

For actors, this means they can't speak to their friends, take trips or eat solid foods. For writers like myself and my intrepid partner, it's a little less stressful, but no less important.

Not only are we competing with other unemployed or first-time Staff Writers, but also other Story Editors who are trying to drop a rank to gain a job.

But, we sally forth, since we'd both make shitty waiters. Hopefully, you'll see our name in Chyron shortly before our show is cancelled and our unfunny starlet tossed back into hosting travel shows for E!.

I'll keep you updated. And though I realize that not striking paydirt this year is high-calorie troll food, I'll be honest anyway.