I've been trying to make this weblog XHTML compliant. For those non-techies out there XHTML is the modern version of the HTML web 'language'. It's a dialect of XML which is .... oh nevermind. I guess this post is for techies.

The multiple articles per day had to be revisited because it seems that '+' is not allowed in a 'name' attribute. I use named anchors on the index page. These also aren't allowed to begin with numbers. Sigh. All my articles start with numbers. Fixed that. Found a table bug thanks to the XHTML validator .

But there are still some sticky wickets and pages of non-compliance data. All of these are in the articles themselves, which were created by the editor (design) mode of the web browser - in this case Firefox. So Firefox edit mode isn't even close to XHTML compliance. It's actually some of the ugliest HTML I've ever seen.  But wait - it gets worse. If you edit a page which is XHTML compliant, Firefox will gratuitously butcher it into non-compliance for you.

Which makes it particularly ironic that I wrote this weblog application primarily so I wouldn't have to type HTML in my diary any more. But if I want it to be standards compliant, I've got to dump the web editor and go back to typing (X)HTML.

For now, I'm only going to make the application itself XHTML compliant. Someday they'll fix the browser. No sense banging my head over and wasting hundreds of hours fixing somebody else's bug. 

A bartender in Oslo is jailed for serving a customer 19 shots of tequila in under 90 minutes - a lethal dose of alcohol which killed the customer.

The sentence wasn't for murder or manslaughter however. The crime was serving liquor to an intoxicated person. It's hard to imagine even this being a crime in Oslo. Doing shots isn't a recreational activity here, it's a way of life.

Upon further investigation, it is reported that the bartender probably wouldn't have been charged at all except that he was in a drinking contest with the victim ...and kept filling his own glass with water.

No sympathy here. Throw away the key.

An Israeli  citizen prompted a gun battle when his hang glider crashed on the wrong side of the Lebanese border. What kind of lunatic would be flying a hang glider within a hundred miles of the Lebanese border during a period of heightened tensions? I have a feeling we haven't been told the entire story.

What do you mean my position has been eliminated to cut costs? I'm the only one working here fercrysakes. I'm the boss. It's the only position there is. I'm paying out of my pocket so I can work here. How are you gonna' cut costs if your only paying employee stops paying to work here? No, really - you can't fire me - because I quit...

And so it goes...   

Ariel Sharon quits Likud, starts a new political party, and asks parliament (the Knesset) to dissolve itself. In some countries, this would be considered a coup d'etat. In Israel, it's just another day.   

The big Jeep has been sitting in front of the house pretty much un-used for the last year or two. Still I was surprised to see a guy at the door asking if I'd like to sell it. Cash. I mentioned that it has an electrical problem, but it runs. That's OK. As is. That would save me from having to donate it to Svetlana. Hmmm. OK.

THE IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reports that Iran just might know how to make an atomic bomb. They apparently learned how to do it from a bomb maker in Pakistan. The only surprise is that they didn't just get it off the web like everybody else. Unfortunately it isn't rocket science. How do they (try to) prevent the spread of nuclear weapons technology? They regulate three things. 1. Uranium and 2. Really fast centrifuges, and 3. Collimators.

Here's a centrifuge. Here's what you do with it:

Next we look for an ignition source. From the diagram:

It looks like we need neutrons. In fact what we need is a neutron gun. Here's one -

Attached to the neutron gun is the collimator. Think of it as a focusing lens for neutrons. It looks like this:

Your finished bomb:

David Ludwig (the teen arrested for killing his girlfriend's parents) and his girlfriend Kara Borden both have websites, we are told. Of course the news media doesn't say exactly where. Once again I've taken control of the situation and found them for you.

David Ludwig's:
http://www.xanga.com/Haydren
http://www.myspace.com/haydren
http://www.picturetrail.com/haydren

Kara Borden's:
http://www.xanga.com/karebear000
http://www.myspace.com/meantxtoxlive

Looks to me like Kara's have been shut down. Here's the photo that show's up in a web cache for the myspace site from yesterday...

The cache from the xanga site apparently had a bunch of her pictures on it - but you can't see any because her photo space providor has replaced them with a 'Photobucket.com Bandwidth Exceeded' image (due to the recent popularity, no doubt).  I snagged a copy of the text (attached below), but it doesn't really have much context without the photos and also ripped out of the online community to  which it was once attached. Something that showed up in the pages of some of their online friends is the emoticon <3 - which I have never encountered before. Again, I've saved y'all some trouble. After a long and intensive search, I finally found it listed on wikipedia (should've looked there first)... it's a sideways heart. I thought it might have been a different organ, since it only showed up in posts by females. As it turns out, that one is 8==D ...

I was just reading the side of the box of paper clips. Multi-Lingual packaging. Spanish name is 'Trombones'. Why yes, I suppose they do look like little trombones.

For my next piece, I'd like to do a little Ted Nugent number called "Wang! Dang! Sweet Poon-TANG!". A one, a two, a three...

35 years ago the Oregon Department of Transportation attempted to dispose of a rotting whale carcass by vaporizing it with a half ton of dynamite. The attempt failed - which left a rather large mess to clean up.

Al-Zarqawi pulled a little boo-boo I think. Blowing up people in Amman? You shouldn't mess with the Jordanians. Nope. Also dead were some prominent Palestinians. You really don't want to mess with the Palestinians. And three 'Chinese delegates of the Peoples Liberation Army'. Chinese military. Hope it's merely a cosmic coincidence that they were in the same hotel as the Palestinian 'security personnel'. You really, really don't want to mess with the Chinese...

Believe it was on CNN - an interview with a potential suicide bomber. What I found of interest wasn't that he looked just like any other teenage kid, but that he really, truly believes that his destiny includes the infamous seventy-five virgins. Due to the media that have defined his world, saving oneself for a date with the seventy-five virgins is the crowning achievement of life.

So it seems that the fundamental difference between radical Islam and other religious extremisms is that they are taught to believe in sex after death. Lots of it. Suppose this is to provide a modicum of hope in a culture of arranged weddings with the daughter of the richest person your dad knows personally. What does Christianity say about sex after death? Don't recall that the topic ever came up. Hate to say it, but their heaven looks better than ours...

And this afterlife orgy still takes place if your body is like totally vaporized. In fact, you get more sex if you're vaporized than if you aren't. They've totally got this marketing thing down... Psssstt... kid - yeah you. Feelin' a bit randy? Of course you are... Wife not putting out for you? I see... She's what - 17-18 years old? Wanna' get laid? Tonight? Here, strap on this vest. Don't worry, I'll take care of your widow - I mean wife.

That's the other interesting thing about this social system. You can get killed for casting a wayward glance at another man's wife. But widows (having fulfilled the 'death do us part' clause) are fair game. Having sex with the widow of a martyr is encouraged - as some of her blessed-ness is presumed to rub off. All of this is a very long winded explanation of the dynamics that we are up against fighting these so-called terrorists. We are up against a culture where there are only two sanctioned methods of gratifying wanton lust. 1.) die for Allah, or 2.) recruit people to die for Allah.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said.

OK - I'll bite. I'd like to criticize your decision and the conduct of the war, Mr. president. ...We still remember the history of how that war began.

Q: What sells?

Just because the software allows titles doesn't mean I have to use them. Never cared for 'em myself. It's just another piece of data of questionable value that has to be thought up and then stored somewhere.

Two women were arrested in Sacramento for participating in a rally called 'Breasts Not Bombs'. Hint: They weren't making bombs. I haven't heard of any arrests for public toplessness since uhm, what - about 1969?

 

In about 1972 I was sitting in People's Park in Bezerkeley and this flatbed truck rolls in. Jerry Garcia and David Grisman played some country tunes while a group of about 200-300 people showed up and danced to the music. Then they all took off their clothes and followed the truck down the street to City Hall where they demanded the right to public nudity. This was Bezerkeley after all. Nobody got arrested. The police just watched, as did I. Naked college girls after all...