patrick.net

"Did you mean Garlic?"

Only when I sight Dick Cheney in the horizon...

Peter P was captured on film at a blog party, so we have to assume he is indeed fueled by sushi and arugula.

You all need to tune in to the forsakencraft radio show on the air now. Will be interviewing Casey Serin live...yes I know you all want to hear what that weasle has to say.

LOL!

But honestly, he sounds quite like quite a few Shanghai born guys I know.

He must be built for a pretty specialized market.

Oh yeah, Peter P is totally a foodbot, here to spread misinformation about astrology and vegetarians. He was probably produced by the sushi restaurant association in an effort to get people to pay $9 for a bite of fish.

(I computed that I just contradicted what I said 3 comments ago -- time to shut down and reboot)

GC, let me read that. Thanks for writing.

I once tried - and failed - to pick a “fight” with him. It seems he even has a prime directive built in!

What is the point of fighting?

"What is the point of fighting?"

I don't know. Nowadays I just fight to make a point or create a tactical advantage or relieve boredom. It's hard to get enthusiastic about anger anymore. I think I spent all my anger and outrage on GOP circa 2000 to 2005.

I find people who embrace dumbness to be rather hypnotic. Maybe they're the ones who achieved enlightenment - not through knowledge but through complete emptiness.

I don’t like videos that cast people in dumb light. It’s just very mean.

I think the video link was directed towards me. Actually, it was quite funny. My wife may agree that I look like that sometime. :)

In my case, I am mostly moved by tragedies.

Same here!

But I also love dark comedies like Dr. Strangelove.

From tragedies, we can feel the deepest emotions concerning human weeknesses.

I envy linear thinkers...my boyfriend claims that he only thinks about problems on hand - apparently my mental habit of flowing from food to the economics of club DJs past the age of 35 to bad Goth novels is not a universal pattern.

Perhaps if I was a more disciplined thinker, I would be rich (or gained an avocation to catch a rich man) already.

I find most good tragedies to be quite funny and all good comedies to be quite touching (that includes Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back - yes to good comedy and yes to touching).

glad you weren’t offended

It is not easy to offend me.

I envy linear thinkers…my boyfriend claims that he only thinks about problems on hand - apparently my mental habit of flowing from food to the economics of club DJs past the age of 35 to bad Goth novels is not a universal pattern.

I do too. I think/worry too much. :(

Astrid - Joan Didion has done a garlic number on Cheney for your delectation:

www.nybooks.com/articles/19376

Now I suppose I'm a bot.

SFGuy,

I always think of Peter P as an angelic creature. He says many reactionary things but he has absolutely no malice in anything he says...he's a lot like Ronald Reagan in that way.

I find most good tragedies to be quite funny and all good comedies to be quite touching (that includes Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back - yes to good comedy and yes to touching).

Tragedies usually have more depth. I hate movies with the classic "Hollywood ending".

But I like Hollywood Ending (by Woody Allen). :) I like most of his movies.

mrsburnside,

I love the New York Review of Books! If you're a bot...we probably got programmed by the same vast evil conspiracy.

I would love to hear CG's review of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking...that would be very interesting.

Reagan is not George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. I think Reagan truly believed he was doing good. The current White House crowd seems to be amoral evil robots on autopilot.

astrid,

Bon appetit.. Next you'll tell me you have a well-worn copy of 'Eat Drink Man Woman' on the shelf (as I have).

I want to see Peter P’s response to CG’s “thinking is a reflection of processing power” treatise.

I may not be good enough to issue a response. I will think about it a bit.

I love the movie, but my all time favorite Asian cinema movie is A Taxing Woman's Return by Itami.

SFGuy,

Why won't anybody think I'm a spambot?

I don't want to pick that fight! I just want some suspicion or affirmation of my roboticness.

SFGuy,

My designers will be extremely pleased to hear that. Thank you for your feedback. :-)

ugh, professions of admiration by a self alleged virtual being???

Yeah, that damn Las Vegas condo market...

How about some nice tomato seeds next spring? Or a CD sampler?

Well, in that case, buy a gun and some switchblades.

SFWoman

die Schlosspanik would more likely translate into Castle Panic or Really Big Stately Manor Panic, or Château Panic.

Maybe using McMansions as pseudo-Manors you could say something like Falschschlosspanik, implying the owners of fake castles are panicking. I think Irrschlosspanik would mean the same thing, but "falsch" has a better ring to it.

I took a look at the oqo product, SF, it's quite a nifty little device. A marked improvement over using PDAs to net surf because of the larger screen and hardware keyboard. My biz idea was to try to source an inexpensive, ruggedised laptop-sized device that was somehow unattractive to steal -- the intent to make net surfing easier for people on the move was the same, altho coming at it from a different angle, more like an internet cafe concept. hmm...

astrid Says:

I envy linear thinkers…my boyfriend claims that he only thinks about problems on hand - apparently my mental habit of flowing from food to the economics of club DJs past the age of 35 to bad Goth novels is not a universal pattern.

Perhaps if I was a more disciplined thinker, I would be rich (or gained an avocation to catch a rich man) already.

I have often wondered about this myself, as I am very disorganized and non-linear (I am officially diagnosed with lifelong ADD). But I always reach the conclusion that it is better to go through life deeply absorbed in trying to understand interesting or difficult things. Thinking shallowly must be so... boring? I guess it's not if you don't realize it, but it still seems tragic. I can't say that I would trade for it, except in moments of pure frustration with myself.

Also, I can't decouple the mental chaos from creativity. Not perceiving the world like everyone else opens the door to many worthwhile things. And sometimes, those things are fortunately lucrative. :)

SFWoman, no need to clarify, I know exactly what you mean. :) Not everybody is meant to draw within the lines. From reading your posts, it sounds like you know many interesting people.

sfwoman, does your brother do the biometric thumbprint readers? customising the case in a way that was hard to reverse was one idea i had, amongst others, including physical locking systems. other things were to alter the laptop hardware in such a way that it became useless away from a base station (hard to do) or otherwise making them unsaleable. i've thought of a few different avenues here, including chasing up the 'dumb laptops' etc. (the dumb laptops have some utility in a range of non-corporate contexts i can think of). all to no avail... :cry:

Reagan’s contemporary opponents, considered him pretty close to an amoral evil on autopilot too. Until the USSR expired.

The USSR arguably expired by itself. Except it's still breathing and planning a comeback, just like the cliche at the end of all Hollywood action movies where the bad guy is riddled with bullets, but the pure evilness of his twisted mind always means he will try to pull out one more weapon and try to ice the good guy while he is hugging his new-found girlfriend... And the good guy of course is never the one who riddled the bad guy, somehow it happens by accident or due to the bad guy's last evil move backfiring on him. (Just like in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shock and awe.)

Meanwhile, the USSR is reverting to a form of national socia1ism once more -- the oligarchs are in jail, national resources are nationalised once again. Next move?

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Ronald Reagan's ambitious ideals included large tax cuts skewed to the wealthy, slashing welfare programs and deregulating the economy, policies that would be embraced by governments around the world.

Reaganomics won admiration especially from Margaret Thatcher, but also burdened America with the largest budget deficit in history as he insisted on massively increasing defence spending to stare down the Soviets.

Mr Reagan ignored critics of his policies by reducing complex debates to one-liners that could be stamped on a campaign button. Black mothers from single-parent families were "welfare queens in designer jeans" squandering government money; Middle East terrorists and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini were "misfits" and "Loony Tunes"; and the answer to the nation's cocaine epidemic was "Just Say No".

Always optimistic, Mr Reagan offered the country certainty and strength. This, he believed, was only possible by ignoring moral ambiguities. He wound back abortion rights, civil rights, affirmative action and the influence of the United Nations.

His belligerent ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, cut off aid for the UN's population fund because it offended the Right to Life movement and cast the single vote against a World Health Organisation code on infant formula that had upset the global food companies.

Liberals were forced into retreat as Mr Reagan's popularity grew. His political dominance reopened debates on welfare dependency, drug use, crime and human rights in eastern Europe. But his enthusiasm for freedom and prosperity did not extend to the developing world, where his Cold War policies led the US to support brutal generals backed by death squads in El Salvador and Contra leaders in Nicaragua who dealt in cocaine.

On the eve of a critical G7 economic summit, Mr Morris said, Mr Reagan ditched the briefing book and went to watch The Sound of Music with his wife. In arms talks with the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr Reagan would mask his lack of knowledge with grating jokes about the Soviet system, to the point where Mr Gorbachev asked for the one-on-one meetings to be kept short.

Mr Reagan's deep lack of interest in detail allowed his cabinet secretaries and personal staff wide latitude. The result was often bitter power struggles inside the White House as the warring players attempted to push forward their agendas.

In his second term, Mr Reagan's hands-off style almost proved fatal to his presidency when it was revealed that the administration had tried to sell weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of US hostages in Lebanon.

The scandal tore away the mystique from the Reagan White House, revealing a dysfunctional president unable to control what one historian described as "a crew of absent-minded mini-Frankensteins".

Investigations exposed a scheme by a bizarre cast, including the CIA boss, William Casey, the National Security Council aide Colonel Oliver North, Mossad agents and arms dealers, who plotted to deliver hundreds of missiles to Iran in exchange for the hostages. In the end, only two were released, one was killed and six more kidnapped.

Worse still, some of the profits had been illegally diverted to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. As the first mutterings of impeachment were heard, the president insisted he had done nothing wrong. Unfortunately, a commission of inquiry he appointed found that he did.

Reagan's supporters credit him with a new age of prosperity, the fall of the Soviet Union and the restoration of conservative values. His critics argue that he divided the US, exacerbated the gap between the rich and poor, increased poverty and homelessness and ignored the onset of the AIDS crisis. He also failed to realise the Soviet Union was collapsing under its own economic woes and unleashed an unnecessary arms race that included the president's pet project, the Stars Wars missile defence system.

Final applause for the ultimate feelgood president - World - www.smh.com.au
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there, google lets you write a term paper in 5 minutes or less... (now no-one's going to talk to me anymore, i know the pattern :cry:)

Randy H. said Turing. Nice. I love Bletchley Park and purple. How do you find a needle in haystack?

Randy H. said Turing. Nice. I love Bletchley Park and purple. How do you find a needle in haystack?

Randy I was very impressed with what happened after the 8th wheel was added.