CMoore.com

Scout who signed Pujols looks back, now stocks shelves at Wal-Mart

Dave Karaff misses the nomadic life of a baseball scout. Instead of sitting behind home plate at dusty ball fields across the Midwest, aiming his stopwatch and speed gun at hot prospects, Karaff spends his days stocking the grocery shelves at a Wal-Mart in Hot Springs Village, Ark.

The St. Louis Cardinals may have dismissed him as an area scout three years ago, but Karaff will forever be linked with one nugget of baseball history.

He’s the scout who signed Albert Pujols.

Go fuck yourselves

High school students are going to be held accountable for what they post on blogs and on social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.com.

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of “illegal or inappropriate” behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

Pray tell where a public school district gains the authority to punish students for activities they perform outside of school. This is no different than if the Feds were monitoring the phone calls of US citizens without warrants and then detaining them.

Legally, speaking, the schools have no right to monitor, prohibit, inhibit, or punish students for extracurricular free speech activities. In fact, every time this has been done, the schools have lost and lost big. We’re talking money and a public, formal apology big. If you have been affected, or know someone who has, your first steps should be the ACLU and the Student Press Law Center.

The dude is not only refusing to eliminate a run as an independent, but he’s also going to take his ball and go home.

After initially agreeing, Senator Lieberman has declined our invitation to participate in the MoveOn.org Political Action online primary for U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

The phrase ‘whiny little bitch’ comes to mind. In a completely gender-neutral sort of way, of course.

Much like being a red shirt in Star Trek or having sex in a slasher film, being mentioned on the first page of a Dan Brown novel is a surefire sign of your impending demise. One can only hope Brown will mention his literary career in the first sentence of his next doorstop piece of shit work.

The recent literary analysis reminded me that I still need to unpack my review trapped in the old phpNuke db… no, wait, I’ll do it now. Here it is. It’s not as rage-fuelled as I remember it. Damn that reasonableness thing!

Davinci Code – 2/5
You’ve probably seen this book around, goodness knows I sure did. It was everywhere, in every store. I figured it was one of those Oprah book club things, so I didn’t pay much attention. Then there was a glowing review in my forums and my wife just happened to buy it for me a couple days later. So I thought I would read it.

Let me summarize my review before continuing: this book is a craptastic exercise in total schlock, and unremarkable even by those low standards. The DaVinci Code is drivel, but it didn’t make me want to hurl it across the room so it gets two stars rather than one. The book is a modern Hardy Boys mystery, but nothing more.
Read more…

… or, more appropriately 666.

See, the winner of Eurovision was … unexpected. Typically this World Cup – meets Pop Idol features ultra safe bubblegum pablum and sappy ballads. Well, this year, it featured a lot of that, but the winner? Was these guys:

Now, watch the videos linked from Sadly, No!. It’s important that you watch them in order, for once you’ve seen that first piece of dogshit and are fully in the mood to garrotte yourself, play Lordi’s winning track. If you’re not revelling in the Hard Rock HalleluJAAAH! then you, sirs and madams, are pablum lovers. Yes! Yes you are! And this guy from Finland says you suck:

Also note, their awesome song titles off of their awesomely-named album Arockalypse: Deadite Girls Gone Wild, Bringing Back the Balls to Rock, Night of the Loving Dead, and, of course, Hard Rock Hallelujah.

As a side note, the lead singer totally looks like Shawn Smith (Satchel, Pigeonhed, Brad). Dude, did you lose 20 years, become Finnish, go glam, and not tell anyone?

Because the whole internet is being tapped.

In 2003 AT&T built “secret rooms” hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

Seriously, people. Encryption + obfuscation == you maintain your privacy

I wonder if Seth McClung’s nickname is “belt-high, down the middle.” It would be one of those honest nicknames, like “stretch” and “tommy two times,” but unlike the ironic ones such as “studmuffin” and “slim.”

Zimmerman brings Zfone. Zimmerman was behind PGP, and for which he was also investigated and sued. This must feel like groundhog’s day to him.

Philip R. Zimmermann created a program to encrypt e-mail. His Zfone will do the same for Internet calls.

He has found out once already. Trained as a computer scientist, he developed a program in 1991 called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, for scrambling and unscrambling e-mail messages. It won a following among privacy rights advocates and human rights groups working overseas — and a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had violated export restrictions on cryptographic software. The case was dropped in 1996, and Mr. Zimmermann, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., started PGP Inc. to sell his software commercially.

Now he is again inviting government scrutiny. On Sunday, he released a free Windows software program, Zfone, that encrypts a computer-to-computer voice conversation so both parties can be confident that no one is listening in. It became available earlier this year to Macintosh and Linux users of the system known as voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP.

Shy as in Shylock, that is.

I’m not sure what I think of Prosper.com.

On the one hand, I would love to send those execrable payday loans out of business and make the personal lending and credit rating markets transparent. I also like that it leverages group and personal identity power, a la eBay, for trustworthiness. It takes a village, and on the internet your village reputation can go a long way.

On the other hand, this is about as risky of an investment vehicle as I can imagine, with the added benefit of religious prohibition (for the orthodox) and an extra feeling of sleeze.

From a lender perspective, these are unsecured loans to people you don’t know (but are at least somewhat vetted by Prosper), many with a history of bad judgements. You do have a 3-year contract, but enforcing judgements for delinquent payees is going to spawn a whole ‘nother industry (or reinforce the existing ones. See sleeze, above). Actually, after reading the FAQ, if you don’t get paid, you’re SOL as you don’t know who the lendee is personally. My guess is that Prosper has an enforcement arm where they’re getting more income (other than the .5% loan interest they take off the top. Damn, I need to think of these online database-charge-me-to-use-them things. Best business model ever, outside of religion.). Actually, on further review, it looks like you get to choose from among a few different collection agencies. In any event, Prosper’s still taking a cut from the referral.

So I’m torn. On the one hand, it could be a great way to help people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get help. On the other, it looks like an ideal fraud and criminal (organized or not) environment. I debate linking to things that I’m unsure of, such as this, on the grounds that though I treasure information and sharing, I’d like to avoid advocating for shady or false things as much as possible.

Anyway, I thought I’d throw it out there. I think their FAQ page may have a little matharoni problem, though, but let’s talk about that below the fold. Read more…

Lamont’s amazing performance is pretty much the death knell for Lieberman as anything other than a Republican or an “independent.” That Lamont got 33% of the party establishment vote is nothing short of incredible.

I think 33 percent is a pretty bad number for an incumbent senator to give up to a challenger nobody ever heard of. Certainly, the Lamont team members were staggering around like dazed lottery winners. “Pinch me,” Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan told a comrade. The Lieberman team was acting like they knew it all along. “Can we count or can we count?” Lieberman manager Sean Smith languidly told a reporter. He was unpersuasive. It may have been a number that tumbled out of their worst-case game theory, but it certainly was not a number they wanted.

The real number is lot worse for Lieberman than 33 percent. I don’t know how big the Lamont vote would get if you could tabulate the no-shows and the sleeper cells of delegates who plan to vote differently in the primary, but I do know it’s a bigger number. And the convention is full of party regulars, usually the easiest people to keep in line. Wisdom of the ages would suggest that the “amateur” voters are potentially much more rebellious.

Congrats to Lamont. He still has a primary to win, but with these numbers, it is highly likely that Lieberman is toast. Goodbye, Joe, you sanctimonious, sexist, prick. You will not be missed.

For those that don’t remember that Joe was the first person (not just Democrat) on the Senate floor to call for impeachment, for those that don’t remember Lieberman’s constant attempts to stifle free speech, for those that don’t remember Joe’s vote for cloture on the heinous bankruptcy bill, for those that don’t remember Joe’s vote for cloture with regards to scAlito, how about his support for rapists’ rights?

Lieberman said he believes hospitals that refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims for “principled reasons” shouldn’t be forced to do so. “In Connecticut, it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital,” he said.

Again, congratulations to the Lamont team. Keep on truckin’!

I don’t think it has aged well, but I saw it at an opportune time (closely after my own undergrad graduation) and it struck a chord. Plus, great cast, good script, intelligent, kooky. Probably too talky to be anything more than a trinket, but I still like it. Now it’s getting the Criterion treatment.

Paralyzed by postgraduation ennui, a group of college friends remain on campus, patching together a community for themselves in order to deny the real-world futures awaiting them. Academy Award–nominated screenwriter Noah Baumbach’s hilarious and touching directorial debut was one of the highlights of the American independent film scene of the nineties, speaking directly to a generation of adults-to-be unable to reconcile their hermetic educational experience with workaday responsibility, and posing the eternal question, where do we go from here? Stingingly funny and incisive, Baumbach’s breakthrough features endlessly quotable dialogue, delivered by a stellar ensemble cast.

Now quake in fear, Seattle! Also, gimme some of money. Except the homos. No, wait, I’ll take their money too, you SINNERS!

In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America’s coastline this year.

Robertson has made the predictions at least four times in the past two weeks on his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded.

Robertson said the revelations about this year’s weather came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January.

“If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms,” Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he added, “There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.”

My favorite part is the “If I heard the Lord right” bit. I mean, if it was the fuckin Lord, is there any way possible that an impotent omnipotent, omnipresent being could speak to you in such a way that you would not understand? Does FSM mumble? Stutter? How could you possibly hear him incorrectly?

Oh yeah, because it was your accountant calling to say that your diamond mine venture was going gangbusters and that fear of tsunamis will push up your gold holdings. Also, you’re a batshit crazy wahhabist addicted to fame. And coke.

For the Christians out there, how does it feel to know that this guy is considered the face of your faith in America? Hell, even McGovern called this shitbrick a ‘kook’ (actual quote: “When you say ‘radical right’ today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.”)

Bush:Dunebuggy as Dukakis:Tank

President George W. Bush rides in a U.S. Border Patrol dune buggy during a tour of the Yuma sector near the U.S. Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, Thursday, May 18, 2006. White House photo by Eric Draper

#5013: the fusebox is never, ever labelled correctly.

In light of which, and since I’m tired of doing them one by one and climbing two flights of stairs each time to see if this breaker is the right one (I’ve gone through half the breakers, so it’s not like I didn’t try), I’m going to shut off the master breaker so I can install a ceiling fan. Because it? Is damned hot in this joint.

If I don’t post for a week or so, send somebody around to check for a body. Actually, nm. If the cmoore.com server is still down for over a day, I’m dead. Donate my shit to the EFF.

Update: looks like everything’s working and nothing is on fire. That’s nice. What’s not nice is that my cheapass home builders only put 3-wire electrical in the light fixture above the master bedroom. Bitches. Also: good way to tell if you haven’t been working your deltoids enough: hold 40lbs. above your head for 20 minutes as you try to get wiring together and screw stuff in. Man, I need to lift more weights.

Here’s the new MyLai

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines “killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps’ own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

I thought Abu Ghraib would be the My Lai of Iraq. Turns out, it’s probably more along the lines of the mining of Haiphong or bombing Cambodia. I don’t know if there was a Tet offensive that shattered public opinion against the war (we seem to have dripped over the line rather than jumped). Turns out, I didn’t need to search for a metaphorical My Lai in Iraq because we had a direct replication. The hooded-on-a-box guy will be the image that remains, like the screaming naked Vietnamese girl running from the napalm.

“This one is ugly,” one official told NBC News.

Ugly? No. Abominable. Inhuman. Unforgiveable. Executing a woman who is leaning over in prayer is not ugly, it is depraved. It may be a symptom of people stretched past their breaking point, given impossible tasks in impossible conditions, and I hold everyone from the soldiers who did it up to the C-in-C responsible. These soldiers, unlike the loser rabble that went on a rampage at My Lai, were considered the best of the best. Hand picked volunteers. And they snapped.

I’m sure the 101st Fighting Keyboarders will accentuate the “rogue unit” angle and the small number of executed. Even so, they will be accepting the un

exceptional nature of the United States (it’s a paradox for their worldview, and I predict they will ignore it rather than go insane trying to reconcile our unexceptional exceptionalism). In any event, this is a war crime. Something you see in Darfur or Serbia or … Iraq.