All you GUI programmers (or non-programmer vision/perception geeks) should run over and take a look at Evaluating Low Spatial Frequency Compositions at Boxes and Arrows. It'll show you new ways of thinking about icon design.

My theory of icon design is basically "Ugh. I can't draw at all. I hate this," so I'm not sure learning how to tell which visual pathway my icon designs are tickling is the kind of lesson I need. But, nonetheless, it's interesting stuff.

(this is one of those posts wherein i put something here for my own archival purposes... )

In a lighthearted little post about the way the high-dollar (and two-bit) political pundits are working hard to avoid owning up to the fact that they were wrong when they pushed for the Iraq war, Liberal Japonicus, at Taking it Outside (the site formerly known as Hating On Charles Bird), asks:

...what is the right way to take these Pollackian calls of `it's all history now, so let's not let this get in the way of me continuing to pundit' Whatever happened to hairshirts?

(my link)

Well, I could only respond in verse:

apologies embarass;
hairshirts, how they itch!
flagellation stings him;
penance? for Catholics;
confession's for the guilty;
pardon's not his to give;
mea culpa hints at weakness;
punishment? none for him.

Even though it's posted in the comment sections of two other blogs already, I'll save it here for my own convenience.

h/t Dorothy Parker

Someone let me know when CNN.com is done showing close-up pictures of John Mark Karr, the guy who killed JonBenet Ramsey. After four days, I'm pretty fucking tired of looking at his beady little eyes and that stupid blue shirt every time I visit CNN.com. It's even worse than their three solid weeks of pictures of fire coming out of the barrels of Israeli artillery.

Here's an oldie, from back in Feb, 05:

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who commanded Marine expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq, made the comments Tuesday during a panel discussion in San Diego, California.

"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot," Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience. "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

It's "fun to shoot some people!" It's a "hoot!"

Can you think of a worse person to decide if charges are warranted in the Haditha massacre ? Nope, me neither.

I think it's time to re-read Catch 22.

h/t Digby

Must agree with The Poor Man, user the search strings from AOL user 711391 is "the greatest character study in literary history".

Go here, enter '711391'.

Noted cryptologist and security expert Bruce Schneier is quite an amazing man. For example, did you know:

Bruce Schneier once broke AES using nothing but six feet of rusty barbed wire, a toothpick, and the front axle from a 1962 Ford Falcon.

and

When Bruce Schneier does modulo arithmetic, there are no remainders. Ever.

?

These and more at Bruce Schneier Facts.

I've submitted a few. I hope they'll be accepted - I'll be sad if they aren't.

Update:
I got two in:

Bruce Schneier is the ideal man. Alice loves him; Bob fears him; Charlie wants to be him.

and...

Bruce Schneier once decrypted a box of AlphaBits.

All hail the strawman, that ancient rhetorical trick in which we create an argument superficially similar to the one our opponent's making, but tweaked just enough to make it trivially easy for us to defeat - a caricature of the real argument. It's a fantastic way keep your opponent busy enough to stop him from advancing his actual argument, and it can score points with the unattentive. But, it's still a fallacy - if you defeat an argument nobody is making (and that no knowledgable person would make anyway), what have you really won? Well, that depends on the audience.

For example, if you're ostensibly trying to present a refutation of evolution, but you're actually just preaching to the choir by arguing against a strawman version of evolution, while counting on the scientific and mathematical ignorance of your audience to keep them from knowing you're full of shit, you might get the already-convinced to nod their heads approvingly. And that might be enough to sell some books or generate some ad revenue for your web site. Maybe that's all you're trying to do.

But, be careful; there's always the chance your 'work' will turn up in the hands of someone who actually knows what he's talking about.