Technology is far from perfect. Damn you technophiles who told me it was. Damn you! I just lengthily posted, perfect html and all, and when I viewed the page, it was all screwy. I'll try again later.

Sinead O'Reilly is the winner of an Irish student photo contest. Her picture is entitled "Says the onion, 'its not you, its me.'"

While we're on the subject of the pope, I liked this entry in today's Fark photoshop contest: (its George John Paul and Ringo)

Hooray for religion: The pope wants the EU to declare itself Christian. Xtian fundamentalists wanted the U.S. Constitution to say stuff about Jesus, too, but the framers deliberately left it out. Because they thought about it for more than two seconds. And because most of them were plain ol' Deists, not Christians. Anyway, it doesn't matter any more. Heaven is just a ticket away. I love the disclaimer at the bottom.

Here's some of the full titles from the Group 2 books:

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. Bernard Goldberg (compare Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky, from Group 1)
The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America. Bill O'Reilly
When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. G. Gordon Liddy (then Liddy grew up and helped un-free America; seriously, does nobody remember Watergate? This man is a thug for hire! And he wasn't even a good one! He got caught and brought down Nixon as a result... remember...?)
Letters to a Young Conservative. Dinesh D'Souza
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Michelle Malkin
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us. Steven Emerson
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. Robert Baer, Bob Baer
Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson. Kenneth R. Timmerman
The Death of the West: How Mass Immigration, Depopulation and a Dying Faith Are Killing Our Culture and Country. Patrick J. Buchanan
Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11. Bill Gertz

I'll come back later with a list of Group 1 titles for comparison.

If Jerry Thacker needs a new cause, maybe he should join the circumcision debate. Or maybe he could write an obnoxious right-wing treatise about the imaginary intransigence of liberals, but written and stated with such confidence (or ignorance, your choice) that right-wing audiences assume he knows what he's talking about. Oh wait. Ann Coulter already did that. One of the guests on the MSNBC Donahue show the other night was a clean-cut, fresh-faced young conservative who spoke tersely and earnestly against anyone and anything even remotely opposed to the current administration's policies. He was sort of a white Dinesh D'Souza, and almost as annoying. There are few things creepier than fresh-faced young (or young-looking) Republicans. Maybe that's just me, though. Maybe because I associate that sort of look with returned missionaries and BYU students.

I thought this would be as good a story as any with which to start my tenure as Corpse Divine squatter. It has particular relevance to me, since my grandma's maiden name is Thacker. If I were a better ex-mormon, I'd be able to pull all sorts of geneology stuff out of my ass about exactly how I'm related to Jerry Thacker, and which bigotry genes we share, and how neither of us is Ari Fleischer's favorite person right now. Of course, I'm just guessing that I'm not Ari's buddy, since our politics are pretty dissimilar. I wonder about people like Fleischer. Do they enjoy contradicting themselves on a daily basis in order to preserve the Republican conceit that the President cannot be wrong? Are they genuinely committed to the politics of the administration? Or are they really just professional mouthpieces, like Shaquille O'Neal for Radio Shack? Anyway, it's a bit odd that Jerry Thacker is considered too radical to be on a presidential AIDS advisory fucking panel, when the sitting Attorney General (who, remember, was defeated in his senate run by a dead man) is as Bob Jones-ey as they come. Maybe I've just gotten to the point that nothing this administration can do will shock me. I fully expect Henry Morris to be appointed as head of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

"At a time when Democrats and Republicans should be overwhelmingly congenial, American political debate has become increasingly hostile, overly personal, and insufferably trivial." Does this quote look like it came from a memoir on the Clinton impeachment? Guess again! This is from a description of Ann Coulter's top-selling Group 2 book Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right. “The immutable fact of politics in America is this: liberals hate conservatives,” she says. And it's entirely the liberals' fault:

Cultlike in their behavior, vicious in their attacks on Republicans, and in almost complete control of mainstream national media, the left has been merciless in portraying all conservatives as dumb, racist, power hungry, homophobic, and downright scary. This despite the many Republican accomplishments of the last few decades, as well as the Bush administration’s expert handling of the country’s affairs in the wake of the worst attacks on American soil and of the war that followed. [Read More]

I thought it would be fun to take the review of Slander and replace every occurrence of "liberals" with "Jews" and "conservatives" with "Fascists." The modified version looks somehow familiar (you can read it here).

In an earlier post I talked about a study on American reading habits. My theory was that group 1 was distinguished from group 2 by a wall of stupidity. There's another aspect to that divide: honesty. I don't mean to imply that the current conservative regime -- heir to the spotless Reagan-Bush dynasty -- is anything but 100% committed to openness and honesty in dealing with the public. In fact, one of the popular books from conservative group 2 is titled Spin-Free Zone. So clearly it is anomolous when the Bush administration presents doctored versions of reality to the voting public by, say, banning all forms of protest within camera shot of the President. It must also have been a strange exception to ordinary white-house policy when a collection of Asian-made boxes were relabeled 'Made in the USA' so that Bush would look better standing in front of them. Maybe its not dishonesty, but smart presentation. Like if white audience members were made-up in black-face to enhance the appearance of minority involvement. The version of reality that shows up on TV may be, in a sense, full of lies, but it least it isn't the kind of reprehensible spin that Clinton used to evade punishment for getting a blow-job. Perhaps the intellectual books of group 1 do not appeal to group 2 readers because the latter are addicted to the revised world of Bush TV, where the brave and wise President Bush answers all questions with finality, and without a whisper of disruptive and confusing disagreement. Thank God democracy is nearly over. I (the voter) just can't handle the responsibility of being in charge.

Something really messed up is going on with my blog. Java errors are showing up one-after-the-other like nasty cockroaches in an ill-kept tool shed. It seems to have driven up my page stats though. Perhaps people are coming back to see if it will virtually crash their browser again with an endless string of "would you like to debug?" dialogs...

American readers are clustered into nearly disjoint groups. According to this kick-ass study (I found the link on boingboing) Americans can be split right down the middle according to the books they read. More precisely, they studied data from online retailers to determine which pairs of books were most frequently bought in the same transaction. They found two separate groups of books. The first groups contains such books as Crashing the Party, Stupid White Men, Manufacturing Consent, and The Bush Dyslexicon. The second group contains such honored titles as Fighting Back, Why We Fight, and Hell to Pay. They made a graph:

People who read from one group apparently don't read from the other. Most of my reading choices obviously come from the first group. I've never heard of most of the items in the second group. But I have checked out some of them, and I propose this explanation for why the groups are split: group two is just rock-stupid. The study's author suggests the following:

It appears that echo chambers have emerged that repeat a consistent message within each cluster. Ron Burt, a leading network expert, explains that a tightly closed network "amplifies predispositions, creating a structural arthritis in which people cannot learn what they do not already know"[PDF...]. With no direct bridges between the clusters, these divisions are unlikely to change any time soon.

I think there's a simpler explanation: group II books are beneath group I readers; they simply don't offer any intellectual value (Bill O'Fuckin'Reilly is in group I for Christ's fuckin' sake). Group II readers simply don't have the mental equipment to process the selections from group I. I realize that my explanation is impolite, but I think it is probably correct.

I had some interesting dreams last night. I'll provide some highlights. I was in junior high school, on some kind of road trip with my family. Our giant RV was broken down somewhere outside of the grand canyon. My mother was yelling angry car-related accusations at my father, who hung his head in futility. "Just try and call my office," he said to me. I opened the side door on the RV and hoisted a massive portable phone (my family never had an RV or a portable phone, by the way). It crackled in my ear as I tried several times to get a call through. Nothing. Then finally I managed to get the operator. She bubbled off some company introduction and then said, "this is Stephanie, how can I help you?" I recognized the voice. "Stephanie," I said, "Stephanie Geerlings?" "That's me," she replied. "Hey, I know you!" I said. "You do?" she asked (obviously she didn't know me). "Or, well, I guess I know you like ten years from now," I said, "I'm having a flashback." That seemed to clear everything up. "Ohhh," she said. She continued: "hey, what do you think my middle name should be?" I replied: "Isn't your middle name 'Anne'?" "No, I don't have a middle name," she said, "but that one sounds good. Thanks and have a nice day." She put me through to my dad's office, which somehow fixed everything and got us on a magical plane home.

Then I was with some friends driving around in what appeared to be the wilderness outside of Jackson, Wyoming. They decided to knock off a convenience store while I was waiting in the car. They came back with some candy and soda and we sped off down a back mountain road. We heard sirens so the driver veered off into some sort of steamy swamp. For some reason the car handled well in the bog (I think the bog-driving feature is a luxury add-on). Then I said, "ditch the car in that lake; we'll do better on foot in the maze!" We forgot to get out of the car before driving it into the lake, and in the confusion we all became separated. I wandered into some ominous mountains which quickly gave way to the creepy rooms of an enourmous Bavarian castle. I ran between ornate, empty rooms for what seemed like hours. Then I came into a big banquet hall where some kind of German holiday party was going on. I tried to blend in, when I realized that there was a cop in the room. He finally caught me waiting in the line for spitzbuben. I think I would have run, but I woke up.

Just like the video game! "Police say a 16-year-old boy in a pickup truck began slamming into parked cars on a residential street early Sunday morning... The youth parked his own pickup truck and used a nearby car and a plumbing-supply truck to inflict the destruction, police said. The keys had been left in the vehicles. At least 25 cars were damaged, causing thousands of dollars of damage." The city of Morgan is damn lucky that that kid didn't know the cheat codes or he could've been rampaging in a tank.

We were watching American Idol tonight and, well, judge for yourself:

hmmm...

It is cold. Very very cold. If I were terminally ill I could just stand outside with a note pinned to my jacket: "Bring me inside when there's a cure for cancer."

It's been snowing steadily and heavily for days. Everything is covered in snow. I heard an interesting rumor: the past two winters in Edmonton had very little snowfall, and the city save hundreds of thousands of dollars on clearing the streets. The rumor is that they're holding out to see what would happen if they didn't plow the streets this year, even though there's more snow. So far it doesn't seem to be causing a problem. The snow doesn't melt when it's -20, so there's no ice. Meanwhile... I heard there was a 60-car pileup on I-80 in Salt Lake last week due to dense fog. I also heard that a life-flight helicopter crashed while trying to find the accident site. As the Canadians say, "pretty wow, eh?"

There was a collection of odd and humorous news on the inside front page of the Edmonton Journal Sunday Reader this week. These were some of the good ones (almost all were from or about the US):

In a recent survey in the US, 1% of respondents named Jesus Christ as "the greatest American of all time."

"In honor of our fallen heroes... free medium fries!" (from a Burger King coupon in Virginia)

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." -Steven Wright

Columbia University professors compiled a list of poorly written headlines, including the following: "Astronaut takes blame for gas in spacecraft." "Something went wrong in jet crash, experts say." "Iraqi head seeks arms." "Stud tires out." "Prostitutes appeal to Pope." "Panda mating fails; veterinarian takes over." "Squad helps dog bite victim." "Miners refuse to work after death." "How we feel about ourselves is the core of self esteem, says author." "No one killed in fatal crash." "Juvenile court to try shooting defendant." "Infertility unlikely to be passed on." "Two Soviet ships collide, one dies." "Cold wave linked to temperatures." "Study finds sex, pregnancy link." "Kids make nutritious snacks." "Red tape holds up new bridge." "Queen Mary to have bottom scraped." "Brittish left waffles on Falkland Islands." "War dims hopes for peace."

There's also a political cartoon in which the American politician is asking (50 years ago) "Are you a coommunist," and (today) "Were you born in the Middle East." The cartoon was titled "US Mass Hysteria." I thought it was a bit funny because when you apply for a security clearance, you still have to certify that you are not a communist or a homosexual, and have never used or sold illicit substances. The cartoon almost asserts a paradigm shift in US hysteria. In fact we don't have paradigm shifts, strictly speaking. We keep our old delusions while adding new ones, thus making US hysteria an additive phenomenon.

Fark posted a link to a Canadian immigration test today. If you score high enough on the test, then you can get a work permit and gain resident status as a "skilled worker." I failed the test. I can pass the test if I become fluent in French. I guess I'll have to go back to the US after I graduate. Although I was so tempted by the 40% lower pay at Canadian universities...