[via BoingBoing] 

Sexoteric Blog: Got a towel? has a couple of great posters via Flickr. Check it out!

While reading through Behr, Kim and Spafford's Visible Ops piece, I came across this amusing quote they attribute to Borenstein (of MIME fame):

"The most likely way the world will be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." – Nathaniel Borenstein

;-)

An old one that has already been /.ed but worth repeating! Register reports: 

Oklahoma city threatens to call FBI over 'renegade' Linux maker
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View

The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker Cent OS. Problem is CentOS didn't hack Tuttle's web site at all. The city's hosting provider had simply botched a web server.

This tale kicked off yesterday when Tuttle's city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff. Taylor had popped onto the city's web site and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate that appears with a new web server installation. Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack on the bustling town's IT infrastructure.
"Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else from accessing it???," Taylor wrote to CentOS. "Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!! I am the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma."

[...]

Read more at the link above (click on quoted article title) and also see the entire email exchange and Register's followup article. If you haven't seen it already, click the link… its absolutely worth it!

These days you won't get much attention (at least in debates on the Internets) unless you sound all intellectual and academic. Legion are the stories of legitimate viewpoints dismissed by failing to meet buzzword compliance. So, inspired by the most excellent tips referred to in an earlier entry on this bog, below is a guide on how to win your next debate on the Internets, even if you are totally in the wrong:

References

People

DO: Mention a bunch of obscure philosophers and experts but make sure they are from an unrelated field. Some philosophers are particularly employable both in terms of their reputation and their mutterings. Wittgenstein is a perennial favourite, though he is becoming rather commonplace these days. Try to refer to such people by their positions, e.g: What I propose is convergent with the post-empiricist Gödelian thesis. Make sure the people you mention are well respected in some serious community, not some wackjob with a following.

DONT: Contrary to what Bush might say, Jesus is not a philosopher.

Places and Time

DO: Nothing like a good historical reference: Weimar Germany (watch out for Godwin's Law if you head down this path), Vichy France, the post-reconstruction years… people eat that kind of stuff up (I mean, can you believe that there is a large World War section at the bookstore and an actual profitable History channel?!).

DONT: Don't fall back on the Holocaust. For one thing its a bit in poor taste. For another you may get sued by the Weisenthal Center or the ADL!

Ideas

DO: Rise above the crowd. Interject yourself as a disinterested party summarising the positions and presenting the large picture. References to Hegelian synthesis are useful here, but throw it in somewhere in the middle of your text. Classify any argument into one of these dualisms: liberal/conservative (left/right), science/religion (scepticism/faith), reductionism/holism, selfishness/altruism, nature/nurture, individualism/collectivism. Then tag your opponent with the position you wish to argue against and tear down that position using the methods described here. Refer to classic ideas, conundrums and paradoxes: the mind/body problem, consciousness, Cartesian idealism, radical scepticism/empiricism, untenable solipsism, etc.

DONT: Don't ever propose a directly opposing idea to an idea that is presented. That exposes you to the danger of real debate. Refuse to answer questions directly and counter with references to other ideas and their inadequacies.

Words and Phrases

DO:

Use these wherever remotely applicable:

• Phrases like: Antebellum south
• Paeleo-anything
• Latin, Latin, Latin: inter alia, ceteris paribus, modus ponens, stuff like that
• Throw a neo- in front of your opponents position to discredit him: neo-Darwinian, neo-conservative, neo-liberal, etc.
• Just big fancy words: antidiluvean, avancular, hagiographic, etc.
• Scientific or technical terminology: counterfactual, contrapositive, underdetermined, asymptotic, and so on.

DONT: Palaeontology is a real word! Avoid the overused Latinisms like anything that starts with Reductio.

Other Concerns and Techniques

Preemption

DO: Preempt counter arguments by: (a) admitting to certain limitations in your position, (b) creating strawmen critiques and dismissing them, (c) employing the technique of BushCo by questioning the ulterior motive of the person (anyone who supports our troops will find little reason to suggest withdrawal). Your opponent might employ the very Guilt By Association technique described earlier, against you. Preempt it: e.g., It would be a grave disservice to confuse this explication with vulgar Lamarckianism.

DONT: As per the cautions above, make sure your argument is obfuscated enough that you do not expose yourself to trivial refutation. Do not, by error, end up constructing a real critique of your position while attempting (b).

Prolong Debate

DO: Prolong the debate as long as possible. Achieve that by constantly expanding the scope of the issues while leaving your own argument vague enough to defy immediate and conclusive refutation. Keep posting responses. Include snippets of poems and song lyrics (preferably not Springsteen, Beatles or Brittney Spears), parts of speeches by personalities, Unix man pages, whatever… keep the thing going!

DONT: Stop posting! In the eyes of the audience on the Internets the last guy to speak is the winner. If you are stuck, return to an earlier point of strength and start expounding on that.

Matrix Pong

[Thanks to Adam]

I don’t usually forward this stuff, but this one is just way too funny to miss.

How deliciously pleasing is this:

CNN.com – Message in a bottle: Don’t litter – Feb 6, 2006
Message in a bottle: Don’t litter

Monday, February 6, 2006; Posted: 7:14 a.m. EST (12:14 GMT)

NAPEAGUE, New York (AP) — A boat captain who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from Britain — accusing him of littering.

[From a friend: Chip]

This one is too funny to not post as a self-parody:

Wired News: No Opinions? No Problem
Commentary by Lore Sjöberg
02:00 AM Feb, 01, 2006 EST

Events are taking place. Disturbing events. World-shaking events. Fortunes are at stake. Countries are at stake. The survival of the most adorable life forms on the planet are at stake. Blogs and news sites across the web host message boards yearning for your commentary.

You owe it to everyone to let them know what you think, and by extension what they should think. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people fail to register.

You may be impaired by — among other things — the lack of an actual opinion on the subject at hand. That’s OK, opinions are filthy, malodorous things that tend to fall apart under close examination. What you need is something that appears to be an opinion without actually requiring defense, justification or rational thought.

While you’re wasting time considering context and relevant factors, lesser minds are beating you to the Submit button. This simple guide to posting on message boards requires no more contemplation than is necessary to microwave popcorn.

[more at link above]

Yeah, bad pun on that title…

Some fun bits (at least if you are as much of a geek as I am) from Divya (I am not sure what her sources are, so no attribution):

• Animals can digest only molecules with one orientation (in an Organic Chemistry sense) though both exist in nature.
• Mitochondria, now part of our cellular makeup, were once free living bacteria. Did you know that they are passed down only the maternal genetic line? (Findings of an underappreciated female biologist: Lynn Margulis)
• Cockroaches can live for 2 weeks without their heads since they have their brains in their legs, but they will eventually die of starvation.