Steaming Turd

Quoth Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader and Democrat from Nevada:

[T]his appointment ignores the value of diverse backgrounds and perspectives on the Supreme Court. The President has chosen a man to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, one of only two women on the Court. For the third time, he has declined to make history by nominating the first Hispanic to the Court. And he has chosen yet another federal appellate judge to join a court that already has eight justices with that narrow background. President Bush would leave the Supreme Court looking less like America and more like an old boys club.

Hey, Harry? Just because Clarence Thomas is a conservative doesn’t mean he’s white. And I doubt most blacks in the US would take kindly to describing “white ∪ black” as constituting a “narrow background”. Unless “conservative” is really what you’re worried about here, rather than maintaining racial or gender quotas in the Supreme Court.

I got tired of the QuickTime plugin being the only solution for playing .wav files in Firefox, so I finally got around to modifying Flushplayer (my Shockwave Flash plugin replacement that extracts the links but doesn’t torture you with the animation itself) to play .wavs. It needs testing before I can release it, but when I’m satisfied that it works okay, I’ll try to release it and Flushplayer here. It’s actually pretty amazing that I couldn’t find an already-written plugin to take care of this, because Win32 actually has an API function to play WAV files, called PlaySound. You just call PlaySound, and it takes care of practically everything. I certainly don’t need QuickTime munging up my browser to do that.

If you’re wondering, I used this page to test it out

In other news, I done got mah car fixed. They took care of the window, a crack in the exhaust pipe between the manifold and the muffler, and two recalls that I hadn’t worried about yet. I ended up letting them change my oil, too.

I received this e-mail today.

Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:10:26 -0400
From: Protective Services <noreply@case.edu>
Subject: Traffic Advisory Update

The City of Cleveland is continuing to work on the Cornell Road Bridge sidewalks. On Monday, October 24th, traffic will be reduced to one lane on the Cornell Road Bridge. Two-way traffic will be maintained by flaggers and police officers at each end of the bridge. This operation will in effect between 9:00am and 4:00pm. The City plans to have two-lane traffic restored by evening rush hour.

I’d like to announce to everyone that the driver’s side window in my car is stuck in the down position. That is all.

P.S. Please don’t steal my car.

To my friends (on the off-chance that people I don’t know read this weblog):

Blizzard is offering 10-day trial subscription keys to current World of Warcraft players, so that they can try to get their friends hooked on the game. If anyone who knows me and can physically meet for me to lend them my game CDs wants to try out the game, I’ll send you the trial key. First come, first serve.

(Note that there are limitations on trial accounts in part to prevent people from using them to cause problems in the game - AFAIK, those limitations are present on these trial accounts as well, and include things like limiting the amount of cash your character can hold, disabling trade and access to the auction house and chat channels, and limiting the level you can achieve. In practice, for 10 days of non-hardcore play, these limitations won’t be too crippling. However, if you decide you like the game enough to continue playing, you can use the account in an unlimited fashion by buying the game and subscribing normally.)

Yeah, I doubt I’ll get any takers, but it’s out there.

According to The Register (a UK-based online newsmag), among other sources, squirrels in some parts of London are getting hooked on crack. Now, the original source of this story was likely The Sun, a tabloid magazine, so you might find this to be of some use. But as the story goes, drug dealers are stashing their goods in shallow burials, and squirrels are digging up the stashes and having their fill. Horribly aggressive squirrels are the supposed result.

The story goes on to say that crack squirrels are already a problem in US cities like New York and Washington.

And to think that yesterday, I thought this was the worst of my worries…

Here’s an interesting puzzle game for you all (however many “all” happens to be right now).

The AP reports (via Fox News) on the aftermath of a Neo-Nazi rally in Toledo this weekend. The Neo-Nazi group, planning to demonstrate in Toledo because of “black gangs they said were harassing white residents”, didn’t actually conduct their march. The city wouldn’t grant a permit to march down the streets of Toledo, but the city’s mayor, who had tried to get residents to ignore the march altogether, indicated that the city couldn’t bar the group from walking down the city’s sidewalks. Protesters opposing the Neo-Nazi group began to gather, but police halted all demonstrations once that protest turned violent. The Neo-Nazis left in short order, but violence continued, propagated by, as the mayor generously says, “gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an opportunity to speak in their own way.” Police were forced to use tear gas and flashbangs in an attempt to subdue the rioters.

In other words, the Neo-Nazis baited black gang members in Toledo, and they fell for it. Now, everyone knows that there really is a problem with gang activity in Toledo, and the Neo-Nazis proved this just by showing up. As the mayor noted, “It’s exactly what they wanted.”

Some things you just don’t quite know what to make of them.

I’m looking forward to the next game in the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion. It’s sort of a side-sequel to Morrowind, in that Oblivion doesn’t take place in Vvardenfell, but rather in Cyrodiil (the capital province on the mainland to Vvardenfell’s island), though the plot takes up the story where Morrowind left off. The graphics are going to be amazing, and I hope my current hardware can handle it.

But what’s particularly notable is that Oblivion features Captain Picard as the king, Boromir as the king’s son, and General Zod as the story’s archvillain.

Yes, that’s right:

It’s gonna be a great game.