Sandhill Trek

F2C

Check out my notes on the Freedom to Connect conference now, at Listics dot com.  Have I mentioned that http://listics.com is Sandhill Trek rel. 3.0 and you should update your links?

SXSW

Yeah... I didn't make it to Woodstock either.  This year's SXSW looks like a wonderful gathering and a shame to have missed.  Here's a pathetic howdy to all the friends who made it to the show.  The speakers, the writers, the players, the payers, the elders, the gamers, the women and men.

howdy... wish I was there

Shtupping some strange...

A compilation of today's Landsmanisms from the comments below...

"Next thing you know, this guy or some other anti-American commie pinko Taliban sympathizer will be telling us that Cheney was drunk, or maybe was shtupping some strange when in Texas."

"Absinthe?  Didn't that make the fart go Honda?"

"Molly saw a crane?  Give her a red badge!  (dontcha love a  literary reference?!)"  (Frank wanders away muttering about courage, sort of a Mutter Courage, actually).

"Great post, Frank.  Seriously."  (Frank wanders away mumbling aw shux.)

Total Information Awareness...

...and just to have something to give me bad dreams, I gleaned this nugget by Spyder from the comments in Barlow's blog.  Totally un-fact-checked, but bound to be true...

UPDATE: Total Information Awareness Lives

Congress voted to shut down the Pentagon’s controversial Total Information Awareness program in 2003 (though not before it was renamed “Terrorism Information Awareness” — sound familiar?).

During a Senate hearing last week, General Michael Hayden was asked whether TIA had simply been “moved to various intelligence agencies” after Congress tried to terminate it. As ThinkProgress noted, Hayden stonewalled:

SEN. RON WYDEN (D-OR): I and others on this panel led the effort to close it [Total Information Awareness]. We want to know if Mr. [John] Poindexter’s programs are going on somewhere else. Can anyone answer that? …

    HAYDEN: Senator, I’d like to answer in closed session.

In fact, the answer is yes.

[T]oday, very quietly, the core of TIA survives with a new codename of Topsail (minus the futures market), two officials privy to the intelligence tell NEWSWEEK. … “It is truly Poindexter’s brainchild. Of all the people in the intelligence business, he has the keenest appreciation of using advanced information technology for intelligence gathering,” [says John Arquilla, an intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.]. Poindexter, who lives just outside Washington in Rockville, Md., could not be reached for comment on whether he is still involved with Topsail."

Monetize that!

Stavros brings the whole Web 2.0 thing into focus!  Well, in and out of focus, but then... you know the wonderchicken.

Dick Cheney's Afternoon Snack

(photo stolen from "Dependable Renegade")

Acting White

Joey postulates that neocons' affinity for Intelligent Design is a (dis)functional social equivalent of non-white kids dissing their peers for "acting white."  If you believe in evolution, you are "acting liberal."  And in neocon circles, acting liberal is a bad thing. 

Funny.  A lot of my friends think acting liberal is a bad thing too.  It positions you too far to the political right in their opinion.

Controlled Demolition?

Can you read this and not believe that the Bush Administration itself is responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center four years ago?

Harshing their buzz...

From the University of Wisconsin Daily Cardinal...

UW-Madison's new policy of contacting parents of students intoxicated in life-threatening drinking situations has already resulted in 22 phone calls home this semester.

According to UW-Madison Dean of Students Lori Berquam, all but one of these incidents involved students who had been sent to detoxification for binge drinking.

Housing officials informed incoming students of the new parental involvement policy [before the school year began.]

According to Berquam, "80 to 85 percent are freshman and the remaining are sophomores."

After an incident takes place, parents are usually called while the student is present.

Weird/Tiered

Tiered... ethernet

Weird... etherbunny