Anyone interested? I’m psyched about this – some think of it as their Rothbury fix for this year. July 4 in Maine!

Bands: Furthur featuring Phil Lesh & Bob Weir, The Flaming Lips, moe., The Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi Band, STS9, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Umphrey’s McGee, Zappa Plays Zappa, Keller Williams, Lotus, Max Creek, Moonalice, John Brown’s Body, The Felice Brothers, Ryan Montbleau Band, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, and Greensky Bluegrass, and their website says more are going to be added soon  [emphasis mine]

Anyone here successfully quit smoking cigarettes? I started taking Chantix and the stuff works like magic. So far a week has gone by since I quit smoking and I honestly don’t even think about or crave it at all. I’m a little worried about what will happen once I stop taking it, but I think I’ve got the willpower now that I see how possible it is to not smoke cigarettes.

I heard a rumor that smoking tobacco was bad for you. Seriously? This is the first I’ve heard of it! Well, Obama has yet again granted sweeping new federal powers to make all of our lives better, and be sure that we hear about this so-called ‘tobaccy’ and its many dangers.

The good:
Requires complete ingredient list to be put on packaging and submitted to FDA, so they can check whether there is a harmful additive or not. However, I can see this eventually turning into “tobacco’s bad, m’kay” and that being banned as an ingredient as well.

The stupid:
Can no longer use the words ‘mild’ or ‘light’. Seriously, have these idiots ever tasted the difference between a Marlboro Red and a Parliament Light? Those terms aren’t just smoke and mirrors, and I highly doubt ANYONE left in this society thinks any cigarettes are safe to smoke.

Sterner warnings on packs: As if this warnings about lung cancer and empysema and birth defects weren’t stern enough. I’m too stupid to read, I need them pic-chars to shows me hows them ciggyrettes are harmyful.

No Flavors: Goodbye cloves.

Federal powers: Now replacing your state laws, one at a time! Thanks gov!

So, whatever happened to an expectation of personal responsibility?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/22/AR2009062202970.html
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/06/22/obama-signstobacco-bill/

Quote I heard the other day…
A liberal is someone who measures the success of a government by the number of people it helps. A conservative is someone who measures the success of a government by the number of people it doesn’t help, because it doesn’t need to.

Title says it all. Do your part to lighten up everyone’s Monday!

If we were to include the potential bailouts being debated at the moment ($819 billion) with the previous bank bailouts of $700 billion, it averages out to $9,718.49 per U.S. taxpayer (156.3 million filers) [source]! Now factor in interest and the possibility of the dollar dropping in value, and we are looking at quite the bill to foot as we grow older. I know what I’d like to do with these bills and my foot, but I’m more curious what my fellow McCrappizens think. I think we should let the businesses collapse and allow the market to correct itself. It’s noble to want to save people’s jobs today, but I think irresponsible in the long run. What say you?

I would like to draw your attention to one of today’s most hotly debated atrocities:

McCrappy has no favicon!

So, I think we should come up with one. You can create your own 16×16 pixel .ico file or use the favicon generator I found here.

I made this one while fooling around with that generator (note that I still have the .ico file, but imageshack won’t host those so this is a gif version):

Here’s a neat video I found – it shows a simulation of a golf ball flying through the air.  The cool part is that it shows how the dimples create little vortices of air that make the ball fly straighter and farther than a smooth ball would (They describe the dimples as making the ball twice as “slippery”). I have no idea if this is already done, but what if airplanes were textured in such a fashion?

Rick Wright, one of the original members of Pink Floyd, has died from cancer at age 65. I’m cranking up Dark Side tonight.

There’s an interesting map here (new window) that shows the breakdown of what Americans refer to carbonated beverages as by county (Pop, Soda, Coke, other). My challenge to you: what makes up the ‘other’ category??

Who knew?

Finally, a name for what I’m sure happens to all of us sometimes.

George Carlin has died at the age of 71 from heart failure.  Here is one of his HBO specials, entitled “Life is worth losing” (NSFW audio).

Here is a story that made my stomach turn. A few weeks ago, in Basra, a father killed his daughter for apparently becoming infatuated with a British soldier. Both her brothers and her uncles joined in to beat this 17 year old girl to death while the mother cried for mercy. These honor killings are quite common in the Middle East, as you probably know. This interview with the father shows a side of humanity so dark I cannot grasp it. After 17 years of being this girl’s father, he killed her and has instantly swept her memory under the rug – preferring to wish he never had a daughter in the first place.

FTA: ‘I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,’ he said, his voice swelling with pride. ‘My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.’

I just downloaded this neat and easy to use encryption program, TrueCrypt. I found it very easy to use, and once you mount an encrypted volume the program is completely transparent and you can read/write to it just like any other drive. Another neat aspect is the ability to create hidden volumes – if I supply my “normal” password, my normal volume is decrypted and presented. Hidden within that same file is a second, hidden volume that is indistinguishable from random data, and only accessible with a different password. So if you were ever forced to supply a password, you give the less sensitive one, and it cannot be proved there is a second one hidden in there.

Now, I’m not an expert in encryption by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m curious what the rest of you think. Are there better alternatives out there? This may be useful for you guys that travel outside the country and whose data may be searched at customs.

Remote-controlled live homeless water cannnoning just got a little bit closer to reality. Check out the BumBot2000. This thing has live camera feeds, a water cannon, and speakers so the operator can bark 1984-esque commands to the street walkers of the night.